One.com is a vast, sprawling WebHost. And they have been for a while. Now, with yet another acquisition of Zoner Oy, they’re one of the largest players in the market. According to TechRadar, “one.com’s latest acquisition should come as no surprise given that the firm has set about making strategic purchases for some time now. Since being acquired itself by private equity fund Cinven in early 2019, one.com has acquired six other organizations in the past year across Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark.” And One.com’s acquisitions should worry you. Reasons for this include:
- Lack of competition in the market
- Server strain and potential increased downtimes
- Less personalised services due to volumes
Less Competition
If you’ve played the board game Monopoly, you’ll understand why the concept is a bad thing. According to HG, “As a company acquires a larger and larger market share, they are able to exert unnatural control over the market. No longer does the principle of supply and demand apply, because the monopoly controls all or most of the supply, so if someone wants the product or service they often end up having to pay an inflated price to have it.” Since web hosting is a significant and ongoing business expense, any price rises would have a detrimental effect to the corporate environment.
Strained Services
Web hosts never have unlimited bandwidth. It’s a restricted resource. So with an unrestrained growth, it’s more likely that each individual will get less of the pie. In order to prevent this, more and more businesses will need to choose dedicated services. And this is no small additional price to pay. According to Startups, “The cost of website hosting for small businesses in the UK ranges from as cheap as £2/month, all the way up to more than £400/month. Shared hosting is the cheapest form of website hosting (£2 – £12/month), while dedicated hosting is the most expensive (£60 – £400/month. However, there are additional and optional costs – such as privacy + protection, and sitelock – which you might have to factor into your hosting budget.”
Less Service
There are some benefits to working with smaller web hosts. One key difference is the personalised service. When you’re more than just a number in a sea of accounts, your business can receive personal attention. That’s not possible with a huge conglomerate. They must triage their limited staff resources by account value. So, if you’re not a big spender, you’re likely to get little to no attention. This can cost you a competitive advantage if an upgrade or configuration change could see your web presence improved. To keep ahead of the competition, try not to let yourself become a number.
We’ve said numerous times, how important it is to invest in good web hosting. It can seem easy to just go with the market leader, but that might be to your detriment. If you want a niche team of experts to look after your best interests, have a browse of our packages.