# HostingBrain

> Market intelligence on European web hosting — who owns it, what it charges, what runs on it — measured
> across the whole active-domains book and a validated ownership ledger, delivered as an MCP connector so
> analysts ask inside Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client and get answers with as-of dates and denominators.

## Findings — analyst briefs (each reproducible through the connector)

- [Analyst briefs](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/): short, data-grounded reads on hosting-market structure,
  each 100% reproducible through the MCP connector:
  - [The route checked out, it was still a forgery: a BGP hijack and RPKI](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/the-route-checked-out):
    The late-August hijack of Hetzner address space carried the victim's own ASN as origin, so it was
    RPKI-valid and origin validation had nothing to drop. ROA publication across the hosting estate is
    well advanced once the single largest announcer is set aside; ASPA publication is almost absent —
    only a handful of operators carry a verified publication at the path layer. Reproduce:
    email_security (free) for the mail-side parallel; the routing figures are from public RPKI/RIS data.
  - [The same word, leader, two floors down: who leads DNS in Europe](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/the-word-leader-two-floors-down):
    webhosting.today's Cloudflare finding corroborated and taken two floors down — brands folded
    into owners, who answers DNS separated from who operates hosting; every external figure
    attributed and dated, every our-side figure recomputed from the served dataset.
  - [European hosting groups measured: the Hosting Anatomy evidence](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/hosting-anatomy-evidence):
    the instrument readings behind the series — platform concentration, cohesion, own-network
    serving share — with the book and base of every figure named.
  - [Nobody left hosting, they left the bundle: hosting churn in Europe](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/hosting-stack-fragmented):
    hosting "churn" is often wallet fragmentation — front doors migrate quickly, trust (email, hosting) migrates
    slowly; builder platforms hold ~0% of the email relationship on the sites they serve (reproduce: stack_profile tool, free tier)
  - [Where the new websites are going: new-site hosting in Europe](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/new-site-momentum):
    once placeholder infrastructure and single-operator bulk events are screened out, traditional hosting still
    takes most new European websites and is the one class giving up ground; that ground splits
    between two fronts of similar size, CDN/edge fronting and a growing visible hyperscaler origin - no
    hyperscaler takeover, fewer than one new site in five (reproduce: hosting_momentum tool, free tier)
  - [The server moves, the customer doesn't: hosting switching by layer](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/layer-stickiness):
    the provider relationship changes at roughly one in ten a year for European business domains; the serving
    layer moves without it for about one domain in a thousand a year - the relationship is the atom of switching,
    and most raw 'migration' volume is not businesses switching
    (reproduce: layer_stickiness tool, free tier)
  - [Whoever holds the domain holds the customer: hosting customer control](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/relationship-control):
    connective thesis over three tools - traditional hosting holds new EU sites (most of the new
    cohort, though a smaller share than of the installed base), the provider relationship is far stickier than the
    server (the serving layer moves without it for about one domain in a thousand a year), and multi-domain owners
    consolidate (about two in three single-provider, on average owners keeping more than four-fifths of
    their domains with their primary provider, virtually all group-loyal owners inside a single brand); the prize is
    the control-plane relationship before SaaS/email/AI attach (reproduce: hosting_momentum + layer_stickiness + customer_faithfulness, all free)
  - [Hosting customers don't leave: provider loyalty in Europe](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/customer-faithfulness):
    provider share-of-wallet from the ownership graph - about two in three multi-domain owners are single-provider,
    cross-border barely dents it, per-provider exclusivity runs from about two-thirds down to two-fifths (book
    quality, not size); virtually all group-loyal owners sit within a single BRAND (conscious loyalty, not
    hidden-ownership artifact);
    measured on tracking-detected ownership to avoid a hosting-side confound
    (reproduce: customer_faithfulness tool, free tier; per-provider = analyst)
  - [Europe checks the mail, nobody stops it: SPF and DMARC enforcement](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/spf-without-enforcement):
    more than four in five of Europe's mail-carrying business domains publish SPF, but fewer than three in ten
    reject-on-fail, and only about one in ten back it with a DMARC reject policy. Enforcement does not follow
    adoption (Sweden publishes less than most and enforces more; Italy publishes widely and enforces little).
    Reproduce: email_security (free).
  - [Half the domains have no website: registry stock vs market size](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/domain-market-vs-hosting-market):
    web-provisioned share of 15 official registry totals runs 49.5% (.de) to 78.7% (.fi); the gap is
    never-web-provisioned registrar stock — between a fifth and a half of registered stock, varying by
    country, so registry totals overstate the addressable market everywhere. Reproduce: coverage_calibration (free).
  - [Who really owns Europe's hosting: market share and concentration](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/market-concentration):
    concentration is three questions on three actor bases; the market-POWER reading is actor-pure
    (hosting competitors only, CDN/SaaS/DNS-infrastructure actors excluded) - on the hosting-relationship HHI
    Norway is highly concentrated, Denmark, Sweden and France are concentrated too, and the Netherlands is the most
    open of the markets we measure, while Europe taken as one book is unconcentrated on the control-plane
    reading. Consolidation is national, and the customer relationship concentrates ahead of the infrastructure
    (in Norway the relationships sit with about three effective owners, the infrastructure with more than twice as many)
    (reproduce: market_concentration tool, free tier)
  - [Cheap first year, then three times the price: hosting renewal cliffs in Europe](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/renewal-cliff):
    1623 offers state both intro and renewal price - 88.6% renew higher, median shared-hosting cliff 3.1x,
    pricing baseline 2026-11-09; the norm is national (from about 2x in the UK to over 4x in Denmark),
    and the deepest teasers sit on consolidator storefronts in roughly the consolidators' share of the
    book (reproduce: market_pricing tool, free tier)
  - [Three ways to sell a domain: business models in hosting](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/hostings-second-act):
    "hosting" now conceals three models — GoDaddy monetises the domain funnel (customers flat, ARPU +9%),
    IONOS pairs web presence with sovereign European cloud, and Europe's consolidators are becoming
    SMB-software buyers (19 of team.blue's 34 validated acquisitions are software). The books are not
    comparable: active-domains footprints 18.5M (GoDaddy) vs 3.28M/1.97M/1.39M/0.99M (United Internet/IONOS,
    team.blue, group.one, Your.Online), and measured acquisition integration spans 0.68 to 0.08 — an
    external test of every platform story (reproduce: consolidation_landscape + saas_diversification +
    integration_depth, free/analyst; snapshot 2026-07-26)
  - [The AI web is one company: AI website builders in Europe](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/ai-website-builders-europe):
    across the thirteen European markets we publish, 9,811 of 5,558,504 active domains showing a homepage
    or shop page carry an AI website builder — 0.177% of that book — against 389,385 (7.0%) on
    conventional hosted builders, 39.7 times as many, and 3,028,991 (54.5%) on WordPress. Restrict the
    book to the 1,852,937 domains re-read since 24 July (33.3% of it) and the AI share is
    0.25%, so the gap is not an artefact of when we looked. The category is one product: Lovable is
    8,284 of the 9,811 detections (84.4%), and 67.1% of the 4,638 detections on that re-read cohort,
    where every product has had the same observation window — both readings are published. Detection is
    a marker in the page, so every AI figure is a floor (reproduce: technology_adoption, category totals
    free and the per-product breakdown Pro; definitions(term='technology_adoption') free; snapshot
    2026-09-06)
  - [Buy first, integrate never: acquired brands in European hosting](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/integration-backlog):
    across nine European groups that run a shared platform, 57 of 87 acquired brands have their customers
    served from a group platform and 23 do not, two or more years after the deal — 1,266,388 live domains.
    21 of the 23 have moved nothing at all (median 49 months since the deal, 20 of them under 5% migrated);
    the other two moved mail only. All seven owners carrying one announced further acquisitions afterwards,
    78 validated deals, while 0.47%-22.33% of their own books moved between platforms they already control.
    Aggregate-level: the brief names no group (reproduce: integration_depth + group_movement, both Pro;
    definitions(term='integration_depth') free; snapshot 2026-08-09)
  - [Three buyers, half the software deals: European hosting acquisitions](https://hostingbrain.ai/briefs/hosting-groups-software-shift):
    the up-stack shift is concentrated, not general — 75 of 262 validated acquisitions and mergers by 22
    consolidator groups took a software or adjacent target, and three buyers (team.blue, group.one,
    cyber_Folks) account for 38 of those 75. Of the 14 groups with five or more validated deals, three have
    made no non-hosting acquisition at all, including hosting.com at 23 deals and none. The record is a
    validated floor built from primary announcements, and a deal count says nothing about whether an
    acquired product was ever sold to a hosting customer — that is a billing fact and billing is private
    (reproduce: saas_diversification + consolidation_landscape, both Pro; definitions(group='ownership')
    free; snapshot 2026-08-03)

## Markets — one page per country

- [European hosting market share, by country](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/): one page per market —
  market share, concentration, market size, email posture and the LOCAL search vocabulary buyers use;
  aggregate-level, denominator-stated, every figure reproducible through the connector:
  (concentration is quoted as hosting-relationship HHI — ACTOR-PURE, hosting competitors only, CDN/SaaS/
  DNS-infrastructure actors excluded — which is the market-POWER reading; the infrastructure figure
  beside it counts where workloads run, and the two are never the same question)
  - [Norway hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/no): the most concentrated market we
    publish — hosting-relationship HHI 3,330 (highly concentrated), ~3 effective owners holding
    80.0% of relationships in the top three, against ~8.8 effective infrastructures; 422,832 live
    business domains; buyers search 'webhotell'/'domene' (reproduce: market_concentration,
    market_digitization, email_security — free tier)
  - [Denmark hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/dk): hosting-relationship HHI 2,555
    (highly concentrated), ~3.9 effective owners against ~5.6 effective infrastructures; 4 of 9
    tracked storefronts display a flat price yet the median measured renewal cliff is 5.5x, and
    weighting storefronts by the customer relationships each serves the renewal the average Danish
    customer meets is 4.5x the first year; storefronts serving 94.9% of captured relationships
    publish a second-year price we can read against the first; 536,319 live business domains; buyers
    search 'webhotel'/'hosting' (reproduce: market_concentration / market_pricing / email_security —
    free tier)
  - [France hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/fr): thin ownership, contested
    acquisition — hosting-relationship HHI 1,935 (moderately concentrated), ~5.2 effective owners
    against ~6.6 effective infrastructures, the largest single control-plane actor at 32.6% of the
    book; at least 5 ownership groups hold page-one positions on the hosting terms we track there,
    90% of 10 tracked storefronts acquire on teaser pricing and storefronts serving 60.1% of
    captured relationships publish a renewal price; 2,278,888 live business domains; buyers search
    'hébergement'/'hébergeur' (reproduce: market_concentration / market_pricing / search_visibility
    — free tier)
  - [Sweden hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/se): ownership roughly halves effective
    competition — hosting-relationship HHI 1,978 (moderately concentrated), ~5.1 effective owners
    against ~10.2 effective infrastructures; 733,471 live business domains; buyers search
    'webbhotell'/'domän' (reproduce: market_concentration / market_digitization / email_security —
    free tier)
  - [Italy hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/it): commerce ahead of controls —
    hosting-relationship HHI 1,740 (moderately concentrated, across the 1,500 moderate line), ~5.7
    effective owners against ~6.5 effective infrastructures; e-commerce tooling on 36.4% of
    fingerprinted sites and a detectable CMS on 65.6%, both the highest we publish, while only 1.9%
    of mail-carrying Italian domains publish a DMARC policy that rejects forged mail — the lowest we
    publish — and 53.9% publish monitoring-only p=none; 1,789,315 live business domains; buyers
    search 'hosting'/'domini' — the English word is the door, the market behind it is Italian
    (reproduce: market_concentration / technology_adoption / email_security — free tier)
  - [United Kingdom hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/uk): a platform market —
    hosting-relationship HHI 2,636 (highly concentrated on hosting competitors only), ~3.8 effective
    owners, but the infrastructure-inclusive control-plane reading makes the field look 1.5x more
    plural than the hosting competition is (the widest such wedge we publish); website-builder
    software detected on 14.4% of measured sites, about three times the median of our other markets;
    4,810,965 live business domains; pricing coverage is 14.0% so NO market price or renewal cliff
    is stated; buyers search 'web hosting'/'domain names' (reproduce: market_concentration /
    technology_adoption / search_visibility — free tier)
  - [Germany hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/de): Europe's largest and genuinely
    contested — hosting-relationship HHI 1,226 (unconcentrated), ~8.2 effective owners against ~12.4
    effective infrastructures; EUR0.84/mo entry for the average customer and a 5.0x median renewal
    cliff; 6,153,999 live business domains; buyers search 'webhosting'/'hosting' (reproduce:
    market_concentration / market_pricing / email_security — free)
  - [Czechia hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/cz): open ownership, sold on the first
    year — hosting-relationship HHI 1,051 (unconcentrated), ~9.5 effective owners against ~15.5
    effective infrastructures and no actor above 21.9%; at least 4 of 7 tracked Czech storefronts
    acquire on teaser pricing, share-weighted entry EUR1.52/mo ex-VAT, and storefronts serving 37.9%
    of captured relationships publish a renewal price; 825,572 live business domains; buyers search
    'webhosting'/'domén' (reproduce: market_concentration / market_pricing / email_security — free
    tier)
  - [Poland hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/pl): an acquisition market —
    hosting-relationship HHI 756 (unconcentrated), ~13.2 effective owners against ~17.6 effective
    infrastructures; 9 of 9 tracked storefronts use teaser mechanics, share-weighted entry
    EUR0.71/mo ex-VAT and storefronts serving only 85.9% of captured relationships publish a renewal
    price; 1,235,660 live business domains; buyers search 'hosting'/'domen' (reproduce:
    market_concentration / market_pricing / email_security — free tier)
  - [Finland hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/fi): fragmented ownership, thin priced
    coverage — hosting-relationship HHI 804 (unconcentrated), ~12.4 effective owners against ~14.7
    effective infrastructures; the 6 tracked storefronts cover only 39.1% of customer relationships,
    and weighting them by the businesses each serves moves entry from EUR4.40 to EUR4.90/mo — the
    larger operators price ABOVE the storefront median; 334,652 live business domains; buyers search
    'webhotelli'/'verkkotunnus', and at least 3 tracked ownership groups hold page-one positions
    through 5 different local brands (reproduce: market_concentration / market_pricing /
    search_visibility — free tier)
  - [Switzerland hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/ch): premium pricing without
    concentration — hosting-relationship HHI 620 (unconcentrated), ~16.1 effective owners against
    ~13.7 effective infrastructures; share-weighted entry EUR11.93/mo ex-VAT against an EUR9.37
    storefront median (the highest we publish), storefronts covering just 25.8% of captured
    relationships state a renewal price, and 35.4% of mail-carrying domains publish a DMARC policy
    that enforces — rejects or quarantines forged mail — the highest we publish; 1,247,605 live
    business domains; no national search vocabulary is published — the Swiss storefronts we capture
    all sell in German while the country buys in German, French and Italian (reproduce:
    market_concentration / market_pricing / email_security — free tier)
  - [Spain hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/es): disclosed repricing —
    hosting-relationship HHI 523 (unconcentrated), ~19.1 effective owners against ~14.9 effective
    infrastructures (the customer book is spread across MORE owners than infrastructures); 93% of 15
    tracked storefronts acquire on teaser pricing, median measured renewal cliff 4.3x, and
    storefronts serving 100% of captured relationships publish the renewal price, so the step up is
    advertised rather than discovered; 948,959 live business domains; buyers search
    'alojamiento'/'hosting' (reproduce: market_concentration / market_pricing / email_security —
    free tier)
  - [Netherlands hosting market](https://hostingbrain.ai/markets/nl): the most open market we
    publish — hosting-relationship HHI 435 (unconcentrated, hosting competitors only), ~23 effective
    owners against ~25.6 effective infrastructures, so counting owners barely thins it; 88% of
    tracked storefronts still acquire on teaser pricing, median measured renewal cliff 7.5x;
    2,526,384 live business domains; buyers search 'webhosting'/'hosting' (reproduce:
    market_concentration / market_pricing / email_security — free)
- [Get a free key](https://hostingbrain.ai/#access): instant self-serve free tier; Pro (EUR 149/month) and
  Analyst (EUR 1,200/month) are monthly subscriptions, cancel any time; the Deal Workspace (EUR
  8,500/transaction) is by request
- [MCP endpoint](https://mcp.hostingbrain.ai/mcp): Streamable HTTP with OAuth 2.1 or bearer key — built on the
  open MCP standard, so it works in Claude, ChatGPT (Plus/Pro developer-mode connectors), Claude Code, Cursor
  and any MCP-compatible client; add as a custom connector, or find `ai.hostingbrain/intelligence` on the MCP Registry
- [Service health](https://mcp.hostingbrain.ai/health): public status endpoint

## About HostingBrain and how it measures

HostingBrain continuously observes the web-provisioned domain population (355M+ web-provisioned domains
globally, 234M+ web-active, 181M+ active
domains — a domain classification, not a company or legal-entity count — verified activity: operating email, live web content or platform provisioning; weekly refresh, calibrated against public registry totals such as Norid and SIDN. Web-active is the "verified web-serving" definition (updated 2026-07-18, not comparable to earlier published values): positive evidence only, including residence on infrastructure proven by the confirmed businesses it carries; the unverifiable remainder is disclosed, not counted). Population baseline dated 2026-11-08.
and maintains a validated, source-linked ledger of 291 hosting-industry events — 263 validated
acquisitions and mergers, plus 28 other tracked entries (divestitures, rebrands, portfolio
enumerations) — including the sector's diversification into SaaS. Coverage: provider market structure per European country
(control-plane — who runs the nameservers — plus hosting, email, web-platform layers), consolidator groups (team.blue, group.one,
your.online, united_internet, IONOS, GoDaddy, Newfold, Miss Group, World Host Group, cyber_folks, Tucows,
iomart and others), operator dossiers with ownership evidence, M&A market mapping, and book-health
analysis. Research confidentiality: customer query subjects are never visible to other
customers and never sold. All intelligence is lawful public-source (OSINT): DNS, HTTP, TLS, public
registry-scale signals, and source-linked public M&A records — no private customer data, credentialed
access, leaked data or intrusive scanning, and nothing appended from personal contact or
consumer-profile sources.

HostingBrain started in 2025 as an internal research project observing Europe's web-provisioned domain
population, and powered private analyst briefings on hosting M&A before opening external access in 2026.
It was built AI-native (an MCP connector rather than a BI dashboard) because the analysts it serves
already work inside AI assistants. As part of external opening, the project has been spun out into
HostingBrain ApS (CVR 46679091, Denmark).

## Documentation

- [Homepage](https://hostingbrain.ai/): what HostingBrain answers, example product output and setup
  instructions
- [Platform](https://hostingbrain.ai/platform): the analytical modules (market structure, operator
  dossiers, consolidation, integration depth, pricing, technology/attach, book quality) and delivery
  modes (AI-assistant connector, dossiers, API/scheduled delivery, custom datasets)
- [Solutions](https://hostingbrain.ai/solutions/): workflow pages per buyer —
  [vendors and partners](https://hostingbrain.ai/solutions/vendors) (channel sizing and attach
  whitespace), [hosting operators](https://hostingbrain.ai/solutions/operators) (benchmarking,
  integration, pricing posture), [investors and advisors](https://hostingbrain.ai/solutions/investors-advisors)
  (market research for transactions and the Deal Workspace; research, not investment advice)
- [Data and methodology](https://hostingbrain.ai/data-methodology): population definitions
  (web-provisioned / web-active / active domains), market layers, public sources, what HostingBrain
  does not claim, and the versioned-release policy
- [European web hosting statistics](https://hostingbrain.ai/european-web-hosting-statistics): the
  citation page — domain populations by tier, hosting market share and concentration for every market
  listed under /markets/, website technology and email-authentication adoption each stated with the
  base it is measured on, and consolidation counts from a validated ownership ledger. Every figure is
  an observation of the live web carrying its population and its data-snapshot date; no revenue
  market size and no growth forecast are published, because neither is observable from the web
- [Pricing](https://hostingbrain.ai/pricing): Explore (free), Pro (EUR 149/month), Analyst
  (EUR 1,200/month), Deal Workspace (EUR 8,500/transaction);
  Pro and Analyst are monthly subscriptions, cancel any time; the Deal Workspace is by request
- [Sample dossier](https://hostingbrain.ai/sample-dossier): what an operator dossier contains,
  shown on a clearly-labelled composite archetype with real aggregate ranges
- [About](https://hostingbrain.ai/about): why the company exists and how data quality is reviewed
- [Contact / walkthrough](https://hostingbrain.ai/contact): question-first walkthrough booking
- [Security overview](https://hostingbrain.ai/security): architecture, authentication, data
  protection — the vendor-review one-pager
- [Terms of service](https://hostingbrain.ai/tos): acceptable use, extraction limits, research
  confidentiality
- [Privacy policy](https://hostingbrain.ai/privacy): GDPR basis, data categories, objection route