Web Hosting News & Industry Updates
Breaking news, M&A deals, pricing moves, security alerts and in-depth analysis for the web hosting industry — 643 articles across 14 categories.
✦ Featured
M&A
Thirty Deals in Six Months: The H1 2026 Hosting Consolidation Map, and the Two Clocks Driving What Sells Next
H1 2026 produced a US$1B Polish hosting-commerce merger, a $450M registrar champion, serial buyers closing two deals apiece within a fortnight, and a $40B data-centre record, while Google's AdSense shutdown forced Sedo and Team Internet to market. The map, the multiples, and the debt walls pushed to 2028-2029.
GoDaddy Q2 2026: More Revenue From the Same Customers
Industry reports #airo#arpu
GoDaddy's Q2 2026: revenue up 6.6%, EPS up 30%, customers up by just 22,000. ARPU, upsell and an $851.8 million buyback are doing the work, and the segment split shows domains and hosting growing slowest of all.
The Hosting Price Squeeze, Part 3: The Playbook
Expert's Voice #control-panel#pricing
In the final part of the series, BrandForge CEO Michiel Grotenhuis turns to the practical question: what do you actually do about rising hosting costs? He borrows from streaming, SaaS, and retail, shares what the community is doing, and argues for reducing dependence on any single vendor.
The Renewal Multiplier Index: What Hosting Costs After the Intro Price
Pricing updates #bluehost#hostinger
First edition of our quarterly index, measured July 29: SiteGround renews at up to 5.3x, the price-lock club at 1.0x, and GoDaddy, HostGator, and Namecheap mid-band at 1.7–3.7x. At every provider with a full plan range, the entry plan renews at a higher multiple than the top plan.
All articles
1–20 of 643
Industry reports
$227,000 to Apply for a New Domain Ending: The First ICANN Round Since 2012 Closes August 12
ICANN's first new gTLD window since 2012 closes August 12: $227,000 per application, country names banned outright, cities needing government letters. Bali wants .bali, and ICANN 87 lands on the island in October, where the bid is due to be announced.
Industry reports
GoDaddy Q2 2026: More Revenue From the Same Customers
GoDaddy's Q2 2026: revenue up 6.6%, EPS up 30%, customers up by just 22,000. ARPU, upsell and an $851.8 million buyback are doing the work, and the segment split shows domains and hosting growing slowest of all.
M&A
Infomaniak Goes Public Without Losing Control
The Swiss host is listing on the SIX Swiss Exchange by reversing into Perrot Duval, a company listed since 1905, to fund sovereign-cloud data centres. The twist: its foundation keeps majority voting rights, so Infomaniak reaches the market while writing permanent independence into its structure.
Expert's Voice
The Hosting Price Squeeze, Part 3: The Playbook
In the final part of the series, BrandForge CEO Michiel Grotenhuis turns to the practical question: what do you actually do about rising hosting costs? He borrows from streaming, SaaS, and retail, shares what the community is doing, and argues for reducing dependence on any single vendor.
Security
Two of cPanel’s Three New Flaws Cross the Line Between Accounts
cPanel patched three vulnerabilities on July 29, across every supported branch. Two matter most on shared servers: an unauthenticated request-smuggling bug that can alter other users' responses, and a database flaw that lets an ordinary account reach admin rights and possibly the host itself.
Pricing updates
The Renewal Multiplier Index: What Hosting Costs After the Intro Price
First edition of our quarterly index, measured July 29: SiteGround renews at up to 5.3x, the price-lock club at 1.0x, and GoDaddy, HostGator, and Namecheap mid-band at 1.7–3.7x. At every provider with a full plan range, the entry plan renews at a higher multiple than the top plan.
Security
A Model Found the Artifactory Zero-Day; Only Self-Hosted Users Had to Patch
During a controlled OpenAI evaluation, a model found a real zero-day in self-hosted Artifactory, escaped its sandbox, and broke into Hugging Face to steal its own benchmark answers. For anyone running a registry, the real exposure is the gap between managed and self-hosted patching.
Pricing updates
Leaseweb’s VPS Increase Falls Hardest on the Cheapest Plans
Leaseweb raises VPS prices on August 1, but not evenly: the cheapest US plan nearly doubles while premium tiers rise far less and some mid-range plans hold. It is less a broad memory tax than a deliberate reset of its cheapest plans, and it lands hardest on the price-sensitive buyers who chose cheap in the first place.
M&A
Thirty Deals in Six Months: The H1 2026 Hosting Consolidation Map, and the Two Clocks Driving What Sells Next
H1 2026 produced a US$1B Polish hosting-commerce merger, a $450M registrar champion, serial buyers closing two deals apiece within a fortnight, and a $40B data-centre record, while Google's AdSense shutdown forced Sedo and Team Internet to market. The map, the multiples, and the debt walls pushed to 2028-2029.
Security
Freenom Is Back, and No Longer Free. The Free-Domain Registry Behind Years of Phishing.
Freenom gave away millions of domains and became the internet's biggest source of phishing, until Meta sued and it promised to quit. Now, per Domain Incite, it is back, running .tk, .cf and .gq again from €8.22 a year. What changed is what fueled the abuse: the domains are no longer free.
Industry reports
Parked Domains Lost Their Ad Engine. What Replaced It Is Drawing Scrutiny.
For a decade, parked domains earned money showing Google ads. On February 10, 2026, Google ended AdSense for Domains and the parking economy collapsed: Bodis closed, Sedo's revenue fell 66%, Team Internet's search revenue fell 63%. The traffic moved to zero-click redirects ICANN is now examining.
Industry reports
Verisign Finally Won .web. Unlike .com, No One Caps Its Price.
On July 22, after a decade of litigation, Verisign won .web. It arrives as the company posts a record .com quarter, and unlike .com, whose price is capped by a US government agreement, .web has no such ceiling. What a freely priced premium domain under the .com monopolist means for the market.
Security
A Malware Campaign Is Using GitHub Actions to Hunt Unpatched cPanel Servers
Three months after cPanel's emergency patch, attackers have turned GitHub Actions into a distributed fleet that scans the internet for servers still exposed to CVE-2026-41940 and harvests their cloud keys, tokens and database logins. How it works, and what to check.
Industry reports
August 2 Is Still Real: What the AI Act’s Big Date Means for Hosting After the Omnibus
The Digital Omnibus moved the AI Act's high-risk obligations to December 2027, and much of the industry heard "delay." But August 2, 2026 still activates Commission fines up to 3% of turnover for GPAI providers and transparency duties for new AI systems. Where hosts sit, step by step.
Industry reports
An AWS Region Has Been Offline for Months, and the Cloud’s Address Is No Longer a Technicality
The war between the US and Iran has kept an entire AWS cloud region offline for months, something ordinary outages never do. Why losing one region can take an unprepared business down, and what real disaster recovery requires.
Expert's Voice
The Hosting Price Squeeze, Part 2: Should You Actually Pass It On?
Part two of the hosting price squeeze series tackles the decision that keeps founders up at night: pass rising costs on, absorb them, or find a middle path. A segment-by-segment guide to raising prices without breaking customer trust.
Industry reports
A Government ID for Every .ru Domain, and a Warning for Every Country Code
From September 1, everyone holding a .ru domain must verify their identity through a Russian government system or lose the name, and foreign owners are the ones most exposed. It is a blunt reminder that a country-code domain carries the politics of the country behind it.
Security
A Once-a-Decade WordPress Core Flaw, and the Gap Between Patched and Safe
A critical flaw in WordPress core, the first of its kind in nearly a decade, triggered a rare forced update to millions of sites. Within 72 hours it was mass exploitation, because forced updates never reach everyone. Why patched and safe are not the same thing.
Security
A 16-Year-Old KVM Escape, and OVHcloud’s Week-Long Patch Across a Million VMs
A 16-year-old flaw in KVM let a customer with admin access escape their virtual server and seize the host on both Intel and AMD. OVHcloud built a fix and rebooted around a million VMs in a week to deploy it, and the campaign shows the quiet choice every host makes between your consent and your safety.
Industry reports
H1 2026: The Six Months That Repriced Hosting
H1 2026 synthesized from forty pieces of verified reporting: renewal spreads past 5x, RAM and storage up 50–300%, domain escalators restarted into record demand, the acquisition funnel measurably broken, $850B of leases off balance sheet, and the machine customer arriving. Growth by invoice.