At Themeisle, we believe in hands-on testing of every product we recommend. Our reviews are based on real experiences, not just specifications or marketing materials. Here’s how we ensure our recommendations are trustworthy and valuable to you.
Our Testing Philosophy
We approach product testing with three key principles:
- Real-world usage: We test products in environments that mirror how you would actually use them.
- Consistent methodology: Each product category follows specific testing processes to ensure fair comparisons.
- User-focused evaluation: We prioritize aspects that matter most to WordPress users like you.
We believe that the most accurate product evaluations come from people with relevant expertise. That’s why we employ subject matter experts for different product categories.
Each expert brings specialized experiences to their testing process, ensuring you get insights that go beyond surface-level observations. Our testers don’t just know how to use these products—they understand how they’re built, what makes them work well, and how to identify potential issues that might impact your site.
Our General Testing Process
Products we review will generally go through these steps:
- Setup and installation: We purchase, install and configure the product ourselves, noting the ease of the process.
- Feature verification: We test every significant feature to ensure it works as advertised.
- Performance assessment: We measure how the product affects site speed and resource usage.
- Compatibility testing: We check compatibility with popular themes and plugins.
- Support evaluation: We contact customer support to assess response time and quality.
- Value assessment: We compare pricing against features and performance to determine overall value.
This is an ideal scenario. Not all products can be tested using identical steps. We adapt our methodology appropriately for each product category.
Isn’t This Super Expensive?
Yes! Yes, it is!
Maintaining all our hosting test accounts, purchasing various plugins, renewing premium licenses, and employing expert testers requires a significant investment (we’ve got invoices to prove it). Just to give you an idea, we spend hundreds of dollars monthly on hosting accounts alone to ensure our recommendations are based on current experiences.
This is why we have to support our website in other ways. Themeisle blog is primarily funded through affiliate links. You know, that thing where if you click on something and then purchase a product or service, we earn a small commission. Learn more about how we make money and why we chose to do it this way here.
However, we want to be crystal clear: our testing process is in no way influenced by these affiliate relationships. Our editorial staff operates completely independently from our affiliate partnerships team. Our reviewers don’t know how a particular article is monetized and don’t receive any portion of the commissions earned. This strict separation ensures that our recommendations are based solely on the quality of the products and their value to users like you.
We’d rather tell you a product isn’t worth your money (even if we could earn a commission) than damage the trust we’ve built with our community over the years.
How We Test Hosting Providers
We understand that choosing the right hosting provider can be a daunting task, and we want to help make that process easier for our readers. That’s why we have developed a comprehensive methodology for testing and reviewing web hosting companies.
Here’s how we do it…
- Honest expert reviews – We work with a team of experts who have years of experience in the web hosting industry. They evaluate each hosting company and provide their honest opinions.
- Real user feedback – We gather feedback from real users by conducting an annual Hosting Survey, and also by analyzing reviews from various online platforms.
- Performance monitoring – We sign up for hosting plans and use them to host our own websites. We continously monitor the uptimes and loading times.
- Real-time updates – We regularly update our reviews to ensure that they reflect the most current information available..
Our Review Process
To determine what the best web hosting services are at any given time, we look through the popular companies on the market and sign up for the most appealing offers from each company. Next, we do a series of tests:
- We set up a standard website on the server and populate it with demo data.
- We test the performance of the host – the load times from various locations around the globe.
- We take note of the uptime/downtime numbers across a period of time.
- We rate each host based on their price, performance, features available for the price, and user reviews.
Pricing
One of the most important factors when choosing a web hosting provider is pricing. We make sure to thoroughly review the pricing options of each hosting company we test, including the cost of different plans, any hidden fees, and any discounts that may be available.
Performance
At Themeisle blog, we don’t just rely on online research to evaluate a hosting provider’s performance. We actually sign up for hosting plans and use them to host our own websites. We keep track of the uptime and loading times of each provider, and we share our findings with our readers. We also take into account the server locations and network infrastructure of each provider.
You can check the uptime and load times for all our test accounts on our hosting status page. If you want to see how a specific hosting provider is performing, just head to its dedicated page.
Features
The features offered by a hosting provider are also crucial to consider. We evaluate the features provided by each hosting company, including the amount of storage and bandwidth, the number of domains allowed, and the availability of tools like website builders and ecommerce platforms.
User Reviews
In addition to online research, we also conduct an annual Hosting Survey (only one in the industry) on our sister-site WPShout, where we ask real users about their experiences with different hosting providers. We take into account the feedback we receive from our readers and the broader web hosting community to ensure that our reviews are comprehensive and unbiased.
We believe that thorough, honest testing is the foundation of trustworthy recommendations. While no testing process is perfect, we continually refine our methods to provide you with the most reliable information possible to make informed decisions for your WordPress site.
Have questions about our testing methodology? Feel free to reach out to us at friends@themeisle.com.
Interested to learn more about our editorial standards. Read our Editorial Policy.