Today, I have seen a presentation about acquisitions in the webhosting branch. A lot of webhosting companies want to take over smaller companies. (mostly student companies, or small starters.) I do think that it is a good thing and it is also good for the webhosting market itself. There are dozens of webhosting companies out there with small annual turnovers and bad support to the customers. And the customers mostly don’t see the difference between an expensive or a cheap company. They Usually look at the pricing and choose the cheapest one. Nothing wrong with that, but when it comes to support, most companies are closed… It is about time that the strongest survive and the weakest are taken over by the strong ones.
Although, there is one problem. The pricing of the products. Most small companies (the “student” or “attic” companies) handle with very low prices. I’ve seen a lot of gigabytes for less than 10 euro’s a year. My hosting company is not the cheapest, but certainly not the most expensive company. But if I want to buy such a small company (with low prices) I cannot heighten these prices to the level of mine’s. Customers would not agree with that. So that makes a lot of small companies unattractive to buy. And that is a pity, cause we really need some cleaning in the market!