How we calculate provider scores

Each provider gets a score from 0 to 10 for every type of service. The score is calculated automatically, only from data anyone can verify on the provider's site. We do not give marks based on impressions and we do not sell positions in the ranking.

Who operates the site and why it matters

hostingmoldova.md is operated by IPHOST, which is itself a hosting provider and appears in the comparison. So that there is no hidden advantage, IPHOST is evaluated with the same formula, from the same kinds of data, and its profile carries the "Site operator" label. When scores are equal, the order is alphabetical.

What goes into the score

• Price. We compare the first-year monthly price of the cheapest plan that covers a standard need, billed for 12 months. For web hosting and WordPress the reference plan has at least 10 GB of storage, and for VPS at least 2 vCPU and 4 GB of RAM. This way we compare offers of the same class, not the lowest price shown on each site. The renewal price does not count towards the score, but we show it next to every offer, because at some providers it is much higher. The cheapest provider gets full points; a price twice as high earns half the points. Prices in MDL and USD are converted to EUR.
• Features. We score different features for different services, because not all of them make sense everywhere. For web hosting and WordPress: free SSL, daily backups, free migration, SSD or NVMe storage and the LiteSpeed web server. For VPS: NVMe disk, KVM virtualisation, unmetered traffic and a 1 Gbps port. Every feature is worth the same, and one the provider does not state on its site scores zero.
• Support. 24/7 availability, the number of channels (ticket, chat, phone) and support in Romanian and Russian.
• Google reviews. We take the rating and the number of reviews from the company's Google profile. The rating does not go into the score directly: we adjust it by the number of reviews. With few reviews, the rating stays close to the average of all providers, because four or five 5-star reviews can come from friends; only from 30 reviews upwards does the company's own rating weigh more than the average. A company without a Google profile gets exactly the average, neither a bonus nor a penalty.
• Guarantees. The period in which you can ask for your money back: 30 days or more earns full points, 14 days half.
• Local presence. Servers in the Republic of Moldova and local payment methods (a card issued in Moldova, MIA, bank transfer in lei).

What happens when data is missing

If a provider has no reference plan, or we could not verify its price, we do not calculate a score and we show it separately, below the scored ones. A feature we could not confirm scores zero until we confirm it.

Where the data comes from

From the providers' public pages. Next to each price you can see the date we verified it. Re-verification runs automatically every day: we compare the prices shown on the provider's page with the ones we collected. If they are the same, the date is updated; if they have changed, the price keeps its old date until we collect it again. Prices for .md domains are updated automatically from the pricing pages. If you represent a provider and have found wrong or outdated information, write to us and we will correct it.

The weights