| Rank | Performance Graph | OS | Outage hh:mm:ss |
Failed Req% |
DNS | Connect | First byte |
Total |
| 1 | Qube Managed Services | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.004 | 0.100 | 0.043 | 0.087 | 0.088 |
| 2 | Hosting 4 Less | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.004 | 0.171 | 0.124 | 0.245 | 0.627 |
| 3 | New York Internet | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.007 | 0.140 | 0.074 | 0.148 | 0.577 |
| 4 | Pair Networks | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.007 | 0.234 | 0.083 | 0.169 | 0.572 |
| 5 | www.dinahosting.com | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.007 | 0.245 | 0.087 | 0.177 | 0.177 |
| 6 | Webair Internet Development | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.011 | 0.167 | 0.073 | 0.154 | 0.353 |
| 7 | Server Intellect | Windows Server 2012 | 0:00:00 | 0.011 | 0.073 | 0.101 | 0.330 | 0.701 |
| 8 | XILO Communications Ltd. | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.019 | 0.202 | 0.068 | 0.136 | 0.234 |
| 9 | Swishmail | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.019 | 0.126 | 0.074 | 0.146 | 0.192 |
| 10 | ServerStack | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.019 | 0.088 | 0.076 | 0.151 | 0.152 |
Qube Managed Services had the most reliable hosting company site in December 2013, making December Qube’s fourth consecutive month in the top ten after attaining first place in September. Qube provides managed hosting services out of data centers in London, New York and Zurich. Qube and Hosting 4 Less, which placed second, both saw only a single failed request over the month with Hosting 4 Less losing out on the top spot due to a slightly longer average connection time (0.04s vs. 0.12s).
Swishmail made an appearance at ninth in the table, taking its total number of appearances in the top ten in 2013 to nine. This means that both iWeb and Swishmail jointly hold the record for the most frequent appearances in the top ten in 2013. Swishmail provides corporate email services on a FreeBSD platform, while iWeb provides dedicated servers, managed hosting and colocation services on a Linux platform.
To sign off the year, WebAir made its first appearance in the table for 2013, placing sixth. WebAir offers hosting services out of data centers in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Montreal and a ‘flagship’ facility in New York (NY1), which WebAir claims offers ‘the lowest network latency to Europe via direct feeds to Transatlantic fiber‘.
Five of the top ten most reliable hosting company sites were running Linux, while four ran FreeBSD. Server Intellect ran the single Windows Server-based site to complete the list: Windows Server makes a reappearance after not placing in the top ten in November.
Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around forty leading hosting providers’ sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.
From a customer’s point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies’ own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.
Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.