[mokarrabin]

It seems that all small hosts future is doomed.

By small host, i mean companies with 50 to 5000 clients.

There are mainly two factors why small hosts might not survive.
Firstly there are big companies with bottomless funding who wants every client in their pocket.
They have the advertising capacity to reach all clients, for example godaddy or 1and1.
Not only will they eventually reach all clients but such companies ad campaigns will also make it impossible for smaller companies to advertise and get any clients at all. Just think about adwords or overture. Nobody is making profit for $15 per click but they are successfully blocking others.

Secoundly, they will get them as they will eventually offer the lowest price. They have their own data center and big volume , their bulk pricing will reach the bottom.

In the process of price cutting, all resellers will fall out of business first. Like resellers with a reseller account or with one or more dedi servers. Because they wont be able to advertise and they wont also be able to offer lower pricing at one stage. More importantly clients wont go to a reseller, when the branded ones are offering lower pricing.

Now lets see what the user wants. Definately the best, the better and the impossible for the least price. They just cant get a good nights sleep without signing up with the host thats giving 20 gig for $5, even though their site is only 1 mb. These customers will eventually realize that the bigger companies gives better uptime, support and over all servcies. Top hosters might even run on loss for years to do that but they will get every client first. At the same time customers will be bomberded by the massive campaigns of the bigboys and their daddies.

This is just an economic assumption... this is the same thing that happened to other sectors, just think!

So does anybody thinks that this wont be true and what should small hosters do to survive ?