Hosting M&A in Q3 2026: The Roll-Ups Kept Buying. Two Big Disposals Ran Past Their Timelines.

The third quarter of 2026 ended with two major sale processes in the domain industry still unresolved. According to a March report by Domain Name Wire, IONOS’s sale of Sedo was expected by the end of the third quarter. Team Internet had guided to an outcome of its review of the Domains, Identity and Software (DIS) division in the first half of the quarter. Neither had announced a buyer by September 30.

Smaller deals kept coming. Linevast joined webgo on July 1, Zone joined Your.Online on August 3, and Identity Digital took over its seventh gTLD contract since February. At the top of the market, the Financial Times reported on September 24 that Norton owner Gen Digital had approached GoDaddy, a report neither company has confirmed.

Transactions and deal events in the quarter. Sources: company announcements and filings, Domain Incite, Domain Name Wire.

Two Disposals Ran Past Their Sellers’ Timelines

The IONOS executive board decided in September 2025 to sell Sedo, amid Google’s wind-down of AdSense for Domains, and to focus on its core hosting and cloud business. Sedo has been reported as a discontinued operation since. In March, Domain Name Wire reported from the full-year results that IONOS was still trying to sell Sedo, with the third quarter as the timeline for a transaction. Sedo’s revenue was €291.5 million in 2025, down from €312.2 million a year earlier. IONOS’s announcements page lists no sale through the end of September, and Sedo still appears among the group’s brands.

Team Internet’s June 15 trading update put the expected outcome of its review of a DIS disposal in the first half of the third quarter. On September 7 it reported that the review was at an advanced stage, reaffirmed its expectation of a valuation “materially exceeding USD 160 million” and now expects any agreed transaction to complete around the year end. The division runs registry platforms behind more than half of the twenty largest new top-level domains, and the group’s net debt stood at $117.6 million at June 30.

The Consolidators Kept Buying

German host webgo brought Linevast into its group on July 1, with the stated aim of expanding business hosting and managed servers. Linevast’s brands, products, contacts and support stay as they were, according to the announcement. Your.Online, which has bought more than 60 companies since 2017, added Zone on August 3. The Estonian host and registrar has sold domains and hosting since 1999, employs 52 people and serves more than 60,000 customers, and it continues to operate independently under co-founder and chief executive Martti Varik.

In the US, Green Olive Tree, a veteran-owned managed-hosting provider, bought ZebraHost, a cloud and colocation provider in business since 2000, for $1.1 million. The deal closed on June 22 and became public on July 15, when Green Olive Tree’s president, Jon Berry, put ZebraHost’s annual sales at about $1.2 million against his own company’s revenue of about $1.5 million, as we reported at the time.

In registries, Identity Digital’s subsidiary Jolly Host became the contracted party for .网站, the Chinese for “website”, in late July. Domain Incite counted it as the seventh gTLD contract reassigned to Jolly Host since February, for a TLD with 2,871 domains in its zone.

cyber_Folks completed a merger inside its own group. A Poznań court registered cyber_Folks’ absorption of Shoper on September 1, after shareholders of both companies approved it on July 20. Three days later, management put the group’s capacity for further acquisitions at more than PLN 1 billion, with the focus on e-commerce.

Infomaniak went public through a reverse takeover. Its shareholders agreed on July 29 that Perrot Duval Holding, listed since 1905, would acquire the Swiss host in exchange for newly issued shares. Perrot Duval’s shareholders approved the deal on September 24, completion followed on September 25, and the renamed Infomaniak SA has traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the ticker INFO since October 1. The Infomaniak Foundation keeps the majority of voting rights through unlisted shares that are not freely transferable.

Managed.com, launched on September 17, is a new umbrella brand over HostPapa, ColoCrossing, Hostopia, CloudBlue and LogoMaker, a portfolio it describes as more than 20 businesses acquired since 2013.

An Approach for GoDaddy That Neither Side Has Confirmed

The Financial Times reported on September 24 that Gen Digital, the owner of Norton, had made a takeover approach to GoDaddy, with talks at an early stage. On September 28 Gen furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission a LinkedIn post by chief executive Vincent Pilette that opens with “Is Gen buying GoDaddy?” and continues: “I can’t comment on rumors, but I can explain how we think about acquisitions.” GoDaddy closed at $100.81 on the day of the report and ended the quarter at $95.51, below the $96.38 it closed at the day before.

Listed Comparables: Three Hosting Shares Up, DigitalOcean Down

IONOS rose 15.6 percent in a quarter in which it raised its revenue growth forecast on August 6 and announced on September 10 a reduction of about 450 full-time positions. GoDaddy had already gained 13.5 percent on its June close by September 23, the day before the takeover report, and ended the quarter up 12.5 percent. DigitalOcean fell 15.1 percent. Verisign is a registry, included as a business-model contrast rather than a hosting comparable, and no average is taken across the five.

Above the Hosting Market, Two Large Closings

The data center layer closed two large pending deals. On July 21 the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership, MGX and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners completed their acquisition of Aligned Data Centers from Macquarie-managed funds, at an enterprise value of about $40 billion. On September 2 CPP Investments and Equinix completed their $4 billion acquisition of atNorth, which runs data centers across all five Nordic countries. Partners Group, the seller, reinvested to take a stake of about 10 percent.

Small Acquisitions Went Ahead, Large Sales Waited

For owners of smaller hosting and domain businesses, the quarter added more examples of regional acquisitions in which the acquired company kept its brand, from Linevast and Zone to ZebraHost. The two large sale processes go into the fourth quarter on different paths: IONOS is selling Sedo to concentrate on hosting and cloud, while Team Internet is weighing a sale of DIS within a strategic review launched to unlock shareholder value. Team Internet expects any agreed transaction to complete around the year end, and IONOS publishes its third-quarter statement on November 12.

About the Data

This review covers a selection of deal events announced, disclosed, completed or registered between July 1 and September 30, 2026 in hosting, domains and the data center layer above them, drawn from company announcements, regulatory filings, trade press and, for ZebraHost, our own July reporting. It is not a complete register of transactions. Undisclosed prices are not estimated. Share-price changes compare closing prices on June 30 and September 30 in each company’s trading currency. Verisign is included as a registry contrast and is not averaged with the hosting companies.