EIG BlueHost – (Endurance International Group) Who are they?
EIG BlueHost (Endurance International Group) is the holding company for hosting service providers such as HostGator and BlueHost. In total, the company boasts over eighty brands – most of which are hosting companies.
EIG – Brief History
The company began life initially in 1996 as Bizland in Burlington Massachusett and has since grown to be the largest hosting company in the world. The company acquired BlueHost in 2010 and were themselves acquired by Accel – KR and GS Capital partners the next year. Since then, they’ve become a listed company with at least, One Billion U.S dollars in market capitalization.
EIG Infamy – Why is it disliked?
The company is publicly listed and is required to cut costs as a result. Inevitably, this cost cutting affects its performance and so, it tends to come under some criticism as a result.
EIG – Why is it important to know them?
If you’re looking to start an online business, it’s important to understand this holding company because it holds tremendous competitive sway over the web hosting service niche. As a result, it’s able to set pricing in such a way as to leave you no options or alternatives from time to time.
Also, depending on your interest or the value of digital assets, it might be important to diversify your digital portfolio across a wide variety of hosting providers in such a way that leaves you an option should there be any issues with EIG owned assets.
EIG – What happens when it acquires a hosting service provider?
If the past is any indication, it is certain that the company will continue to expand its services and acquire new hosting companies as they reach a certain scale. Should this be the case, there are certain possibilities to look out for, and guard yourself against.
- Customer/technical service depletion
- Data center changes
- Staff changes – layoffs mostly
- Infrastructure overhauls
EIG cycle – Why is this important
This means for the most part that the company has a policy that lets it acquire companies without any formal notifications. This means that even when you switch, you might very well be switching to a company owned by Endurance International Group. While this seems ominous, you can solve the problem by diversifying your digital assets across various platforms such that any issues that occur with an EIG owned service can be mitigated by a non-EIG owned service.
How to solve this problem
While the Round-robin servers, or other load balancing networks are highly technical and will take some time to complete correctly, they are an option to protect yourself from downtimes, and other possibilities that may occur from using an EIG owned hosting provider. Many hosting companies offer load balancing services at a cost as well.
Find here, a list of companies that EIG own.
Find here, a practical guide to load balancing
Conclusion
While the nature and scope of EIG is not of particular importance to most people who host their services on the platform, it might help to understand the wide-reach and impact that a holding company with this level of influence can have on your day to day experiences.
In many cases, when companies such as BlueHost are acquired by industry specialists like EIG, resources are shared to cut costs and optimize production efficiencies and these can manifest as lag or latency in service speeds, customer-service lag or even downtime in certain instances.
To this end, it might be wise to consider load balancing or distribute your digital assets across different hosts to prevent a complete shutdown of your operations and service activities when cross-functional, multi-dimensional problems arise.
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