Do you trust reviews of the hosting providers?

[NiceNIC]

I still read reviews, but I pay more attention to what happens when something goes wrong. A provider with a few imperfect reviews but a clear record of solving problems can be more trustworthy than one with hundreds of perfect ratings.

 

[FrancoFang]

I am on the other side of this, so treat it as disclosure rather than
defence: part of my job is negotiating with review and comparison
sites, which makes me one of the people paying for the thing this
thread distrusts.

The "top 10" observation above is correct and I would not argue with
it. What I would add is a way to tell the difference from outside,
because you cannot see the commission but you can see its symptoms.

The payment model predicts the content. A site paid a one-off bounty
per signup is optimising for the click, and what happens to you in
month two is not their problem. That is what produces the "best hosting
2026" page regenerated every January. A site on recurring commission
only keeps earning if you stay, which quietly aligns them with telling
you the truth, including the unflattering parts.

You cannot see which model a site is on, but the two look different.
Recurring-commission sites tend to maintain and update old reviews
rather than only publishing new ones, they publish the negatives, and
they quote specific configurations and prices - which go stale, and
therefore have to be looked after. A page that could have been written
without ever touching the product usually was.

Agreeing with NiceNIC: what happened when something broke is worth more
than the score. And Artashes is right that authentic reviews are still
a real asset - the mechanism is mostly just making it possible for the
reviewer to say something bad.