10 global hosting trends
TRANSCRIPT
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
• 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