What are your hosting market predictions for 2020?

Francisco · November 2019

So what is everyones predictions for big changes for 2020? Mine are:

Solus.io finally launches at $4/m/core with Solus VM1 set to sunset 12mo to 18mo after initial
WHMCS sunsets lifetime licenses with the launch of v8.0. To add to the displeasure they remove the "unlimited customers" option and requires everyone pay $0.30/month/active or similar.
More mergers/buyouts as datacenters continue to roll out products competing with their own users.
Plesk removes their unlimited domain option.
Directadmin prunes back the amount of OS' they support to allow them to make it easier to maintain the product.

#2 I stole from @qps.

Francisco

elliotc · November 2019

Hosting start offer dedicated IPv6.

seriesn · November 2019

Someone will hack Oakley, massive leak, end is neigh.

vpsgeek · November 2019

@Francisco based on what you posted the prices of hosting will go up significantly

MikeA · November 2019

I don't think WHMCS will retire owned licenses, but I guess with the ownership nothing should be surprising. The good thing there is that there are other great options besides the two or three big ones.

tgl · November 2019

OpenStack, SaaS, PaaS, kubernetes, docker

I would research these because its 2019, the old school market will last, but you wont be able to evolve

evnix · November 2019

From a customer/developer perspective, I would like to see these in the low-end providers as well,

Managed Databases (Better availability, Backups etc). This is the number one pain point and Providers like Scaleway and DigitalOcean are already tapping into it quite nicely.
Managed Load-balancers (Same as above)
More Docker/Kubernetes support (Instead of having to install docker on a vps)

We did quite a lot of freelancing work for the first two so I know a few hosts will be coming up with these.

Shared Hosting could revive if marketed right. Right now marketing is unfortunately limited to cost. SharedHosting basically does all the above but is limited to PHP. I have worked with a few who are investing in deployment platforms directly/tightly related to Laravel, Symfony etc. So when they launch they call themselves a cool and trendy Laravel/Symfony App host with managed DB/LB etc (while internally it is just calling DirectAdmin/Cpanel/CustomPanel APIs).

The main reason for this change I believe is Hosting companies cannot directly compete with their Datacenter providers with such cut throat rates (as Francisco said) and they need to quickly start differentiating themselves.

InceptionHosting · November 2019

I am really interested to see how solus.io is received, I fear they believe that the current customer base will support it, I suspect that it will not be a rapid take up at all.

MichaelCee · November 2019

My prediction for 2020 is that CloudLinux will provide MySQL Governor support for MariaDB 10.4

My hope is that the WHMCS heard splits a bit and even if people don't switch to Blesta, they open their mind up to alternatives.

WSS · November 2019

I read this as "Housing Market Predictions", and my response is virtually the same. Shit gonna climb until the bottom falls out again.

MichaelCee · November 2019

@WSS said:
I read this as "Housing Market Predictions", and my response is virtually the same. Shit gonna climb until the bottom falls out again.

The same applies to both markets. If you got in early, you're lucky.

Lee · November 2019

Certainties:

Francisco said: Solus.io finally launches at $4/m/core with Solus >VM1 set to sunset 12mo to 18mo after initial

WHMCS sunsets lifetime licenses with the launch of v8.0. To add to the displeasure they remove the "unlimited customers" option and requires everyone pay $0.30/month/active or similar.

More mergers/buyouts as datacenters continue to roll out products competing with their own users.

Very Likely:

Francisco said: Directadmin prunes back the amount of OS' they support to allow them to make it easier to maintain the product.

I would not rule out cPanel making 'refinements' to their pricing. I would also not rule out the same from Direct Admin although 2020 may be a bit soon in their case, depends on how successful the cPanel price increases have been for them in terms of attraction.

Also, I see more competition in the cloud markets currently dominated by DigitalOcean and others and that to some degree ties in with the more mergers/buyouts point noted above.

MichaelCee · November 2019

@Lee said:
Certainties:

Also, I see more competition in the cloud markets currently dominated by DigitalOcean and others and that to some degree ties in with the more mergers/buyouts point noted above.

Yes, I see it now.

Openstack everywhere.

walle · December 2019

@evnix said:
From a customer/developer perspective, I would like to see these in the low-end providers as well,

Managed Databases (Better availability, Backups etc). This is the number one pain point and Providers like Scaleway and DigitalOcean are already tapping into it quite nicely.

Managed Load-balancers (Same as above)

More Docker/Kubernetes support (Instead of having to install docker on a vps)

I agree. As a developer that is using/creating Docker for basically everything, my server I use for hosting my projects is basically a minimal OS with only firewall and Docker installed. Maintaining the host OS is something I'm not interested in to do, I want to go serverless without the limitations of traditional shared hosting. What DigitalOcean and Scaleway have shown us is just the beginning (or at lest I hope so).

FHR · December 2019

SmallWeb said: Openstack everywhere.

Please no.

I don't think that's fortunately ever going to happen though.

qps · December 2019

Francisco said: WHMCS sunsets lifetime licenses with the launch of v8.0. To add to the displeasure they remove the "unlimited customers" option and requires everyone pay $0.30/month/active or similar.

Unfortunately, this is happening; just a matter of when and how hard they turn the screws. Given what happened with cPanel, I'm not optimistic. It's going to hurt.

poisson · December 2019

@walle said:

@evnix said:
From a customer/developer perspective, I would like to see these in the low-end providers as well,

Managed Databases (Better availability, Backups etc). This is the number one pain point and Providers like Scaleway and DigitalOcean are already tapping into it quite nicely.

Managed Load-balancers (Same as above)

More Docker/Kubernetes support (Instead of having to install docker on a vps)

I agree. As a developer that is using/creating Docker for basically everything, my server I use for hosting my projects is basically a minimal OS with only firewall and Docker installed. Maintaining the host OS is something I'm not interested in to do, I want to go serverless without the limitations of traditional shared hosting. What DigitalOcean and Scaleway have shown us is just the beginning (or at lest I hope so).

This looks like a very interesting model that can change the industry quite a bit.

PureVoltage · December 2019

It will be interesting to see what ends up happening.
I can say we will see a lot more bandwidth options for 2020 from providers. We are waiting on quite a few 100G ports to be setup for sometime in 2020.

It would be interesting if WHMCS removed the lifetime options from all of us that own them. We have 6+ owned licenses, hopefully nothing big changes with them for a few more years until our own system is built.

Daniel · December 2019

walle said: As a developer that is using/creating Docker for basically everything, my server I use for hosting my projects is basically a minimal OS with only firewall and Docker installed. Maintaining the host OS is something I'm not interested in to do, I want to go serverless without the limitations of traditional shared hosting.

Isn't this basically what PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) is? Think things like Heroku and AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Dokku is pretty interesting for self-hosting.

Francisco · December 2019

PureVoltage said: I can say we will see a lot more bandwidth options for 2020 from providers. We are waiting on quite a few 100G ports to be setup for sometime in 2020.

Bigger issue is that a lot of backbone providers don't have the capacity in places.

HE is still 10gbit in a lot of markets with Cogent being similar.

@qps said:

Francisco said: WHMCS sunsets lifetime licenses with the launch of v8.0. To add to the displeasure they remove the "unlimited customers" option and requires everyone pay $0.30/month/active or similar.

Unfortunately, this is happening; just a matter of when and how hard they turn the screws. Given what happened with cPanel, I'm not optimistic. It's going to hurt.

In my case I'd be getting bit for 2 of the 3 products discussed in my post.

Still, a lot of hosts haven't announced new pricing for cPanel (OVH just recently posted their changes).

I expect a lot more people to move to DA or to "purpose built" services like the "hosted Wordpress" offerings.

Francisco

Francisco · December 2019

SmallWeb said: Openstack everywhere.

Openstack is just a really big platform to deal with.

There's only a couple billing options with at least 1 of them charging $3/month per physical core.

There's a WHMCS module I think but you're dealing with the abortion that is modulegardens modules.

Francisco

splitice · December 2019

$7 1GB+ VPS from established providers will become less common. Wage & licencing increases will push out may quality players leaving only the fly by nights.

I suspect some providers will re-evaluate $2-3 DDoS protected IPs. Primarily due to Voxility price increases.

Francisco · December 2019

splitice said: Primarily due to Voxility price increases.

Not sure how confident they are to raise prices given Magic Transit is around.

I do know they are now passing the gateway fee to customers. A lot of people are seeing a $50 - $100/m spike or similar.

Francisco

havoc · December 2019

Intel CPUs take a hit on code execution prevention

Non-cloudy providers start experimenting with offering container services. They execute it poorly

More cross provider linking. Like I'm trying to figure out how to make a LES VM talk to two clouds...and I'm an amateur so I can't be the only one thinking this

splitice · December 2019

@havoc look into tinc. It's great for stuff like that. Not the highest performing solution (Wireguard performs better) but simple and just works.

InceptionHosting · December 2019

I predict that 2020 is the year the IP4 shortage starts to show a tangible impact in some areas, likely Europe first.

Amitz · December 2019

AnthonySmith said: likely Europe first.

Oh noes. Not again...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_first
I hoped we were through with fighting each other...

debaser · December 2019

@AnthonySmith said:
I predict that 2020 is the year the IP4 shortage starts to show a tangible impact in some areas, likely Europe first.

Meanwhile nothing's gonna change in terms of connectivity because most large European ISP's are sitting on a surplus of IPv4's that they acquired in the early to mid '00s. This was the era that a medium sized ISP from a tiny country like The Netherlands would get a /12 subnet. Everything you needed was a good explanation for your needs.

Daniel · December 2019

splitice said: look into tinc. It's great for stuff like that. Not the highest performing solution (Wireguard performs better) but simple and just works.

I used to use Tinc but v1.1 has been experimental for a very long time, and I started encountering sporadic lockups where it'd get stuck at 100% CPU usage (both on v1.0 and v1.1). WireGuard is a bit trickier to configure given it doesn't automatically create a mesh network like Tinc does, but you can automate part of the config with something like Ansible to get a similar outcome. WireGuard do have mesh networking tools on their todo list, so maybe one day it'll be easier (https://www.wireguard.com/todo/#mesh-networking-tools).

IndoVirtue · December 2019

One webhosting panel dark horse will finally erected to challenge cPanel popularity, features, stability, security and pricing. Or it already is?
NATed IPv6 Only VPS because finally the IPv6 stock is depleted (okay, maybe not 2020 lol. Or maybe our sun dying first)

JustinG · December 2019

I too think we'll start to see more OpenStack options, I've personally seen some of the more "DevOps" crowd (who were traditional AWS / GCP / Azure only) start to look back at other hosting options due to price or flexibility constraints. OpenStack's features are the icing on the cake for them.

What are your hosting market predictions for 2020?

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