Bluehost is now part of the Endurance International Group (EIG) borg.
I am curious what everyone thinks concerning the short and long term implications will be for both parties involved in this buy out?
In the short run, probably no implications. There’s been no news coming from either entity.
In the long run, it might mean the integration of Bluehost into EIG’s way of doing things, but it didn’t happen yet with Justhost, so maybe EIG’s modus operandi is changing.
Or another option would be for EIG to incorporate their other companies into the Bluehost way of doing things.
When EIG acquired Ipower it was a disaster in every aspect one could imagine. So perhaps EIG learned something from the Ipower fiasco.
One thing is for certain EIG doesn’t have a good track record for smooth acquisitions. They are notorious for screwing things up during the transition. Even with the Justhost takeover, tech support took a dump during the transition period.
On another note Accel-KKR purchased a controlling interest in EIG a number of years ago. I am curious if Accel-KKR is pressing EIG to change their business tactics?
And for whatever it is worth, rumors were floating around the internet EIG had made an offer for Hostgator. Brent responded the notion of Hostgator being up for sale.
From the Hostgator blog:
HostGator is Not For Sale
I have been shopping the possible sale of HostGator this last year and have finally decided that HostGator is no longer for sale. I received some very serious bids that would have made myself as well as many HostGator employees very rich. I turned down the bids for a multitude of reasons. The majority were turned down as I didn’t believe the number being offered reflected a large enough premium for what our future is worth.
We shall see if Brent’s choice not to sell is the winning one in the long run. In case that EIG did indeed negotiate with Hostgator, it looks like they had their eye on a number of quite big hosts. I hear that Netfirms might have been recently bought by them as well.
I wouldn’t be surprised if EIG has its eyes on Netfirms. It seems to fit the criteria of hosts EIG has been acquiring.
One thing is for certain EIG has deep pockets to be able to go on a buying spree picking up Justhost and Bluehost. Netfirms is small potatoes compared to the previous acquisitions.
Netfirms is small potatoes compared to the previous acquisitions.
I don’t think Netfirms is quite so small. Perhaps not of Bluehost size, but still a decently sized hosting company, with a firm base in the Canadian hosting market.
Its just a rumor, there is no such reality.
What is just a rumor? EIG acquiring Bluehost? Or EIG buying Netfirms?
The last time I looked at webhosting.info it displayed Netfirms having around 330,000 domains hosted.
It was hard for me to find any reliable data to guage how many domains Bluehost, Justhost, and the other EIG companies have. But a rough guesstimate would put Bluehost/Hostmonster at 2 million, Justhost at half a million, and EIG at 1 million which would bring EIG up to a total of 2.5 million domains hosted. Adding Netfirms to the equation would put EIG around 2.8 million domains hosted.
So who is EIG going to target next? Dreamhost? Lunarpages? OVM.net? Mediatemple?
Godaddy was on the market a while back. Wouldn’t a merger between Godaddy and EIG be an interesting mix?!
The last time I looked at webhosting.info it displayed Netfirms having around 330,000 domains hosted.
I recall them claiming to host 1.2 million websites, though they may be counting their free hosting in that I suppose. In any case, even at 330000 real domains hosted, they’re bigger than a lot of hosts that EIG has bought in the past, and one of the biggest of the old free hosting providers.
On the Netfirms website they claim to be hosting 1.2 million websites. I wonder why there is such a discrepancy between what webhosting.info and Netfirms report for domains hosted. Undoubtedly each must be using a different method for compiling their statistics.
I tend to believe Netfirms numbers over anyone else. So if the 1.2 million domains are correct, assuming EIG has taken over Netfirms, it would put EIG hosting to a grand total of approximately 3.7 million domains.
Not sure if everyone knew this yet, but according to this article it’s now confirmed they own Bluehost.
Netfirms has been acquired by EIG. As a Netfirms customer, I just got an email about it, though the new owner was not named, so started sleuthing. Here’s the confirmation, on EIG’s site:
http://www.enduranceinternational.com/endurance/welcome-netfirms.bml
As I want hosting located in Canada for some of my sites, I will be moving them out of Netfirms.
From the info on the Netfirms site it appears Nexx Online may also be part of the deal.
http://www.netfirmstransition.com/faqs/
I wonder if anyone has any idea of how big Nexx Online happens to be?
That is difficult to say. However that worth to think of end users and if they will feel better with such integration at all.
I guess I should have mentioned Nexx Online was a sister company to Netfirms.
EIG has acquired lot of big hosts and hosts like Bluehost are huge, they are almost as big as hostgator if not bigger. So is netfirms.
In end it will be few left which is good for us (other hosts) in long run i think :-/
I think the change in management can effect Customer Technical Support. The response time may increase/decrease so let hope for the best.
Earlier this month CEO Matt Heaton posted a comment on his blog about the new data center he has established where all the BluerHost/HostMonster servers now reside (my site had less than an hour’s downtime during the move - far less than the email they sent me suggested might happen). Apparently BlueHost/HostMonster currently uses only 25% of the capacity of the new data center.
There is no mention of his having sold BlueHost/HostMonster or any indication that there is any change whatever in the team running those companies. So presumably if EIG has acquired any ownership in BlueHost/HostMonster it is as shareholders who have no input into the day to day operations. The only indication on Matt’s blog of any change of ownership is that he now signs off with Matt Heaton / Founder Bluehost.com/Hostmonster.com instead of Matt Heaton / Bluehost.com