Hostindex.com is a web hosting directory that has been online since 1998. Hostindex.com contains listings for over 8500 web hosts located on every continent in the world.
Hostindex.com charges a one time listing fee of $199.
The search feature at Hostindex.com allows a user to search for a web host by company name, by geographical location, or by hosting platform.
The Hostindex.com directory offers several additional features to site visitors including a host glossary, hosting articles, and host awards. The Top 10 Host Awards are given to the the best hosting companies listed at Hostindex.com, according to the text on the website.
The overall appearance of Hostindex.com is somewhat unsettling. The background for the site is white, with yellow as the background color for the header and left hand sidebars. Red is used in the logo, on the sidebars, in the directory category titles on the home page, and for the page titles throughout the site. There are banner ads, many of which blink, in the header, sidebars, footer, and in the directory listings on the showcase pages.
After browsing through Hostindex.com, I'm not sure how anyone could use this directory to find a web host. The links on the home page, which appear to categorize the listings within the directory by type of hosting offered, are actually links to the showcase pages, which feature selected companies.
The only way to truly search through the 8500 companies listed at Hostindex.com is to use the link to the search feature which appears in two places on the home page, and in the upper left corner on other pages. The rest of the large red links on the home page either lead to the showcases or affiliate offers.
There is a page titled "Web Hosting News & Articles" which states that it is updated daily, but it hasn't been updated since August 3, 2012, and before that it was last updated on September 9, 2011.
Hostindex.com offers some resources that attempt to help users select a web host. There is a link in the left sidebar titled "Web Host Guide." This link leads to a section of the site called "Welcome to the Beginner's Guide to Web Hosting." This is a great idea for a directory of web hosts. Unfortunately, the guide is only five pages long, it is in all text, there are no helpful illustrations or videos of any kind, and it fails to address many of the questions that someone new to web hosting would have.
There is another link in the left sidebar titled "Host Glossary." This link leads to a large glossary of web hosting terms. This is another good idea, but without any supplemental illustrations or videos, it is basically a wordy dictionary that is only good for people who already understand web hosting, and who probably don't need a glossary at all.
There is a third link in the left sidebar titled "Voting Booth." Clicking on this link leads to a page where you can vote for a web host. However, I couldn't find any place at HostIndex.com that actually showed the results of the votes that had been cast.
