Anyone out there with a resource (or opinion) on how many web hosting companies are out there competing for the "works"?

For the sake of simplicity, resellers should be considered "customers" of Web Hosting companies. I'd like to know how many there are that own their own/manage their own NOC, servers etc.


(pssst. the title I've been so generously given "newbie" gave me the rights to ask this question! )

Thanks in advance! ;)

Hi,
Having their own NOC doesn't make a hosting company, in fact, few do. Most hosting companys with dedicated, or colocated machines are smart enough to use an NOC to their advantage.

This allows the time to grow, without going tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to see if you can make it float. You grow, and share the resources like bandwidth and NOC costs with a few hundred friendly competitors, and if you feel the overwhelming urge once your bringing in the profit, then start your NOC.

The number of hosting companies that have their own data center, has to be small - like about 1 to 3 percent of all hosts.

The host should worry about his hosting customers and the servers they are on. Not the data center, until they have grown large enough to support the company with the high quality techs that will keep the NOC running, and they are not cheap.

In my opinion, for the most part.. there is two seperate fields. Hosts, and NOC's... when you combine two jobs into one, it is going to suffer on both ends.

As for hosting companies... several million trying, several hundred doing it well.

NOC's, several hundred.... a few good, a few more fair,, and quite a few that will fold up and die this year. Who can put an exact number ? I doubt anyone.

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"For the sake of simplicity, resellers should be considered "customers" of Web Hosting companies. "
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This couldn't be farther from the correctly spoken word !!
"For simplicity..." NO !!
Resellers are the Life blood and driving force behind any good hosting company. Almost all hosts started there. It is the learning stage that drives them to better themselves, and helps the main host in their efforts to grow as well. Without good resellers, hosts would fail one after another.

Dang... this got long fast.... sorry.

Tim L

superiorhost said
some stuffAll of which I agreed with except for this: NOC's, several hundred.... I'd say many, many more than that. Heck, I can come up with eight small companies near me, each of which has a data center. Certainly each of the top few hundred cities in the US alone must have a few NOCs, and a lot of local ISPs -- those still around and with physical facilities -- offer web hosting. And the original question just asked how many are "out there," without specifying a country, so we're casting a wide net.

But I agree with your basic point, that counting only hosts with their own data centers isn't anything close to an accurate picture of the industry. Remember, you're not then only cutting out small operations, you're leaving out big players like DellHost as well.

Hey Tim,

I guess I misworded my question. I wasn't denouncing Resellers by any means. I understand their value all too well with over 35% of our customers being attributed to resellers of our services.

Would it be suitable to suggest "classes" of hosting companies?

Full-blown data center. maybe multiple locations;
Colocated;
dedicated;
reseller (of someone else's hardware/software)

Originally posted by JayC
All of which I agreed with except for this: I'd say many, many more than that. Heck, I can come up with eight small companies near me, each of which has a data center. Certainly each of the top few hundred cities in the US alone must have a few NOCs, and a lot of local ISPs -- those still around and with physical facilities -- offer web hosting. And the original question just asked how many are "out there," without specifying a country, so we're casting a wide net.



I agree that there are allot of NOC's, but only a few are real NOC's. Allot of companies who claim they have a noc don't even have backup generaters. Its just a standard room with a few racks.

Hi JayC,
Yes, I agree, about the numbers game, but I wasn't trying to give an acurate count, just a visualization of the whole aspect. I honestly don't think anyone knows how many of each there really are. I was just trying to show that for the millions of hosts, there are hundreds of data centers... perhaps thousands but I was just thinking of it as an image of a pie chart.

And inet7,,
i wasn't trying to say you belittled resellers... but it did sound like they were understated in comparison.. could have just been my trend of thought last night.
:rolleyes:

I also agree with vizi,, there are many small companies with their own machines, housed in basements, offices, where ever,,, but that don't make them a data center. Some even lease hosting space and dedicated servers to help cover the bills, but still not a true data center.

Basically, what I was saying was that it is almost impossible to get a good count of each level. There are so many out there, and with the internet, you can look much bigger than you are, or much smaller than you are.

It sounds like something the US governmnet could easily waste a few million trying to count.

Tim L

As a total there are 16k hosting companies.

Thats the latest numbers.

Joe

Originally posted by JBIZ718
As a total there are 16k hosting companies.

Thats the latest numbers.

Joe
Where did you get that number from?

Wow Joe! You sound really informed. Where's that data from?:D

Im not sure the specific magazine.

I get about 30 a month to my place of business.

I remember reading an article about a month ago stating that there around 16k total hosting companies.

That covers all areas.

Most of these companies are resellers. The minority are NOC owners, and facility owners.

If I can find the article Ill let you know, but thats what I remember.

Joe

Another way to verify this info is, though its not the most acurate,

Go to the host directories, most of them have some count.

But I go with the article, and suggest the 16k is around rite.

Originally posted by superiorhost
It sounds like something the US governmnet could easily waste a few million trying to count.Hmmm.... maybe I'll start work on a grant proposal! I could use some government money...

I've heard that 16,000 number a few times, but really the only place I've heard it is here in these forums. Maybe it's true, but no one I've heard (or read) mention it has mentioned a credible source.

(Nope, sorry Joe, "some magazine" isn't a credible source! Most magazines aren't credible sources anyway; the magazine article itself would have to name a source to be credible in my book. As it is, it's hearsay, which doesn't mean it's wrong; just that it's unverified.)

Hmmm,,,

I really think that 16 K is a verry low guess.

The magazine had to put some kind of figure on it.. but it sounds like a guess to me. Just look in some search engines... don't forget all the over seas ones too.

Hey jayc,, go for the money. That should be worth at least a half mil to research it right. But I think by the time you got half done, the data would be out dated...
hmm,, there is next years grant :D

Tim L

Im going to stick with 16k.

If you think about it, its a feasable number.

Joe

Originally posted by JBIZ718
Im going to stick with 16k.

If you think about it, its a feasable number.Sure it is. The only question is, is it right?

I'm also trying to remember how long ago I first heard that number. What do you think the growth rate in hosting companies has been? If it was 16,000 six months ago, it'd probably be substantially higher now. If it was in a magazine even four or five months ago, consider the lead time for publication and the fact that whoever wrote it had to get it from somewhere, which might have been some analyst's report on something a few months before... it could easily be a year old.

And, not knowing where the number came from, what kinds of operations does it count?

All in all, feasible or not, it's a pretty unreliable number.

If you're counting resellers, 16,000 is definitely too low. Pair.com says here (http://www.pair.com/pair/about/statistics.html) that they have 14,000 resellers, and I'm sure the rest of the world combined is more than 2,000.

Looking at those statistics, pair has one reseller for every 7.5 "active sites". Based on Netcraft's statistic of 9.5 million "active sites" -- and I think the two definitions are pretty much equal -- that would mean somewhere around 1.3 million resellers around the world.

Now, I'm sure that is a rather drastic overestimate: pair.com's 7.5 websites per reseller sounds anomalously low. Nevertheless, I'd guess at somewhere around 100-150 thousand webhosts/resellers around the world.

Part of the problem lies with definitions. If you don't count "resellers," you're drastically undercounting. But a significant number of resellers at places like Pair aren't actively selling hosting services; sometimes it's a cost-effective way to host a number of related sites.

Still I agree that 16,000 worldwide seems low. After all, aren't there almost 10,000 hosts here at WHT now?

Originally posted by JayC
After all, aren't there almost 10,000 hosts here at WHT now?

Where do you get that figure from? There are under 3000 registered users here, and only 151 have an entry in the index in the advertising forum. Many registered users have come in because they were looking for webhosting, not selling it, and some of us... well, some of us have absolutely no reason for being here ;)

It seems to me 16,000 is an underestimate. But many of these are jsut hosts, while others add value services like design. So it may not be fair to group all hosting companies into one category.