[jasongill]

Shared hosting is dying, but not yet dead; FTP is dying with it - it's really the last big use case for FTP now that software distribution and academia have moved away from FTP. As shared hosting continues to decline in popularity, FTP is going along with it.

Like you, I will miss the glory days of FTP :'(

[theshackleford]

Shared hosting is in decline in much the same way as it was in 2015. Aka everyone involved is still making money hand over fist despite continued reports of its death right around the corner.

[tredre3]

The number of shared hosting providers has drastically declined since the 2000s. I would posit that things like squarespace/hosted wordpress took the lion share, with the advent of $5-10 VPS filling the remaining niches.

The remaining hosting companies certainly still make a lot of money, a shared hosting business is basically on autopilot once set up (I used to own one, hence why I still track the market) and they can be overcommitted like crazy.

[theshackleford]

> The number of shared hosting providers has drastically declined since the 2000s

Yeah, there’s definitely been some wild consolidation. I’ve actually been involved in quite a few acquisitions myself over the last decade in one form or another.

> (I used to own one, hence why I still track the market)

I’m still in the industry, though in a very different segment now. I do still keep a small handful of legacy customers, folks I’ve known for years, on shared setups, but it’s more of a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” kind of thing now. It’s not really a profit play, more a mix of nostalgia and habit.

[immibis]

Source on the number of providers declining?

[nativeit]

Probably worth noting also that declining number of providers does not equal a declining number of customers. I know every company I engaged with ~15-years ago has been acquired at least once.

[immibis]

And there are new ones all the time.

[jasongill]

No, not at all the case. There has been continued consolidation of the shared hosting space, plus consumer interest in "a website" has declined sharply now that small businesses just feel that they need an instagram to get started. Combine that with site builders eating at shared hosting's market share, and it's not looking good for the future of the "old school" shared hosting industry that you are thinking of.

[SoftTalker]

Seems short sighted, a lot of older people and privacy conscious people of all ages avoid social media. But I guess if they are sustaining a business on only Instagram, good for them.

[theshackleford]

> There has been continued consolidation of the shared hosting space

That’s been happening, at least from my own memory, since at least the mid-2000s.

> plus consumer interest in "a website" has declined sharply now that small businesses just feel that they need an instagram to get started.

Ah yes, the 2020s version of “just start a Facebook page.” The more things change, the more they stay the same I suppose.

> Combine that with site builders eating at shared hosting's market share

I remember hearing that for the first time in I wanna say...2006? It sure did cause a panic for at least a little while.

> and it's not looking good for the future of the "old school" shared hosting industry that you are thinking of.

Yes, I've heard this one more times than I can count too.

The funny thing is, I’ve been hearing this same “shared hosting is dying” narrative for nearly two decades now. Yet, in that time, I’ve seen multiple companies launch, thrive, and sell for multi-million dollar exits.

But sure, this time it’s definitely the death knell. Meanwhile, I assure you, the bigger players in the space are still making money hand over fist.

https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/web-host...

> By hosting type, shared hosting led with 37.5% of the web hosting market share in 2024

[jasongill]

I was in the space from the late 90's, acquired ~30 brands and was the largest private consolidator of shared hosting, and sold to a Fortune 500 in 2015. Sounds like you had a similar experience as mine. There's no way you can deny that the glory days of shared hosting are over - while there is still a little money to be made by setting up a VPS with cPanel, and money to be made if you are WebPros or Newfold, the market is contracting and has been for years due to the factors I listed. The Cheval list used to be the hottest marketplace on the planet and now is just a shell of it's former self, unfortunately.

[valiant55]

I think everyone is underestimating how much B2B file exchange happens over SFTP/FTPS. I'm in healthcare and my system moves thousands of files up and down from over 100 unique hosts daily.

[bawolff]

I think the true death of ftp was amazon s3 deciding to use their own protocol instead of ftp, as s3 is basically the same niche.

[HumanOstrich]

FTP does not even come close to supporting the use cases of S3, especially now.

[bawolff]

Yeah, but the average s3 user doesnt care about most of those most of the time.

Just like how there are usecases ftp supports that s3 doesn't.