Last updated April 26, 2026. This page describes the affiliate relationships behind phpwebthings.org. I publish it in plain language because I’d want to read the same thing on any review site I trust.
The rule
I will only join an affiliate program for a service I personally use, on infrastructure I personally pay for, with money out of my own bank account. If a vendor offers me a generous commission for something I haven’t tested, I say no. This isn’t a moral stance; it’s the only way the reviews stay credible to the kind of reader I’m writing for.
Current programs
The list as of the date above:
- Backblaze B2. I have used B2 for off-site backups since 2018. Every restic test in my own homelab has, at some point, hit a B2 bucket.
- Hetzner Cloud. Two CX31 instances run my Mailcow and Mailtrain. I’ve moved my dedicated server through three Hetzner generations.
- Cloudflare (R2 and Cloudflare Tunnel referrals where applicable). I use R2 for one specific bucket and Tunnel for two services.
- NameHero (host of this site). Disclosed because the irony of not disclosing it would not escape my readers.
If a program ends or I add a new one I’ll edit this list. The date at the top of the page changes whenever the list changes.
Programs I have refused
I’m not going to name names, but I have turned down at least four affiliate offers in the last twelve months from VPS providers I don’t run anything on, two from “VPN-with-self-hosting-features” companies, and one from a managed-Kubernetes startup whose pricing didn’t make sense to me. If a service shows up in an article without an affiliate disclaimer, that’s why.
How affiliate links are marked
Articles that contain affiliate links carry a short disclaimer at the top of the page (above the first heading) and a longer one at the bottom. Affiliate URLs typically include the partner’s tracking parameter (?ref=…, ?aff=…) in the visible URL string; I don’t use cloaked redirects.
What affiliate income is for
Hosting, the dedicated server my Mailcow and Mailtrain run on, the Backblaze B2 bills, an annual JetBrains subscription, the occasional piece of homelab hardware. The site has not yet covered its costs in any given month, and I’m fine with that. The day it does, the only thing that will change is that I’ll stop writing this paragraph in present tense.
FTC, CMA, and the rest
This page exists in part to comply with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s endorsement guidelines, the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority’s hidden-advertising guidance, and the equivalent rules elsewhere. The principle behind those rules is that readers deserve to know who’s paying. I agree, which is why this page reads the way it does instead of being a single legal sentence.