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Why Niche Hosting Is Becoming Increasingly Popular Among Website Owners

2014-11-25by Anand Srinivasan

Web hosting is an extremely tough industry to be in with wafer-thin margins and cut-throat competition. According to figures published in the 2012 edition of the CIA World Factbook, there are nearly 903 million internet hosts across the world with nearly 505 million located in the United States. Although this is grossly higher than the number of actual web hosting companies we have, there is no gainsaying the fact that this is an industry with an extremely large number of competitors.

 

It is hence not surprising to find web hosts positioning their companies on a variety of parameters. There are webhosts that position themselves according to the location of their datacenters. Then there are hosts that market their lower costs. But perhaps one interesting development over the past decade is the mushrooming of a new age of web hosts that cater to a particular niche or an industry.

 

For the uninitiated, niche hosting services typically target a specific industry or category of businesses and offer web hosting services to them. For instance, there are web hosting companies that target the travel and tourism industry, financial businesses, etc. So why exactly have niche hosts become so popular? Here are some reasons why.

 

Features Customized To Your Requirements:

Traditional web hosts offer a generic set of tools like the Cpanel and Fantastico suite to their customers. While these are extremely useful, they may not be particularly helpful for your specific needs. For instance, SaaS business owners will need specific tools to quickly setup modules for payment integration, subscriber management, etc. On the other hand, a small business would prefer a host that gives them one click access to tools for invoice management, CRM, etc. Niche web hosts like Fiber for instance take the specific requirements of customers in the SaaS industry and build a package that appeals to them.

 

Knowledgeable Customer Support:

As anyone from the customer support industry will tell you, no amount of theoretical learning will prepare you for the actual questions customers ask you. With a niche host, you can expect the customer support team to be more aware of the technical and business questions a typical customer has. As a result, the customer experience from a niche host is likely to be much better than a generic web host that positions itself on customer support. That in turn helps your company in building a stronger loyalty among your customers.

 

Premium Experience:

The web hosting industry is riddled with companies that try to use price as the sole differentiator. This race to the bottom has had an adverse impact on the ecosystem as a whole. Low priced hosts have fewer resources to manage customers. With hundreds of such hosts servicing thousands of websites, we are looking at an internet ecosystem that is riddled with slow loading websites and a poor experience for the web users. By offering custom services to websites in their niche, such web hosts can afford to charge a higher price than hosts competing on price. This allows the host and in turn their website customers to provide a premium experience to the end users and is thus a more sustainable business model.

 

Does your company offer niche hosting to your customers? How has your experience been relative to generic web hosting? Please share your feedback in the comments below.

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Anand Srinivasan

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