The Most Innovative Things Happening With Website Hosting
April 10, 2023Website hosting is an exciting space right now. New innovations are happening all the time, changing and improving the face of the industry on a regular basis. Most website owners think of website hosting as an underlying necessity rather than an innovative technology.
Over 75% of the world’s population uses the internet. If you’ve got a website—regardless of how much of that is your target market—you can’t afford to fall behind with the tech innovations of website hosting.
Here are some of the most innovative things happening with website hosting right now. Keep up with the tech, and you can expect to maximize your own web hosting and boost your own business as a result.
E-Commerce Optimized Web Hosting
Online shopping was already blowing up before the pandemic hit, but since then, it’s multiplied exponentially in size and popularity. Online stores have popped up out of nowhere, and online customers are more than ever.
E-commerce growth has slowed since we returned to normal life in 2022, but it continues to be a huge industry that’s rife with innovation. Although life has returned to normal to an extent, the convenience of shopping online is still something consumers take advantage of.
Website hosting companies are making the most of this and have begun offering e-commerce-optimized web hosting solutions.
In truth, this is an excellent innovation. An e-commerce website is very different from a services website in many ways. Web hosting should cater to the differences. Everything from privacy and security to streamlining payment processes is what these kinds of hosts focus on.
Got an e-commerce website? Make the switch to e-commerce-optimized hosting—you should see a difference in everything from page loading speed to security of checkout.
Full-Service Hosting
The price difference between types of hosting is getting smaller. Being well-priced is no longer the defining factor for choosing a good web host—rather, web hosts now need to differentiate themselves in a crowded market by offering more than their competitors.
Full-service hosting is one of the latest technological innovations in the website hosting industry. While offerings of free email addresses and storage space are old ideas, hosts are getting creative to offer extras above and beyond the usual (and above and beyond their competitors).
Other hosts are offering packages carefully tailored to your individual website needs. This is an excellent innovation—no longer are you paying for features you don’t need, but you can pick and choose those things that will be useful for the running of your website.
Niche Hosting
Similar to e-commerce-optimized hosting, some web hosts are niching down to cater to specific types of websites.
Influencers, freelancers, content creators… These kinds of businesses or business people had to handle all the ins and outs of their businesses by themselves before.
Technology is bringing about new ways of running these kinds of businesses. Instead of having to deal with all the details, these kinds of businesses will soon be able to build a website on pre-built structural sites designed to cater to everything these kinds of businesses use and need.
Eco-Friendlier Hosting
Almost every industry is making changes in order to be more eco-friendly. Web hosting is no exception. In the past, web hosting servers had a huge impact on CO2 emissions and used a ton of electricity in order to stay cool.
Once upon a time, being an eco-friendly web host was rare and set you apart from the others. These days, however, being eco-friendly is almost a must—and web hosts are rising to the challenge.
Cloud hosting is one of the biggest eco-friendly innovations in the past few years. It removes the need for physical servers, significantly reducing electricity usage. For those servers that do still need power and cooling down, artificial intelligence has become the go-to.
AI streamlines the energy usage and cooling processes, lowering your energy usage and saving costs. These kinds of “set and forget” systems are extremely valuable and may one day be the norm in web hosting.
Containers
Containers are a newish innovation that’s gaining traction in the hosting world. Containers are much more efficient and, more importantly, much more scalable than your regular types of website hosting.
A container is a resource-light self-contained copy of an entire website held on a software platform. They hold all the elements necessary to run a normal, fast, effective version of the website but ultimately use fewer resources.
One of the greatest things about containers is that they’re super scalable. All you need to do to scale up is create more containers when necessary. Even then, you only need to scale up to the extent you need, rather than scaling up beyond what’s necessary and wasting resources and funds.
Emphasis On Security
With the huge value of websites—especially e-commerce—security features have had to keep up with the rapid growth. With new innovations come smarter hackers… So security cannot be ignored.
Web hosts are placing more emphasis on security than ever before. Aside from the usual SSL certificates, two-step verification, and so on, artificial intelligence is now being used to keep websites safer.
One of the best things about AI is that it’s often able to detect threats before they affect the system. Between malware scanning and analyzing traffic patterns, the layering of AI is an exceptional innovation that’s changing things in the website hosting world.
Conclusion
Website hosting doesn’t rest. The industry is constantly evolving and bettering itself, providing better, more effective solutions. These are some of the most innovative things happening with website hosting right now, but we can expect even bigger innovations to come in the next few years.
The biggest names in web hosting—think WordPress and Shopify—are continuing to come up with new ideas, creative solutions, and never-before-thought-of ways to keep web hosting exciting, growing, and more secure than ever.
Keep up with the web hosting industry if you’re a website owner. You never know how the latest innovations may change your own business—everything is working towards a greener, smoother, safer, and easier experience for businesses online.
##
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Wheeler runs a web design agency that helps small businesses optimize their websites for business success. He aims to educate business owners on all things website-related on his own website, Reviews for Website Hosting.