Why you won't find us on our favorite platform, Reddit

If you go looking for Candor Host on Reddit, you won’t find us. Our account is permanently banned.

That’s a strange thing for a hosting company to volunteer, and stranger still because Reddit is genuinely our favourite platform. It’s where people ask real questions about hosting and get real answers, where “which host should I pick” threads are more honest than any review site, and where our founder read for years before he ever ran a company. We’d rather be there than on any other platform we’re on.

Here’s the whole thing, in order. Some of it is our fault, and that part comes first.

We broke the rule

Our founder posted in r/webhosting and linked candorhost.com.

You’re not allowed to do that there. It’s a subreddit for people asking about hosting, not for hosting companies to advertise in, and the rule exists for an obvious and good reason. He broke it, and he was banned for it.

That ban was correct. The rule was published, he didn’t follow it, and the mods did exactly what mods are supposed to do. We have no complaint about that part and never have.

The ban had an end date. It passed.

Then we answered a question

After the ban expired, someone on our team replied to a question in the same subreddit. Here is that comment in full:

Worth understanding why the “one hacked site infects the others” thing happens on cheap shared hosting, before picking a replacement. On most sub-$5/mo shared plans, all your sites run as the same Linux user, in the same PHP-FPM pool, on the same filesystem tree. If one WordPress install gets popped, the attacker can read the other sites’ wp-config.php files, harvest DB credentials, and pivot in minutes. It’s the default architecture on the “unlimited sites for $2.99” tier at most low-end hosts, not FUD.

For a small agency, look for: separate Linux users per site (ask directly — vague answer means shared), published RAM/CPU/PHP-worker limits (if the page says “unlimited” it means oversold), backups you can restore yourself from a UI, and the same price at renewal as at signup.

There’s no link in it. There’s no pitch. It doesn’t mention Candor Host at all — not the company, not the product, not anything you could buy from us. It’s an answer to the question that was asked, and other people in the thread said it was the right one.

Reddit permanently banned our company account for ban evasion.

Before that, neither account had ever received a ban or a warning on Reddit, for anything.

We appealed twice

The first appeal came back saying the permanent ban would not be lifted. It did not say why.

The second appeal was never answered.

That’s where it sits today. We don’t know which rule the comment broke, or how answering a question from a company account after a separate expired ban is evasion. We’ve asked twice, and both times the answer was either “no” or nothing.

The part we keep coming back to

The subreddit’s own rules put this better than we could. Rule 2, in full:

Do not self promote your webhosting company. Shameless self promotion is forbidden. Please buy an advertisement through the Reddit ad network.

We don’t think that’s an unreasonable way to run a forum. Moderating a hosting subreddit without a rule like it would be miserable, and that rule is a large part of why the place is readable at all. Written down, at least it’s honest about the arrangement.

But read the two halves together, because they’re the whole thing: a hosting company cannot answer a question about hosting, and can pay to appear beside one. Participation is forbidden. Spending is invited.

We’re the case that makes the seam visible. Our comment promoted nothing, named no company and linked nowhere, and the account is permanently banned anyway — while the advertising route stayed open the entire time and is open right now.

We’re not going to take it. That isn’t a boycott, we’re not asking anyone to join one, and we’re not claiming we’ve earned a place in that community — we’re a month old and we’ve earned nothing yet. We just can’t be the company that answers “you may not speak here, but you may buy space here” by reaching for the chequebook.

The subreddit sidebar carries a section headed Friends of /r/webhosting, which opens “Looking for webhosting? We like these guys:” and then names and links a handful of hosting companies.

We’re deliberately not repeating the names here. Several are good hosts, none of this is their doing, and this isn’t an argument with them.

It’s an argument with the shape. A hosting company may not say its own name in that subreddit — but the subreddit may say it for them, at the top of the page, with a link. Recommendation exists. It’s simply not reachable by anything a hosting company is permitted to do, because everything that would earn it is the thing that gets you banned.

We’re not claiming we should be on that list. We’re a month old and we’ve earned nothing. We’re saying that under these rules there is no path by which we, or any new host, ever could — and after a permanent ban for a comment that named nobody and linked nowhere, there is no path left for us at all.

That’s the part we’ll keep disagreeing with, and it’s why you won’t find us there.

Where that leaves us

Our founder no longer participates in r/webhosting. We don’t post to Reddit from anywhere else, and we won’t — a company that’s been told it’s evading a ban does not get to go and evade a ban. If that reads as us accepting a ruling we disagree with, that’s exactly what it is.

So the answers we’d have written there get written here instead. That comment above is the kind of thing we’d still rather be posting in a thread where someone asked. We’ll write it up properly on this blog soon, at more length than a comment box allows.

If you want to talk to us, Discord is where our team actually is. There’s also X, Bluesky and LinkedIn — or you can follow what we ship by RSS, which doesn’t need an account anywhere and can’t be taken away from you.

Why we published this

Because a company that only publishes the flattering things isn’t being transparent, it’s doing marketing.

We publish what our servers actually hold, what happens to your price at renewal, and every change we ship including the ones that were our own mistakes. This one isn’t flattering either. It’s here for the same reason.

And if you’re on the r/webhosting mod team, or at Reddit, and we’ve got any of this wrong — tell us and we’ll correct this page the same day. We’d still rather be reading that subreddit than writing this.