When discussing web hosting algternatives like Amazon AWS, it is always important to note the digital divide issue, also called the information technology breach. There are many factors that cause people from not being able to access the internet: education, costs and last-mile internet penetration issues.

In terms of internet penetration, the region with the most coverage is North America at 89 percent, followed by Europe with 73.9 percent. It is worth mentioning that North America has wide expanses of inhospitable land where internet service providers find it very challenging to reach; nonetheless, wireless and satellite technologies are on track to deliver internet even in the most remote rural areas of Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Internet penetration in Asia only manages to cover slightly more than 45 percent of the continent; however, just about everyone who is able to access the internet will do so in Asia.

Latin America and the Caribbean have a combined penetration rate of 61.5 percent, but the digital divide happens to be too high in some of the countries in this region; researchers believe that certain customs and traditions among Caribbean and Latin American families were not initially conducive to encouraging people to use the internet, but this is changing thanks to the advent of social networks. It so happens that the country with the highest internet penetration is the Caribbean island nation of Bermuda at 97.75 percent.

Old Habits Die Hard: Domain Name Stats

Some of the most interesting web hosting statistics are related to the domain name system, more commonly known by its DNS initials. The .com top level domain continues to dominate the internet landscape despite the 2017 count of 1,096 TLDs available to register new domain names in.

By the time this article is published, there will be one billion active websites in the information platform we know as the visible web. It is nearly impossible to estimate the magnitude of the dark web, which includes password-protected sites, TOR services and secretive peer-to-peer networks such as Freenet and I2P, but is is safe to venture that the total dark web far exceeds the size of the visible web in a "tip of the iceberg" scenario.

At one point in 2014, there was frenzy of new websites being registered, indexed and published, but this number actually decreased over the next few years until early 2017, when the total number was once again climbing towards the one billion mark.

In the end, web hosting services could be busier than ever in 2017, but the data centers that host services such as WeChat and WhatsApp could be even busier as owners of micro companies turn to these mobile apps as an online presence in lieu of traditional websites.