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Why Hosting Companies Are Losing Traffic

Why Hosting Companies Are Losing Traffic

Site.pro’s marketing team has recently conducted a small research on global search trends in hosting and website builders’ markets. We took a look at the official data from Google Trends to see the average search volume.

Shared hosting vs website builder on Google TrendsPopularity for "Shared hosting", "Website builder" and "AI website builder" trends over the past 5 year. Source: Google Trends

Then, we went to a professional SEO tool — Ahrefs Keyword Explorer — to assess the popularity of queries in concrete numbers.

Keyword Comparison in Ahrefs

Keyword: Website builder

Search volume for a "website builder" query is 115K per month in the US. Potential organic traffic gained is estimated at 451K, and it's worthy almost $2M.

Look at the trend chart — it's stable and is growing steadily.

Website builder search volumes in AhrefsMonthly traffic and search volume for "Website builder". Source: Ahrefs

Keyword: Shared hosting

Meanwhile, search volume for a "shared hosting" query is 7.4K per month in the US — 93% lower. Potential traffic is only 13K.

If we examine the trend chart, we'll see that the populariry of "shared hosting" searches is declining.

Shared hosting vs website builder in AhrefsMonthly traffic and search volume "Shared hosting" vs "Website builder". Source: Ahrefs

As time goes, more and more people are searching for website building tools that go in bulk with hosting and domains. It leads to hosting companies losing traffic. But why? And does it mean that hosting companies find direct competition in website building platforms?

We dug deeper to find out.

Keyword Research in Kenya

The situation gets more tricky when you really think about it.

For a case study we took a developing, but not very crowded at the moment Kenyan market. Kenya is a country with one of the highest Internet penetration rates in Africa — it reached 48% in 2025, but it's not overpopulated with global players yet. Our query is “Shared hosting”, our target country — Kenya. Let’s see what the top 9 results are.

Shared hosting in Kenya, AhrefsTop 10 search results for "Shared hosting" query in Kenya. Source: Ahrefs

Namecheap.com, Hostinger.com and Spaceship.com — companies that are not native to the country — are present, but native to the African continent HOSTAFRICA, Hostpinnacle.co.ke and Safari.com are comfortably taking other top spots.

Note: A similar trend is noticeable when we look at other queries — like “rent a car” — Google tends to give preference to local companies and tailor results based on the user's location. Same goes for software, hosting, and most other services. Local companies can have an advantage, the competition isn’t too aggressive, but there is a catch.

Car rent SERP results in KenyaTop 10 search results for "Rent a car" query in Kenya. Source: Ahrefs

Let’s see what results for the “Website builder” query for Kenya look like.

Website builder query results in KenyaTop 10 search results for "Website builder" query in Kenya. Source: Ahrefs

Not a single local company in sight on the first page. The reason is simple — most Kenyan hosting providers don’t offer a website building tool at all, and those who do — hide it in the menus, making it difficult for search engines to find relevant keywords.

In the meantime, global brands are actively using aggressive ads and SEO strategies. They include all possible relevant keywords in the meta information of their pages, which, in the end, lets them be on top of search results and effectively have a monopoly over the market.

This vicious circle leads to big providers (Namecheap, Wix, etc) becoming more popular in Kenya → more people knowing about big providers → more people searching for big providers → more big providers sitting on top of the search.

Case Study: How HOSTAFRICA Got the Best SEO in Kenya

Getting your company’s website in the top positions of Google is hard, especially when you aim at a crowded keyword like "website builder". However, it’s not impossible. You can rank for a similar, but more precise keyword. That's how HOSTAFRICA took the first place on Google.

Search results forTop 10 search results for "Business website" query in Kenya. Source: Ahrefs

The key is to optimise your website and services to the demand of your existing and potential clients.

By the way, you can go a bit back and notice how HOSTAFRICA ranks #2 for "shared hosting" as well, right after Namecheap. Coincidentally, it’s also the only hosting provider (not counting global companies) that has a website builder and a menu item for it. Despite HOSTAFRICA being a hosting company first, it advertises other services as well (emails, domains, reselling) and puts an AI website builder banner on its front page, attracting more potential clients.

HOSTAFRICA homepageHOSTAFRICA homepage

It leads to HOSTAFRICA holding solid first-page positions for a lot of searches related to building websites and online stores.

Keywords of Hostafrica.keThe best performing keywords of HOSTAFRICA

After HOSTAFRICA added a website builder on their website, they noticed a faster growth in SEO performance, including position rankings. We had an interview with Michael Osterloh, the founder of HOSTAFRICA, so time ago. If you want to know more about the Kenyan hosting market — make sure to take a look.

Michael Osterloh
For me, everything is about the ease of use. Even non-sophisticated guys need hosting services. We have to help them
Founder & Managing Director, South Africa
Hostafrica

How to Get Advantage as a Local Company

Even a smaller company that invests a bit of time into adopting additional services for its clients and investing a bit of time into updating menus and landing pages can potentially compete with giants like GoDaddy and Wix, at least in its local market.

For a quicker start, here’s a list of three tips to follow for hosting companies as well as some useful links.

Implement a website builder

By bulking your fast local servers and solid infrastructure with simple tools for actually building websites you can attract way more users. Not only that, but it will be easier to retain existing ones, sell more domains and upsell more expensive plans, simply because you’re adding more measurable and obvious value to your product.

To get a website builder, a hosting company doesn’t need to spend years developing an in-house solution. White Label and Revenue Share plans allow the installation of a developed website building tool on hosting panels.

A White Label plan allows you to fully brand the website builder as your own product and get 100% of the revenue, while Revenue Share is free; it gets unlimited free websites for your users and 50% for each premium website plan sold.

Create a landing page

Search engines and AI agents love original and useful content. Shoot two birds with one stone by making a landing page for the website builder and putting it in your menu.

A dedicated, well-optimised page can be better than paid ads in terms of effectiveness. Follow our guide to make an attractive page.

The page itself doesn't need to be very complicated, but it should at least include:

  • Promotional marketing materials, such as videos and images;
  • For AI website builders (a very popular option) an input field, where users can write their prompts. You can see an example of how it looks on our landing page. To learn how to add an input field on your website, check out the documentation;
  • Pricing — for AI, e-commerce, exclusive templates;
  • List of advantages of your solution;
  • Instructions and FAQs for users to follow. Again, nothing to write from scratch — the knowledge base can be downloaded.
Note: After you create a landing page, make sure it has incoming links from other pages on your website (other than the menu item). Add links to your AI website builder page from hosting plans, and other services if you have those.

Another important step is to optimise the meta information and keywords on your web page. Correct meta tags are very useful, but they must be not too long and not too short, otherwise a website can get penalised. If you want to learn how to optimise meta information and other SEO metrics in our website builder, check out the guide on SEO.

Ending Thoughts

To provide the best value for your customers and achieve growth, you need to always keep in mind who is your audience and what is the end-product your customers are searching for.

Most customers aren’t looking just for hosting servers. They want a website for a particular goal — an online store, a business website, a personal project, etc. Meet them when they are, that’s the best way to earn customer satisfaction and stay relevant on the market.