HostAdvice’s New Research Reveals the Largest Hosting Provider in India

Are you looking for the largest hosting provider in India? New research of HostAdvice has revealed key insights into the web hosting market share of the country.

With a market share of 8.02%, Net4 has become the largest hosting provider in India. The company serves over 1000 SME customers and more than 2000 medium to large businesses. Also, it serves 6000 resellers across various segments. However, followed by the company going bankrupt in September 2020, the number of customers is decreasing gradually. Right now, its market share is down by 1.9675% in comparison with October 2020.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the second-largest hosting provider in the country. It has a 6.94% market share. Also, it is seeing steady growth, which is up by 0.2046%. HostGator takes the third spot with a 5.75% share. It has a growth rate of 0.2705%, which is higher than AWS. DigitalOcean and Rediffmail take the fourth and fifth spots with market shares of 4.43% and 3.29% respectively. Their growth rates are up by 0.2192% and 0.1311%.

The sixth, seventh and eighth spots have gone to E2E Networks, ZNetLive, and CtrlS. All of the three companies are based in India. They have market shares of 2.79%, 2.25%, and 1.96% respectively. However, only E2E Networks has seen growth, which is up by 0.8758%. The other two companies, ZNetLive and CtrlS, are down by 0.6447% and 0.8516%.

With market shares of 1.53% and 1.31%, GoDaddy and Microsoft Azure take the ninth and tenth spots. Their growth rates are up by 0.5780% and 0.4877%.

According to the research of HostAdvice, there are five Indian companies in the ranking of the top 10 hosting providers in the country. They are Net4, Rediffmail, E2E Networks, ZNetLive, and CtrlS. The five remaining spots are occupied by overseas companies. It shows that Indian customers have an interest in both local and international hosting companies. However, with the largest hosting provider in the country going bankrupt, more users are shifting to overseas companies to avoid hassles in the future. As a result, the market share of AWS, HostGator, and DigitalOcean is increasing steadily.  

The research reveals another important factor, which is the user rating. Some of the Indian companies have managed to outsmart overseas companies. Despite being in the seventh position in terms of market share, ZNetLive has received average feedback of 9.1 out of 10, which is higher than the rating of both AWS and HostGator. The customers are really happy with the outstanding customer support service and prompt response.

E2E Networks, the sixth-largest hosting provider in India, has also managed to outtake the overseas companies. By offering a decent support service and budget-friendly hosting solutions, it has received 6-stars feedback from the users.

Established in 2014 by Eliran Ouzan and currently owned by Moonshot Marketing LTD, HostAdvice is the largest web hosting information center. It has over 6,000 active web hosting provider review pages written by experts with years of experience in the industry while also having more than 65,000 user reviews.

AWS to Dethrone Net4 as the Largest Hosting Provider in India 

Net4 went bankrupt in September 2020, leaving all of the users in a terrible situation. The domains purchased from the provider were being closed without any notice. As a result, around 73,000 websites with “.in” extensions were facing uncertainty. Fortunately, the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) allowed the Net4India domain name customers to migrate to other registrars to avoid disruption.

Since September 2020, Net4 has been losing its market share to all the competitors, leaving an open door for AWS to become the largest hosting provider in India. Right now, AWS is in the second spot with a market share of 6.94%. On the other hand, around 8.02% of websites in India are still hosted on Net4.

However, the share of Net4 has gone down by 1.9675% in October 2020. If it continues to decrease at a similar rate, AWS will become the largest hosting provider in the country within a few months.

People Still Preferring Indian Hosting Providers

Despite Net4 going bankrupt, a lot of people prefer the Indian providers for hosting their websites. There are several reasons. Latency is one of the main factors, which refers to the response time between the user of the site requesting action and the website performing the requested action. It depends on the distance between the hosting server and the target audience.

A site hosted in the United States or Europe will have a higher latency, starting at 180 milliseconds. However, if it’s hosted in India, the latency will be around 20 milliseconds, which is very low. As a result, the site will load quickly and deliver a great user experience. Also, it will create a positive effect in terms of SEO. While showing results, the search engine bots give preference to sites with Indian hosting. It’s a very significant factor for the websites which are specifically targeting the Indian audience.

Overseas companies are aware of the benefits of server location proximity. To stay in the competition, they have already launched their own data centers in India. In 2016, both AWS and DigitalOcean had introduced their data centers in the country. By featuring the latest servers and network architecture, they ensure a consistent and seamless experience for all the users. They provide the same benefits that you get from the Indian hosting providers.

However, Indian companies offer hosting solutions at a significantly low price. For example, E2E Networks charge only Rs. 4,745/month for M.60GB plan, which offers 60 GB RAM, 450 GB SSD, and 12 vCPUs. On the other hand, DigitalOcean offers a similar package, known as Memory Optimized Droplets, at Rs. 25,560/month, which is six times higher than the price of the Indian company’s solution. The plan gives you a higher RAM capacity of 64 GB. However, it provides only 200 GB of storage and 8 vCPUs. The same thing goes for AWS, which charges Rs. 41,878 for a similar plan, known as z1d.3xlarge. The cost is nine times higher than the price of E2E Networks’ M.60GB plan. 

If you are a budget-minded business owner, you will not spend six or nine times more money on a hosting solution. It’s one of the reasons for a large number of Indian businesses to prefer local hosting providers. 

Can the Indian hosting companies take out the overseas providers in the future? Only time will tell. However, due to the relatively low cost, most of the small and medium businesses will continue to rely on the local providers.

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