Web hosting is no more a lucrative business as it once used to be, the market has now turned into an extremely difficult one to survive in, given the nature of competition that persists along with margins that are wafer thin. If the 2012 CIA world Fact Book Figures are to be believed, then the number of internet hosts across the world is close to 903 million, out of which a whopping 505 million that are solely operative in the United States of America. And, if these figures were to be believed then the industry sure does have a lot of competitors.
Given the nature of the competition that persists in this market, it is not even a least bit surprising that the players in the market try to position themselves in a number of differentiating ways. For some, the location of the data-centers is the main differentiator and then there are others who find lower costs to be the advantage, but perhaps a striking trend that seems to have emerged from a decade or so is the small cluster of web hosts that cater to a specific niche or an industry.Simply put, niche hosting is nothing but a focus on offering web-hosting services such ass FFmpeg hosting to cater to a particular industry or a business category such as companies that target the financial industry or the beauty industry.
So what has made Niche Hosting a favorable business?
Let us look at some of the reasons below! Industry-specific Customized Features If one looks at the Tools and features that most web hosts offer, then it has to be a generic one like cPanel or Fantastico suite that are made available to the users. Although these tools are useful for generic needs they might not be particularly useful for needs that are specific like software as a service users need module specific tools that help them to quickly set up modules for payment integration, CRM, Subscriber management etc, whereas a start-up user, might prefer to have a host that enables them to have access to tools that help them setup their invoice management, payment integration or CRM at the click of a mouse.
Web hosts that are into niche web-hosting try to build packages that appeal to the SaaS industry that also cater to their specific requirements. Customer Support that is Knowledgeable and Efficient When you offer a niche hosting services, you can expect your customer support team to have a narrow base of questions that the customers come up with, which makes their customer support experience better when compared to that of a customer support that is based on generic web host offerings.
This in-turn could mean having a strong positioning as well as developing a loyal customer base for you. Experience that is a Class-apart!When price becomes a differentiating factor, one thing that has a definite impact when you consider the deliver is the quality, and in this case websites that load slowly, poor customer service for an expanded base of customers or even poor web-user experience for the customers.
Niche web-hosting sets this off by allowing the web hosts to quote higher and provide quality experience and service to their customers, thereby helping in sustaining themselves. So, what’s your take now? And, how has your experience been with generic web hosting choices so far? Do share your feedback in the comments section, and I’ll try to cover the various niche web hosting markets during December and January like I had covered SSH hosting etc in past.