Hello, and welcome to HostPeek! My name is Dan Lemnaru and I will present you why this web hosting comparisons site can help you like no other can. I know that time is always of the essence, and this short first introductory page shouldn't take you more than a couple of minutes to read.

The rankings

Server uptime records* Rank Host Uptime #1 1and1 99.99% #2 HostGator 99.97% #3 Godaddy 99.94% #4 HostMonster 99.91% #5 Lunarpages 99.88% #6 Fatcow 99.88% #7 Netfirms 99.85% #8 Dreamhost 99.8% #9 Hostpapa 99.54%

Server performance records** Rank Host Avg. time #1 HostGator 324.76ms #2 Hostpapa 414.81ms #3 1and1 428.84ms #4 Lunarpages 649.7ms #5 HostMonster 765.19ms #6 Dreamhost 804.62ms #7 Godaddy 1563ms #8 Netfirms 2080ms #9 Fatcow 2353ms

Network test records*** Rank Host Rate #1 HostGator 592.8KB/s #2 1and1 481.8KB/s #3 HostMonster 447.1KB/s #4 Dreamhost 414.1KB/s #5 Lunarpages 390.5KB/s #6 Godaddy 373.6KB/s #7 Fatcow 216.4KB/s #8 Netfirms 145.4KB/s #9 Hostpapa 138.2KB/s

*      As proved by Pingdom based reports. The higher the value, the better.
**    Calculated as the average of applications run times (joomla, phpbb, wordpress). The lower the value, the better.
***   Calculated as an average of the bimonthly download speed tests. The higher the value, the better.
---- All values updated monthly. Check the charts and figures pages to find detailed, up-to-date information.

The hosts

As you've probably already noticed, the hosts presented on this site are some of the most widely known web hosting providers, with some of the largest customer bases, and equally sized marketing budgets. If you've been looking for hosting you've probably heard about some of them already, maybe you've even seen their ads on TV. But how does that high visibility translate into service quality? Do their promises have anything to do with the reality of facts? How do their services compare to one another? 

The site

I've created Hostpeek.com to answer those questions with real data rather than hype. If you're tired of the hundreds of "top hosts" websites that publish fake, inaccurate, uninformative, random looking, unverifiable or intentionally misleading web hosting rankings, or tired of sites that only try to sell you a hosting service and provide you with information that was simply copied from the hosts' websites, you'll be glad to see that HostPeek.com is totally different. It allows you to actually take a peek at hosting companies' services, revealing servers' evolution over time.

Essentially, it's as if you had tried all these hosts yourself and now you're looking back at the results, because what I do is sign-up for an account with each hosting company as an inconspicuous customer. Then, with the help of monitoring software and services, I measure how fast some of the popular applications run on their servers (a blog, a content management system and a forum), keep track of various pertinent variables, monitor uptime etc. 

The details

You can access very detailed information about each host using the links in the "Charts and figures" menu, so that you can make your own judgments. Also, for your convenience, a set of rankings and average figures is presented on this very page, and updated monthly. It will help you make some easy, fast comparisons.

The Guide and FAQs articles provide detailed answers and instructions on how all of the data should be interpreted. In them you'll even find some self-critiques on the project. Yes, I don't claim perfection. Perfection is merely an ideal, thus my advice to you is to be reasonable. Be a realist. That's exactly what's presented on this site: reality, as it is being experienced on a regular customer account, at a number of hosts.

Helping out

If you like the site, you can help the site survive and grow by spreading the word about it. Please mention it in your blog or tweeter, link to it, or even just mention it to a friend who might need it. Thank you, and good luck finding the right host for your needs! I sincerely hope that Hostpeek.com will be of real use to you!