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(WEB
HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- This week's Web hosting
news saw several big announcements in the way of
acquisitions. And, while the rest of this week's
news was somewhat smaller in scale, the variety
of stories demonstrated several specific trends
in hosting services and reseller programs. On
Monday, shared Web hosting provider PowWeb
announced that it had been
acquired by the Endurance International Group,
a company that owns several other Web hosting
providers, including BizLand and FatCow.
Endurance says it will maintain both the PowWeb
brand, and its popular online forums. PowWeb is
in the process of migrating all its customer Web
sites and email to a new load-balanced hosting
platform.
Also on Monday, ISP and Web host EarthLink
announced that it had completed its
acquisition of VPN provider New Edge Networks,
which secures multi-site managed data networks
and dedicated Internet access for business and
communications carriers. EarthLink acquired 100
percent of the company for 2.6 million shares of
EarthLink common stock and $114.3 million in
cash. EarthLink says the deal will form the
foundation for the company's expansion into the
market for business networks.
One of the most popular new applications
among hosting providers, Blogging tools have
become almost a must-have service in just a
short time. This week, several hosting providers
announced that they had added blogging tools to
their service portfolios.
ColdFusion focused Web hosting provider
CFDynamics announced on Wednesday that it had
launched a blogging tool, CFDBlogger. The
service, says CFDynamics, provides free setup
and a low monthly fee for hosting blogs. The
tool uses the WordPress multi-user software and
each blog is built on a secure database.
On Thursday, Web hosting provider
DowntownHost announced plans to begin selling
hosting solutions for
customers that want to operate blogs but
have no prior knowledge of how to build Web
sites. The company says its Blog Ready Solutions
will enable customers to have their blogs up and
running with a few clicks. The company also
announced that it had introduced an affiliate
program for promoting DowntonHost services.
DowntownHost's affiliate program-related
announcement was part of a larger wave of
reseller-related announcements to surface this
week.
On Monday, reseller hosting provider Host
Gator announced that its resellers had seen
remarkable success in the last few years.
The company says a survey of its partners
determined that its top 1,000 resellers host an
average of 49.5 sites each, with its top
reseller hosting 827 sites. The company
calculated the numbers from a study of the 8,000
resellers that joined between December 2003 and
February 2006.
On Wednesday, UK Web hosting provider
Fasthosts announced that it had
re-launched its reseller program, focusing
on a plan to increase its indirect sales channel
by 50 percent. The company has redesigned its
reseller program to increase profitability and
allow a more efficient delivery of its hosting
services. The new package includes domain
registration, email and Web hosting, broadband
and dialup access services as well as a new
application programming interface that enables
resellers to better configure their accounts.
And on Thursday, reseller Web hosting
provider ResellerClub announced that it had
introduced
new discounts on its Web and email hosting
services for resellers, cutting prices by 40
percent to offer greater profit margins. The
company says its new pricing structure provides
resellers with different pricing slabs, allowing
for wider profit margins as they conduct more
business with the company. The promotional
pricing will be available on all its plans
through October 31, 2006.
While this week's Web hosting news was mostly
the kind of news that industry observers tend to
expect, the prominence of new services among
hosting providers and new services for resellers
certainly demonstrate a lot of promise for the
continuation of the industry's current healthy
outlook. |
