How Is This Site Funded?
In short: we earn commission if you click an 'affiliate link' and buy hosting from one of our partners.
This is known as affiliate marketing. We use the revenue generated to pay the hefty bills that come with running a popular site. They also pay for new features, like our hosting comparison tool.
If everyone stopped buying hosting via those links, we'd have to close the site. Quite apart from being job-less, we'd no longer be able to bring you are awesome hosting reviews, coupons, hosting search & more.
Referral Fees? Sounds Shady To Me...
It's not. It's the internet equivalent of a salesman getting paid a commission for selling a product. Like 'real life', there are scrupulous and unscrupulous salesmen online (more on that here).
The internet's biggest brands all offer affiliate programs: Amazon, eBay, Expedia etc. Google even run their own affiliate network on behalf of 1000s of companies worldwide.
Can You Can See My Personal Information?
Relax: we don't see any personal information: name, address, credit card details etc.
Typically, we see that an anonymous user has spent $x, the date and time of the transaction and - sometimes - which product they bought.
Here's what one of the more sophisticated sales reports looks like:
(This one is for Go Daddy)
Many of them are far less sophisticated - these ones just list sale date, time & commission earned.
In short: most privacy concerns about affiliate links are because they are poorly understood. We hope to do our bit to put that right!
What Does This Cost Me?
Nothing. Not a dime.
Every business spends money recruiting new customers. Web hosts with affiliate programs pay sites like ours instead of sales staff, conventional advertising or fancy print ads.
New customers have to come from somewhere - and anybody who tells you that 'word of mouth' is the answer has never worked in a remotely competitive industry.
Sometimes you'll even save money buying hosting via our website. That's because some hosts are so keen to sell via hosting review sites that they give us special discounts to send your way (be sure to take a look at our hosting coupons section).
In short: being awesome is not enough. Even the biggest, most succesful hosts in the world spend big bucks to generate new business.
What Do You Do To Deserve This Commission?
Sites like this cost cold hard cash to build, run and maintain. In the last two years, we've invested the kind of money in this site that - forgive our directness here - would buy a house in parts of the US.
We've a small-but-dedicated team - programmers, webmasters, writers, editors and bloggers. Unsurprisingly, we pay them for their time to get the best people.
How Does This Work, Exactly?
Affiliate relationships usually rely on use of a special unique link. It might look like these real-life examples...
http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?84624 is a DreamHost affiliate link
http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-3728728-10378406 is a Go Daddy affiliate link
...and are used to track referrals.
Once you arrive on the host's website via us, your relationship with them is tagged with our special code. If you spend money with them, they'll pay us a referral fee.
These vary from host to host. For a domain sale at Go Daddy, we might earn a couple of dollars (as in the example below). For selling a 'regular' budget hosting plan, we'll typically earn $100 or so.
How Else Do You Make Money?
Apart from affiliate deals, we sell advertising space. We aim to ensure that our ads look like ads - not endorsements.
Got Questions?
No problem. Drop us a line via our contact form and we'll answer them. If we think it'll be of interest to other users, we'll add the reply to this page, too.