You can check for new EIG acquisitions on this page on a regular basis.
What originally began as BizLand in 1996 – now known as Endurance International Group (EIG) is now the largest conglomerate in today’s web hosting industry. Endurance’s primary business model is to acquire smaller hosting businesses to increase their customer base.
A large percentage of hosting companies that exist today were acquired and are now owned by a single company – Endurance International Group (EIG). This company has a history of making silent acquisitions so you won’t find a complete list of the brands on their website.
EIG comes in, buys up all of a hosting provider’s customers, keeps the website brand running but consolidates the hosting accounts to their servers in most cases. It appears EIG leaves some of their bigger brands like Host Gator and Blue Host alone but many of the smaller ones get consumed and consolidated only to end up with poor customer service and declining hosting quality.
When a customer is unhappy with their current hosting provider and decide to switch to a new one, they have a decent probability of still ending up with the same hosting company (EIG) under a different brand name.
EIG used to have a page on their site stating the following:
Acquisitions are a key component of our growth strategy. Using a proprietary methodology, we have completed acquisitions with more than 30 hosting companies and migrated hundreds of thousands of customers onto our platform since 2001.
(Source: a copy saved on June 28, 2012)
Why You Should Avoid Endurance International Group (EIG)
The story for every EIG acquisition seems to be the same – it destroys the reputation of the hosts it acquires. A Small Orange, BlueHost, HostGator, Arvixe, Site5 and so on have had loads of customer complaints about deteriorated services after EIG purchased them. The most notable event customers experienced on August 2, 2013 when millions of sites at BlueHost, HostGator, and HostMonster went offline at the EIG data center in Utah.
Another reason is their monopolistic position of owning many hosting brands leads to price-fixing. When you control the majority of the brands, you can control the pricing for them and switching providers is not a simple task depending on the size of the website.
Since the purchase of HostGator, many customers have had issues with declining service quality and increased ticket response times. Like all acquisitions they make, most changes occurred on the inside – migrating data center, rate limiting bandwidth, changing control panel settings.
Regardless of whether you are building a website for your business or a hobby there are providers (like MojoEngine) who are not owned by EIG. It’s a simple choice to avoid them to protect your online identity.
Full List of EIG Hosting Companies (to Avoid)
(The list will be updated regularly based on press/news information)
List compiled from Wikipedia, Research As a Hobby, and WP-ME.
- 2slick.com
- AccountSupport
- Arvixe LLC
- A Small Orange
- ApolloHosting
- AppMachine
- Berry Information Systems L.L.C.
- BigRock
- BizLand
- BlueBoxInternet
- BlueDomino
- Bluehost
- BuyDomains
- CirtexHosting
- Constant Contact
- Directi
- Domain.com
- DomainHost
- Dot5Hosting
- Dotster
- easyCGI
- Ecomdash
- eHost
- EmailBrain
- EntryHost
- Escalate Internet
- FastDomain
- FatCow
- FreeYellow
- Garin IT Solutions Co.
- Garin Technologies
- Glob@t
- Homestead
- HostCentric
- HostClear (defunct)
- HostGator
- HostNine
- HostMonster
- HostV VPS
- HostGallo
- hostwithmenow.com
- HostYourSite.com
- HyperMart
- IMOutdoors
- Intuit Websites
- iPage
- IPOWER/iPowerWeb
- IX Web Hosting
- JustHost
- LogicBoxes
- MojoMarketplace
- MyDomain
- MyResellerHome
- MySocialSuite
- NetFirms
- Networks Web Hosting
- Nexx
- PowWeb
- PublicDomainRegistry
- PureHost
- ReadyHosting.com
- ResellerClub
- Saba-Pro
- SEO Gears
- SEO Hosting
- SEO Web Hosting
- Site5
- Sitelio
- Southeast Web
- SpeedHost
- Spertly
- Spry
- StartLogic
- SuperGreen Hosting
- Typepad
- Unified Layer
- USANetHosting
- vDeck
- Apex Infosys India
- Verio
- VirtualAvenue
- VPSLink
- Webzai Ltd.
- WebHost4Life
- webhosting.info
- Webstrike Solutions
- Xeran
- YourWebHosting
