Current
Last reviewed: January 2026
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Complies with FTC 16 CFR Part 255 (Updated 2023)
·
Effective: January 1, 2026
Important notice — required by the FTC
HostingGarage uses affiliate links.
Some links on this website — specifically links to web hosting plans and services —
are affiliate links. This means if you click a link and make a purchase,
HostingGarage may earn a commission from that hosting company.
This commission comes at no extra cost to you.
You pay the same price you would pay going directly to the hosting company’s website.
This disclosure is provided in accordance with the United States Federal Trade Commission’s
Endorsement Guides, 16 CFR Part 255, as updated in June 2023, and applicable consumer
protection regulations in India under the Consumer Protection Act 2019 and ASCI Guidelines
for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media 2021.
View FTC guidelines →
Section 1
What This Means For You
HostingGarage is primarily a free website health checker — a tool that diagnoses
your website across SSL, DNS, uptime, and server performance from Mumbai, at no cost and with no
signup required. That part of the site has no affiliate relationship with anyone.
However, HostingGarage also publishes hosting comparisons, rankings, and reviews. Some of these
pages contain links to hosting plans. When you click one of those links and purchase a hosting
plan, the hosting company pays HostingGarage a commission. The commission funds the cost of
running this site — including the hosting plans we purchase for testing, the monitoring
infrastructure, and the time spent writing and maintaining content.
✓ What affiliate links mean
- HostingGarage earns a commission if you purchase
- You pay the same price regardless
- Commission funds independent testing
- Links are clearly identified where possible
✗ What affiliate links do NOT mean
- Rankings are not influenced by commission rates
- Hosts cannot pay to improve their ranking
- We do not accept payment for reviews or placements
- Our performance data is not adjusted for partners
The website health checker tools — SSL checker, DNS checker, uptime checker, and speed test —
are completely free and contain no affiliate links.
These tools diagnose your own website and have no commercial relationship with any hosting provider.
Affiliate links appear only on hosting comparison and review pages.
Section 2
Which Links Are Affiliate Links
Not every link on HostingGarage is an affiliate link. Here is how to identify them:
1
Hosting plan links on comparison and review pages
Links labelled “View Plans”, “Check Price”, “Get Started”, or similar buttons on hosting review and comparison pages are affiliate links. These link directly to the hosting company’s website with a tracking parameter.
2
Hosting Report Card recommendations
The India Hosting Report Card at hostinggarage.in/reliable-web-hosting-india/ contains affiliate links to each listed hosting provider. The performance data on that page is independent — the links to purchase are affiliate links.
3
Individual hosting review pages
Pages like /hostinger-review/, /cloudways-review/ and similar contain affiliate links to the hosting provider being reviewed. Each review page carries a disclosure notice at the top.
✗
These are NOT affiliate links
Links to the SSL checker, DNS checker, website speed test, uptime checker, and down checker are free tools with no affiliate relationship. Links to external resources, documentation, or third-party research cited in our content are also not affiliate links.
Section 3
How We Choose Which Hosting Companies to Include
Inclusion in our hosting comparison is based on objective criteria — not on whether a hosting
company has an affiliate programme or on the commission rate they offer. These are the criteria
we apply:
1
Mumbai or India-region datacenter
The hosting provider must have a server location in Mumbai or the nearest India region. Without this, a fair performance comparison from our Mumbai monitoring probe is not possible.
2
Actively recommended to Indian WordPress users
The provider must be a hosting option genuinely considered by Indian website owners and developers — not an obscure provider included to inflate comparison numbers.
3
WordPress officially supported
The provider must support WordPress on their standard shared hosting plans. Our test environment is a fresh WordPress installation and the host must be compatible with it.
4
Accessible shared hosting plan available
We focus on shared hosting plans accessible to individual website owners and small businesses. Enterprise-only or minimum-commitment plans that are not realistic options for most Indian website owners are not included in our shared hosting comparison.
Having an affiliate programme is not a criterion for inclusion. A hosting company that meets the
above criteria but does not have an affiliate programme can still be included in our comparison.
Similarly, a hosting company with a generous affiliate programme but without a Mumbai datacenter
would not be included in our India hosting comparison.
Section 4
How We Rank Hosting Companies
Rankings are based entirely on two independently measured performance metrics.
Affiliate commission rates, business relationships, and advertising spend have no
effect on ranking position.
Ranking criteria — in order of priority
📊
1. Uptime — primary ranking metric
90-day uptime percentage measured from a Mumbai BOM probe via HetrixTools. The host with the highest sustained uptime over 90 days ranks first. This metric is entirely controlled by the hosting provider’s infrastructure.
⚡
2. TTFB (Server Response Time) — secondary metric
Median Time to First Byte from Mumbai over 90 days. Used as a tiebreaker when uptime figures are within 0.01% of each other. Lower TTFB ranks higher. This measures only the server’s response time — not frontend content the site owner controls.
—
Nothing else
Price, features, support quality, affiliate commission, and advertising relationships do not affect ranking position.
📡
Independent data at hostlatency.com
All uptime and TTFB monitoring data is collected and published independently at
hostlatency.com — a separate platform that has no affiliate links
and no commercial relationship with any hosting provider. Rankings on hostinggarage.in
are derived from that data. A hosting company cannot influence its ranking through
any commercial arrangement because the underlying data exists on a platform where
no such arrangement is possible.
View independent benchmark data at hostlatency.com →
Our full testing methodology — including how test environments are set up,
what tools are used, what metrics are collected, and what we deliberately exclude from
ranking — is documented at
hostinggarage.in/methodology/.
Section 5
Editorial Independence
The content on HostingGarage — performance data, rankings, reviews, and tool results — is
produced independently of any commercial relationship with hosting companies. The following
practices govern our editorial approach:
✓
Hosting providers are not notified before monitoring begins
We start monitoring without informing the provider. This ensures the data reflects normal operating conditions rather than a temporarily improved environment.
✓
No payment accepted for positive coverage
We do not accept sponsored posts, paid reviews, or any payment that would result in positive content about a hosting provider. All review content reflects our independent assessment of the performance data.
✓
No provider can request re-ranking or re-evaluation
Rankings are updated on a fixed schedule when new monitoring data is available — not in response to requests from hosting providers. A provider that improves its infrastructure will see that improvement reflected in the next data cycle automatically.
✓
All hosting accounts purchased at retail prices
Every hosting plan used for testing is purchased at the standard retail price available to any customer. We do not use complimentary accounts, press accounts, or accounts provided at a discount by the hosting company.
✓
Performance data is published before rankings are updated
Raw uptime and TTFB data is published at hostlatency.com before any ranking change is reflected on hostinggarage.in. This means the data exists independently and can be verified before any commercial recommendation is made.
Section 6
The Affiliate Relationship — Plainly Stated
We want to be straightforward about how this works. When you click a hosting link on
HostingGarage and purchase a plan, the hosting company pays us a referral commission.
The amount varies by company and plan type. Some companies pay more than others.
That commission is what funds this site. It pays for the hosting plans
we buy to test (₹14,000+ so far), the HetrixTools monitoring subscription used to track
uptime from Mumbai, the server infrastructure, and the time spent building and maintaining
the tools and content on this site. Without affiliate income, independent testing of this
kind would not be economically possible.
We recognise this creates a potential conflict of interest. Our response to that conflict
is structural — not just a statement. The performance data that determines rankings lives
on hostlatency.com,
a separate platform with no affiliate links. A hosting company cannot improve its ranking
by paying us more commission because the ranking is determined by data on a platform where
no payment is accepted. You are welcome to verify every number we publish by checking
hostlatency.com directly.
Quick reference — affiliate relationships at a glance
💰
How we earn
Commission when you purchase hosting through our links
🛒
Your cost
Unchanged — same price as going directly to the host
📊
What funds testing
Affiliate commissions pay for ₹14,000+ in real hosting accounts
🔒
Ranking protection
Data on hostlatency.com — structurally independent of commissions
🆓
Free tools
SSL, DNS, uptime, and speed checker — no affiliate links anywhere in these tools
Section 7
Third-Party Affiliate Programmes
HostingGarage participates in affiliate programmes operated by the hosting companies
listed in our comparisons. These programmes are operated by the hosting companies
themselves or by third-party affiliate networks. The following hosting companies
currently have affiliate relationships with HostingGarage:
🏢
Kinsta
Affiliate programme operated by Kinsta. Commission earned on new hosting plan purchases through our referral link.
🏢
Cloudways
Affiliate programme operated by Cloudways / DigitalOcean. Commission earned on new account signups and plan purchases.
🏢
Hostinger
Affiliate programme operated by Hostinger. Commission earned on new hosting plan purchases through our referral link.
🏢
HostArmada
Affiliate programme operated by HostArmada. Commission earned on new hosting plan purchases.
🏢
ChemiCloud
Affiliate programme operated by ChemiCloud. Commission earned on new hosting plan purchases.
🏢
MilesWeb
Affiliate programme operated by MilesWeb. Commission earned on new hosting plan purchases.
This list is updated when affiliate relationships change. BigRock is included in our
performance comparison but does not currently have an active affiliate relationship
with HostingGarage. Its inclusion is based on performance data only.
Section 8
Your Rights and Choices
You are never required to use our affiliate links. Every hosting company listed on this
site can be found by searching their name directly. Using our links supports the free
tools and independent testing on this site, but the choice is entirely yours.
If you prefer not to use our affiliate links: you can visit any hosting
company’s website directly by typing their domain in your browser. The performance data
and rankings on HostingGarage are available to you regardless of whether you use our
links. The free website health checker tools have no affiliate links and are always
completely free to use.
You also have the right to know when you are clicking an affiliate link. We aim to
identify affiliate links clearly on pages where they appear. If you ever encounter
a link that appears to be an affiliate link and is not disclosed as such, please
contact us using the details below so we can correct it.
Section 9
Changes to This Disclosure
This disclosure is reviewed and updated whenever our affiliate relationships change —
when we add a new hosting affiliate partner, when we end an existing relationship, or
when relevant regulations are updated. The effective date at the top of this page
reflects when the current version came into effect.
Continuing to use HostingGarage after an update to this disclosure constitutes
acceptance of the updated terms. If you have questions about any change, you are
welcome to contact us.
