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When it comes to the business of website hosting, we wanted to show you how some of the 16 biggest companies differentiate, and what kind of customer and revenue figures they’re generating.
Without further ado, let’s dive in…
#1
A2 Hosting: $16.5 million /year
A speed focused web hosting service
In 2001, Bryan Muthid launched A2 in Ann Arbor, MI, from a two-room office. He started the company to streamline website hosting for beginners. Today, the last reported A2 hosting revenue is $16.5 million per year, and the company’s data centers have expanded to Singapore and Amsterdam. A2’s extensive support team helps the company’s 110,000 customers reach their hosting goals.
Today, the company offers a variety of hosting services, from shared hosting and WordPress hosting to VPS hosting. In 2014, A2 launched their signature Turbo Hosting plans and packages that yield rapid page loads, stronger traffic capability, and better caching options.
A2 doesn’t just provide hosting services—the company Is also eco-conscious. It heavily focuses on environmental goals, including offsetting emissions and partnering with Carbonfund.org.
#2
Aiven Hosting: $37.7 million /year
A managed cloud service hosting company with over 230 employees
Founded in 2016 in Helsinki, Aiven develops managed cloud service hosting for software infrastructure services. Aiven hosting offers the latest open source technology tailored to developers for larger-scale businesses and enterprises. Aiven’s overarching goal is to help developers focus on creating applications by taking care of all cloud management.
Aiven has since expanded to three other countries and received $419 million in funding to date. This has resulted in the business receiving a $3 billion valuation in May 2022.
Aiven had a reported earnings of $37.7 million in 2021, and the company’s clientele includes Toyota, Fiverr, and Opendoor. They previously announced that they have been growing revenue 100% year on year thanks to having over 700 customers across 50 countries.
At the end of 2019 the company had ‘just’ 42 employees, but, this number has since grown to over 230 with headcount increasing by more than 65% since late 2021.
Aiven’s latest initiative is the Aiven Cluster Start-up Program, launching in December 2021. The program offers selected start-ups competitive benefits to bolster their growth. These benefits include $100,000 in Aiven credit for one year along with dedicated support from Aiven’s technical, promotion, and mentoring teams.
#3
Anchor Hosting: $300,000+ /year
Bootstrapped hosting provider of over 900 sites
Started by Austin Ginder after working with WordPress since 2010, Anchor Hosting prides itself on being a hassle-free option for freelancers and web professionals.
Austin bootstrapped Anchor Hosting back in 2014 and has grown it to an average revenue of $19,750/m and hosted over 900 sites within the first five years.
In 2021 the business received over $300,000 income from hosting services.
Austin takes a very personal approach when it comes to the service he offers. He allows people to email him directly and even shares his office location and regular meetup events.
#4
Carrd: $1 million+ /year
A platform for building simple one-page sites
Founded in 2016, Carrd is an SaaS company that allows non-developers to create and maintain single-page websites, like landing pages, profile pages, and more. The company’s rich selection of templates makes Carrd especially attractive to first-time website builders. And attractive it is — Carrd hosts over 3 million individual sites with more than 2 million users.
Carrd’s founder goes by a pseudonym—“AJ”—whose true identity remains a mystery. Before AJ founded Carrd, he enjoyed tinkering with website templates, which prompted his friends to start requesting those templates. He soon monetized these requests, and Carrd was born. Per a recent report, Carrd Hosting Revenue nets over $1 million per year.
In 2020, Kim Kardashian boosted Carrd hosting revenue and awareness when she tweeted a link to a Carrd website about the Black Lives Matter movement.
Since then Carrd’s user base has continued to expand with AJ sharing on Indie Hackers that they are growing by 10,000 new sites daily.
#5
Convesio Hosting: $1.6 million in funding
A five year old hosting company with multiple investors
Convesio solely focuses on WordPress hosting and management. Thomas Fanelli founded Convesio in 2018 to provide a more dynamic and creative WordPress experience at competitive prices. Convesio’s hosting solutions include auto-scaling, built-in caching, and multi-container deployment to prevent server failure.
Convesio hosting also offers uptime monitoring to notify that a website went offline. All in all, it boasts many time-saving features that enable WordPress users to build websites in under a minute.
Convesio is a fast-growing company. The company’s last round of funding took place in December 2019 to the tune of $1,142,295 and 828 investors. The company has raised $1.6 million to date.
Convesio’s future goals include adding servers to multiple countries around the globe. Founder Thomas Fanelli champions the WordPress community by attending events such as WordCamp US and other meet-ups worldwide.
#6
DigitalOcean: $576 million+ /year
A simple cloud hosting service with 600K+ customers
Founded in 2011 by Ben and Moisey Uretsky, DigitalOcean is a cloud computing provider geared toward software developers. In short, DigitalOcean enables developers to run applications simultaneously on multiple computers. The founders launched DigitalOcean hosting after noticing a gap in the app creation niche for developers.
DigitalOcean operates data centers in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Singapore, London, Toronto, and Bangalore. In 2021, DigitalOcean went public on the New York Stock Exchange with $47 per share.
Today, DigitalOcean has a customer base of more than 600,000, and their 2022 revenue was $576.3 million. This was an increase of 34% year-over-year and saw a gross profit of $364.4 million.
With the help of $491.3 million worth of investments into the business, DigitalOcean has a goal of increasing this revenue figure to over $1 billion per year going forward.
DigitalOcean hosting is a huge presence in both the developer and open source communities. They maintain a Q-and-A platform on their website for developers and host networking events, including the annual Hacktoberfest that celebrates open-source software.
#7
Elegant Themes Hosting: 806K Users
A partnership with various hosting companies
Working with Divi, a swiftly-growing hosting platform with over 2.1 million users, Elegant Themes offers fast, reliable website hosting. Founder and CEO Nick Roach touts the company’s partnerships with top WordPress hosting companies to supply Divi-compatible sites with pre-configured settings and tools to make hosting easy and intuitive.
Elegant Themes hosting operates in over 20 countries with over 806,000 customers. The company started as a one-man operation in Roach’s college apartment and now partners with major hosting companies like Flywheel and Pressable.
Nick Roach looks to the future and sees Divi growing to encompass even more services like cloud storage for a Divi library. The company has cornered the WordPress hosting theme market.
#8
Flywheel Hosting: $14.4 million /year
A Managed WordPress Hosting with 125k+ customers
Ranked at number 92 on the Inc. 5000 Regionals Midwest and number 855 on the overall Inc. 5000 over the last couple of years, Flywheel is a premier choice for website hosting.
At the time of that Inc. 5000 report their revenue increased to $14.4 million, up from $8.8 million in 2016. In fact, from 2014-2017, Flywheel had a 1,445 percent increase in growth rate
With a diverse staff of experts from many different backgrounds and skill levels, the award-winning team at Flywheel works with big names like Casper and Expedia to host efficient, fast websites. They’ve worked with over 35,000 brands to date.
Co-founder Dusty Davidson grew Flywheel with the goal of putting more Midwest businesses on the map. In the company’s early days, he and his fellow co-founders personally made calls to customers before hiring a sales team.
After being acquired by WP Engine two years ago, Flywheel hosting has continued to grow exponentially. With over 125,000 customers so far, Flywheel is part of the largest WordPress hosting company in the world.
#9
Hostifi Hosting: $1 million /year
Grown to over 2,000 customers
Hostifi is only three years old, but it’s already doing well. Within the first two years, it passed the $300,000 mark in annual recurring revenue, and it’s still growing.
In fact, the company grew from $100,000 to $1 million revenue in a 24-month period. Reilly believed the biggest uptick in this came in early 2020 when they changed the minimum pricing plan from $19/m to $49/m.
Founder Reilly Chase sought a better way to support Ubiquiti products, and when he couldn’t find one, he created one—Hostifi hosting. Focused on unifying customers’ many different websites, Hostifi offers an elegant solution of one cloud-based server that connects everything.
With over 2,000 customers, Hostifi is accelerating at a rapid pace with only five employees. Hostifi has its own unique wizard to make connecting devices easy, even remotely. It offers nightly backups to make sure nothing gets accidentally lost.
With plans offering anywhere from 250 to 1,000 UniFi device connectivity, Hostifi has a plan for all businesses. It’s also worth noting that previously 92% of all HostiFi revenue came from their UniFi cloud hosting product.
#10
Kinsta: 22K+ Customers
More than 8,500 sites have now migrated to the service
Kinsta’s team of 150+ employees offers constant support for all WordPress hosting needs. Kinsta was founded by a group of friends who saw a gap in the hosting market and wanted to fill it.
Their proprietary development suite, DevKinsta, enables customers to build, test, and debug WordPress sites on a local server before sending them out into the world. The company is looking to bring its tech to those who can’t afford the high-end hosting options.
Kinsta saw a 75% revenue increase in 2020, with profits over 39 times what they were in 2015. Over that same period, the company’s customer base grew over 84%, servicing more than 22,500 customers in over 120 countries on six continents. This customer base grew again by over 41% in 2021 which resulted in a further 47% revenue growth – 60 times more than their 2015 base figure.
With a churn rate of under 5%, Kinsta hosting is a service that customers almost always stick with once they give it a try.
#11
Liquid Web Hosting: $90 million Valuation
Featured 12 times in a row on the Inc. 5000
Liquid Web, valued at $90 million through its combined success with web hosting and cloud services, has continuously grown its brand by acquiring other companies such as Rackspace and LearnDash. Liquid Web is one of only 33 companies to make the Inc 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies list a dozen times.
Liquid Web manages over 500,000 sites, from more than 187,500 customers across 150+ countries. By launching its own private cloud service to offer document security and recovery without public interference, Liquid Web sets itself apart.
The company’s ten global data centers offer services to customers all over the world. Liquid Web hosting even has special services for the healthcare community, with HIPAA-compliant hosting.
#12
Miss Group Hosting: ÂŁ25 million /year
Digital Solutions Provider with over 800k customers
Based in Manchester, Miss Group hosts 935,000 websites and employs over 350 people. It dubs itself the fastest-growing web hosting group, given that founder Mattias Kaneteg only started the company in 2014. A serial entrepreneur, Kaneteg sold an online gambling company to Unibet to accrue funds to establish Miss Group.
Today, Miss Group hosting services also include supplemental tools such as SEO and domain management. It holds offices in over eight countries. As a company, Miss Group strongly values bottom-up decision-making over a top-down approach.
The company’s buy-and-build strategy is particularly dynamic, as they performed their latest acquisition in January 2023. Miss Group has acquired 24 companies and partnered with a further 12, including Dell and VMWare. Miss Group’s recently reported yearly revenue was £25 million.
After various rounds of investment, the total funding in the business has now surpassed ÂŁ19 million.
#13
Pantheon Hosting: $29 million+ /year
A Web Ops platform with over 2.5k agency partners
Pantheon hosting lives up to its name. With over 12,000 customers and over $29.1 million in revenue this year, it’s growing by the day.
In 2021 the company announced a 163% three-year revenue growth rate and was valued at over $1 billion in July 2021. This was in part due to receiving more than $200 million in funding, including from Founders Collective.
Company co-founder Zack Rosen had a vision of streamlining how websites are made to deliver a business’s services and products faster than traditional website building. Pantheon works with companies from every business sector, from Clorox and Patagonia to the United Nations Foundation.
The company’s customer service is ranked #1 on G2 Crowd for Managed Hosting Relationship, and with near-constant uptime on sites it helps build, Pantheon is shaking up the website-building world. Pantheon hosts over 300,000 websites for over 12,000 businesses. With an investment from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Pantheon is just getting started.
#14
Valheim Serverhosting: $420K /year
Gaming Dedicated Hosting Servers From $13/m
Valheim Server Hosting (powered by Hostari) offers game dedicated servers from $13/m.
The service was launched rapidly in March 2021, and they very quickly saw the first customers sign-up.
The business has shared previously that they were achieving $10,000 monthly recurring revenue through their hosting services. However, it’s since been revealed that this has increased to over $35,000 per month with the help of an SEO campaign.
This shows that there is definitely a market for very niche specific hosting services which is exactly what Valheim provide. After all, the company was created with the intention of making a niche product with a ready-made audience.
#15
UK2 Hosting: 35K+ Websites Hosted
A domain and hosting service which is part of THG
John Morris founded UK2 to take advantage of what he calls “digital disruption.” Working for a travel company back when typewriters and filing cabinets were the latest and greatest tech, Morris saw email and the Internet revolutionise the world before his eyes and struck while the iron was hot.
He sees the rise of connectivity through items like Amazon’s Dash Buttons and smart home technology as the latest frontier in connectivity and is steering UK2 hosting to incorporate that. As part of THG, a publicly-traded company, UK2 hosts more than 35,000 websites and works with over 330,000 UK businesses.
With its combination of website hosting and building services, UK2 offers the complete package. UK2 works alongside sister brands like Dotable and 100TB to provide support for every need while also standing on its own to serve as a single, streamlined point of contact.
#16
VirMach Hosting: 300K+ Customers
A Linux and Windows Server Hosting Service from $2/m
Founded in 2014, VirMach offers multiple Virtual Private Servers (VPS) for both Linux and Windows to over 300,000 customers at affordable rates (as low as $2 per month) without compromising server performance and customer support.
The company caters to small businesses, so the easy-to-use factor of its VPS makes it attractive to hosting newbies. Now operating 11 data centers around the world, VirMach hosting provides customizable options for a variety of applications, with free data protection and 100% uptime guaranteed.
Not overly common among hosting providers, VirMach offers a robust affiliate program for its users. In fact, VirMach gives over $120,000 per year to affiliates who refer customers to the company’s plans and packages. As a result, VirMach affiliates have the unique opportunity to earn regular commissions from every referral.
