Introduction by Jared Townsend


To describe the web hosting industry as diverse would probably be an understatement. It’s far reaching, covering a variety of services that not only allow key demographics to coordinate and maintain their web presences, but store all sorts of critical data featuring multiple capabilities. While any web host surely promises its clientele the ability to get them up and running, we always return to the question, “Who’s the best to go with?” There are upsides to selecting any company, and of course, the unfortunate potential downsides that also exist. This year, at Ping! Zine, we thought we’d do some exploring, attempting to identify the most proficient companies specializing in a number of categories.


The web hosting industry has, without a doubt, diversified. That’s especially true within the past half- decade. Industry standards have shifted as cloud has emerged as a key offering. That’s seen in many service providers ranging from hosts such as OnApp on a large capacity scale to one of the world’s top technology providers, Apple, who through its iCloud offering


012 www.pingzine.com provides such a service in a more personalized way.


In the area of hosting, standards such as shared, reseller, VPS, and dedicated continue to dominate integral parts of the industry. Meanwhile, server and colocation technologies are creating waves with new components providing for greater efficiency, capacity and green standards. Other key categories accounted for in this year’s awards cover areas such as protection against online threats like DDoS and spam, website builders, backup services, merchant accounts and video hosting.


To receive our results, we polled our viewership, asking them their opinions on who they thought excelled in such critical areas. After extensive feedback, the results have arrived. And while they’re nowhere near scientific, they represent some consensus among our faithful readers.


So without further ado, here are this year’s winners:


FEATURE


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