It's always interesting to look back at a year and analyze what happened. 2014 was the second full year of operation for Review Signal. Four new companies were published on Review Signal: Azure, FlyWheel, Pagely, WebSynthesis. We added roughly 45,000 new reviews (oddly enough about half as many as last year). We ran two massive performance testing reviews of managed WordPress hosting companies (1, 2).

So I finally got around to slicing and dicing the data exclusively looking at data collected in 2014 and here are the awards:

 

Best Shared Web Host: A Small Orange [Reviews]

Best Web Hosting Support: FlyWheel [Reviews]

Best Specialty Web Hosting: FlyWheel [Reviews]

Best Unmanaged VPS: Digital Ocean [Reviews]

Best Managed VPS: KnownHost [Reviews]

New comer FlyWheel [Reviews] has set the bar in terms of how high a company can fly (I'm sorry!). When I introduced FlyWheel they had the absolute highest numbers I've ever seen and continue to be in a tier of their own. They do WordPress hosting and that is it, so maybe there is some advantage to specialization. They took the best specialty hosting and support awards this year.

For the third consecutive year in a row, A Small Orange [Reviews] has the best shared web hosting.

Digital Ocean [Reviews] has become the fourth largest web hosting company in under two years according to netcraft. It's easy to understand why when they take home the best unmanaged VPS provider for a second year in a row.

Finally, a new-comer into our awards list, Known Host [Reviews] managed to take the Best Managed VPS award this year beating out last year's winner, A Small Orange.