When you're shopping for web hosting, you might compare five different companies and feel good about having options. The problem: several of those companies are the same company under different brand names. Here's everything owned by the EIG/Newfold conglomerate and why it matters for the hosting decision you're making.
Endurance International Group (EIG) spent the 2000s and 2010s systematically acquiring web hosting brands. The strategy was consistent: buy established hosts with loyal customer bases, consolidate them onto shared infrastructure, reduce headcount and support quality, and extract margin. In 2021, EIG merged with Web.com Group and rebranded as Newfold Digital.
The result is a single company that controls a significant portion of the shared hosting market while presenting itself as dozens of independent competitors. The brands maintain separate websites, different pricing pages, and different marketing identities, but the underlying infrastructure, support systems, and product direction are centralised. Shopping between these brands is not shopping between genuinely different products.
Bluehost (acquired 2010): Still one of the most recommended WordPress hosts due to historical affiliate relationships with WordPress.org. Performance and support have declined measurably since acquisition. The WordPress.org recommendation is commercial, not merit-based.
HostGator (acquired 2012): Was a well-regarded independent host known for flexible shared hosting and good support. Now runs on the same consolidated infrastructure as Bluehost with a similar quality trajectory.
iPage (acquired 2010): Budget-tier host, minimal features, a price trap for first-time buyers who don't know better. Essentially a brand that exists to capture price-sensitive buyers with no meaningful product differentiation.
Network Solutions (acquired via Web.com merger): Legacy domain registrar and hosting company. Pre-merger, it had decades of history as an independent brand.
Register.com (acquired via Web.com): Domain registrar, absorbed into the portfolio.
A2 Hosting (acquired 2019): Had a stronger independent reputation for speed and developer tooling. Post-acquisition quality is debated; they've maintained more product identity than some Newfold brands but the trajectory since 2019 is mixed.
Justhost, FatCow, Netfirms: Smaller budget brands under the same umbrella, largely interchangeable products with different brand identities targeting different demographic segments.
When EIG acquires a host, several things typically happen over 12–24 months post-acquisition: support staff are reduced, data centres are consolidated, custom infrastructure is migrated to standardised EIG systems, and investment in product development slows or stops. The brand name stays the same, so customers don't immediately notice. Reviews start declining 12–24 months post-acquisition as the transition completes and the cost-cutting manifests in the customer experience.
Multiple EIG brands often run on the same physical servers in the same data centres. Switching from Bluehost to HostGator to "get away" from Bluehost can mean literally moving to a different brand on the same rack. This is well-documented, both brands share server infrastructure and the same shared IP ranges appear in technical investigations of both platforms.
Most hosting review websites operate on affiliate commission models. Hosts that pay higher commissions tend to rank higher in "best hosting" lists regardless of product quality. Bluehost, specifically, pays some of the highest affiliate commissions in the industry, which is why it remains prominently recommended despite its product quality declining since the EIG acquisition.
When evaluating hosting recommendations, check whether the recommending site uses affiliate links (a disclosure is often required by law but sometimes buried). The presence of affiliate links doesn't make a recommendation invalid, but it explains why some hosts with mediocre products remain prominent in "best of" lists year after year. Developer forums, Reddit communities, and independent technical reviews tend to be more reliable than commission-driven review sites.
Look for hosting companies that are privately owned and not part of a conglomerate. Check Crunchbase or LinkedIn for ownership information if you're unsure. Ask directly: "Are you owned by or affiliated with Newfold Digital, EIG, GoDaddy, or any other large holding company?" Any evasive answer is informative.
Genuinely independent hosts include Kinsta, SiteGround (independently owned, privately held), DreamHost, and smaller regional hosts with transparent ownership. Cloudways is now owned by DigitalOcean but maintains a distinct product with its own infrastructure layer. The acquisition context matters; even independent brands can be acquired and changed over time.
HostBible is independently owned with no EIG/Newfold affiliation. Our infrastructure investment decisions are driven by product quality rather than margin extraction targets set by a holding company.
The practical implication is straightforward: if you're comparing multiple shared hosting options and want to genuinely compare different products, exclude Newfold-owned brands from comparison with each other. They're the same product category under different labels. Compare one Newfold brand (if you want to include one at all) against independent alternatives.
The brands to avoid if product quality and independent ownership matter: Bluehost, HostGator, iPage, Justhost, FatCow, Network Solutions hosting. These are all effectively the same product from the same company with declining quality trajectories and no meaningful competitive pressure on each other because they don't actually compete, they're the same organisation.
No conglomerate ownership, no consolidated infrastructure. LiteSpeed, daily backups, free migration, and honest pricing.
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