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Finding Trustworthy Webhosting Reviews? 89

Nylisk asks: "I've been searching for a new webhost for my site and upcoming sites. While searching for a host I find many webhost review sites that feel fake. They are primitive and limit themselves to a small amount of hosts to examine. They will display any where to around 30 hosts to 'review' but mostly I find sites that review only 5 or 6 hosts. When you look further you find no community on the site to provide further comment on those reviews. The site is done by a single publisher with minimal information, and most of it looks like an advertisement. There are only email links and basic submissions boxes. I was going to post example links, but why give them the publicity? The more I snoop, the more webhosts I find that are connected. I can't say I am surprised, but to be honest its tough not to find these results from search engines. I can't seem to find anything real. Are there any websites run by a community of members who review webhosts?"
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Finding Trustworthy Webhosting Reviews?

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  • by KodeK ( 887864 )
    I'll host you from my home DSL connection :)
    • I have had similar issues finding webhosting reviews when I was trying to migrate a site from CIHost's crap. They all seem to be fake or complaints from clueless users. I eventually stumbled across an ask slashdot from a few years ago that was a person hunting for hosting. Thats where I found dreamhost and it has been nothing but great since (and a great deal). You should give Dreamhost [dreamhost.com] a try. Their lowest level hosting is a great deal and provides more features than many more of the more expensive ho
      • I'll second that dreamhost recommendation.
      • I'll third that. I moved my and my dad's domains to dreamhost and they've been an, uh, DREAM to work with. Best part I think is their very well-done control panel. Not the standard CPanel that I hate so very very much. :) Everything is easy to find and links directly to help.

        Only downside with dreamhost is that they have no phone support. They make up for it by answering all emails within an hour. I've never had trouble with them, even when it was to fix something I broke. :)

        If you use MY referral code, yo
      • Have you had a look at Canadian Hosting companies? Several of my friends like http://www.ahost.ca/ [ahost.ca] They are a smaller hosting company, but provide great support and prices aren't too bad either.
  • by WTBF ( 893340 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @04:34PM (#13357986)
    You might want to check out Webhosting Talk [webhostingtalk.com] and ask about any hosts you are looking at, or search the forums to see what customers of the hosts are saying.
    • Think of some fast, stable sites you often visit, then use whois to find out who their host is. Atleast you'll be assured they have quality products, enough quality for those great sites not to drop them. Now it all comes down to plain comparison shopping. That's how I got my host; they host tomshardware.com.
  • http://webhostingtalk.com/ [webhostingtalk.com]
    • yeah i agree, been searching for a dedicated host for awhile now and the reviews there by users are great. Think i'm gonna go with layeredtech for my dedicated hosting needs.
      • Layeredtech are very professional, seem well organized, and respond quickly to any problems I have. That said, the server I rent from them runs nothing special (debian stable), and seems to hang pretty often (a few times a week), which seems really wrong:-(
        • I run my webservers and a small shared hosting business off of Layered Tech. I haven't had a single problem with them, nor any serious problems with downtime. My server's power supply died about a month ago and they had it back up and running with a new supply in less than 30 minutes. I completely agree with the parent, if you want dedicated go with Layered Tech. They're wonderful!

          David - you might want to check on your server's hardware, there may be a problem there causing it to hang. Maybe give LT a bu

  • WHT (Score:1, Redundant)

    by RaffiRai ( 870648 )
    WebHostingTalk.Com [webhostingtalk.com]
  • by kosmosik ( 654958 ) <kos@ko[ ]sik.net ['smo' in gap]> on Friday August 19, 2005 @04:37PM (#13358004) Homepage
    I think classic webhosting is thing of a past. Recently I almost exclusively use dedicated servers or virtual servers. You can get one quite cheap like $20/mo. (3GB space/50GB transfer) - what you get is dedicated Linux machine (or vserver that looks and feels like dedicated machine) on which you install your distro of choice, get root on it and do whatever you wish. Also there are offers of hosting dedicated to several popular solutions - like Drupal, eZ Publish, Mambo, Zen Cart etc. - they specialize in those apps and you get installation of these with support etc. - I think that is better aproach than simply just to get an account on server and put files via FTP on it - I mean you got more in control.

    I think this is the future. First of all take a look at linode.com - you will get your *own* server with full access to everything. No more waiting for ISP admin to fix that one httpd option or some permissions.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      This is true if and only if you know how to run a server and want to screw with the maintainence (and security) of it.

      If you do, VPS's are a great deal. $20/month can buy a nice little VPS (9GB space/ 96GB bandwidth) that can handle a few database driven sites, and email, and DNS quite nicely.

      Right now, one of my favorites is unixshell.com. What I really like about them is that you get console access via SSH in addition to normal SSH access. This is great for when you accidentally screw up your firewall
  • I work for a web design firm who does not do any sort of hosting. We regularly refer our customers to and set up sites with a web hosting company called ISOC (http://www.isoc.net/ [isoc.net]).

    We have had no problems with them thus far, and any changes we needed to accomidate the special needs of certain sites were made in a very timely fashion, not to mention the support representatives spoke English! (I think they are based in KY)

    • Wow, nice job ripping your customers off! This is yet another reason why I have never trusted a "web dev" to tell me where to host my sites. $29.95 setup fee and $15.00/month for 25MB of space and 5GB transfer/month?! That's not even competitive with my old crappy dialup ISP's plan! And the last time I used them was.... 1998.

      Let me give you an example of some other hosting companies' offerings. For $9.95/month dreamhost [dreamhost.com] offers 2400MB of space, 120GB transfer/month, unlimited mysql, and a boatload of fe
  • don't know if you've got enough upload, but try http://httpd.apache.org/ [apache.org] I've got no problems with my DIY web hosting, but YMMV.
  • Check with friends (Score:4, Informative)

    by tonsofpcs ( 687961 ) <slashback@NOSPAm.tonsofpcs.com> on Friday August 19, 2005 @04:38PM (#13358015) Homepage Journal
    I was going to post example links, but why give them the publicity?
    So that they get to experience the wonders of the slashdot effect?

    he more I snoop, the more webhosts I find that are connected.
    Yes, many webhosts are just resellers of services that they acquire from other hosting companies. Actually, many different businesses have deals like this, it is not just limited to webhosts.

    Are there any websites run by a community of members who review webhosts?
    There are quite a few, but they all have either too few users that they are just as bad as a single user's review, or they have so many that there are an equal number of bad and good reviews of most hosts.

    Personally, I would just ask friends and local IT people how they like their providers, and what they have and what they are missing.
    • by DavidNWelton ( 142216 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @06:05PM (#13358618) Homepage
      I have some suspicions that web hosting is a "market for lemons" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemon s [wikipedia.org] :


      In this model, as quality is undistinguishable ex ante by the buyer (due to the asymmetry of information), incentives exist for the seller to pass off a low-quality good as a higher-quality one. The buyer, however, takes this incentive into consideration, and takes the quality of the good to be uncertain. Only the average quality of the good will be considered, which in turn will have the side effect that goods that are above average in terms of quality will be driven out of the market. This mechanism is repeated until a no-trade equilibrium is reached.


      Other than by talking with friends (which isn't very scalable), it's hard to know who's good, and who is just some random loser thinking he's going to make a buck. It's really easy to put up a fancy site, even answer the phone professionally, but you only learn they're no good when your server dies on Friday evening and no one can fix it untill Monday!
      • Other than by talking with friends (which isn't very scalable), it's hard to know who's good, and who is just some random loser thinking he's going to make a buck.

        Why isn't this scalable? Of course everyone talking to the same friends doesn't scale, but everyone talking to their own friends seems to scale fine.

        • Why isn't this scalable? Of course everyone talking to the same friends doesn't scale, but everyone talking to their own friends seems to scale fine.

          Because the majority of people don't ask their friends. It's the same reason why you can't use your six degrees of seperation to get a date with Tyra Banks.
      • by rimu guy ( 665008 ) * on Saturday August 20, 2005 @01:45AM (#13360497) Homepage

        It was great to read the 'market for lemons' post. It takes a fair bit of experience in the 'industry' to be able to pick the good hosts from the bad. And unless hosting customers are savvy enough to tell a good host apart from a bad one the good ones will indeed be driven out of the market.

        Here is my advice for finding a good host.

        • Ignore the 'review sites'. Or at least take them the reviews with a major grain of salt. Most 'review' sites are indeed just paid advertising sites. 'Top Hosts' are typically just the hosts that paid the most for the listing.
        • Look for a host with a few years in the business. It means the host has gotten past the first 6 month hurdle were probably 99% of all webhosts just up and disappear (losing money, getting bored of the job, selling out to a bigger outfit, etc). Obviously a new business may be good, but you will improve your odds by picking an older business. In addition to proving themselves survivors they will likely have gotten their procedures and server setups nicely tuned, plus they will have a bit of experience behind them.
        • Look for multiple contact details on their site. Phone, email, tickets. Most webhosts will work from home, so you may or not see a physical address (which isn't necessarily bad). A physical (office) address may indicate a larger organisation (which isn't necessarily good).
        • Look for forums or some way of users making public comments/questions about a site. It indicates the host has some confidence in their ability. And it is likely you'll see problem reports (quite normal, no need to get alarmed) and how the host deals with them (which is what you should really be interested in). A lack of forums may not indicate a bad host (they could just be shy).
        • Google for the prospective host. You'll find people recommending them, or hosted by them. You may find positive/negative comments about the host. As has been mentioned, research them on web hosting talk [webhostingtalk.com]. Take any comments with a grain of salt: host enough people for long enough and _someone_ is going to be unhappy about how they were treated. Look for common themes in what people are saying about the host.
        • If you have the time setup some kind of uptime monitoring [pingability.com] on the host. Preferably try to figure out the server they are setting up new customers on. It may not be the same server as their domain.
        • Pop in a pre-sales question. Ask a few intelligent questions. See what response you get. The response may be well written or may indicate the author is a l337 h4xor kid trying out the hosting biz. The response should indicate the host knows what they are talking about. Good questions to ask: what do you do about server failures? what network outages have you had? And describe your backup setup. Problems happen, denial could very well be an indication of dishonesty.
        • Check their prices. Deals that are too good to be true probably are. Look for middle of the road and up pricing (and be aware that there are plenty of high priced hosts that have pretty bad reputations).
        • Check their resource allocations. 'Unlimited' is bad (or rather it is not really possible despite what the host will say). 'Unmetered' is the more honest phrase (it typically mean, when applied to bandwidth that the server is on a fixed bandwidth pipe and you can use as much as you can get. When the bandwidth is maxed out your transfers will just be throttled.

        --
        Disclaimer: Take all this advice with a grain of salt, since I happen to run a VPS hosting outfit [rimuhosting.com].

  • By that I mean structure your query as problems with webhost or "webhost" dissatisfaction etc
  • Hang out.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by jvagner ( 104817 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @04:46PM (#13358078)
    ..on Web Hosting Talk for a few weeks and it becomes obvious who the good ones are. It takes a little work, but I can think of 5 hosts right off the top of my head that have sterling reputations and aren't hard to locate.
  • Hit web dev forums. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SocialEngineer ( 673690 ) <invertedpanda@@@gmail...com> on Friday August 19, 2005 @04:47PM (#13358081) Homepage

    You can usually find a number of recommendations by freelancers such as myself for hosting suggestions.

    A Small Orange [asmallorange.com] is really popular right now among devs. I'm setting a client up with them, myself. They apparently have superb service and reliability. Another popular one is Dreamhost [dreamhost.com]. I'll be switching over to them in 6-9 months, more than likely.

    • by wbren ( 682133 )
      I signed up with Dreamhost a little while back, and they are pretty good. The tech support response time is a little high, but other than that it's been fine. The main reason I used them was their price. During a promotion, I got 2.4GB with 120GB bandwidth and lots of scripting support for $44 per year.
      • You overpaid by a factor of 4 :-) You can get the "Crazy Domain" plan (yours) for $7.77 with a promo code.
      • You should check out getting a serious upgrade (for less money!) to the current CodeMonster promotion [dreamhost.com]: 1 free domain registration, 15 full domains, 75 subdomains, 7680 MB Disk, 192 GB Transfer, 3000 Mailboxes, 375 Users, MIVA merchant E-Commerce, etc. for 16/mo if you pay 2 years in advance, 20/month if you pay 1 year.

        PHP4/5, RoR, CVS, anon FTP server, etc. -- I've been looking around for shared hosting for all of my "little" sites to live on, and this is now it (I signed up about 10 minutes ago). If you'r
        • I tried dreamhosting, but after a month of them continually screwing up the setup (they would fix one, thing and break another, and never both to actually check if things *worked* after the fix), I switched to Rimuhosting. While more expensive, it's great, as you can run whatever you want to. I switched from using PHP to ModPython fairly easily. I also love the fact that you can use Debian (my personal pref) or Redhat. Their servers are fairly stable (in the beginning there was some trouble, but after being
        • Correction - to get anon FTP support you'll need to pay for a unique IP (another $5/month)
    • Gotta agree about Dreamhost [dreamhost.com] and not just because I want the referrals. ;-)
    • I've been with dreamhost about 18 months now and have had great luck. I started out with an early promo that got me the better part of a years hosting for VERY cheap - but continued on because they've been so easy to deal with and reliable.

      There's also a coupon floating around that'll get you $50 off any signups - just enter "PBP" when signing up.

      Also - bear in mind that although dreamhost does NOT have telephone tech support, they really don't need it. They've been doing fine by me with just email suppor
  • Try this (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kraeloc ( 869412 ) <kburninator@proto n m ail.com> on Friday August 19, 2005 @04:47PM (#13358084)
    http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ [nearlyfreespeech.net] Read the FAQ for details, but the gist of it is dirt-cheap prices and enourmous flexebility.
    • Also try http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/ [totalchoicehosting.com] - Very cheap, fast and reliable. You can grab 20GB b/w with 850MB space and all the added extras for $5.00 per month.
    • Re:Try this (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mshiltonj ( 220311 )
      I switched to nearlyfreespeech a couple months ago. Here's what I have to say [mshiltonj.com] about them.
      • It's cheap but there are other similar solutions.
        The catch is that you have to pay .01/month per megabyte of storage which is not really very cheap. If you store a couple hunderd MB of pictures, that adds up to more than what you would spend, say on shieldhost.com. And you don't have email.
    • Here's another ringing endorsement for nearlyfreespeech. They've been fantastic. Their pricing is very hard to beat, especially for a smallish site. Running a lightly used download site (hosting some of my experiental builds for an open source project... 20MB or so a pop, semi-regularly posted to busy user forums to get users to test features), a blog, a bookmark sync app, and a photo album has cost me just under $3.00 for the past 9 months. Support has been fantastic. If you don't need SSL for your site, a
  • 2 host stories (Score:2, Interesting)

    well, in the past 6 months i've had 2 different hosts, and i have (almost) nothing but good things to say about each.

    the first host i went with was dailyrazor. they provide you with a private JVM for about $20 a month, give you 10 mysql/postgresql database, a decent amount of space, unlimited subdomains, bladiblah.

    good: they have excellent support. i had trouble getting hibernate working, and they were actually googling with me trying to find out what was causing my problem (the database connections would g
  • 2ADV.net [2advanced.net] have some insanely powerful deals from around 12$ a month, to their 300$ a month dedicated server. They run both types of server (Linux/Windows) and the site and company was created by 2ADV.com [2advanced.com], a successful webdesign team.

  • From the Slashdot story: "The site is done by a single publisher with minimal information, and most of it looks like an advertisement."

    I've found that also. Most "reviews" of ISPs are actually advertisements, and the reviewers, because they represent differently, are lying. Therefore you cannot trust them.
  • http://www.modevia.com/ [modevia.com] I've been using them for the longest time and i can't say how awesome their support is.

    One thing i've found about web hosts through trial and error: it's hard to find a good host with awesome tech support.

    I've had 3 hosts in my years that respond within "48 hours". Modevia usually responds within 2-3! Not only that but i'm truly amazed by how they are willing to help their users... just the other day i had one of my sites defaced because of my stupidity. Modevia hopped right
  • i recently did some digging myself for a webhost. i didn't find any particularly good rating site for hosting. most of what i saw did look pretty hollow.

    i did follow a link from someone's sig here for www.dreamhost.com and found them to be a good deal. i read a lot of good reviews about them when googling them directly and the price is good.

    i've found them to be pretty relaible, a touch slow on creation of new databases, but that's more an issue with dns than anything else. what you get for the money

  • Hostgator , Thats all I need to say. They host my site; they called me and verified I was me after setting up the site. I had a question about JAVA and MySQL; they went out of there way to fix it.

    I'll recomend them to anyone
  • Either online, or in RL. Talk to people, ask them which hosting company they use, if they are happy with it and why. Read the blogs of people of people you know, trust or who are into similar things as you. Jump on usenet, go to teh forums at places like webhostingtalk or at the actual hosting service itself and read what people are saying.

    Ignore articles published by news sites, magazines and the like. They are out to make money and hence are biased. You cannot get a feel for how good a hosting service is,
  • by dmaduram ( 790744 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @10:28PM (#13359850) Homepage
    If you're searching for a hosting provider, Netcraft has a rather nice table that displays server uptimes [netcraft.com], % failed requests & other ancillary information for a large sample of hosting companies. An example of one row in the aforementioned table would be as follows:

    Hosting provider = www.valueweb.net
    OS = Linux
    Outage hh:mm:ss = 0:00:00
    Failed Req% = 0.00
    DNS (Time taken for the DNS lookup of the hostname) = 0.181
    Connect (first phase of the http GET request when the TCP/IP connection is setup to the remote server) = 0.105
    First byte (time from when the last byte of the http GET request is sent until the first byte of the response header is received) = 0.211
    Total (This is the time from when the http GET request is started until the last byte of data is received) = 0.211
    Kb/s = -
    Size (K) = 0

    The table displays the top 50 hosting providers with respect to failed requests, so, personally, I restricted my search to all the hosting providers that had a Linux OS (for script compatibility), and a failed request percentage below 3.0%. Given these performance constraints, I subsequently chose the cheapest suitable plan offered by a hosting company in this sample set, based on my bandwidth/disk space criteria.
  • I know it sounds like a /. cliche, a guy on slashdot saying you should see who supports open source, and go with that provider. But that's what I'm going to say.

    Not so much because they support open source, but more because if an OSS project is hosted there, it's probably there because of the quality, not just because of the sponsorship. OSS projects are run by savvy people who know how to not stay stuck on a bad host.

    If you look around at where various respected OSS sites are hosted, a few big names keep p
    • I went through a search for hosting several months ago and ended up going with hub.org in part because they didn't have a lot of hype.

      What they do have is reasonably priced hosting where you can tell exactly what you're getting. There are several different setup options, and a continually updated list of all the software installed (down to the details of the perl modules), including version numbers. That was very appealing, given some of my experience wrestling with bunches of packages that aren't all upd
  • I've been using t35.net a year and a half, they're cheap, reliable, have generous space and download limits, provide full cPanel admin backend and allow as many domain names and subdomains as you want.

      Overall I would give them 10/10 every time.
  • I hosted with JohnCompanies [johncompanies.com] and they were great! Linux and FreeBSD only, either virtual private servers or dedicated boxes, or colo your own, and real Unix admins for support if you need it.

    They also offer discounts if you're hosting an open source-related, non-profit, or educational site!

    The only reason I left them is that a client allows me to colocate my own servers in his cage for free... if that deal ever goes away, I'm switching back to JohnCompanies in a heartbeat.
  • I use Bihira.com. [bihira.com] It's a bit slow at times. (nothing noticable on fast connections), but has a ton of features, unlimited MySQL DBs, PGQL DBs, unlimited subdomains, the whole works. VERY cheap too, $2.50 a month for the smallest package. All packages have the same features, only space and bandwidth vary. Comes with cPanel too.
  • Beware WHT (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bitsy Boffin ( 110334 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @04:04AM (#13360799) Homepage
    As others have said, WHT [webhostingtalk.com] is probably your best bet for reviews.

    One thing to note about WHT though is that there is a "WHT Level Host" and that level is quite low - what I mean is that a lot of the time WHT attracts those $1/month overselling fly-by-night teenage (or less) managed "hosts" (who are almost certainly kids who bought a $1/month mammothly oversold reseller account) that will ignore support requests when they go on summer holidays with thier parents. Unfortunatly these hosts start out well, and they often get good reviews (probably tooting thier own horn), but very quickly they will die off.

    Also make sure you know exactly what you want, ask questions. You're posting here so I'll assume that things like SSH access are important, and if you're using PHP you probably don't want anywhere that has safe_mode restrictions (and probably not open_basedir), you might also want to avoid hosts that run php as suPHP (basically cgi-mode php in a wrapper).

    In short, take your time, choose wisely.
  • I use PowWeb for the Mystery Studio site (see sig), $7.77 a month, 3000 GB/month, no big problems in the 2.5 years I'm hosted with them. http://www.powweb.com./ [www.powweb.com] No, I don't work for them, and I won't get a comission.
  • Webhosting is a lot like selling used cars, or amway or other MLM pyramid schemes. There are always new players doing what they can to look like a serious business, and when they get bored or broke they sell what customers they have to the next guy as a starter kit. Those that are slightly successful get other idiots to resell their crap, in the hopes of spreading the responsibility and risk around.

    I work around a number of bandwidth resellers. Their most numerous customers are little webhosting companies,
  • OC Host Review [ochostreview.co.uk]

    This site was created to provide an impartial, unbiased system for users of OcUK Forums [overclockers.co.uk]to share experiences with different webhosts (both positive and negative) and for people who perhaps have never bought webhosting before to have a reliable source of information.
  • I have been with a webhosting company called http://www.cyanidehosting.net/ [cyanidehosting.net]Cyanide Hosting For quite a while now, and have very much enjoyed their services.

    They have quite good uptime, and you can always talk to the admin on their irc network (irc.cyanide-x.net) about custom plans/setups.


    /Whitey
  • I was just in the same boat. I have a small business and do very little traffic. My old provider, Dixiesys, was cheap and had value when I started, but the prices haven't changed in years, and I've found the servers to be painfully slow, especially for admin tasks.

    Look at the webhosting forum links early on. I jumped in with Site5. Looked good, was easy to set up, and forums were very responsive. And with 12GB storage - enough for my personal and business data to all be stored (we're talking non-secure s
  • After the 5th host I was recommending to customers provided bad service, charged credit cards incorrectly time and again, I just started my own and have never been happier.

    We haven't advertized at all and I don't have to deal with some 9/hour guy that doesn't know how email works. One time I had a guy telling me my internet connection was the problem when I was online chatting with him!

  • No idea if you have any requirements with regards to geographical location of your hosting provider, but if not or if hosting in the Netherlands is an option for you...

    I use for all my hosting needs. They are extremely well connected (being at the same location and on the same network as www.debian.org for example). [gnulinux.nl]

    They support Linux, and as long as you know what you are doing, will also support other OSS based installations (using FreeBSD myself). Currently running on a dedicated server with a celeron 180
  • Personal Colo (Score:2, Interesting)

    by markcic ( 45724 ) *
    Not really a review site but a good listing of personal colo sites. Personal Co-location Registry [vix.com]
  • IMHO, if possible, it's best to ask friends who have sites which have similar traffic profiles to your whom they use AND if they would recommend them to others.

    If that isn't applicable to your situation, I would get a half a dozen companies that fit your criteria - price, capacity, etc. and then search the major web master hangouts like webmasterworld.com and sitepointforums.com and even google for previous posts of problems with those webhosts. E.g. "testwebhost.com problem" or "testwebhost.com downtime
  • I've used webhostingjury [webhostingjury.com]to do research on different web hosts, and have been very impressed with the number of reviews they have. I used them to find ICD Soft [icdsoft.com]. It turns out that their reviews were very true to reality. I've posted question to their IT People, and have gotten a reply within 2 minutes. I host my website at: DBZ Computer [dbzpc.com] with ICD Soft. So overall I really reccomend webhostingjury [webhostingjury.com].
  • I personally like epinions. http://www.epinions.com [epinions.com] There are quite a few reviews there on some

    Reviews For Web Hosting [epinions.com]

    I use the site a lot when I am looking for new appliances, furniture, just about anything I am planning on purchasing. Although it does not make the decision for me, I am able to see unbiased reviews.

What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey

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