SEO Hosting: The Best (And Worst) Compared

Before I get into this post, I want to make it abundantly clear that SEO hosting always poses some levels of risk (to an extent) and you should use different, premium hosting providers to run your PBNs, however, those kinds of hosting bills can rack up very quickly and SEO hosts can be extremely cheap in comparison.

So, I thought I’d do an analysis of several of the biggest SEO hosts in the world and find out once and for all, which is the best, most affordable and safest to use.

What Is SEO Hosting?

SEO hosting is mostly used to host private blog networks across multiple IP addresses, as Google’s algorithm has preferential treatment to different referring IP addresses.

An example would be: 3 links from 3 different domains all on the same IP, will be worth less than 3 links on those 3 different domains if they were on different IPs.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, that if you buy an SEO hosting pack from a provider then all of those IPs you’re using will just have a ton of PBN sites on them. That USED to be the case (seriously) before Google started slapping the sh*t out of everyone who branded themselves as an SEO host. Eventually, those hosts that caught up and re-evaluated, slipped into the cloud.

Cloud-Based SEO Hosting

Almost all of the current/modern-day SEO hosting providers are running on the cloud, this means Google can’t simply locate one of the IPs used by an SEO host and deindex every domain on it, as the server a PBN site is hosted on likely also hosts hundreds (if not thousands) of other sites from different customers, the majority of which won’t be PBNs.

This doesn’t make SEO hosting bulletproof what so ever, there have still been several cloud SEO hosts that have been hit, though generally it’s because of a different reason than the server. For example, one I covered recently was the number of people blocking bots on ALL of their PBNs –

This is what we’d call a “footprint” – Something on your PBN site (or to do with your site) that gives Google a way to find it, other than doing a manual review of your backlink profile.

Google in the past has gone after networks in all sorts of creative (and technical) ways, using headers, nameservers, plugins, themes, file names, whois info… And that’s just to name a few – It may sound pretty overwhelming, so check out my how to build a PBN guide, if you want to make sure your network is properly built.

SEO Hosting Companies

There are a TON of SEO hosting companies out there, so I’m only going to be covering a few in this post, mainly the ones I like the best or have used the most myself – I also asked in the BHC Skype group who people thought was the best, so we’ll start with the one that got the most votes.

Easy Blog Networks

Last year I actually did a consulting session with the guys behind EBN, and it quickly showed that they had thought for a rather long amount of time about how they were going to work on issues that have been plaguing the SEO hosting industry.

I wanted to showcase an example of some of their really clever thinking before I get into the service itself. Almost every SEO host has an “indexed” or “deindexed” label on each of the sites they host, all of those hosts find out if a site is indexed or deindexed by using a proxy to search Google for the domains name and see if it’s there – If it is, it’s indexed, if not, well you get the gist. However, that can be a footprint as it’s unlikely someone is going to be searching a domain name, let alone a domain name of a brand new site, let alone a domain name of a brand new site 2 times a day.

So, to counteract this, EBN check the server logs for GoogleBot traffic, this not only allows them to see if the site is indexed (as a deindexed site won’t get traffic from GBot) but also gives a detailed insight into the crawl rate (healthy-ness) or a site, without having it on Webmaster Tools or manually looking through the logs yourself.

This kind of clever thinking translates into quite a lot of the other features and development aspects EBN have used to make their service top tier and it’s the kind of thinking I like to see from people who read this blog: Creative Black Hat Marketers – Because there’s a lot more to black hat than spam emails and buying links guys, but that’s a whole different post, for a whole different time.

Advantages

• Over a thousand IPs from 15 cloud hosts
• Easy Dashboard
• Automated updates & backups
• Mail box forwarding options
• VERY low downtime
• No bandwith or space limits (for those wanting BIG networks)
• Automated importing from other hosts
• Metrics & Uptime monitor

Disadvantages

• Only Allows WordPress Sites
• Price can be a little high at around $2/blog per month

I HIGHLY recommend EBN, and from all of the hosting providers in this post they come out on top from all of my testings.

Signup to Easy Blog Networks – $7 7 Day Trial, and no Invite Required for Charles Floate Readers.

P.S. I highly suggest you check out their blog and especially their “advanced footprint series” for those with large networks, or those wanting to build super HQ networks for the long run.

IPNetworX

The loser of the pack, plagued with problems after it took off in 2013 as the leading SEO host, it’s not really had a substantial comeback and has carried on using a non-cloud based solution, opting for dedicated and VPS servers instead – This came back to bite them when OVH had downtime issues and a large segment of the IPNetworX system went completely offline, taking a lot of it’s users PBNs with it.

Advantages

• Cheap IP addresses from 85+ A-Class IPs
• Unique cPanels for each site
• Daily backups

Disadvantages

• Non-cloud/CDN based
• Limited disk space
• Reports of mass deindexations/downtime

I don’t really suggest going with IPNetworX unless you really need a provider that offers unique cPanels and continent-specific IPs. You can check out their pricing and signup here.

PBN.Hosting

The new kid on the block, and they came in swinging.. I got recommended to get an account with these guys from the infamous GrindStone a number of months ago and haven’t regretted it.

I’d say PBN.Hosting is the HTML alternative to Easy Blog networks – Grab a 20 pack on each and you’ll have the best of both worlds. The only difference (aside from of the technical aspects) between EBN and this provider is that PBN.Hosting has a lesser amount of cloud providers than EBN, though PBN.Hosting use a CDN infrastructure to have access to a LOT more IP addresses than EBN, though I’ve seen some overlapping Nameservers even with the CDN IPs.

Advantages

• 400k+ IPs (From their CDN)
• Content scheduler & drip feeder
• Super easy management dashboard
• Uptime & Metric counter

Disadvantages

• Similar pricing to EBN, can be a little expensive at about $2/blog per month

I hate to sound like a broken record but this is still a fairly new service, and even though it seems top quality, it may have teething problems gaining a lot of new members, so we’ll have to see how time takes it. You can signup to PBN.Hosting here.

IX Web Hosting

Though they don’t officially (on their site) advertise as an SEO host, they spend an awful lot of money on AdWords ads to offer their multiple dedicated IP hosting service to SEOs, resulting in a lot of people picking up accounts with them and as such, I also picked up 15 sites a number of months ago.

Advantages

• Cheap Dedicated IPs
• 3 Free Domain Registrations Included
• Easy Hosting Manager

Disadvantages

• Only Unique C-Class IPs
• Not Purpose Built for SEO Hosting (Could be a benefit too though)

If you’re going to use IX for your sites, then I suggest just limiting it to a few sites (3 – 5) and making those sites as high quality as possible, as you’ll be on dedicated IP addresses, that are all the unique C-Class.

You can check out their plans here.

6 Month Deindex Comparison

I’ve had accounts with each of the hosting providers in this post for a number of months now, the only one I haven’t had an account with for under 6 months is PBN.Hosting, but they’re still a fairly new provider.

I decided to do a deindex chart to see how many of the sites I setup on these providers got deindexed, in comparison to how many sites I setup overall with each of them.

IP NetworX did the worst in terms of a deindex rate, with PBN.Hosting & EBN being the best – Though technically EBN had more sites and more time, as my PBN.Hosting account is the youngest of them all.

The Best SEO Host

If you’ve clicked directly to this part of the post just to see who made it to #1 then I suggest you read the rest of the post first, as I’ve already covered who the best host is: Easy Blog Networks.

You get security in their framework, they have a fantastic development team, very low downtime rates, large amounts of namesevers, IPs, and providers and all for a fairly cheap price.

Normally (for good reason to) EBN is an invite-only service, however I’ve managed to snag a direct access link for all of you guys and gals, so you can join straight away without applying here.

SEO Hosting FAQs