The current recession is bad, 600,000 people a week losing their jobs in the US and growing. The numbers are ugly and getting wore.
So how is your hosting business doing?
In my case I have seen a 30% increase in signups in January with people leaving yahoo and godaddy for cheaper hosting like me. More and more people are looking to start a web business because they are out of work ad need an income.
Is anyone seeing increased sales? Is the hosting industry growing or is it just me?

There are many companies in the UK as well making people redundant but for us we have noticed an increase as well in all areas of sales including the big purchases of dedicated servers.
A good amount of our sales are fully custom hosting so I think people are looking around for better deals. Our shared hosting has increased as well over the past month.
So at the moment cant complain as the recession has not hit us in any bad ways.
Would like to hear from any companies that are finding it the other way.

We brought in twice as many clients this past January than we did last January.

I would say that business is up for most people I speak with. The hosting industry appears to be relatively unfazed (so far) by the economic plight.
-mike

Business grew consistently in 2008 and the trend is continuing in 2009.

My business isnt up nor down, about the same.

The trouble hasn't really even hit yet. When you see massive inflation in the US, (and you will in the near future) many web hosts will have difficulty raising their prices even though a loaf of bread will be going for $10, while their hosting is $.99/yr.
Just like anything else, those with the foresight and stomach for the tough times will survive and others will go by the wayside.
Make the right decisions now, because, if you can make it work during times like these, (not times now, but what's coming soon) you'll be successful no matter what.

A little bit up, but not anything drastic yet. No complaints though, up is better than staying the same. :)

Honestly January was great, seems there are lots of entrepreneurs making a go at it.

Up for us as well.

Up for us as well too.. thank goodness :)

Constant growth for the past year. No sudden increase - just standard for us. We did see quite a few downgrade requests here in January, and many smaller stores even dumping their merchant accounts (and dedicated IP with SSL Certs) to go with minimal hosting and using PayPal for their merchant processing instead.
We have also seen a number of people getting into running their own business (stores etc), hoping to be more financially stable or just make a few extra dollars. Fingers crossed for all those affected, and continued growth in the web hosting sector.

I would have to agree with the majority here that sales have either remained the same or increased.
The reason behind that would most likely be as a couple here suggested, and that is, people are looking for alternatives to make income, and one of those alternatives are either starting online businesses, or taking part in the online market.

Keeping the sales the same isn't exactly a good sign, the game server market alot of providers are really hurting, although the past 3 months we have tripled each month new client signups.

I can't speak for January yet, but December broke all previous sales records.

Its sad to see so many layoffs.
In the last two months my company has seen a steady increase in the amount of people needing outsourced support for their IT infrastructure.

Business has been actually going up for me. I suppose the reason for this is that with many people without jobs, they have more free time and some might be planning on starting their own online business or a blog.

The economy is down simply because we put it there, exporting jobs to China, allowing big corporations to run industries by themselves, anyone who knows their history can easily see that were repeating the 1890's-1910's (Smaller recession then the Great Depression).
Hosting is good though, even though were new we seem to grow continuously strong.

It's definitely great to hear that the vast majority of hosts who posted to this thread are doing even better than before! :)

The problem is, the hosts that are doing bad will most likely not state they are doing worse then before :)

The problem is, the hosts that are doing bad will most likely not state they are doing worse then before :)
If you offer reasonable rates for hosting, and have good support services, there's no reason that you cannot remain strong.

Business is definitely up as costs have come down drastically for bandwidth and hardware is a lot more powerful for a cheaper price and can do more. The internet and IT is a must now and no longer a luxury and an affordable one at that.