Web Hosting in the United States

At Web Hosting Geeks we understand web hosting industry more than anyone else. And we know there’s just something about web hosting - the never-ending innovation, the cutting-edge technology, the endless competition, and the sheer traffic volume that keeps us engaged. That being said, it’s a complex, competitive industry, and we understand how complicated the state of the business can be. We’ve done the research, and our full report on the state of the web is locked below.

Key Statistics Snapshot

According to ibisworld.com (the largest provider of Market Research Reports & Analysis in the U.S.), there are no major players in the data processing & hosting services in the US industry. The industry is highly fragmented and is therefore not dominated by a single company or a small number of companies.

What Are The Trends of Web Hosting?

We’ve done a lot of research into what web hosts companies are doing these days. After doing the survey, we can’t help but notice a few important innovations in web hosting procedure. First and foremost among these is an overall emphasis on being green.

More and more web hosts are trying to cut down on emissions, reduce costs, and give back to the environment through renewable energy. Number of companies supplying their servers with power through sustainable wind energy, and they are even over-producing energy to return some gain to the grid. It’s an interesting phenomenon to behold, especially as the web hosting industry is one of the leading sources of pollution in our modern age.

We’ve also noticed an extreme emphasis on cloud computing. We know: The phrase “cloud computing” has been applied to everything from scalable server space to your iPhone’s wireless backup policy, but we still have to mention it.

Gone, seemingly, are the days of straight shared hosting, in which a dedicated server in California can provided web space for hundreds of thousands of users. Instead, a scalable interlocking network of computers that responds to demand has replaced the former method of site hosting. Most of large companies are jumping on the “cloud” bandwagon, and we fully expect most viable web hosts to follow suit in the coming years.

Lastly, we’re seeing a great push for overall customer satisfaction within the industry. It seems hosts are starting to genuinely care about customer support, offering US-based technical assistance, affordable plans with unlimited features, and heaps of cost-based incentives to jump on their hosting bones.

How Big Is Web Hosting?

To kick things off, let’s just consider how large the business of web hosting really is these days, especially within the United States. At last count there are roughly 11+ billion registered websites and blogs. Considering that North America makes up 13.5% of the total, global Internet traffic, including domain registration and maintenance, it’s safe to say that a large portion of the world’s web hosting occurs in the United States.

US Web Hosting Business Locations 2011

The Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and West regions have combined total of 57.9% of industry establishment. One reason that these regions make up the largest population of establishments is they also have the highest number of people in the United States. Other reasons include the geographic client location in these regions. For example, California has a large number of industry establishments (and the highest share of industry revenue) because of the number of technology companies based in Silicon Valley.

With all that in mind, it’s safe to say that the web hosting industry is big and getting bigger all the time. In fact, the world of web hosting has been increasing exponentially over the last 15 years, and now - according to Webhosting.info - we are in the neighborhood of more than 20,000 unique web hosts in the United States supplying space for users around the world. That’s a lot of content, as well as a lot of competition.

To summarize the current size of the industry, web hosting in US is huge. Below we provide the list of 50 largest cities in the United States: