Who Owns Your Web Hosting?
Seemingly different web hosts may actually be the same company.
Mar 8, 2010 Categories: Web Hosting
When you are searching for a web host, the first thing you might do is look at the features of different webhosts. Then, you might read reviews about those hosts. Overall, that’s a pretty good plan. However, you might be surprised to find out how many different web hosting services are actually owned by the same parent company.
Potentially all of the servers for each of those “different” web hosts are housed in the same data center. They are more than likely managed by the same IT staff. Customer support may also be handled by the same call center for each one of the hosts belonging to the parent company.
So is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. If the hosting providers have good reputations, then the parent company’s efforts to diversify their client base are working. The problem arises when the hosting providers don’t do a good job and have gained bad reputations.
Let’s say you read a review about Webhost X. The review just dumps all over them and how horrible their hosting service is. It goes on to recommend Webhost Y as an alternative that looks good. I think you see where I’m going with this. If Webhost X has a bad reputation and Webhost Y is relatively unknown (or not widely reviewed), but they are owned by the same company, you would be getting into the same mess with either choice.
The bottom line is that it’s always necessary to look into the hosting service you are considering, especially if the account will be for a business website. If you are looking for a good webhost that has been thoroughly evaluated, take a look at our webhost reviews. You can also try our HostSelector™ tool – it helps you find a good host that meets your specific needs.
In the interest of making this even easier for you, I have tracked down groups of webhosts that are owned by the same parent companies. Here is the list.
Companies: FastDomain, Bluehost, Inc., HostMonster, Inc.
Address: 1958 South 950 East, Provo, UT 84606
URLs: http://www.hostmonster.com/
http://www.bluehost.com/
http://hosting.fastdomain.com/
Contact Phone: Bluehost & Hostmonster – Sales Support: 866-573-4678
FastDomain Sales Support: 888-210-3278
BBB: These businesses are not registered with the BBB
This is the big one:
yourwebhosting.com and accountsupport.com are generic reseller hosting platforms. yourwebhosting.com is built on the same hosting infrastructure as easycgi and accountsupport.com is built on the same hosting infrastructure as hostcentric (they’re both the same). Within these platforms there are no references back to easycgi or hostcentric, which allows completely anonymous reselling.