Editorial Guidelines

These editorial guidelines govern how every piece of content on Hosting Cost is researched, written, reviewed, and maintained. They exist so our independence and our standards are explicit, not just implied by the about page.

Editorial Guidelines: No Pay-for-Placement

This is the rule everything else follows from: no hosting provider, past, present, or prospective, has ever paid for a mention, a ranking position, a “best of” inclusion, or favorable treatment on this site. In this ranking-only phase, there are no affiliate links, sponsored placements, or commission-based recommendations anywhere on Hosting Cost. If that ever changes for a future phase of the site, it will be disclosed explicitly and clearly, not folded quietly into existing content.

Editorial Guidelines: How We Handle Claims

Every factual claim about a provider — pricing, uptime SLA, storage, support channels — is checked against that provider’s current, public documentation before it’s published. We don’t rely on secondhand summaries or outdated pricing pages. Where we cite third-party data, such as on the statistics page, we note the general pattern rather than presenting a single unverifiable number as precise fact.

Editorial Guidelines: How Comparisons Are Built

Comparison and “best for” content follows the testing-led methodology described in how we review hosting. We don’t start from a conclusion and build a list to support it. We start from the attribute the reader actually cares about — price, performance, control, ease of use — and evaluate options against that attribute honestly, including naming where a type or approach isn’t the right fit.

Editorial Guidelines: Author Accountability

Every article carries a named byline from one of our three editors, each writing within their area of genuine expertise — infrastructure, WordPress and managed hosting, or security. We don’t publish unattributed content, and we don’t rotate bylines across topics outside an editor’s actual specialty.

Editorial Guidelines: Corrections and Updates

Hosting is not static — pricing changes, SLAs shift, and new hosting models emerge. Content is reviewed on a recurring schedule rather than published once and left untouched. The “historical data” signal referenced across this site’s structure reflects genuine, periodic re-review, not a cosmetic timestamp update. If a reader identifies an error, it is corrected and, where material, noted.

Editorial Guidelines: Tone and Accessibility

We write to be understood by someone new to hosting, without talking down to someone experienced. Jargon is defined on first use or linked to the glossary rather than assumed. We avoid manufactured urgency, exaggerated claims, and vague superlatives (“the best host in the world”) in favor of specific, checkable statements.

Editorial Guidelines: Independence From Our Own Preferences

Editorial independence also means guarding against our own editors’ personal biases, not just commercial pressure. Each editor writes within a defined area of expertise specifically so that no single person’s preferences dictate coverage of the whole domain. A security-first bias from our Security Editor is balanced by a cost-first lens from our Pricing Editor, and neither overrides the shared attribute checklist described in how we review hosting.

Scope of These Editorial Guidelines

These guidelines apply to every published page on Hosting Cost, including the glossary, the calculators, and the comparison and best-for content, not only long-form guides. Interactive tools are held to the same no-pay-for-placement standard as written content: a calculator’s output reflects the underlying math, never a provider relationship.

For the practical side of these guidelines — exactly how we test and form our conclusions — see how we review hosting. For the full editorial team behind this content, see about Hosting Cost.