There are more than 1.9 billion websites in the world right now. Did you know this? Which only proves how fast-paced the sector is. To remain among the top-notch hosting providers without risking staying behind with all that’s happening, we’ve packed the best web hosting trends in 2022-2023 that such hosting providers (must) follow.
So, What Are Top 5 Web Hosting Trends That You Must Observe Closely?
Web hosting is an extremely rapid field that must remain flexible enough to operate in the constantly changing digital landscape, keeping up with all sorts of requirements for a well-wired world at the same time. We at BGOcloud always strive to deliver the best web hosting services and hosting plans to our clients that respond to these dynamics. But to do so, it’s not enough to simply define what certain WordPress hosting package or a MikroTik VPS plan, for example, will cost them and what it will deliver for the money they pay.
A reliable hosting provider must also go beyond things such as handling a domain name, providing 24/7 help service or easy-to-find chatbots that offer quick question-answer dialogues. So, here are the latest web hosting trends that reputable and highly trustworthy web hosting companies follow:
1. HTTPs Everywhere
Back in 2018, Google Chrome reached a milestone for the browser’s security, marking non-HTTPs websites as “not secure” and changing the norms for what it means to:
- be present online
- safely browse the web
- not compromise personal information
Offering more encrypted connections equals more security but it also means a rule that hosting providers must comply with. The benefits that come with offering free HTTPs (which is interchangeably used with a “SSL Certificate”) in fact outnumber the inconvenience of applying a new requirement to the offered services and the way hosting providers take care of what is present on the Internet.
Some advantages of integrating HTTPs as a norm to the hosting services:
- Websites using this type of hosting ensure better security and can earn customers’ trust more easily.
- Protect sensitive data and users against man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks so hackers can’t steal any information.
- Increase website ranking, which is a huge plus for online businesses.
- Data is encrypted in transit – when going to and coming from a server.
2. More Cloud, Fewer Data Centers
According to some of the most recent statistics and research by Statista, in 2020, data centers were estimated at around 45% of the total IT infrastructure spending. However, things are forecasted to decrease dramatically, dropping to 36.5%. The reason for this is because more and more enterprises are now investing cloud hosting instead of setting up data centers and managing networks, servers, storage on their own.
3. Security Protocols As a “Post-Covid Syndrome”
With the COVID-19 outbreak, the instances of scams, data violations, and cybersecurity meltdowns seemed to pile up and increase. Governments adopted the so-called contract-tracing mechanism for preventing the spread of the pandemic, which urged companies and employers to share sensitive information with local authorities. And the increase in-and-out data flow when providing names, locations and so forth, inevitably led to hacker attacks and violations.
Which urged hosting providers to tighten security and offer increased user privacy protection. So, a reliable hosting provider now is someone that takes into account these extra measures and makes use of security protocols.
4. Diversification + Tooling
There’s no better practice that will make you stand out as a hosting provider now than offering extra, value-adding services and even tools. Forget the extra bandwidth or ultimate disk space. Something that gives hosting providers an edge over competitors is having additional things like online training to new hosting users, sufficient knowledge base and learning resources, custom sessions, SEO and marketing tools for e-commerce WordPress websites, for example, drag-and-drop platforms that allow for easier website development and management, and even organizing live hosting-focused webinars or tutorials streaming them on YouTube.
5. Green Web Hosting
Green web hosting with service providers that generate renewable energy – this is one of the most recent web hosting trends that is gaining traction now in the web hosting service market. The bigger the efforts and the environment-friendly practices, the more Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) or Voluntary Emission Reduction (VER) acknowledgements.
- RECs are given to web hosting providers that invest in the production of renewable energy.
- VER certificates acknowledge the efforts of web hosting providers that have emission reduction projects in place.
There are of course other web hosting trends and best practices to consider like:
- Delivering managed web hosting with included help desk services, system updates, admins that run the websites, and more.
- Increasing the target market and stretching far beyond current users and business niche.
- Multi-cloud hosting and the use of different cloud computing systems for managing multiple processes, tasks, customer requests, issues, and so forth.
Unless you haven’t started adopting at least some of these practices already, it’s time for a change. Only this way can you remain competitive and really respond to the dynamics of the world that exists online.
Some Interesting Web Hosting & WWW Facts
- More than 35% of all websites run on WordPress.
- The first-ever website (info.cern.ch) was released back in 1991 by the British physicist Tim Berners-Lee.
- On April 30, 1993 CERN made World Wide Web (“W3” for short) technology available on a royalty-free basis to the public domain, allowing the Web to flourish.[3]
- The World Wide Web was invented in March of 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee (see the original proposal). He also introduced the first web server, the first browser and editor (the “WorldWideWeb.app”), the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and, in October 1990, the first version of the “HyperText Markup Language” (HTML).[4]
- In 2013 alone, the web has grown by more than one third: from about 630 million websites at the start of the year to over 850 million by December 2013 (of which 180 million were active).
- the industry started with 4 hosts in 1969 but as of 2022, there are over 330,000 web hosting providers globally.
- The forecasted growth of this industry is expected to be over $170 billion by 2027.
On a Final Note
If you want to read more about BGOcloud and our services, here’s an interesting and independent review – BGOcloud Review 2022 – Is It Worth It?