Web Hosting Market Share & Statistics for 2024

Web hosting is one of the pillars holding up the internet as we know it – the majority of websites you visit rely on web hosting providers for servers, resources, computing power, and content delivery. The web hosting market is continually growing and evolving. As such, it also faces many challenges as well as opportunities to leverage emerging technologies.

In this article, I offer an overview of some statistics, such as the web hosting market revenue and growth rate, market share, and key players. Furthermore, I discuss some of the key trends and challenges for the web hosting industry at large.

Key takeaways

Web hosting industry is growing rapidly with an estimated annual growth rate of 18%.
Shared hosting remains popular but there’s a shift towards faster, flexible, cost-effective solutions like cloud hosting and serverless architecture.
Increasing reliance on hosting services is driving demand for better performance.
Major players try to meet market demand by offer cloud hosting, edge computing, serverless architecture, and AI-powered solutions.
High energy and water consumption in data centers is driving a push for renewable energy sources.
New technologies such as cloud, edge computing, and serverless architecture require updated cybersecurity and performance management approaches.

Web hosting statistics

To understand the state of the hosting market today, let's look at some important statistics. Below are brief overviews of the hosting market revenue in 2024 and estimated growth rate, web hosting market share by hosting type, and some of the industry's key players of the last few years.

Revenue and growth rate

According to Statista, the web hosting market revenue is projected to reach US$159.9 billion by the end of 2024. With an expected annual growth rate of 17.35%, the market volume is projected to reach US$255.8 billion by 2029.

The growth of the web hosting market can be partially attributed to the global COVID-19 pandemic, as consumers increasingly rely on online services. Fortune Business Insights cites such change in consumer attitudes as the reason small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) seek a strong online presence, making web hosting a priority for many.

Market share by hosting type — Source: Demandsage

Shared hosting remains the most popular hosting type among users, with a 37.64% share of the overall web hosting market. Shared hosting is the least expensive hosting type that web hosts offer, and is most of the time suitable for small-to-medium sized businesses both in terms of resources and scalability options.

Key players

Like anything else, the web hosting market has its giants that are responsible for hosting the majority of websites on the internet. Here are some of the key players in the web hosting industry in 2022:

Key trends, challenges, and opportunities

The web hosting industry is evolving to accommodate customers’ needs, adapt to changes in the cybersecurity and legal landscapes, and implement the newest available technologies.

The growth of the web hosting industry can be mostly attributed to increased online activity overall. Factors such as global digital transformation, artificial intelligence, SME expansion to the online domain, and others contribute to the industry’s growth and development.

Along with growth come new challenges and opportunities. Web hosting providers are looking for ways to deal with the growing demand for more easily scalable hosting options, sustainability and cybersecurity challenges, and data protection compliance.

Digital transformation and meeting the market demand

Digital transformation, which largely means the digitalization of businesses, drives the web hosting industry’s change and growth. Online activities such as online shopping for both goods and services, as well as the general population becoming more reliant on the online space only increased during the Covid-19 pandemic. This naturally led SMEs, especially in the eCommerce and service industries, to seek an online presence to increase their reach.

This presents an overarching challenge for the web hosting industry: building such infrastructures and business models that can handle huge amounts of new users, data, and traffic, and managing the costs at the same time.

Web hosting service providers must employ strategies to get noticed, stay relevant, and offer quality services for prices that are attractive to customers, profitable for the providers, and remain competitive. To meet the market demands for scalable hosting, providers are moving towards offering solutions such as infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and software as a service. Furthermore, they integrate edge computing as well as gradually migrate to cloud hosting and serverless architecture.

Edge computing, cloud hosting, serverless architecture

Hosting infrastructures integrating edge computing is one of the key trends in the web hosting industry. Edge computing offers a way to enhance performance via faster content delivery and reduced latency.

Furthermore, cloud hosting is no longer something that gives a business a competitive edge. It has become a commodity, a fundamental part of any business operations. SMEs increasingly turn to public cloud services for storage and workloads, and cloud hosting as a whole offers help in modernizing infrastructures and optimizing costs: it introduces better scalability, security, and higher performance.

Another emerging trend is the move toward serverless architecture, which allows for much faster communication and data transfers, and a usage-based billing model for businesses. However, a challenge yet to be solved with serverless hosting architecture is performance management and lack of infrastructure visibility, raising the need for more complex monitoring approaches.

AI and automation

With the still-ongoing boom in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning used for all kinds of business operations automation, web hosting services are also looking to integrate AI solutions (including generative AI) into their services. Some examples of such services include AI assistants for hosting management such as Hostinger’s Kodee, AI-powered website creators with generators for site content, AI-assisted analytics, and similar tools.

Sustainability

As immaterial as web hosting, cloud computing, and the internet may appear, the servers they run on are very real and very physical. Any hosting service relies on data centers with physical servers all over the world, and the biggest challenge is energy – electricity and water consumption. A solution to the energy problem that many hosting providers are turning to is renewable energy sources such as solar or wind power, as well as more energy-efficient servers designed to reduce the carbon footprint of hosting and cloud service providers.

Cybersecurity and data protection

Among the biggest and most important trends in the web hosting market is the increased importance placed on cybersecurity and data protection regulation compliance (specifically the EU GDPR and the CCPA) to be able to operate in geographically diverse areas. Mitigation and prevention of threats such as denial of service attacks, ransomware, data breaches, and others require ongoing efforts to secure and manage increasingly complex hosting infrastructures, especially with providers continuously moving towards the edge and cloud computing.

Sources and further reading

What is the market share of web hosting?

The current market share of web hosting is as follows: Amazon Web Services (AWS) owns
33.6% of the market, followed by Google Cloud with 9.4%, IONOS with 5.0%, GoDaddy with 4.2%, and the Endurance International Group with 1.3%.

Who is the largest web hosting company?

The largest web hosting provider that owns the most shares in the web hosting market is Amazon Web Services (AWS), with a 33.6% market share.

Which company hosts the most websites?

Cloudflare Hosting hosts 18% of all websites on the internet, followed by Amazon Web Services and Google.

Which site is best for web hosting?

I recommend Bluehost for web hosting. You can also check out our other best web hosting services in 2024 to find a host that suits your needs best.