Hi, I am just where people think web hosting is headed?


Where do you think the web hosting business is headed?

I think most future business will come to us, so most other hosts will probably want to just turn over customer lists now. Seriously, what time frame, 6 months, 1 yr, 5 yrs? Who knows?

I think hosting business' online will top out in 8-12 months. After that many host, starting with the free ones, will start to drop. Then some of the pay hosts should go out of business within 20-24 months. After that competition should start to heat up as prices go down.

What do you base this estimation on? Keep in mind the vast majority of the people in the world do not even have internet connections yet, and probably wont within the next year.

-Brendan

The greatest regions of growth will come from the Asia-Pacific region in the next year or two, followed by Africa (eventually?). Keep in mind that India is still not fully connected, yet has some excellent high-tech centres; China is coming online slowly but surely; there's also still room for growth in the rest of the world (particularly Europe and and the Americas).

I think when (if?!) the new TDLs come out there'll be a spike in new customers; I have no doubt there'll be a good deal of coverage in the main-stream press.

I also think a year from now there'll be a greater percentage of small hosting services run from people's homes, as broadband becomes increasingly available.

I don't see how the industry could do anything other than expand. More people in more countries are getting online. More companies are getting online (both existing and new and internet based).

As connections get faster, it may shift towards being *the* #1 source for news and entertainment. If this happens, which I believe it will, then we haven't seen nuthin' yet.

WebTv, Tivo, your television, your phone, your computer... I can see these blending into one product, or mayeb two devices made more compatible.

My kids will laugh when I tell them what we could *only* do via the internet. :)

Well, this is what I think.

The hosting business is like the real estate one. Where is the real estate business headed? I dunno. It has its ups and downs. But for the long run, its here to stay. People will keep needing place to put there websites up, like they will keep needing a place to stay. The internet is yet growing. Its yet a baby. If you wanna be in the business to make quick money, your in the wrong business. If you are thinking of the long run, its the right thing for you. Returns will be slow. But they will be enough, as long as your service is good. Like everyone else has said, the rest of the world is joining the "internet". They are getting wired.

Right now, the industry revolves around America. Its a fact. I think its reached a point of burn out there. The new nations will run the show. They should be the targetted audience.

[Edited by kunal on 01-16-2001 at 10:07 AM]

The NASDAQ effect has somehow created a negative sentiment on the public, some may think the internet will evaporate and remain as a page in the hostory book. IMO this round of cosolidations will form a stronger foundation for the new economic revolution.

Hey, just look, we are here communicating through this new form of communication channel, and daily we see new faces joining the crowd, posts on looking for good hosting company pops up every other day...

US internet populations are still growing on a fast pace, the internet population is exploding in the Asia-Pacific region and in the China main land, the penetration rate is still low compare to few Europe countries, but generally there are plenty room for growth, and that means business opps.

Evantually there will be new inovations, enhancements to what we can offer now. In this area, US will take the lead, Europe follows and the Asia-pacific will come like a hungry tiger !

So, don't worry and be happy..and see clearly the development of a new economic revolutions.


Long live internet...long live web hosting...

:wink:

As IntelligentHosting brings up, there will be a sizeable increase in the number of servers run out of people's homes. But there will always be plenty of room for 3rd party web hosts.

In the nearer term, I'm looking to decreasing costs in bandwidth, and hosts also being more receptive to sites that run lots of server side scripts. As RAM and CPUs become increasingly powerful for the cost, it won't be so big a deal.

What I'd like to know is what things will be like in six months or year from now. I'm looking forward to seeing some reliable new hosts surpass tera-byte.com's excellent prices for transfer, for example.

Originally posted by IntelligentHosting.com
I think when (if?!) the new TDLs come out there'll be a spike in new customers; So your theory is that there are thousands of people who would like to set up a site, but haven't done so because they don't like the available top-level domains? You'd have a hard time convincing me of that.

Many new webhosting companies are born every month, and yet many companies die every month. Well its pretty balanced......

Originally posted by JayC
So your theory is that there are thousands of people who would like to set up a site, but haven't done so because they don't like the available top-level domains? You'd have a hard time convincing me of that. What I'm suggesting will happen is that when the new TLDs are released, the media exposure (will it be a frenzy?) will make some say to themselves, "Hey, I should get a website." Maybe some people will want a website that have never considered it before, maybe there actually are some people that have wanted a site but have been discouraged by the lack of free ".com" domain names, I'm not really sure. It just seems to me that with all that publicity that's sure to surround the new TLDs, there's likely to be a spike in the number of people starting websites.

I also would say that, "there are thousands of people that would like to set up a site, but haven't done so because they don't like the available TLDs" is not an unresonable statement. Maybe not hundreds-of-thousands or even tens-of-thousands, but I'll bet there's a few thousand out there who don't want to settle for "MyE-MusicShopNow2000.com".

Hopefully everything continues to do well,otherwise many of the people who post here will be without a job =).


James R. Clark II
Nethosters Inc.
http://www.nethosters.com

Originally posted by IntelligentHosting.com
I also would say that, "there are thousands of people that would like to set up a site, but haven't done so because they don't like the available TLDs" is not an unresonable statement. Maybe not hundreds-of-thousands or even tens-of-thousands, but I'll bet there's a few thousand out there who don't want to settle for "MyE-MusicShopNow2000.com". You might, of course, be right. But it's certainly not been my experience. In talking to potential site development clients, some already have a domain name registered but many more have not. They have some idea of what they want, and I've neither seen nor heard of anyone backing off from whatever their web business plan is because they couldn't come up with a suitable domain name, doom and gloom of those wishing to profit off new TLDs notwithstanding.

I suppose it happens from time to time, I'd say not enough to be a sizable impact in view of the size -- monetary volume -- of the hosting industry.

So will media attention to new TLDs make a difference? Really again I can't see it being even a blip -- the prompts to think "Hey, I should get a website," as you suggest, are already unavoidable!

You mean MyE-MusicShopNow2000.com is still available?! What am I doing here?! I gotta get to it before someone else does.

And don't get any ideas! That domain name is mine...MINE I tell you!!!

Originally posted by lalaweb
You mean MyE-MusicShopNow2000.com is still available?! What am I doing here?! I gotta get to it before someone else does.

And don't get any ideas! That domain name is mine...MINE I tell you!!!
Oh come on. You're just going to buy it then sell it on eBay. Starting bid, $50,000,000 (it's been appraised at twice that much).

Bah. MyE-MusicShopNow2000.com -- you guys are so behind the curve! I've already registered MyE-MusicShopNow2001.com and MyE-MusicShopNow2002.com so you may as well abandon any hope you have of e-business success right now!

Yes, but I shall be first to register MyE-MusicShopNow2000.aero! I can be sure about this, because I've paid $250 to a "Reservation Service" that's supposed to have "insider information" on how to register the new TLD names before the "other guys" do. I know this to be true, I got an unsolicited e-mail telling me so.

I caught the end of a news article on tv, in which they said we are just at the beginning of the internet revolution.

as to the future of web hosting in particular, I think a lot of email sales customer support and a portion of email technical support will be shifted to countries like India.