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The Problem with VPS Reviews

 by: raindog308

When you go to buy something, you might search the Internet, looking for reviews.

Unfortunately, for web hosting services (including VPS), this often is a suboptimal strategy, for the following reasons.

First, those "top ten hosts" sites are completely ridiculous nonsense. Ignore them.

Second, legitimate boards that talk about VPS services are often dominated by people's negative experiences. People are more likely to post if they have a negative experience than a positive one. If everything works as advertised, customers are busy doing their work. If there's a problem, they get angry and want to vent.

Also, you often don't get the full story. The review writer states that he received bad service, the VPS was down, and the provider refused to give him a refund. Outrageous! Oh, wait, turns out he was spamming Viagra ads to a million people an hour.

You also have no idea what the reviewer was doing with his VPS or if his expectations matched the provider's offerings. A lot of people want flawless perfection for $3/month. A lot of people seem to have a hard time understanding where the managed/unmanaged line is.

In general, reviews are tricky to really trust. You may wish to read my How to Find a Good VPS Provider article.