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BlueHost vs HostGator - Who is BIGGER?
While HostGator will release their stats every month in their newsletter, BlueHost has been very secretive about their "numbers". But recently, Matt Heaton, CEO and president of BlueHost and HostMonster disclose their magic numbers for the first time, so we can now compare both side by side.
So who is bigger? Who is growing faster? Let's find out.
At first let us look at the stats for HostGator collected from their monthly newsletter.
- November 2009 Stats:
Email sent: 574,475,391
Email Received: 1.04 Billion
Domains Hosted: 2,792,097
Size of Files hosted: 691 TB
Monthly Bandwidth: 3,473 TB
- December 2009 Stats:
Email sent: 597,454,406
Email Received: 1.08 Billion
Domains Hosted: 2,985,686
Size of Files hosted: 729 TB
Monthly Bandwidth: 4,401 TB
- January 2010 Stats:
Email Sent: 621,352,582
Email Received: 1.13 Billion
Domains Hosted: 3,105,228
Size of Files Hosted: 754 TB
Monthly Bandwidth: 4,710 TB
Next, let us look at BlueHost "secret numbers" for January 2010 released in Matt Heaton's blog post.
- Total Domains Hosted: 1.9+ million domains
- Total Paying Hosting Customers: More than 525,000
- Total Servers: 850+ (ALWAYS rotating out older servers)
- Total Sales/Billing/Support Requests Per Day: Approximately 5,000
- Number of new customers (not domains) added each day (Mon-Fri): 800+
- Number of new customers (not domains) added each day (Sat, Sun): 500+
- Number of new domains added each month: 50,000 � 70,000
- Total Bandwidth Capacity: 20 Gigabits/Second (100% ours, not shared in ANY way)
- Average Hold Time For Support: 19 seconds
- Number of Employees: 240+
- Registrar For Domains: Fastdomain Inc (Sister company that �sells� domains to Bluehost/Hostmonster)
- Outsourced services: NONE!!!!!!!
- Revenue: _____ (Some things really do need to be kept private)
- Profit: _____ (Some things really do need to be kept private)
* BlueHost numbers include HostMonster as both are the same company.
Now we know that in terms of size base on number of domains hosted, HostGator is bigger. HostGator number of domains hosted in January 2010 are 3.1 million while BlueHost are 1.9 million.
BlueHost is growing new domains hosted as much as 50,000 to 70,000 each month. HostGator is able to grow faster at 120,000 to 190,000 per month.
So does that means the winner is HostGator? NOT SO FAST!
The metric that we use for the comparison is the number of domains hosted which is not the best measure. The best measure would be the number of customers. Since a customer can host unlimited domains in their account, a customer that host 100 domains is still 1 customer. Unfortunately, HostGator doesn't disclose this information. BlueHost currently has 525,000 paying customers.
HostGator is a full service web hosting provider offering all kinds of hosting solutions such as shared hosting, windows hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, etc. while BlueHost focus solely on Linux-based shared hosting. So the number of domains hosted are easily distorted for HostGator.
HostGator advertise their products everywhere including the offline world using BIG bill boards, magazines, radio air-time and even human skin!!! BlueHost focus their marketing effort solely online and most of their new customers come from word of mouth of their existing customers.
How Much Money Is BlueHost Making?
This will be very interesting! [It happens that my part time hobby is to analyst businesses]
Matt Heaton didn't disclose their business revenue but due to the simplicity of their business that offer only one product, we can do an accurate estimation!
Since hosting fee are recurring, and assume the average monthly price paid is $6.95, a year would be $83.40. Times the number of paying customers 525,000 will give us a revenue of $44 million a year!
They are able to increase domains by 50,000 to 70,000 each month so it would be like 720,000 a year. That would be around 37% increase a year.
So estimated revenue for BlueHost is $44 million per year and I expect this number will grow more than 30% each year for the next several years!
After I wrote this article, Matt Heaton shot me the following email.
Big problem with your evaluation. You said BlueHost does 4.4 million in revenue based on $6.95 * 525,000. That is very incorrect. $6.95 * 525,000 * 12 is more accurate (12 months in a year). That is $44.1 million in revenue per year, and actually we do MUCH HIGHER revenue than that each year.
HostGator as of January 2010 had less than 230,000 paying customers. At that time we had 525,000. They host more domains because they do reseller hosting, but they don't come close to BlueHost in revenue numbers, paid subscriber numbers, or profit. Its not even close. Please update your article to reflect this new information.
Thanks,
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com
So it looks like I made a very careless mistake (luckily this is not a school exam and analyzing businesses is only a hobby). The number above has been updated from 4.4 million to 44 million.
So who is BIGGER? Matt Heaton indicates that HostGator paying customers is only 230,000, which is less than half of BlueHost. If his information is correct, then BlueHost is twice larger than HostGator. So BlueHost is the winner here!
Even at half of BlueHost, HostGator will still be able to generate 22 million a year! A number that many businesses can only envy of.
I hope these figures give you more confidence on hosting with BlueHost and HostGator as you can see they are serious businesses.
For first time visitor, BlueHost is rated as the #1 host, HostMonster #2 and HostGator #3. All of them are highly recommended. Simply read my hosting reviews to find out more about them.
Related:
- BlueHost Review
- HostGator Review
- HostGator Plans Comparison
- Compare HostGator shared hosting plans with BlueHost.
Size
We are currently doing over $60m a year in sales and growing at $2m+ a month runway for the year. We are about a month away from hitting 300k customers and we currently have 319 employees.
In the next year I expect us to be at least 50% larger in size. I hope this helps clarify things. =)
Bluehost Stats
I am willing to say this. We will do MUCH MORE than $85 million in revenue this year (2010) and our average profit margin exceeds 45% due to running our own data center, creating our own nationwide fiber network and peering agreements, and managing cpu and i/o better that any other shared host. Those savings add up and are translated into reinvestment in new technologies that will continue to benefit our customers.
Fun article - Nobody is funner to compete against than Brent. We are willing to challenge Host Gator to a Bluehost vs Hostgator basketball game to see who is the greatest hosting company of all time. ONLY employees allowed to play (At least 6 months employment!!). Haha - If you are interested let me know Brent!
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com
It sounds like were about
It sounds like were about tied then Matt. Once you factor in Hg's growth this year we'll be doing somewhere exactly around $85m in 2010. Not bad considering that I think it was only two years ago that you were doing over 3x+ our sales.
I'm still waiting for you to sell out since it will be great for business. If you're thinking about exiting do you think you could wait a few more months? We've had to slow down sales again to keep up with hiring.
Personally I think we've both been slacking. I know what Hostgator is capable of and I have way to much respect for you to think you're content what's been accomplished.
It's embarrassing that Godaddy is 10x both our sizes. I don't know about you but HG is gunning for them while maintaining our quality. If were talking about HG and BH I'd say it's hard for either one of us to be winning the race when were both still on the sidelines stretching.
BTW Basketball isn't our game. If you're up for a game of paintball or some iron man in beer pong let me know.
-Brent
Well....
To be honest... I am branching out a lot more than shared hosting. I talked some about building our own data centers and doing our own fiber networks across the nation and soon international networks. Doing the same thing over and over isn't as appealing to me. I need to work on new things.
Kernel work is where I have spent most of my time the last two years. I honestly believe the stuff we have accomplished in the kernel is worth more than all of Bluehost. I just have to get out there and sell it, but instead have been hording it for our own use. It is applicable in every single market from phones to the largest server farms.
You better hope we don't do reseller hosting though! Because if we did, watch out. With our CPU and I/O and Memory controller we could do some amazing things in the reseller market that no one else could compete with.
Really, you should have have been willing to try SimpleScripts, and our CPU/IO stuff, and our custom backup system. All of which is the best of their kind. SimpleScripts is the best installer for Cpanel by a mile, but you wouldn't use it just because it was made by me. Our CPU and IO stuff would solve instantly 95% of your server and mysql issues, and our backup solution is literally 10x faster than R1soft and like 30X faster than cpbackup in Cpanel. In addition, it takes about half of the space of either r1soft or cpbackup, and its a drop replacement for cpanel meaning that you can still use CPanel's restore function.
When it comes right down to it though there is only 1 statistic that matters - Profit. I don't know what your margins are, but I would be VERY surprised to if you were anywhere near 45%. Certainly not on your higher end ticket items such as dedicated servers etc which are the primary driver of your revenue.
Regardless, you are doing very very well, and believe it or not I'm glad you are doing well. You worked hard and were smart about how you did it - you earned it. Most people blow it when they start to grow larger, but you've kept a pretty level head on the whole time. Good luck.
PS - Sorry, no beer pong for me. I don't drink. You are ON for paintball though!!! We will crush you guys!! Let me know when you want to do it. Come to Utah (Better for paintball). If we lose Ill pay for your hotel and airfare for your team!
Matt Heaton / President Bluehost.com
can I come paintball
Hey , guys can i come and play paintball with you guys?
But in case you tap out - you
But in case you tap out - you gonna pay for hotel and airfare for the both Oxley and Heaton teams)))
Interesting Discussion Going On Here!
It's just incredibly fun to watch two founders of the web host (thrash) talking to each other openly. James, thanks for the wonderful post that got the talking started! :)
Its just unbeliveable that
Its just unbeliveable that two founders are mouth fighting here...
Kernel work is where I have
Kernel work is where I have spent most of my time the last two years. I honestly believe the stuff we have accomplished in the kernel is worth more than all of Bluehost.