In the game server hosting industry, it's an open secret that almost every listing site is either in the pockets of a major game server hosting company, or unreliable in it's review processes. When finding your host to start your community on, it's easy to be pulled towards a hosting option that sucks. All because that terrible service you bought just so happened to pay the website you found the service on the most money. At GameServerExperts, we strive to set the highest standard for content surrounding the game server hosting industry by breaking through these deceptive practices.
As a website that produces reviews and authoritative information on game server hosting, we have a responsibility towards you (the reader) to ensure that the content you are reading is produced ethically, and without external influence. This document details all the steps that we take to ensure that the content you read is bias-free, ethically produced, and actually helpful.
Our Core Values
Our editorial process is built on the core beliefs that:
- Your trust in the GameServerExperts brand is exponentially more valuable than any extra money we could make lying to you.
- We have a duty to cover the game server hosting industry at the deepest levels we can.
- We must strive to provide the most value to the reader that we possibly can.
Acting in the Interest of You
The mission of the GameServerExperts is to produce content that informs you about starting your own game server. This means that all of our content is produced to help potential and current game server owners better understand and make decisions about game server hosting. We will never stray from that goal to try and make money off of our audience. This means that we will be:
- Impartial: We will never take a biased view on a game, company, or review.
- Firm But Fair: When reviewing a service or giving you news, we will give the honest truth, even if it's a difficult truth.
- Independent from External Interests: We do not take money from companies to change our content, and we never will. While we do take affiliate commissions for sales of services, we do not allow that to affect our content.
Our Rating Methodology
When rating a game server host, there are 8 factors that all Game Server Hosting is judged on by the GameServerExperts. While we understand that these factors don't fully 100% of a game server offering, these are the factors we judge every host on:
- Hardware Performance: How does the hardware (CPU/RAM/Storage) this game server host uses compare to the available hardware on the market?
- Support: How quickly does support respond to inquiries? Are the support staff qualified to resolve the issues they are solving?
- Control: How user-friendly is the control panel? Does the average end user get a headache when using it?
- DDOS Protection: How much traffic can the protection handle? Are there unique filters for each game? Do users get null routed on the service?
- Price: Based on all the other features of the service, does the price adequetely justify the benifits of using the game server hosting?
- Locations and Connectivity: Does the service offer a large amount of different locations? Do these locations have good latency in production use?
- Reliability: Does the service have high uptime? When there is downtime, is the downtime communicated to clients in a timely and helpful manner?
- Simplicity: Can an average first time user start a game server with no external help from support or friends?
In addition to these factors, we will also always make room in a review to discuss additional features of note provided by a game server host that other hosts don't provide.
Hardware Performance
When evaluating hardware performance for a game server, the most important factor is the CPU. Here is how we evaluate that:
- 5 Stars: The game server host is using high performance consumer grade CPUs (Top 50 Avg Bench %) on it's best offerings.
- 4 Stars: The game server host is using high performance consumer grade CPUs (50-100 Avg Bench %) on it's best offerings.
- 3 Stars: The game server host is using mid-grade consumer or server grade CPUs (100+ or Above Avg Bench %) on it's best offerings.
- 2 Stars: The game server host is using low-grade consumer or server CPUs released more than 7 years ago on it's best offerings.
- 1 Stars: The game server host does not disclose it's actual hardware specs, or uses CPUs released more than 10 years ago on it's best offerings.
*Stars can be deducted in this category for blatently overselling hardware, not having NVMe SSD Storage, or having non DDR5/DDR4 RAM configurations.
Support
When evaluating support, we evaluate response time, attitude, and actual helpfulness for solving the problem. Here is how we evaluate that:
- 5 Stars: The game server host's support systems are consistent and there are multiple. (Email, Discord, ticket, etc.) Support staff are always on top of your problem. When you open a ticket with this company, you're happy to talk to the support again.
- 4 Stars: The game server host's support systems are consistent. Support staff are on the same page with clear and consistent communication. When you open a ticket with this company, you aren't worried about whether or not they will help you.
- 3 Stars: The game server host's support systems create inconsistencies in between different support members and channels. Simple issues take days to resolve fully. While you'll get your problem solved, you won't feel one way or another about it.
- 2 Stars: The first response to a ticket takes more than 12 hours. Support does not communicate effectively and sets poor expectations for the customer. When running into issues with this host you would rather find the answer yourself than deal with the support.
- 1 Stars: The first response to a ticket more than 24 hours. Support is actively rude and condescending. When you open a ticket with this company, you are in for a crazy ride that you do not want to be on.
*Stars can be deducted in this category for having support that are impatient, lack professionalism, and are not qualified.
Control Panel
When evaluating the control panel, we evaluate user experience, technical functionality, and features. Here is how we represent that:
- 5 Stars: On top of being good, this host's control panel is one of the best in the industry. It sets new standards for features on game server hosting control panels.
- 4 Stars: This host's control panel is overall great, and does all the things you would expect an easy to use control game panel to do.
- 3 Stars: While there aren't as many features as the new fancy control panels, the panel itself is functional and does what it needs to do to help a game server owner.
- 2 Stars: The control panel is clearly old and dilapidated. While everything works, you have to spend extra time doing work you wouldn't need to do on most panels.
- 1 Stars: The control panel has functionality that just doesn't work. When you open this company's control panel you get a raging headache.
*Stars can be deducted in this category for lacking features most panels have, like an in panel code editor, a file manager, or a command line.
DDOS Protection
When evaluating a host's DDOS Protection, we evaluate total traffic the protection can handle, and whether or not the protection has Layer 7 protection. Here is how we represent that:
- 5 Stars: This host offers some of the best DDOS protection in the entire game server hosting industry. Not only can it handle basic attacks, but it has created it's own custom filtering to prevent game specific DDOS attacks that would otherwise take down most game servers.
- 4 Stars: This host can block the majority of Layer 7 attacks. It works with a DDOS protection provider (Examples include Cloudflare, Path.net, CosmicGuard, and more) that protects them from the majority of mainstream DDOS attacks for all of the games that they host.
- 3 Stars: This host can block the majority of Layer 4 attacks. It works with a DDOS protection provider that doesn't specifically focus on game server hosting filters, meaning that some attacks might get through.
- 2 Stars: This host can block DDOS attacks, but will null route (drop your server's connection) more often than other game server providers to prevent DDOS attacks that become large enough, leaving you vulnerable to the wrath of your provider.
- 1 Stars: This host does not offer DDOS protection or has extremely weak DDOS protection, your game server with this company is the equivalent of a straw house.
*Stars can also be deducted in this category for hosts that have a reputation for being successfully targeted for DDOS attacks and or widespread null routing of clients.
Price
When evaluating a host's pricing, we evaluate every service the host provides, and whether or not the pricing is worth it for the features provided. Here is how we represent that:
- 5 Stars: This host offers some of the best price performance ratio in the industry. Not many competitors can compete with this host on price at the quality presented.
- 4 Stars: The pricing is great for the value, there's also some additional freebies and cheap addons to the service. There's a money back guarantee.
- 3 Stars: The pricing is adequete for the quality of the service, but there are costly addons that can make the base offerings more expensive.
- 2 Stars: The service is very cheap due to a lack of features and poor service quality.
- 1 Stars: You are not getting a good value by purchasing this service. There are competitors that offer the same benefits for cheaper.
*Stars can also be deducted in this category for hosts that have confusing refund processes, unintuitive payment gateways, or overly intrusive KYC (know your customer) processes.
Locations and Connectivity
When evaluating a host's locations and connectivity, we evaluate the number of locations the host provides, and whether or not the locations have low latencies. Here is how we represent that:
- 5 Stars: This host offers a large number of server locations covering 3 continents or more, alongside very unique server locations that almost no other provider has. The latency for each of this provider's locations' is world class.
- 4 Stars: This host offers a large number of server locations covering 2-3 continents. The latency for each of this provider's locations' is good.
- 3 Stars: This host offers some locations in 1-2 continents. The connectivity for this host is good enough for game server hosting.
- 2 Stars: This host only offers some locations for game server hosting in 1 continent. The connectivity for this host is spotty at best.
- 1 Stars: This host only offers 1 location for game server hosting or has a reputation for very poor latency.
Reliability
When evaluating a host's reliability, we evaluate the status page uptime for the host. Here is how we represent that:
- 5 Stars: This host provides more than 99.95% uptime, with compensations (either in the form of an SLA or account credit) for downtime and timely maintainence notifications for scheduled downtime.
- 4 Stars: This host provides 99.9% to 99.95% uptime, with timely maintainence notifications for scheduled downtime.
- 3 Stars: This host provides between 99% and 99.9% uptime, with inconsistent maintainence notications and status updates.
- 2 Stars: This host provides less than 99% uptime, with frequent minor outages.
- 1 Stars: This host provides less than 99% uptime with frequent major outages (20 minutes or more) during peak times.
*Stars can also be deducted in this category for hosts that inaccurately track downtime, or hosts that intentionally schedule "emergency maintainence" everytime unexpected downtime occurs.
Simplicity
When evaluating a host's simplicity, we evaluate the experience for a first time game server owner. Here is how we represent that:
- 5 Stars: This host's knowledge base covers every possibility and makes starting a server for your favorite game super easy. Their control panel leads the industry in features that make adding mods to a game extremely easy. This host turns the game server hosting experience into putting together legos.
- 4 Stars: This host's knowledge base covers the majority of topics a new server owner would want to know. Their control panel has a few features that make starting a server for the first time pretty easy.
- 3 Stars: This host's knowledge base covers some of the topics a new server owner would want to know, but not all of them. Their control panel has 1 or 2 features that help, but that's about it.
- 2 Stars: This host's knowledge base is very bare bones. Starting a server with this hosting company would require previous experience with another hosting company or searching for resources online often.
- 1 Stars: This host has no knowledge base. The experience from start to finish is one of the most unintuitive experiences in the game server hosting industry.
Overall Rating
The overall rating presented on all review articles is an aggregate average rating of all the qualities above ranked out of 5 stars.
Please note that sometimes we will stray from this conventional methodology in special circumstances. When that's the case, we will let you know in our review and give you an explanation as to why we have rated a quality in a certain way.
Questions and Concerns
For questions and concerns about our editorial guidelines, please contact us via. email.