Every once in a while, the hosting industry gets a shakeup big enough to make even the most jaded execs sit up and pay attention. This is one of those moments. Rocket.net – the fast-rising managed WordPress platform that barely existed six years ago and is already making noise at the top of the market – is officially joining forces with Hosting.com, a heavyweight built on years of acquisitions and relentless growth.
In an exclusive interview for Konrad’s Corner Podcast by Konrad Keck, we sat down with Seb de Lemos, CEO of Hosting.com, and Ben Gabler, CEO of Rocket.net, to discuss what this means for the industry, their customers, and the future of hosting.
Two companies, one ambition: redefining hosting
For Seb de Lemos, CEO of Hosting.com, the decision was obvious: Rocket.net brings exactly what Hosting.com was missing. “Rocket is the missing piece we’ve been looking for. Together, we can build the hosting company we’ve always dreamed of.”.
Ben Gabler, founder and CEO of Rocket.net, didn’t mince words:
“This isn’t an exit. This is an entrance. Together, we get to create something that doesn’t exist yet – a unified platform, built around the customer, designed for the future.”
If you’ve been watching the space, you already know why this matters: the traditional hosting model is under pressure. Margins are thinner, expectations are higher, and users are no longer impressed with “unlimited everything” banners. This partnership signals a pivot – away from selling raw infrastructure and toward building a true SaaS-driven platform.
Why Hosting.com and Rocket.net are betting on each other
On paper, Hosting.com and Rocket.net couldn’t be more different. One is a giant – platform serving hundreds of thousands of customers. The other is a six-year-old rocket ship, built from the ground up to deliver managed WordPress hosting with speed, performance, and seamless onboarding.
But beneath the surface, both companies share a rare alignment: a product-first mindset and an obsession with customer success.
Seb de Lemos (Hosting.com) explained it best during the interview:
“We’ve built Hosting.com around one idea: put the customer first. But Rocket brought something we didn’t have – a SaaS mentality. They see hosting not as selling servers, but as solving problems. That’s where the future is.”
And he’s right. For years, hosting companies have been locked in the same marketing arms race – same cPanel, same templates, same cookie-cutter product bundles – differentiated only by who can outspend the other on ads. Rocket.net broke that mold by treating hosting like a SaaS product, hiding the messy infrastructure behind a clean, high-performance solution that “just works.”
Ben Gabler put it bluntly:
“We built Rocket.net to take away the headaches. For agencies, SMBs, and site owners, hosting should be invisible. You don’t care about CPU limits or resource charts – you want your site to load fast, stay secure, and scale when it needs to. That’s the mindset we’re bringing to Hosting.com.”
This shared philosophy – solve problems first, market second – is what made the deal almost inevitable.
But there’s also a practical angle here. Rocket.net has been growing at a staggering pace, hitting $10M ARR with a tiny team – just one sales rep, one marketing person, and almost zero ad spend. To take it to the next level, Rocket needed infrastructure, resources, and reach.
Hosting.com, meanwhile, needed a premium, SaaS-driven flagship product to lead its future strategy. In short:
- Rocket.net gets scale. Access to Hosting.com’s massive customer base, traffic, and capital.
- Hosting.com gets speed. A battle-tested managed WordPress platform and a team that knows how to build products customers actually want.
It’s the textbook definition of a better together play – except both sides are dead set on keeping their DNA intact. Rocket isn’t being swallowed; it’s becoming the innovation engine inside Hosting.com.
Or, as Gabler framed it:
“Hosting companies usually buy tech and then kill what made it special. That’s not happening here. We’re doubling down on what Rocket does best – and scaling it across an audience 20 times bigger.”
This is not about consolidation. It’s about changing the game.
Building a unified platform without breaking what works
Deals are easy. Integrations aren’t.
But here’s the thing: Hosting.com and Rocket.net are already integrated – and they pulled it off in days, not months.
That alone says a lot about how both companies are built.
“From today, you can buy the Rocket.net managed WordPress product directly on Hosting.com,” explained Seb de Lemos. “It’s the exact same product, same performance, same support team. We didn’t gut it. We plugged it in.”
And they’re not stopping there. The plan isn’t to smash Rocket.net into Hosting.com and rebrand it out of existence. Instead, Rocket stays Rocket – but it becomes the premium, SaaS-driven layer powering Hosting.com’s future.
Ben Gabler summed it up simply:
“This isn’t about replacing Hosting.com’s stack. It’s about giving customers options – from a $3 shared plan to a $30 managed plan – all running on the same orchestration layer. And if you want to upgrade, you hit a toggle, not a migration.”
This is the part that should make every CTO in the industry sit up:
no migrations, no downtime, no painful replatforming.
Hosting.com’s infrastructure is being retooled to run Rocket’s orchestration layer across the board, meaning customers can move seamlessly between tiers of service.
The product stack is about to get wider
Right now, Rocket.net powers Hosting.com’s managed WordPress. But the roadmap goes further:
- “Rocket Lite” – a more affordable, stripped-down WordPress hosting plan for users who don’t need Cloudflare Enterprise or premium support.
- Advanced app hosting – support for frameworks like Laravel and CMS platforms like Joomla.
- Better domain and DNS management – the companies are rethinking how customers buy, point, and manage domains, moving away from the old “set nameservers and pray” model.
- Collaboration tools for agencies – with tens of thousands of agencies already on the platform, they’re working on tools to connect developers, agencies, and clients inside a single ecosystem.
In other words, this isn’t just about adding Rocket.net to Hosting.com’s menu – it’s about building a multi-layered platform that spans every stage of digital growth:
from someone’s first $3 site to an enterprise serving millions of visitors a month.
“The ultimate vision is to build an infinite customer lifecycle,” says Gabler. “Whether you’re just testing an idea or scaling a business to millions of visitors, you stay in one ecosystem.”
That’s a SaaS mindset applied to hosting – and it’s something traditional providers have consistently failed to pull off.
A faster path to innovation
One of the most overlooked pieces here is speed – and not just page speed.
Rocket.net is bringing product velocity that Hosting.com simply couldn’t achieve alone. New features, API-level integrations, developer-first tooling – these things move fast when you have a SaaS-native team.
“When we sat down with Ben’s team, it felt like HostingCon 2006 all over again,” Semos said with a grin. “Zero egos. Everyone at the table wanted the same thing: build products customers actually want.”
And because Rocket.net’s platform is now deeply embedded into Hosting.com’s infrastructure, innovation becomes frictionless: new features get rolled out once, instantly accessible across hundreds of thousands of accounts.
What this means for customers
For customers, the message is simple: everything gets better, nothing breaks.
If you’re on Hosting.com, you now have direct access to Rocket.net’s managed WordPress platform – same speed, same support, same price ($30/site).
If you’re on Rocket.net, nothing changes: same team, same service, same roadmap.
There’s no forced migration, no hidden upsells, no surprises.
“When you buy managed WordPress on Hosting.com today, you’re literally buying Rocket.net,” says Seb de Lemos. “We didn’t touch what makes Rocket special. We’re scaling it.”
For agencies managing hundreds or thousands of sites, this deal removes a massive pain point: upgrading is seamless. One click – no DNS headaches, no downtime, no weekend migrations.
And for smaller businesses? The plan is to introduce a “Rocket Lite” tier soon – delivering Rocket-level performance at lower price points.
Hosting as SaaS, not servers
This partnership isn’t about stacking two companies on top of each other. It’s about redesigning what hosting means.
For decades, hosting has been sold like a commodity: pick a plan, get a cPanel login, set up DNS, and hope it all works. But customer expectations have changed – speed, security, and scalability are table stakes now.
Seb de Lemos put it bluntly:
“Hosting companies have to evolve into SaaS product companies. That’s what we’re doing. We’re not here to be second best.”
This is where Rocket.net’s DNA becomes central. They’ve been treating hosting like a SaaS product from day one – hiding complexity, automating the ugly parts, and obsessing over user experience. Now, Hosting.com is taking that approach across the entire stack.
Ben Gabler framed it even more aggressively:
“We’re building an infinite customer lifecycle. From your first visitor to millions of visitors, we want you on one platform, one ecosystem – no switching, no migrations, no friction.”
And this isn’t just about WordPress anymore. The roadmap includes:
- Developer-first platforms like Laravel hosting, tuned for scalability.
- Smarter DNS and domain management – ditching the outdated “nameserver dance” for modern, seamless integrations.
- Agency-focused collaboration tools – giving the tens of thousands of agencies they already serve better ways to manage and grow client portfolios.
- Expanding beyond hosting entirely – products that help businesses succeed online, from e-commerce tools to integrated identity management.
In other words, Hosting.com and Rocket.net don’t just want a bigger slice of the pie – they want to bake a new one.
And here’s the kicker: they’re positioned to pull it off. Rocket.net brings the innovation velocity; Hosting.com brings the scale and capital. Together, they’re aiming for something no one in this space has done successfully yet: a billion-dollar SaaS-first hosting platform.
“Failure isn’t an option here,” Gabler said flatly at the end of the interview. “We’re not playing catch-up. We’re setting the pace.”
A wake-up call for the hosting industry
Let’s not sugarcoat it: this move should make a lot of traditional hosting executives uncomfortable.
For years, the industry has been stuck in a rut – endless price wars, the same cPanel dashboards dressed in different colors, and a marketing-first mindset that sold “unlimited everything” while doing very little to actually innovate. It worked… until it didn’t.
Margins are razor-thin, customer expectations are rising, and the next generation of developers, agencies, and SMBs no longer care about “managing servers.” They want speed, scalability, automation, and above all – simplicity.
That’s exactly what Hosting.com and Rocket.net are betting on. This deal signals a shift from hosting as infrastructure to hosting as SaaS – from selling “plans” to delivering solutions. If they execute on even half of their roadmap, the result won’t just be another hosting company; it’ll be a platform. A unified ecosystem where businesses can start small, scale fast, and never hit a ceiling.
And if you’re a competitor still clinging to the old playbook? You have two choices:
- Adapt fast – rethink your product strategy, invest in SaaS-first innovation, and start solving problems instead of selling servers.
- Get left behind.
Because here’s the truth nobody wants to say out loud: The cPanel arms race is over. The future belongs to platforms that hide complexity, prioritize experience, and build for customer success.