Price honesty (intro vs renewal)
20%
Renewal pricing is where most hosts ambush customers. We weight transparency heavily.
Uptime and performance
20%
Measured against the published SLA over the trailing 12 months where data is available.
Support quality
15%
Response time, knowledge of the agent, and channels offered.
Ease of use
15%
Time-to-first-site for someone who has never used cPanel.
Feature breadth
10%
Free SSL, free domain, free migration, backup frequency, staging environments.
Scalability path
10%
Whether the same provider can take you from shared to VPS without a painful migration.
Value at renewal
10%
The score after intro pricing expires — the price you actually live with.