Despite of the near recession status which is being successfully (?) evaded by the government in the US, the growth does seem nothing less than spectacular. Analysts at Tier1 Research (T1R) deduce that 'Rackspace, Savvis, AT&T and Verizon Business have been the biggest beneficiaries of this market growth, being the clear leaders in the managed hosting sector.' Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of the Hosting Industry and Statistical Analytics, I shall proceed on with some of the reasons which I find have been the leading factors for this growth :
1) Resellers: The term 'reseller' is being linked unthinkably with the hosting sector now, and mind you, there is a lot of logic behind that. Almost all leading hosting networks have special reseller plans for ambitious customers who want to start their own sub-version of a hosting company with their own set hosting plans and much fulfilling profits. Due to this upsurge of resellers in the market, people now, have so many places to choose from; little realizing that the ultimate source of the hosting is the main provider with much cheaper rates and much faster, well-appreciated technical support rather than the fairly expensive hosting resellers(they do need their profits!).
2) Affiliates: Upon delving into the depths of Affiliate Marketing, sooner or later, you realize that the most lucrative and high payout sectors for becoming an affiliate is 'Digital Products' (more specifically, 'Website Hosting'), Drugs, and Electronic Goods (prospect of growth). Almost every web host out there has an affiliate system, where affilates get paid huge amounts (sometimes in excess of $100) and they publicize the hosting site all too enthusiastically. Although, the ratio and proportions of affiliate marketing seems all too dizzy for me. The average hosting packages on a hosting site start from monthly subscriptions ($8.99/mo on average), to biennial subscriptions ($5.99/mo on average). These hosting sites pay about $75 on an average to affiliates for each customer that they refer. Say, a person takes a monthly subscription and leaves after a month, then the hosting company will face losses of $75-$8.99=$66.01. But, who cares about the losses that they incur, because, we finally have thousands of sites pertaining to : 'hosting coupons, hosting discounts, hosting reviews, top hosts, recommended hosts' etc, with all such sites containing affiliate links/banners of the hosting companies.
3) Features: Most of you, who have seen the features provided by hosting companies, would be mind boggled by the disk space and bandwidth that they claim to provide you. These range from 750GB-1500GB disk space and 750GB-15000GB bandwidth. If you notice closely, these offers are only on shared hosting (not on reseller or dedicated). The thing to think about here is, an average server which is loaded with hard disks, can at most contain about 1000-2000GB. And, the same server, is used for shared hosting of about 500+ clients. If you actually start giving 1500GB to each person, then the server would need a disk space of : 500(client)*1500(GB)=750000GB, or 750TB, which, in the real world, can only be possible in your dreams. I call this disk space as: Virtual Memory; Because, you will presume that you have this much space and will work on your site considering that you have lots of memory to burn. Now, if you are wondering about the tall claims here, then there's some news for you: They don't actually allow you to use the disk space. There are some restrictions mentioned in the terms and conditions, such as - Max use of 50000 inodes (number of files); Max use of 5GB for scripts, 5GB for images, 5GB for videos and so on, which results in use of no more than 25GB. Such restrictions, if not followed, result in termination of your account. So, I hope you read the TOS before you actually start believing.
In the context of Shared Hosting, I can think of a proverb: "What you see is 1500GB. What you get is 25GB. What you see is blazing fast servers. What you get is a slow normal site, but darn cheap hosting"
Ok Ok. This proverb won't exactly go down in the books, but it pretty much sums up shared hosting for you.
I expect to see the 1500GB increasing to 5000GB in the coming years. But, the facts will still remain the same. The Hosting Industry will see some terrific growth over time and let's hope for the best and see what happens in the years to come.
This article is written by Ritoban Chakrabarti, an analyst and reviewer associated with Hosting Site Reviews
All the source of content is either through research on the internet or through personal/social experiences.
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