Web Hosting Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: James Porter | Last updated: September 29, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
According to Axis Intelligence Research, 14.5% of all websites run on hyperscaler infrastructure that is sold to the site owner under another company’s brand. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Alibaba together serve 22.1% of websites at the data-center layer but hold only 7.6% at the hosting layer, per W3Techs data for September 2026.
Quick Answer
No single web hosting provider controls more than 5.4% of the web. Shopify leads with 5.4% of all websites, Hostinger follows at 5.1% and Amazon at 4.4% (W3Techs, September 2026). The ten largest hosts combined serve 33.6% of sites. Underneath that fragmented storefront, Axis Intelligence Research measures a Hyperscale Underlay Share (HUS) of 14.5 percentage points: the gap between the websites hyperscalers physically serve and the websites they bill directly.
Key Findings
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, the Hyperscale Underlay Share (HUS) stood at 14.5 percentage points in September 2026, meaning roughly one in seven websites runs on hyperscaler hardware resold by another brand.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, platform-captive builders (Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow and eight smaller site builders) host 16.0% of all websites, more than double the 7.6% hosted directly by the five hyperscale clouds.
- Hostinger overtook Amazon in February 2026 to become the second-largest web hosting provider behind Shopify, according to W3Techs.
- Netcraft’s July 2026 Web Server Survey counted 1,494,915,628 websites across 305,348,459 domains, and Axis Intelligence Research estimates only 14.5% of those sites are active.
- GoDaddy added a net 22 thousand customers in Q2 2026 on a base of 20.5 million while ARPU rose 8.7% to $250, per its Form 8-K filed with the SEC, a growth profile driven by price and product mix, not new accounts.
Who Is the Largest Web Hosting Provider in 2026?
Shopify is the largest web hosting provider by share of websites, at 5.4% as of September 29, 2026. That result surprises people who picture “hosting” as a shared server plan, but W3Techs attributes hosting to the company the site owner pays, and every Shopify store is hosted by Shopify. Hostinger ranks second at 5.1% and Amazon third at 4.4%, per W3Techs’ daily web hosting survey.
The top of the table is flat. Five providers sit in a 0.1-point band between 2.4% and 2.5%: United Internet, GoDaddy Group, Squarespace, OVH and Newfold Digital Group. One notch below, Hetzner and Vercel are tied at 2.1%.
Web Hosting Market Share by Provider (Top 20)
| Rank | Hosting provider | Share of all websites | Segment (Axis classification) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shopify | 5.4% | Platform-captive builder | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 2 | Hostinger | 5.1% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 3 | Amazon | 4.4% | Hyperscale cloud | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 4 | Wix | 4.2% | Platform-captive builder | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 5 | United Internet | 2.5% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 6 | GoDaddy Group | 2.5% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 7 | Squarespace | 2.5% | Platform-captive builder | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 8 | OVH | 2.4% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 9 | Newfold Digital Group | 2.4% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 10 | team.blue | 2.2% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 11 | Hetzner | 2.1% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 12 | Vercel | 2.1% | Developer / frontend cloud | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 13 | SiteGround | 2.0% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 14 | 1.7% | Hyperscale cloud | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 | |
| 15 | DigitalOcean Group | 1.5% | Developer / frontend cloud | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 16 | XServer | 1.4% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 17 | WP Engine Group | 1.3% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 18 | GMO Internet Group | 1.2% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 19 | Aruba Group | 0.9% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| 20 | Sakura | 0.9% | Independent web host | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
James Porter: The ranking reads like a market with no gravity. Three providers clear 4%, and the next seven are separated by three-tenths of a point. That is what a commodity layer looks like when the switching cost is a DNS change and an export file. Anyone quoting “market leader” in shared hosting should specify which leader, measured how, because Hostinger and GoDaddy are closer in share than two data centers in the same metro are in latency.
How Concentrated Is the Web Hosting Market?
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the three largest hosts (Shopify, Hostinger, Amazon) serve 14.9% of all websites combined, and the top ten serve 33.6%. Two-thirds of the web sits with providers outside the top ten. For comparison, the cloud infrastructure market tracked in our cloud market share statistics is dominated by three providers; website hosting is the opposite shape.
What Is the Hyperscale Underlay Share (HUS)?
Definition: The Hyperscale Underlay Share (HUS) is an Axis Intelligence Research metric that measures the percentage of all websites served from hyperscaler data centers but billed by a different hosting brand. It is the difference between the combined data-center share and the combined hosting share of the five hyperscale clouds.
Formula:
HUS = (Amazon + Google + Microsoft + Oracle + Alibaba share at the data-center layer) minus (the same five providers’ share at the hosting layer)
September 2026 reading: (11.3 + 8.0 + 0.9 + 1.4 + 0.5) minus (4.4 + 1.7 + 0.8 + 0.2 + 0.5) = 22.1 minus 7.6 = 14.5 percentage points.
W3Techs publishes two separate surveys that almost nobody reads side by side. Its web hosting survey records the company a site owner pays. Its data center survey records the company that operates the hardware and network. When the two numbers diverge for the same operator, the difference is infrastructure being resold, white-labeled or embedded inside another product.
HUS by Hyperscaler
| Hyperscaler | Data-center share | Hosting share | Underlay (pp) | Pass-through ratio | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | 11.3% | 4.4% | 6.9 | 2.57x | W3Techs; Axis calculation |
| 8.0% | 1.7% | 6.3 | 4.71x | W3Techs; Axis calculation | |
| Oracle | 1.4% | 0.2% | 1.2 | n/a | W3Techs; Axis calculation |
| Microsoft | 0.9% | 0.8% | 0.1 | n/a | W3Techs; Axis calculation |
| Alibaba | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.0 | n/a | W3Techs; Axis calculation |
| Combined | 22.1% | 7.6% | 14.5 | 2.91x | Axis Intelligence Research |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, Google has the highest pass-through ratio of any hyperscaler at 4.71x: for every website Google hosts directly, almost four more run on Google infrastructure under someone else’s name. Amazon’s ratio is 2.57x.
The ranking also contains its own evidence. Shopify and Wix, the first- and fourth-largest hosts by share, do not appear in W3Techs’ data-center ranking at all, which means the sites they host are attributed to another operator’s infrastructure. Microsoft shows almost no underlay (0.1 point), which suggests Azure’s footprint in website delivery is mostly direct, not resold.
James Porter: This is the number I would hand to anyone writing a resilience plan. Your contract says Squarespace, Shopify or a regional host. Your blast radius may say us-east-1. When a hyperscaler region degrades, the outage map lights up with brands that never mention the hyperscaler in their terms of service. HUS does not tell you which provider sits under your site; a traceroute and a WHOIS on the IP will. What it tells you is that roughly one in seven websites carries a dependency its owner never signed for directly.
For the capacity side of that dependency, see our data center statistics, and for revenue context on the two largest underlay operators, our AWS statistics and Google Cloud statistics.
Website Builders vs Web Hosts vs Cloud: Hosting Market Share by Segment
Axis Intelligence Research grouped every provider in W3Techs’ hosting ranking with a share of 0.1% or more into four segments. The classification is ours; the underlying shares are W3Techs’.
| Segment | Providers included | Combined share of all websites | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent web hosts | Hostinger, United Internet, GoDaddy, OVH, Newfold, team.blue, Hetzner, SiteGround, XServer, WP Engine, GMO, Aruba, Sakura, Group.one, Your.Online, Automattic, Hosting.com, Namecheap, Kinsta | 30.9% | W3Techs; Axis calculation |
| Platform-captive builders | Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Tilda, Webflow, Duda, Weebly, Jimdo, Nuvemshop, Framer, HubSpot, Cafe24 | 16.0% | W3Techs; Axis calculation |
| Hyperscale clouds | Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Alibaba | 7.6% | W3Techs; Axis calculation |
| Developer / frontend clouds | Vercel, DigitalOcean, Netlify, GitHub, Vultr, Render, Railway, Linode | 5.1% | W3Techs; Axis calculation |
| Long tail (all other providers) | Hundreds of regional and niche hosts | 40.4% | Axis calculation (100 minus 59.6) |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, platform-captive builders now host 16.0% of the web, where hosting is not a product the customer chooses but a feature of the software they chose. That segment is 2.11 times the size of the hyperscale segment at the hosting layer (16.0 vs 7.6).
The developer cloud segment deserves its own sentence. Vercel, at 2.1%, is tied with Hetzner and ahead of Google’s direct hosting share of 1.7%. A company whose product is a deployment pipeline for frontend frameworks now hosts as many websites as one of Europe’s largest dedicated-server operators.
James Porter: The long tail is the part nobody writes about and the part that pays for the most help-desk tickets. Four in ten websites sit with providers too small to make a top-ranking table: the regional cPanel shop, the small reseller, the agency running its own VPS fleet. Those operators are the first to feel it when control-panel licensing or IPv4 lease prices move.
What Percentage of Websites Use WordPress in 2026?
WordPress runs on 40.2% of all websites and holds a 58.7% share of sites that use a detectable content management system, as of September 29, 2026 (W3Techs CMS survey). 31.5% of websites use no CMS that W3Techs monitors.
| CMS / platform | Share of all websites | Share among CMS-powered sites | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 40.2% | 58.7% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| Shopify | 5.4% | 7.8% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| Wix | 4.2% | 6.1% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| Squarespace | 2.4% | 3.6% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| Joomla | 1.1% | 1.6% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| Webflow | 0.8% | 1.2% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| Tilda | 0.8% | 1.2% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| Duda | 0.7% | 1.1% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| Drupal | 0.6% | 0.9% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| GoDaddy Website Builder | 0.6% | 0.9% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| Lovable | 0.1% | 0.1% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| v0 | 0.1% | 0.1% | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
| No CMS detected | 31.5% | n/a | W3Techs, Sept 29, 2026 |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, WordPress still powers 2.81 times as many websites as the six largest hosted builders combined (40.2% vs 14.3% for Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Tilda, Webflow and Duda). That ratio is the single best predictor of what a general-purpose host sells: WordPress is the workload that keeps shared hosting, managed WordPress and one-click installers commercially alive.
Two entries at the bottom of the table are new signals. Lovable and v0, both AI app-generation tools, each register on 0.1% of all websites. That is small, but it is measured, and it means AI-generated sites have crossed the threshold where a technology survey can detect them in the wild.
Hosting and CMS: Where the Numbers Overlap
Shopify’s 5.4% appears in both the hosting table and the CMS table, and the match is not a coincidence: on a closed platform, the CMS and the host are the same company. Wix shows the same pattern at 4.2%. That identity is the definition of the platform-captive segment, and it is why a builder’s CMS share and hosting share move together while WordPress’s CMS share is spread across hundreds of hosts.
How Many Websites Are There in 2026?
Netcraft’s July 2026 Web Server Survey received responses from 1,494,915,628 websites across 305,348,459 domains and 14,772,048 web-facing computers (Netcraft, July 2026). According to Axis Intelligence Research, that is 4.9 sites per registered domain responding to the survey.
Website Count Growth, September 2025 to July 2026
| Survey month | Websites | Domains | Web-facing computers | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 2025 | 1,337,528,194 | 285,209,235 | 13,806,606 | Netcraft |
| November 2025 | 1,366,582,597 | 288,926,456 | 14,008,584 | Netcraft |
| January 2026 | 1,376,952,390 | 295,088,466 | 14,365,221 | Netcraft |
| February 2026 | 1,419,977,535 | 297,071,903 | 14,379,914 | Netcraft |
| March 2026 | 1,427,812,919 | 297,642,950 | 14,225,050 | Netcraft |
| April 2026 | 1,433,742,238 | 299,194,059 | 14,198,148 | Netcraft |
| June 2026 | 1,489,396,284 | 304,146,307 | 14,653,771 | Netcraft |
| July 2026 | 1,494,915,628 | 305,348,459 | 14,772,048 | Netcraft |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the number of websites responding to Netcraft grew 11.8% between September 2025 and July 2026, while domains grew 7.1%. Sites are multiplying faster than the domains that hold them, which is what subdomain-heavy platforms, preview deployments and generated landing pages produce.
How Many Websites Are Active?
Netcraft does not publish a total active-site figure in its monthly post, but it does publish counts and shares for its active-site ranking. Cloudflare served 50,838,387 active sites in July 2026, equal to 23.46% of the active total. Dividing one by the other, Axis Intelligence Research estimates the active web at 216.7 million sites, or 14.5% of all sites Netcraft counted. The remaining 85.5% of counted sites fall outside Netcraft’s active definition.
James Porter: Keep this ratio in mind the next time a vendor claims to “power millions of websites.” Most websites are not websites in any sense a visitor would recognize. The unit that matters for capacity planning, abuse handling and revenue is the active site, and by this estimate it is about one site in seven.
Which Web Servers Power the Most Websites?
The answer depends on which slice of the web you count, and the gap between slices is the story.
| Slice (Netcraft, July 2026) | #1 | #2 | #3 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All sites | nginx 20.37% | Cloudflare 16.67% | Apache 11.50% | Netcraft |
| Active sites | Cloudflare 23.46% | nginx 14.45% | Apache 12.10% | Netcraft |
| Top million busiest sites | Cloudflare 28.29% | nginx 20.02% | Apache 15.56% | Netcraft |
| Web-facing computers | nginx 43.92% | n/a | n/a | Netcraft |
Cloudflare’s share rises from 16.67% of all sites to 23.46% of active sites and 28.29% of the busiest million. nginx does the reverse on sites but runs on 43.92% of web-facing computers. The two findings fit together: nginx is what the origin server runs, Cloudflare is what the visitor’s browser talks to. OpenResty jumped to 8.02% of all sites in July 2026, a reminder that a single large platform migration can move this survey by several points in a month.
How Fast Are Web Hosting Companies Growing in 2026?
Public filings for Q2 2026 show three very different growth rates for three different layers of the hosting business.
| Company | Layer | Q2 2026 revenue | YoY growth | Key operating metric | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | Developer / AI cloud | $281M | 29% | ARR $1,125M; AI customer ARR $234M (+212%) | SEC 8-K |
| Wix | Platform-captive builder | $563.1M | 15% | ARR $1,963M; Creative Subscriptions $398.4M (+15%) | SEC 6-K |
| GoDaddy | Domains + independent hosting | $1,298.0M | 6.6% | 20.5M customers; ARPU $250 (+8.7%) | SEC 8-K |
GoDaddy: Growth From Price and Mix, Not From New Customers
GoDaddy reported Q2 2026 revenue of $1,298.0 million, up 6.6% from $1,217.6 million. Its Core Platform segment, which includes domains and hosting, grew 3.9% to $783.2 million, while Applications and Commerce grew 11.0% to $514.8 million. Net customer additions were 22 thousand on a base of 20.5 million. According to Axis Intelligence Research, that is quarterly customer growth of 0.11%, set against ARPU growth of 8.7% year over year. GoDaddy is narrowing full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $5,215 million to $5,255 million, versus $4,951 million in 2025.
DigitalOcean: Hosting Economics Are Moving to Inference
DigitalOcean’s Q2 2026 revenue rose 29% to $281 million, with annual run-rate revenue of $1,125 million. AI customer ARR reached $234 million, up 212%. According to Axis Intelligence Research, AI customers now account for 20.8% of DigitalOcean’s total ARR.
Wix: The Builder Layer Keeps Double-Digit Growth
Wix grew Q2 2026 revenue 15% to $563.1 million, with Creative Subscriptions up 15% to $398.4 million and Partners revenue (agencies and resellers) up 17% to $213.8 million.
James Porter: Line the three up and you get a map of where hosting margin is migrating. The domain-and-shared-hosting business is growing low single digits in its core and making it up on price. The builder layer grows mid-teens. The developer cloud that pivoted toward inference is growing 29%. None of them sell the same thing anymore, and all three still show up in a “web hosting” search.
How Many People Work in Web Hosting?
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies hosting under NAICS 518000, “Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services.” The industry employed 482,080 people in May 2023 at an annual mean wage of $116,230, per the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics [older data: most recent industry-specific OEWS page for this NAICS code available at a stable URL].
| Occupation in NAICS 518000 | Employment | Source |
|---|---|---|
| All occupations | 482,080 | BLS OEWS, May 2023 |
| Software developers | 73,990 | BLS OEWS, May 2023 |
| Customer service representatives | 28,000 | BLS OEWS, May 2023 |
| Web developers | 4,510 | BLS OEWS, May 2023 |
The category is broader than website hosting: it includes payroll processors, streaming support and colocation. Establishment counts for the same subsector are tracked on our data center statistics page, which owns that figure in the Axis number registry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Shopify counted as a web hosting provider?
W3Techs assigns a website to the company the site owner pays for hosting. Every Shopify store is hosted by Shopify, so Shopify ranks first with 5.4% of all websites in September 2026. The same logic places Wix fourth at 4.2% and Squarespace at 2.5%.
Is Hostinger bigger than GoDaddy?
By share of websites hosted, yes. Hostinger hosts 5.1% of all websites and GoDaddy Group 2.5%, per W3Techs on September 29, 2026. GoDaddy is larger by revenue and customer count: it reported 20.5 million customers and $1,298.0 million in Q2 2026 revenue, much of it from domains, not hosting.
Does my website run on AWS even if I don’t use AWS?
It may. Amazon operates the data centers behind 11.3% of websites but directly hosts only 4.4%, per W3Techs. Axis Intelligence Research attributes the 6.9-point gap to sites whose hosting brand runs on Amazon infrastructure. Checking your site’s IP address ownership will confirm which network actually serves it.
What is the Hyperscale Underlay Share?
The Hyperscale Underlay Share (HUS) is an Axis Intelligence Research metric: the combined data-center share of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Alibaba minus their combined hosting share. It measured 14.5 percentage points in September 2026 (22.1% minus 7.6%), using W3Techs survey data.
How many websites are actually active in 2026?
Axis Intelligence Research estimates about 216.7 million active websites as of July 2026, or 14.5% of the 1,494,915,628 sites counted by Netcraft. The estimate divides Cloudflare’s active-site count (50,838,387) by its active-site share (23.46%).
Is WordPress losing market share to website builders?
WordPress still runs on 40.2% of all websites and 58.7% of CMS-powered sites, per W3Techs in September 2026. According to Axis Intelligence Research, that is 2.81 times the combined 14.3% share of Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Tilda, Webflow and Duda.
Which web server is most used in 2026?
nginx leads across all sites at 20.37% and runs on 43.92% of web-facing computers, per Netcraft’s July 2026 survey. Cloudflare leads among active sites (23.46%) and the busiest million sites (28.29%), because it sits in front of origin servers as a reverse proxy.
Are AI-built websites showing up in hosting data?
Yes. W3Techs now detects Lovable and v0, both AI app-generation tools, on 0.1% of all websites each as of September 2026. Vercel hosts 2.1% of all websites, tied with Hetzner.
Methodology
Data collection. Axis Intelligence Research retrieved every figure on this page from primary publishers on September 29, 2026: W3Techs daily surveys (web hosting providers, data center providers, content management systems), Netcraft’s monthly Web Server Survey posts (September 2025 through July 2026), SEC filings by GoDaddy (Form 8-K), DigitalOcean (Form 8-K) and Wix (Form 6-K) for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, and the BLS OEWS industry table for NAICS 518000. No figure on this page comes from a secondary aggregator.
Hyperscale Underlay Share (HUS). HUS = (sum of data-center shares for Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Alibaba) minus (sum of hosting shares for the same five). Pass-through ratio = data-center share divided by hosting share. Both surveys come from the same publisher and the same measurement universe, which makes the subtraction methodologically compatible. The hosting survey was read on September 29, 2026 and the data-center survey carries a September 26, 2026 stamp; both are updated daily and a three-day offset moves figures by hundredths of a point at most.
Segment classification. Each provider in W3Techs’ hosting ranking at 0.1% or above was assigned by Axis Intelligence Research to one of four segments based on its primary product: platform-captive builder (hosting bundled with a proprietary site builder or commerce platform), independent web host (shared, VPS, dedicated or managed hosting sold as a standalone product), hyperscale cloud, or developer / frontend cloud. Automattic Group is classified as an independent host because WordPress.com hosting runs open-source software portable to any host. The full provider list per segment is in the CSV method_note column.
Active-site estimate. Netcraft’s July 2026 post lists Cloudflare’s active-site count and share; total active sites = 50,838,387 divided by 23.46%. Cross-checking with nginx’s active figures (31,304,892 sites at 14.45%) gives 216.6 million, within rounding.
Scope. W3Techs measures what it calls the relevant web (sites with real content and traffic), so its percentages describe a different universe from Netcraft’s raw site counts; Axis does not mix the two in any single calculation. Hosting share counts websites, not revenue; a provider can rank low by sites and high by revenue. BLS data is the latest industry-specific release available at a stable URL and is labeled accordingly.
About This Dataset
The file web-hosting-statistics-2026.csv is the fact table for this article: 196 rows, one observation per row, with source organization, document, URL, retrieval date, primary-source flag and a method note for every Axis-calculated value. It is published under CC BY 4.0: you may copy, share and adapt it for any purpose with attribution.
Cite as: Axis Intelligence Research, Web Hosting Statistics 2026, September 2026, axis-intelligence.com/web-hosting-statistics/
Citation Formats
APA: Axis Intelligence Research, & Porter, J. (2026, September 29). Web hosting statistics 2026: Who really hosts the web, market share by provider, and the hyperscale underlay. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/web-hosting-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research, and James Porter. “Web Hosting Statistics 2026: Who Really Hosts the Web, Market Share by Provider, and the Hyperscale Underlay.” Axis Intelligence, 29 Sept. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/web-hosting-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research, and James Porter. “Web Hosting Statistics 2026: Who Really Hosts the Web, Market Share by Provider, and the Hyperscale Underlay.” Axis Intelligence, September 29, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/web-hosting-statistics/.
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