2025’s Most Important Web Hosting Statistics

If you’re lucky enough to remember the rise of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, you probably recall old relics like GeoCities, Angelfire, and Netscape. It’s hard to forget the overuse of Comic Sans, WordArt on every page, and prolonged loading times. I know it’s kinda cringey, but I miss those days.

The internet is as universal in 2025 as frosted tips and Beanie Babies were in the ‘90s. I mean, seriously, there are about 1.2 billion websites in the world.¹⁰ It’s a number so high it’s hard to fathom. And how are these websites powered, you may ask? It’s all made possible by web hosting.

This got me thinking about the hosting industry as a whole, so I scoured the web to bring you the most important web hosting statistics, from revenue to market share to cloud hosting, and everything in between.

The web hosting industry is a saturated market with more than 330,000 companies.¹ If you’re planning to get into the biz, you’ve got your work cut out for you!

The industry is dominated by a handful of players that hold most of the market share, like AWS, Shopify, and Hostinger — industry leaders that have found their respective niches and taken over.

However, the number of hosting companies is constantly growing. Perhaps in the next decade, these major players will have some competition from newcomers.

Of the 330,000+ hosting companies across the globe, a handful stand out for their grip on the market.

Many of these companies are household names that are recognizable to anyone, even if they haven’t built a website or purchased web hosting before. That just goes to show how big the industry really is!

The Top 20 Largest Hosting Companies

AWS Is the Largest Hosting Provider, With a 5.2% Market Share

Unless you live under a rock like Patrick Star from SpongeBob, you’ve heard of Amazon. AWS is a subsidiary of the online retail giant that provides cloud computing services to roughly 5.2% of the market.²

In non-geek terms, AWS lets a whole lot of people and businesses host websites on its servers.

If you think its number of customers is impressive, get this: AWS has a $2 trillion stock market value — an achievement only four other U.S. companies have earned.³

Shopify Comes in Second, With a 4.8% Market Share

Shopify is the gold standard when it comes to eCommerce for small businesses, so much so that it’s earned a 4.8% market share.²

Shopify’s eCommerce solutions make it easy to build an online store, which undoubtedly contributes to its grip on the market.

Hostinger Comes in Third, With a 3.7% Market Share

Budget web hosts are a dime a dozen, but few actually provide value behind their impossibly cheap services.

Hostinger is one of these exceptions, which has earned it a 3.7% market share.²

When you look at the numbers, it gets even more impressive: Hostinger has more than 2 million customers and manages more than 5 million domains.¹³ Not bad for a budget web host, huh?

Learning all about the industry’s biggest players may have you wondering how much dough they’re raking in. Well, with an industry as dominant as web hosting, you know there are billions of dollars involved. Here’s the bottom line:

The Web Hosting Market Is Expected to Generate a Massive $192.85B in 2025

To quote Tom Cruise in the 1996 film “Jerry Maguire” — “Show me the money!” The web hosting market answers this call and beyond. Experts predict the industry will generate an insane $192.85 billion in 2025.

By 2029, revenue is expected to grow to $355.81 billion.⁵

The U.S. Is Expected to Generate $69.68B in Web Hosting Revenue in 2025

If you didn’t already know, the United States holds the biggest market share in the web hosting industry, so it’s only logical that it’s expected to generate nearly $70 billion in revenue in 2025.⁵

Experts think the United States’ success in this area has to do with the widespread adoption of cloud-based services and an emphasis on security — I’d have to agree!

The Web Hosting Industry Has an Overall CAGR of 19.7%

Web hosting is a booming industry that shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. The biggest player in the industry is North America, which holds a $52.14 billion slice of the pie.

In total, the hosting industry’s compound annual growth rate is 19.7% — a number on par with other top industries like eCommerce and digital marketing software.^11,12

The Average Spend Per Employee Will Reach Nearly $400 in 2025

The average web hosting spend per employee is expected to reach nearly $399.78 in 2025.⁵ Talk about pricey! With the industry’s rate of growth, I would only expect this number to increase over time.

Shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting are just a few of the different types of web hosting you can get.

In addition to the main ones, you’ll also find more niche services like WordPress hosting and plans tailored to your operating system, like Windows hosting, Linux hosting — you get the picture.

If you had to guess which type of web hosting was most popular, do you think you’d get it right? Well, I’m about to spoil the surprise, so think of your answer now.

Shared Hosting Has a 37.64% Market Share

If you guessed that shared hosting was the most popular hosting type, you were right! It holds a whopping 37.64% market share.¹²

I was initially surprised to learn that cloud hosting didn’t hold the biggest market share. But when I thought about it more, it made sense. While businesses use cloud-based hosting solutions more often, your average Joe is more comfortable with a user-friendly shared hosting provider.

VPS Hosting Has a 25.38% Market Share

Coming in hot is VPS hosting with a respectable 25.38% market share.¹²

Virtual private servers offer a nice middle ground between shared hosting and dedicated servers. These plans are popular with midsize to large businesses and developers who like to have a little more control over their servers.

Dedicated Hosting Has a 17.98% Market Share

And finally, dedicated hosting comes in third with a 17.98% market share.¹² The folks who use dedicated servers are typically large organizations or industries that have strict compliance regulations, like HIPAA. Dedicated servers are great at keeping your data safe and sound, but they are pretty expensive.

There are currently more than 11,800 data centers worldwide, with more than 45% of them in the U.S. Can you guess which other countries lead in the number of data centers?

Here’s a rundown:

Other top countries include France (315), Australia (307), and the Netherlands (297).¹⁵

Oof, talk about bad for the environment. The U.S. has 5,381 data centers — the most of any country.

And so it’s no surprise these data centers consume a heck of a lot of electricity. Experts predict that data centers will consume 9% of electricity generation in the U.S. by 2030 — that’s more than twice the current usage.

What’s even crazier is that one large data center consumes more electricity than 750,000 residential homes.⁷ That makes me feel a lot better about accidentally leaving my lights on.

Thankfully, the web hosting industry is investing in alternative energy sources, reducing its carbon footprint, and innovating more efficient ways to cool its facilities.

Domain registrar and web hosting provider GoDaddy has registered an incredible 81 million domain names and has more than 20 million customers.⁴

The company got its start in 1994 and quickly became a household name thanks to its brazen (and often controversial) TV commercials starring celebrities like Danica Patrick. The web host and domain registrar has chilled out in recent years, opting for a less controversial marketing approach.

Coming behind GoDaddy are some other heavy hitters in the domain registrar space:

GoDaddy’s second-closest competitor, Onamae, has just a fraction of the number of registered domains. I’m not one for gambling, but I’d place my bet on GoDaddy keeping its number-one spot for years to come.

Where would the internet be without WordPress? The content management system makes light work of creating websites with its site templates and plugins, which is why 43.4% of site owners use it.

Compared to the Drupals, Joomlas, and Magentos of the world, WordPress has an even higher share of the CMS market at 61.3%.⁶

The fact that WordPress is open source (and therefore free) certainly doesn’t hurt its popularity. However, I personally love the software and think it earned its number-one spot by merit.

This statistic likely won’t come as such a surprise, since .com feels like the default domain extension. About 38.11% of global websites use it as their TLD (top-level domain).

Other popular TLDs include .org, .info, and ccTLDs (country-code TLDs) such as .cn and .tk.⁸

Most Popular TLDs

The first TLD was .arpa for ARPANET, the network that evolved into what we now know as the internet. That was followed by .com, .org, .edu, .gov, .mil, and .net.⁹ Today, there are more than 1,600 fun (and odd) TLDs, including .pizza, .rocks, and .wtf.

A staggering 1.2 billion websites live on the World Wide Web, but only 17% of these websites are active. That means a whopping 83% of websites are just gathering virtual dust. That reminds me — I should probably take down my old websites from college.

Despite the number of websites collecting dust on the digital bookshelf, about 252,000 websites are created every day — that’s also three per second if you’re curious.¹⁰

Web hosting is an ever-evolving industry with innovations like cloud computing, AI, and eco-friendly initiatives taking root. I think it’s pretty obvious that the industry is thriving and will continue to generate a whole boatload of revenue for years to come.

That said, your journey doesn’t have to end here. There is a lot more to learn about web hosting, so check out the resources I’ve compiled to keep on learning.

1. https://www.hostingadvice.com/how-to/how-many-web-hosting-companies-are-there
2. https://www.hostingadvice.com/how-to/largest-web-hosting-companies/
3. https://www.npr.org/2024/06/27/g-s1-6525/amazon-2-trillion-stock-market-value
4. https://www.hostingadvice.com/how-to/largest-domain-registrars/
5. https://www.statista.com/outlook/tmo/it-services/it-outsourcing/web-hosting/worldwide
6. https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress
7. https://www.technology.org/2024/06/04/data-centers-predicted-to-consume-9-of-us-electricity-by-2030/
8. https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tldtype/all
9. https://www.inwx.de/blog/en/first-top-level-domains
10. https://siteefy.com/how-many-websites-are-there/
11. https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/web-hosting-services-market-100863
12. https://www.bluehost.com/blog/web-hosting-statistics-market-share/
13. https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/top-20-fastest-growing-industries-in-the-next-5-years-predictions-1262713/
14. https://www.hostinger.com/blog/3-million-clients
15. https://www.hostingadvice.com/how-to/web-hosting-facts-and-definitions/