The illusion of choice
Go shopping for web hosting today. You’ll see dozens of brands. Bluehost. HostGator. iPage. FatCow. HostMonster. JustHost. Domain.com. BigRock. Arvixe. A Small Orange. Network Solutions.
They look like competitors. Different logos, different websites, different marketing. You might spend an hour comparing them, reading reviews, weighing pros and cons.
Here’s what most people don’t know: they’re all owned by the same company.
The Endurance International Group story
Starting in the mid-2000s, a company called Endurance International Group (EIG) went on an acquisition spree that reshaped the hosting industry. They didn’t build hosting brands. They bought them. Over and over.
Some of the major acquisitions:
- Bluehost: acquired in 2010
- HostGator: acquired in 2012 for $300 million
- HostMonster and FastDomain: acquired in 2010
- iPage: acquired in 2012
- FatCow: acquired in 2012
- A Small Orange: acquired in 2012
- Arvixe: acquired in 2014
- BigRock, ResellerClub, and LogicBoxes: acquired from Directi in 2014 for $160 million
- Domain.com: part of the portfolio
- Network Solutions: one of the original domain registrars, now in the same portfolio
- Constant Contact: the email marketing platform, also acquired
By the time EIG was done, they controlled over 80 web hosting brands. Over 80. All funneling into the same company, often running on the same infrastructure, under the same management making the same decisions about pricing, support staffing, and server quality.
In 2021, private equity firm Clearlake Capital acquired EIG for around $3 billion and merged it with Web.com (which had been bought by another private equity firm, Siris Capital, in 2018). The combined entity was renamed Newfold Digital.
Same brands. Same playbook. New corporate name.
GoDaddy’s parallel path
While EIG was consolidating in the US, GoDaddy was doing the same thing globally. Between 2012 and 2022, GoDaddy made 28 acquisitions. Some highlights:
- Media Temple: a respected developer-focused host, acquired in 2013. Eventually folded into GoDaddy’s platform.
- Host Europe Group: acquired in 2017 for $1.82 billion. This included 123 Reg (the UK’s largest domain registrar at the time), Domain Factory (major German host), and Heart Internet.
- Sucuri: website security company, acquired in 2017
- Dan.com: domain marketplace, acquired in 2022
GoDaddy became the dominant force in European hosting overnight by buying Host Europe Group. Independent brands that customers trusted were absorbed into GoDaddy’s operation.
What happens after the acquisition
Here’s the pattern. It repeats almost every time:
Prices go up
The introductory price stays low to attract new customers. But renewal rates climb. Bluehost’s introductory shared hosting starts cheap, then renews at two to three times the introductory rate. HostGator users report prices gradually doubling over several years. This isn’t a bug. It’s the business model.
Private equity firms buy hosting companies expecting a return on their investment. That return comes from raising prices on a captive customer base. Moving a website is a hassle. Most people pay the higher renewal price rather than deal with migration.
Support quality drops
Running a support team of experienced engineers is expensive. After acquisition, support is often outsourced or staffed with less experienced agents reading scripts. Response times increase. Resolution quality decreases. The people who built the original brand and understood the platform are replaced with cost-optimized alternatives.
Infrastructure gets shared and oversold
When you consolidate dozens of brands onto shared infrastructure, the incentive is to pack servers as densely as possible. More accounts per server means more revenue per server. Performance suffers, but slowly enough that most customers blame their own website rather than the host.
The brand becomes a shell
The original team that built HostGator or Bluehost or A Small Orange is long gone. What remains is a logo on a website that routes to the same backend, the same support team, and the same billing system as dozens of other “competitors.” The brand exists purely for marketing. The differentiation is gone.
Web hosting should be getting cheaper
Here’s what makes all of this especially frustrating: the underlying technology has only gotten cheaper over the past 20 years.
- Server hardware is more powerful and energy-efficient than ever (the current RAM shortage aside, the long-term trend is clear)
- Storage costs have plummeted. What cost dollars per gigabyte in 2005 costs fractions of a cent today.
- Bandwidth is cheaper and more abundant
- Automation has reduced the manual work required to manage hosting infrastructure
- Open-source software (Linux, Apache, Nginx, PHP, MySQL) is free and better than it’s ever been
The cost of providing web hosting has gone down dramatically. And yet prices keep going up. That’s not because hosting costs more to deliver. It’s because consolidated companies with private equity owners need to generate returns, and raising prices on existing customers is the easiest way to do it.
Who’s left?
After two decades of consolidation, genuine independent hosting companies are rare. Most of the brands you see online are owned by Newfold Digital, GoDaddy, or another holding company. The “competition” you see when shopping is often different divisions of the same corporation bidding against themselves.
Independent hosts still exist, but you have to look for them. They’re usually smaller, privately owned, and not spending millions on Super Bowl ads. They compete on quality, support, and fair pricing rather than on marketing budgets funded by private equity.
Why APlusHosting exists
We’re not backed by private equity. We’re not part of a portfolio of 80 brands pretending to compete with each other. We don’t charge $3/month to get you in the door and then triple the price when you renew.
APlusHosting is owned by A+ Hosting, Inc. A private company that’s been running hosting infrastructure for nearly 30 years. We own our servers. We employ our support team directly. We set prices based on what it actually costs to provide good hosting, plus a fair margin. Not based on what a private equity firm needs to hit its quarterly targets.
When hosting technology gets cheaper, we can pass that along. We don’t have investors demanding price increases. We don’t have a corporate parent squeezing margins. We just have customers who deserve honest pricing for a service that should have been getting cheaper all along.
What to look for in an independent host
If you’re evaluating hosting providers, here’s how to spot the real independents:
- Check ownership. Search “[hosting company] parent company” or “[hosting company] acquired by.” If the trail leads to Newfold Digital, Clearlake Capital, or GoDaddy, it’s not independent.
- Look at renewal prices. If the introductory price is dramatically lower than the renewal price, the business model is bait-and-switch. Honest pricing doesn’t need a “hook.”
- Test support before buying. Contact support with a question. Did a real person respond? Did they understand the platform? Or did you get a scripted response from someone who clearly doesn’t work with the actual infrastructure?
- Check how long they’ve been around. New hosts appear and disappear. Companies that have been operating for 10, 20, or 30 years have proven they can sustain a business without selling out.
The bottom line
The web hosting industry has been quietly consolidated by a handful of private equity-backed corporations. The brands you grew up trusting are now labels on a shared platform designed to maximize revenue extraction.
Web hosting is mature technology. It should be affordable, reliable, and straightforward. APlusHosting exists to offer exactly that. Real pricing. Real support. Real independence. No private equity. No bait-and-switch. No 80 brands pretending to be different companies.
APlusHosting: independent, privately owned, and priced for real people. Not a subsidiary. Not a portfolio brand. Not owned by private equity. Just good hosting at honest prices.