10 Global Hosting TrendsAnd How They Will Impact Your Business

Adam Eisner

Director, Domain ServicesOpenSRS

About Tucows

• One of the world’s largest domain name

registrars

– Currently manage over 9 million names

• Large provider of hosted email and SSL

certificates

• Offices in Canada, USA, UK

August 25, 2009

What We’ll Talk About

10 global trends in web hosting that will have a

significant impact on your business.

August 25, 2009

State of the Industry

• A great industry to be in (relative to others)

• Now viewed more as a utility

– The good: It’s a necessity

– The bad: Customers take it for granted

• Mass market hosting (non-managed):

– $7.8B (USD) industry in 2009

– $8.4B (USD) industry in 2010

August 25, 2009

State of the Industry (cont.)

• The true value of hosting is now in the

applications supporting it

– Publishing (photo/blog) tools, analytics,

search engine marketing, fax to email,

marketing tools, etc.

• The shared hosting universe is changing

– Significant penetration already

– Marketing needs to change with the times

August 25, 2009

10 Global Hosting Trends

Trend 1: ccTLDs Are On The Rise

• Generic TLDs (.com, .net, etc.) were 50% of domain name market in 2005

–Comprises only 45% today

• European hosts doing a much better job selling ccTLDs

• High-growth area for most major hosts

August 25, 2009

Top ccTLDs

– .CN (12 million)

– .DE (12 million)

– .UK (7 million)

– .NL (3 million)

– .EU (3 million)

– .AR (1.8 million)

– .RU (1.6 million)

– .IT (1 million)

– .BR (1 million)

– .US (1 million)

August 25, 2009

Trend 2: Hosts Are Getting In

Front Of Their Brands

August 25, 2009

There are 89 hosting companies on Twitter!

Trend 3: Policy is Changing

• New escrow / reseller requirements are

coming from ICANN

• Up to 400 new gTLDs are coming: which

will you sell?

– Front-runners for industry buzz: .WEB, .ECO

August 25, 2009

Trend 4: Hosts Are Selling One

Package

August 25, 2009

• Customers who still don’t have hosting

are likely to be laggards

– They know what a website is, but not hosting

• Those who do have hosting will want

specific things

– Talk to them on features

August 25, 2009

Trend 5: Hosts Are Selling

Premium Names

• Names which cost $500 to $3000

• Tucows, GoDaddy, RCOM, NetSol all selling

• Most names resolve to SMB site in six months

• Recent sales by Tucows resellers:– Emailmagic.com

– Bluelabs.com

– Webhostbiz.net

– Techwriters.net

August 25, 2009

Trend 6: Hosts are Selling SSL

• Still plenty of this opportunity in this space

• Extended Validation (EV) certificates a

great high-margin opportunity

August 25, 2009

August 25, 2009

Trend 7: Hosting Customers

Expect Feature Rich Email

• Usable Webmail

– Feature set, localization, brand-able

• Up to date spam and virus filtering

• Dedicated disk space – lots of it!

All costly expectations to deliver - only to

give it away!

August 25, 2009

Trend 8: Hosts Are Outsourcing

Email

• Ask yourself: Do you have in-house

expertise required to run a premium email

offering? Dedicated abuse team

NOC team

Dev team

Professional Services (to migrate customers existing mail to new

system)

August 25, 2009

Trend 9: Hosts Don’t Fight

Spam For A Living

• Over 90% of all inbound email is spam

• Fighting spam isn’t your core competency,

nor should it be

• DIY can be a costly approach requiring

dedicated resources/hardware

August 25, 2009

Trend 10: Personalized Email

• Domain + Email = Personal Identity

• Go beyond selling just a domain name and

raw disk space

• Offer your customers a service they can

use right away – email

August 25, 2009

Thank You!

Questions?

August 25, 2009