We end the year on a quiet note. DreamHost again at number one. HostGator, my pick, sneaked up a notch to number two. BlueHost dropped more, but their HostMonster brand bounced back a bit, so it’s kind of a wash. midPhase and ANHosting both dropped, as they have overall since their purchase by UK2.

A lot of the rest were more or less in the same positions. Of course, people’s minds are not on hosting during December, especially this December. Besides the sundry holidays, we also have economic crises, political changes, and international chaos, especially in the middle east. The world is a lot bigger than hosting and it showed in December. Unless the world manages to suddenly go sane, January is not really looking to be better.

On the other hand, with the holidays out of the way, maybe people will finally have time to build those cool new sites they dreamt up in December. Even a little extra Adsense scratch would be welcome by most people at this point. So, we’ll see.

I wish you all a peaceful new year.

DreamHost again topped the list, so that isn’t really news. HostGator, my favorite, has moved up to third from fourth; again, not too exciting. The weird news is BlueHost’s continued drop, now to fourth. BlueHost was number one here (and on the previous version of this site) for dozens of months. Odd, given that nothing much has changed there that I can see.

midPhase shot up to second and EasyCGI plummeted to eighth. They basically changed places. It could just be a natural swing in where Windows people are hosting, since not a lot of our top hosts offer Windows.

Yahoo remains at the bottom, despite having a decent plan, mostly I think because of the price. Nobody has extra money nowadays (unless you are a CEO), so price is going to be more important for everything, hosting included.

Shop carefully, fellow websters.

Well, they say that change has come to America, and change seems to have come to the top 10 list as well. DreamHost has managed to hold onto the top list, suggesting that BlueHost’s lost grip on that spot wasn’t a fluke in September. EasyCGI and HostGator both shot into the top five from the bottom of the list. MidPhase and ANHosting have continued that steady decline, perhaps indicating a more serious problem.

Sure, much of the rest of the list just shuffled a bit, but those are some very interesting changes that may imply a changing of the guard in the top tier of hosting.

On a side note, I apologize for the lateness of this post. I could give reasons (working on the election, then houseguests, blah blah blah), but the reality is that I kind of dropped the ball. Sorry about that.

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