Digiweb’s Webhosting Landgrab
Digiweb is trying to get back in the hosting game. Its latest colour brochure boasts that it has the lowest prices for domains in Ireland. It also claims to have Ireland’s most modern shared hosting platform. I don’t think that the managment of Digiweb appreciates the gulf that has opened between it and the leaders in the Irish hosting business.
Initially a hosting company, Digiweb branched into the telco/ISP business a few years ago. It also became very successful as an ISP. But in the process it left its original core hosting business on the back burner. This allowed some of the current hosting service providers (HSPs) to get established and build up good client bases. How good? Well Digiweb is now ranked number 13 in the list of top Irish hosters with a BIONIC (Biz/Info/Org/Net/Ie/Com) domains hosted figure of 2443. By comparison, Hosting365.ie has a BIONIC of 20190 domains as of 01/October/2006.
The Digiweb business hosting plans are not exactly cutting edge. There are three: Business Starter; Business eCommerce and Business Enterprise. The prices are 9.99 Euros per month, 19.99 Euros per month and 29.99 Euros per month.
The Business Starter package is 9.99 Euros a month and provides hosting for 10 domains. It has 3G of storage space, 25GB of transfer per month, 250 e-mail accounts. Scripting and data base support is provided.
The Business eCommerce package is 19.99 Euros a month and provides hosting for 25 domains. It has 5G of storage space, 50GB of transfer per month and 500 e-mail accounts. It also has scripting and data base support. It has eCommerce support with an integrated shopping cart.
The Business Enterprise package allows for an unlimited number of hosted domains. It has 10G of space with 75GB of transfer per month and 1000 e-mail accounts. It also has eCommerce support with an integrated shopping cart.
Pricewise, the packages are similar to those of Hosting365.ie or Novara.ie or Blacknight Solutions. But there is a significant differerence. The Digiweb packages are aimed at businesses. The home/non-business section of the hosting market is important. Many of these accounts are those of bloggers and family websites. And perhaps more importantly, they are the sites of larval webmasters. These are the people who will be buying hosting in the future.
The landgrab strategy has been used before by a number of players to grow their market share. It typically involves selling near to cost or below it. Digiweb’s domain prices are close enough to cost that the profit is minimal. Buying market share has been done by WebhostingIreland.ie, Letshost.ie with the result that both are now significant players. But is it too late for Digiweb’s landgrab?
Tags: Irishblogs,IEDR, Domains, Webhosting, Internet Statistics, Irish Webhosters, domainnames
Written by John McCormac on October 17th, 2006 with comments disabled.
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