There seems to have been a boom in the number of hosting companies offering more competitive deals in the past year or so. The whole market seems to have become oversaturated with companies trying to undercut each other with "Unlimited" deals.

Is there still a gap in the market for new companies? After all, there seems to be a hosting solution for nearly every niche now.

There's ALWAYS room for new competitors. If you can do something, better and offer better solutions to clients, then that's your foot in the door.

There are thousands of people that offer hosting services with the exact same information that really do nothing to set themselves apart. These are the same people that offer budget prices and undercut everyone. They're also the same people that close down their business after a few months (or run it for several years as a hobby) as there's just no income to support their business plan.

Personally, in the hosting world, I welcome the competition. It gives us a chance to showcase why to use our hosting rather than the competition.

I think it's easy to start up a hosting business, but difficult to get a share of the market. Personally speaking, I would never register a domain with an unproven web host. It's not worth taking a chance of the company not being able to deliver great service, or worse yet, of folding.

Survivor in the market is a different game, all have an equal chance, but what solutions they provide and how much better they can get as they gain experience decides what share they can get off the market. There are so many companies which have done better than the old sharks in the sea. This sea is vast, there is space for whales, sharks, small fishes etc (Survival of the fittest)

what gives this industry a bad name are the ones selling Alpha and master reseller plans on sites like ebay for $2 a year, so you get people purchasing these and then calling themeselves webhosts without any clue on what they are doing, so they get a few clients and then support questions come in and they dont know what to do or say so just close down and do a runner.
in my 11yrs i have seen many of these so called hosts and i have tested many with questions and some dont even know what DNS or dedicated IPS are.

Thanks for the replies guys! Food for thought.

Yeah there seem to be endless offers of "Run your own unlimited hosting business for $3 / month".

Woody I agree with you, I hate parting with my money and I would expect independent reviews from existing customers about the service etc. that a host provides.

never take reviews on web hosting forums as gospel as you will find 99.9% of reviews are bad as the only reason people visit forums to post reviews is if they have had a bad experience with a host.

i tend to look at a site and if it has live chat is this ever online or just for show and then if its online ask some very basic simple questions that any host should know and take note of the replies and then if they have a ticket system or email ask the same questions this way and see if they give the same replies,
also check out a whois service to see where the site is actually registered and more important does the whois give details or is hidden, if their whois details are hidden then why what are they hiding

I guess yeah the forum reviews are biased, its always hard to find 'proper' reviews.

Live chat is a useful service/feature, and something that I'd definitely expect from any host.

All depends of the business plan and the way the company owners want to go! There is allays room for new players. They are those who make the industry to grow!

Definitely! Hard work, but that is the same for any industry.

but you can get software for specific tasks that make life a little easier for you, but you need to put in the hard work to keep above your competitors.

something that will be the next step for any host will be CloudLinux, but as yet this is not available for Openvz

Good competition is what helps the industry grow. Think of it this way, without competitors then how do you know you are striving to do the best in the industry?

I don't think the hosting market would never be saturated. Like Handsonhosting said, there is always room for new competitors. You just need to target the right potential customers for your hosting plans.

If I sorted the things on geographical basis then it is over-saturated in western part of the world (usa and uk), In European countries it is about to get saturated but in Asian region specially in developing countries like India still it has a big scope.

Hosting market at present does seem very crowded and tons of companies, small businesses and projects moderated by freelancers are competing with each other, trying to lower their prices constantly to win more sales but solid businesses are flourishing at the same time, getting rewarded with accounts renewals done by their loyal customers that have been with them for many years.

If you are seriously looking for entering the hosting reselling market or even are considering to set up your very own brand in today's complicated hosting world, try starting with targeting local markets and smaller communities of project admins. It is a big mistake to assume you will begin generating sales within a few weeks of launching your site, unless you use paid advertisements, because net world has already proved to be somehow misleading.

Companies in your country and city can be among potential customers of the services offered by your website.