Don't Back Down

I just received an email telling me that I only had a limited amount of time to accept (or decline) a potential review for a site called Web Hosting Bluebook. This is interesting for two reasons - one, because I don't remember being asked to review the site and two, because it's actually the first time I've been asked to review a site. In the interest of disclosure, this is a paid review, but I will give you the full details on what I find out. Ready? Here goes.

Web Hosting Bluebook bills itself as the #1 Web Hosting Source (their claim) - which is interesting, because it makes it sound like they actually provide web hosting (something I don't think they do). The site has a clean look to it, and I suspect they would be better off telling you that they are the #1 Web Hosting Research Guide or something along those lines. Whatever the claim, I think you'd be hard-pressed to put either to a test and have it proven with hard facts, so it's probably better to look at the site to see what you do get.

The site offers a "live help" button, but like so many of them, it says that they are offline, and that you need to leave a message. At four in the afternoon on a weekday, that seems a little odd. Chances are probably good that the live help is either non-existent, or run out of a country on the opposite side of the world from the US. That's not bad, just something to keep in mind. Chances are that you won't really need the live help, just something to consider. They also offer a toll-free phone number, but you probably are more interested in the site than picking up the phone to call them.

The main focus of the site (at least, what you will see on the home page) is a list of the top ten budget plans. Cheap plans, you might say, since the highest-priced plan in the list is $11.95 (from Yahoo!). Frankly, I'm not sure where they assembled their list, since you can beat even the lowest-priced plan ($4.95) pretty easily with a simple Google search. That doesn't mean that you'll get good service or decent bandwidth, I'm just saying that it is what it is - if you're looking for the cheapest-priced plans, this isn't the place to go to find them.

What you do get is a nice grid that allows you to easily compare these ten plans: You can quickly see how much the plans cost, what it will cost you in setup (they are all free, at least at the moment), how much a domain will cost you (all but one are included), how much disk space you get, how much bandwidth you get and the rating of the plan. You can even click on a "read review" link to get some more details if you are so inclined. What I would really like to see is not only a larger list (more than 10 plans), but a way to sort the list, so if I wanted to sort by bandwidth or disk space, I could do it. Sure, the list isn't huge, but I'd just like the ability to sort the chart. it would make a nice addition.

As to the "reviews", they aren't terribly detailed, but they just give you a recap of what the service offers, and provide you a link to the site so that you can sign up. From what I can tell, the links redirect you to the site, so chances are good that they are affiliate links, but there is no mention of this on the Web Hosting Bluebook site itself. Again, this isn't a bad thing, I'm just sayin'.

The rest of the Bluebook site is a bit lacking. The Forum hosts a single topic - true, it holds a ton of information in it, but it would be nice if it were separated somehow, rather than containing one monstrous thread. As-is, it's a little less than useful. The Hosting Directory contains a link to another page, and it's just a single link (at this writing, anyway), and the Articles page gives you a nice overview of hosting in general, with a number of introductory topics on the subject. Though it's not the focus of the site, this is probably the best resource they have to offer.

Each of the other links on the site - Tools & Articles, Blog, Wordpress Themes, Newsletter and Hosting Glossary - takes you to a GoDaddy parked page. They could use some work here, and I'm not sure if they are still working on the roll-out, or if they have just decided to go with the site as-is.