It is clear that the web hosting industry is one of the most profitable internet businesses in the last decade, or at least it has become. A lot of internet providers or software developers changed their work models and started offering complete services.

This significantly increased the role of marketing and aggressive growth of the web hosting companies. It has become important not only to have a quality data center facility and non stop working people who maintain the business, but it has also become à la mode to provide complete solutions from A to Z.

This was the time when web hosting became adult and a real industry on the web. Then we witnessed buy-outs, mergers, web hosting became real property, being only virtual as business. From another side, we saw a real growth in the domain registration market too, right after the dot com boom finished.

The internet entrepreneurs realized that a successful business is when you meet good domain with quality service and a lot of SEO efforts. The upper level was gained also when the Web 2.0 (as category) has emerged and again re-scaled the picture of the hosting business.

Then it became really “saturated” - well said but in the recent months I started thinking that this is not really true. Why? The reseller hosting business - the way it started was not meant to pose real threat to its parent, but it really did in the past year.

We have seen ‘web hosts’ come and go as we have never before, and in any other business. Yes, it is not hard to start such occupation, yes it can make you some money, but…there are a lot of ‘but’s.

Service Provision Needs Quality

I think it needs, OK, we may start with reliability but then, if you want to offer something and people will pay for it, you better think of its quality! Nowadays, there are so many hosts that I am sure, no one can count the number. Well, may be some one can count the reliable, quality and honest hosts - and the list may be kind of complete but this can be done only be independent professionals - and there are no independent ones! Not anymore.

Saturated vs Overcrowded

These days, almost every designer, web developer or person who has knowledge related to web programing or system administration is ready to open web hosting company. And most of those people have the right knowledge and skills, don’t get me wrong. The problem is coming from the lack of time, money and dedication the people can blend and start good hosting business.

I am not going into debate what are the ‘most important principles’ of starting on the hosting market. But I would say that when starting something new, we need to calculate what we can give and what we can then take off that new thing. There is only one result when we go it and then loose our passion - disappointment for both, us the people we let down. And there people are our customers.

From where to continue…

I am not sure where the problem comes from - it can be from the lack of clear procedures of becoming a working company, complete absence of any industry standards or a lot of other legal issues that companies rely on and take advantage of.

But one thing I am sure of - playing with web hosting business as its simple game is very harmful and takes off the field the ’side to side’ relations and trust. This make it rough to work, to handle and deal with.

The recent months did not showed some special trend or development of the hosting industry which may lead us to an extraordinary conclusion of the future. And I am not that selfish to hide some vision if I had such :). There are no any significant changes or supernova technologies that may take us to another level. There are not even new ideas in web hosting business - there are just some improvements, some new promotions, some hosts going mad with overselling model, some clients keeping their search for the cheapest host…there are few more.

What is web hosting about

There is something that is really differentiating the web hosting as service from the other services - the impossibility to determine the quality of the rendered service and the on-going non adequate model of offerings. There are not so many companies that offer any kind of service (but same) and have differences in the quality, the prices, the features.

Just imagine 3 different tourist agencies offer the same cruise from point A to point B, with same ship and same cabins but for different prices. The same applies to all the services and even to internet. If you are to offer something varying from your competitor, then try to explain the difference s you have.

Have you even seen something like this in web hosting business? I did not! I see big companies, small companies, mediocre web hosts offering the same, or even something “better” - same web hosting plans with different prices. Of course to top it all - here comes the big ‘overselling’ daddy.

It seems to me, that the web hosting companies are not trying to show their clients that the service they offer are reliable and quality but they compete their prices with the other web hosts, that is really annoying for the hosting seekers because, I see that in the forums, people are so confused when they have to compare companies, prices and features, that they start to hate it all. And here is where the “most cheapest host” fans are born - but that is another story.

In the end - web hosting is something people need to show other people, that they exist, that they have business and that they want to get connected. I really don’t see that in the efforts of the web hosting companies.

Do we care about the Customer

Of course, yes! How would be the next questions. What do we do to make them and keep them happy. There is a phrase saying that there are no perfect web hosts, there are only hosts that are perfect for us. I agree with this, with one remark - the relations between the hosts and the clients are the thing that can make any host the perfect one - the attitude of its employees and the vision of its owners.

Lets say a web host is having some problems with their hardware or software, and this comes on almost daily basis. There are customers that will notice the issue and will immediately address it to the customer support of the respective web host. From here we have 2 ways - the client is happy after the support resolved the matter quickly or ti did not helped and the client is not happy.

There are people who are not content to have fairly bad service with good and helpful customer support, others are OK with this and may stay with the host for a long as they know the attitude and help they receive is exceeding the industry standards or they just got used to this host.

The standards are the problem - the missing standards are really problematic because the individual expectations cannot be never met and offering something ambiguous is more welcomed by the hosting companies, rather than fulfilling some industry standards.

What service we offer

We only offer what the customer is paying or at some point, what the customer expects - if you have some exacting and demanding client you will be more willing to give good service - if the customers only pays and does not expect anything particular, then the whole point is moved in other direction.

Price of marketing the web hosting

The most rough and inadequate market is the web hosting one. If you want to market your web hosting service you will need - a lot of money and nerves and a lot of time to find the right niche and places to expose your services.

There is no industry like web hosting and there is no business like web hosting!

We all know what happened in the beginning of this year, when customers started complaining about the monopoly acts of Network Solutions, when the company used its rights to hold any domains the people searched for. This happened when a person uses the search domain availability option from NetSol website or from sites, using, Network Solutions whois search base.

So far so good, but it is very widespread tactics when it comes to the playing strategy of the corporations. They rule the game, they define the rules. In this case, the rules are coming from ICANN, but the leak in those regulations, given in the hands of some few monopolist companies out there, results in what we have today - filled lawsuit against, both ICANN and Network Solutions!

What is that mean in first place - many in the web hosting industry are trying various methods to reach their goals - customer attraction and growth. Which is fine but the ways and strategies they are using are not fair - for the industry and for their clients.

We all know a lot of companies have parallel directories, blogs, review sites and others to link to their main business or to attract more customers and visitors. Most of those are, lets not say fake but kind of misleading as they recommend specific services or hosting providers.

Of course everybody is free to make its own market strategy to make more profit but in a long term, this is nothing more but harmful to the web hosting industry. If you have the resource to do that it will be helpful but still not showing respect to your customers or rivals.

Other type of working closely with “different” hosting companies is another method if ruling and trying to gain monopoly over the others. There are a lot of examples on how big hosts are “opening” new web hosting sites that offer services similar to their own or a little bit different. They may also use it as comparing website features or prices. The marketing of such sites is separate and nothing shows that they are owned by same company - except when you deal with them and see that they are all the same - using the same hosting facilities, same infrastructure, same support and technical staff etc.

At least this is not fair to the people who seek for reasonable and reliable hosting services. There are lots of bad or negative reviews on such websites (apart from the fake ones) and the whole point of this is that such saturated market as the hosting one is, should not afford to have those offerings. Good example of what you need to do if you are “big gun” is to be part of the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions in the web service industry. This both shows potential and good management. Then you can use the acquired brand as separate business but still part of your group.