One of the main principles I used to select the hosts I recommend was whether they are likely to be a long-term choice. So I tried to pick out the hosts which, as I saw and felt, have a long-term strategy focused on delivering high quality services.
In this short post, I will reveal some of my affiliate data for the hosts that display the status of referred customers – whether they still remain clients.
My oldest friend: HawkHost
One of my oldest hosting partners is HawkHost. The first client I referred to this host was on 16 July 2014, and the customer is still active (i.e. they still use HawkHost as of January 2026).
After all the years of me being an affiliate of this host, I can say that they have managed to keep quite low prices and at the same time provide very good services, so that I literally don’t remember a single complaint from my readers regarding this host, although I’ve referred more than 200 clients to them so far.
I understand that a host simply can’t be perfect for absolutely everyone. But the fact that for more than a decade there has been no angry or disappointed review from my readers confirms that the host has really managed to meet the expectations of its clients. This is an awesome job, in fact.
My old fellow: GeekStorage
Like HawkHost, GeekStorage is one of my hosting partners that has been proving it provides very high quality to its customers for years. And like HawkHost, this host is similarly popular among my website’s audience, and likewise I don’t remember a single angry feedback suggesting that my recommendation of GeekStorage was wrongly targeted or misleading.
The first customer I referred to this host was on 11 May 2016. And the oldest active client referred to GeekStorage was on 14 June 2016, and they are still using it.
Thus, the audience of my website prefers HawkHost and GeekStorage most of all, and they are still happy with their choices for a really very long time.
Kinsta is more expensive and plays extremely well
Unlike hosts like HawkHost or GeekStorage, Kinsta plays in a different market, focusing on providing fully managed hosting. This is a much more expensive option in general for hosting individual sites or reseller plans, but still, I can see that people stick with Kinsta pretty well for years.
Among my audience, Kinsta is not a very popular choice (perhaps because of pricing) compared to the more classic hosts mentioned above, but I’ve also had no complains about this host from my audience.
The first client I referred to Kinsta was on 7 March 2019, and they stayed with Kinsta until 8 May 2023.
The oldest customer who is still active joined Kinsta after my recommendation on 4 December 2020.
LightningBase is a niche hosting provider that simply works
This hosting is not the first option among my audience, but at the same time, people who choose it also stay with LightningBase for several years.
The first customer I referred to this host was in 2016, and the oldest client who is still active joined LightningBase on 4 December 2020.
Guru – UK host with great retention
Guru.co.uk is the last host on my list that provides retention data on the customers referred to them. I picked this host to recommend as a UK-based hosting for people who need hosting specifically in the UK. And although among the visitors of my website there are very few people looking for an exclusively UK host, the retention data I have shows that this host is likely a very solid option.
I know I can’t make a reliable conclusion based on just two sales I’ve made so far, but one of the two clients is still using Guru starting from 13 April 2021 (and the client is on a monthly subscription).
Conclusion
The five hosts above are all the hosts on my recommended list that provide information on whether referrals are still active. So I shared this info as an additional factor for evaluating how reliable the hosts are.
Besides, although I’m not actively working on my website any longer, the long-term hosting recommendations that I made are still valid, and I’m proud that I was able to pick hosts that have been able to deliver extremely good quality services.
Take care!
My recommended hosts are here.
