Where is the consumer hosting market going next?

[Lee]

10-15 years ago it was all the rage to have a personal website, no really, everyone who was anyone including your Gran had a website, it maybe only had a guestbook (remember them) but it was a customer nonetheless.

In 2017 shared/reseller hosting is not so much a thing, comparatively. There is a market and it will stay for a while longer but with Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and so on the personal site clients are running low.

Even devices prevent people wanting to build sites, fewer and fewer people I know have a desktop PC/Mac, a phone and a tablet and/or laptop does the job, but not for sitting 3 hours building sites.

I believe the market in shared/reseller is shrinking, those left are getting smarter with their choices, some firms may seem their client base climbing not because there are more clients, less are looking at the $1 unlimited market and more are not settling for a sub par service.

Personally, I don't think it will continue to coast for too much longer, perhaps it will be largely replaced by the wordpress/Wix type offerings where people can blog and build things from their tablet.

Views?

 

[HostXNow]

Views?

That this is very depressing to read. The thought of it makes me

 

[Lee]

That this is very depressing to read. The thought of it makes me

Only if you become one the hosts that can't make it in that 'new market'. There are customers out there for all services, just fewer of them and they get more scarce as time goes on. The bigger emerging markets which are controlled currently by the likes of DO, Linode and others will continue to grow where these type of providers have no interest in shared/reseller offerings.

There will always be a market for the enthusiastic out there who want to build their own idea on the simplest hosting platform.

 

[Jonathan]

People don't necessarily want shared hosting in the traditional sense of being able to have X domains, X MySQL DBs, etc. People are going more for the SaaS (I hate all the aaS phrases...) where you deliver them a working piece of software, ie WP, Joomla, etc. They don't care about the nitty gritty and many hosts are spinning WP into a site builder of sorts.

Hosts that are effectively delivering and advertising to this market are thriving and will continue to do so. The whole trend of having eeeeverything connected to the internet/"cloud" has in a large way dumbed people down IMO so instead of a market that's getting smarter and always looking for the most technologically superior product you have a market looking for the easy way out where they can point and click and be in the "cloud".

 

[MannDude]

There is still money to be made servicing little shops and restaraunts.

You see a new sign in town for a place you've never seen? Pop in! Tell them what you can do for them, whether it be a simple website with their menu that you can update once weekly for them to display new specials or whatever. You can setup their email for them too, right there in their store for them. And trust me, those type of clients will pay you a monthly rate that can make it worth your time to do that. Get some customers like that under your belt, provide a basic, simple but needed service and you can still survive.

Don't forget that some people are business owners. They're not webdesigners, they're not marketers. They wanted to open some novelty hot dog shop and they did. Now you can step in and create a simple site, do some basic SEO work, setup an email account for them and be available for them at normal business hours and they're going to pay you monthly at a rate similar to that of their cellphone bill, cable or internet bill. You can charge them $40/mo for doing that if you wanted.

 

[maounique]

you have a market looking for the easy way out where they can point and click and be in the "cloud".

There are billions to be made from "pointnclicking", especially in relatively new areas (for most fox), see, bill gates made billions from the pointnclickers which could suddenly operate a computer having no idea what that is essentially...
Same here, no wonder people do not understand or even agree between aficionados on what a cloud is, but all want a piece of it. Our cloud is deliberately feature full and complex, so the pointnclickers do not feel encouraged to try operate a product which is not meant for them.

 

[Nick]

There is still money to be made servicing little shops and restaraunts.

You see a new sign in town for a place you've never seen? Pop in! Tell them what you can do for them, whether it be a simple website with their menu that you can update once weekly for them to display new specials or whatever. You can setup their email for them too, right there in their store for them. And trust me, those type of clients will pay you a monthly rate that can make it worth your time to do that. Get some customers like that under your belt, provide a basic, simple but needed service and you can still survive.

Don't forget that some people are business owners. They're not webdesigners, they're not marketers. They wanted to open some novelty hot dog shop and they did. Now you can step in and create a simple site, do some basic SEO work, setup an email account for them and be available for them at normal business hours and they're going to pay you monthly at a rate similar to that of their cellphone bill, cable or internet bill. You can charge them $40/mo for doing that if you wanted.

This is very true. Did a simple website for a friends local business and everyone commented on how they liked it and wanted their own for their small businesses. Have probably made 4 or 5 in the past month and making a decent return out of each. Just because you provide an online service, doesn't mean you can't meet face to face to gather an understanding of what they require. I also find people like to be able to put a face to who they're working with as well.

 

[jarland]

I think the future of the consumer space is found in something that is readily available today but hasn't quite caught up to replacing the basic website/CMS yet. I'm thinking services ranging from Etsy to Squarespace. You can see the two paths I'm going down there. Services like Etsy replaces the personal website for selling your crafted items, while services like Squarespace will replace the business sites or professional blogger sites.

Wordpress will be dethroned in the next decade. The path to it's end in popularity is a very long one though, it doesn't happen in a day. These are the reasons it will fall from it's pedestal:

- Designer builds site, tosses it on their hosting account, charges client once. Never updates. Site compromised. Client blames designer. Client won't pay for updates. Bad blood follows, client looks for new solution. Client might pick the same solution with a different designer. After a few failures, which can take years, maybe they try something new.

- Non-technical customer uses easy Wordpress installation and a purchased theme, believes they've taken care of themselves. Fails to update. Compromised. Blames host. Starts over with a new host. After the same thing happens over the next few years, maybe they try something new.

- Non-technical customer spins up unmanaged VPS with Wordpress, has no idea how to admin, pays too little for their bad optimization and goes OOM regularly after their crappy plugin fills the database with trash. Blames host, moves to a new one and is fine for another year or two. After it happens a few times, maybe they try something new.

All of these scenarios involve non-technical customers blaming someone else for their poor choices because their poor choices take a long time to become apparent. That leads them to believe the choice wasn't the problem, they think someone screwed them over somewhere to try to get more money out of them. This is why Wordpress has a hold on the market that we all see coming to an end, but none of us can see the end of the tunnel. It's a damn long path, but it will happen. There's no other CMS that people are going to rush to. SaaS is where they truly find "set it and forget it" and that's where I still believe they will all end up.

 

[maounique]

SaaS is where they truly find "set it and forget it" and that's where I still believe they will all end up.

I also think so, the management will involve more and more automation and "botting" to check stuff, occasionally, some human may be needed, but in 90% of the customer usage scenarios, well written automation platforms will suffice.
Managed hosting is too expensive, unmanaged we all know where it leads with every joe, dick and harry as webmasters, SaaS may evolve to be a middle way, not quite managed, but very close.

 

[Tyler]

Economically speaking, the web hosting industry is a classic example of 'decreasing cost industry'. These are companies where the prices of all the inputs continue to go down, and as a result, the price to the end user goes down. Similarly, while there once was (what economists call) 'supernormal' (excess) profit, more and more companies have come in to squeeze out the profit, also driving the pricing down. I will be doing a (non-academic, just for fun) study on this and reporting my findings as soon as I get the time to make the huge Excel table.

 

[Jonathan]

Economically speaking, the web hosting industry is a classic example of 'decreasing cost industry'. These are companies where the prices of all the inputs continue to go down, and as a result, the price to the end user goes down. Similarly, while there once was (what economists call) 'supernormal' (excess) profit, more and more companies have come in to squeeze out the profit, also driving the pricing down. I will be doing a (non-academic, just for fun) study on this and reporting my findings as soon as I get the time to make the huge Excel table.

Would be interested in what you come up with

 

[HostRush]

I think demand will remain steady. I believe there are more hosts out there nolw, giving consumers more choices of who to sign up with.

 

[maounique]

These are companies where the prices of all the inputs continue to go down,

Perhaps, but they are fewer all the time, eventually, the costs will stop going down, you can get hosting now for a dollar a month or below, the financial costs with the payments for very low priced offers are a hard threshold and going up, actually, in many cases. Hardware is still getting better for the same price, but power is not, while rack space it is pretty stable price wise.
The really interesting cost, though, is the one with support, tickets can cost 1 $ per piece even the simplest ones and even with the very well known and hated "outsourced" schemes, I think there is no space for further price cuts these days, apart for a rethinking of the industry model as discussed above.

 

[farhanideas]

As we know there are many hosting provider at very cheap cost but there are some one that having good services and support at best price . If any one experience one they will prefer to go to the best hosting provider