The State of Web Hosting Q2 2026
Where new websites actually live: hosting brand-share trends across 2,013,989 launches.
Read the live, interactive report at websitelaunches.com/reports/state-of-web-hosting-q2-2026
Executive Summary
Developer platforms are gaining share. Classic site builders are getting hit. Shared hosting is roughly flat to slightly down. AI builders are still small, but growing.
- At the category level, dev platforms rose from 31.0% to 33.9% share, while site builders fell from 28.8% to 24.7% — the largest category decline in the report.
- Vercel led the quarter, powering 355,994 launches — 17.7% of all sites with an identified host.
- Netlify was the quarter's biggest riser, gaining 1.85 share points from the first tracked week to the last, with weekly volume up 61%.
- Wix and Squarespace were the clearest losers. Wix lost 2.08 share points and Squarespace lost 1.47 points, the two largest brand-level declines in the dataset.
- Shared hosts remained broadly stable, slipping from 32.3% to 31.7% share.
- AI builders remain a smaller category, but their share rose from 3.2% to 4.3%, led by Lovable and GPT Engineer.
About this first edition
This first report covers the 12 complete weeks since hosting-brand detection began: Mar 23–Jun 8, 2026. Because collection started late in March, this edition straddles the Q1/Q2 boundary. Future editions will align to full calendar quarters.
Coverage has held steady at roughly 55% of launches, so weekly trends reflect market movement rather than improving detection.
What This Tracks
Every site we discover is fingerprinted for the hosting brand actually serving it — the same hosting value shown on each site's launch-record page. This report rolls that signal up by week so you can see how the hosting market is shifting in near real time, rather than as a single end-of-quarter snapshot. Share is measured as a percentage of all launches that week with an identified host, which controls for week-to-week swings in total launch volume.
Weekly Share Trend
The top 8 hosts by quarter volume, plotted as weekly share of identified-host launches. Vercel and Hostinger trade the lead at the top, while the developer-oriented platforms below them climb steadily across the quarter.
Hosting Brand Share by Week (% of identified-host launches)
Quarter Leaderboard
All 20 tracked brands ranked by total volume this quarter, with the share change from the first tracked week (Mar 23) to the last (Jun 8).
| # | Hosting Brand | Sites | Share | Wk1 → Wk12 | Δ pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Vercel
Dev platform
Cloud platform built for front-end frameworks; created Next.js and is the go-to deploy target for React/Next.js developers.
|
355,994 | 17.3% → 18.4% | ▲ 1.09 | |
| 2 |
Hostinger
Shared host
Budget shared-hosting giant from Lithuania, known for ultra-low-cost plans and an in-house website builder.
|
350,504 | 18.7% → 17.8% | ▼ 0.94 | |
| 3 |
Shopify
Site builder
Hosted e-commerce platform that powers a large share of independent online stores.
|
264,187 | 12.4% → 13.0% | ▲ 0.59 | |
| 4 |
Netlify
Dev platform
Developer platform for static sites and serverless functions; helped popularize the JAMstack approach.
|
137,271 | 6.0% → 7.8% | ▲ 1.85 | |
| 5 |
Namecheap
Registrar/host
Domain registrar that also sells affordable shared hosting.
|
116,491 | 5.7% → 5.7% | – 0.01 | |
| 6 |
Wix
Site builder
Drag-and-drop website builder aimed at non-technical users and small businesses.
|
105,760 | 6.2% → 4.1% | ▼ 2.08 | |
| 7 |
Squarespace
Site builder
Design-led website builder popular for portfolios, small businesses, and online stores.
|
87,321 | 5.1% → 3.6% | ▼ 1.47 | |
| 8 |
Lovable
AI builder
AI app builder ("vibe coding") that generates full web apps from a text prompt — one of the fastest-growing AI dev tools.
|
61,772 | 2.3% → 3.4% | ▲ 1.02 | |
| 9 |
GitHub Pages
Dev platform
Free static-site hosting served straight from a GitHub repository; common for docs and project sites.
|
51,677 | 2.5% → 2.6% | ▲ 0.09 | |
| 10 |
GoDaddy
Registrar/host
One of the largest domain registrars and web hosts.
|
43,663 | 2.1% → 2.0% | ▼ 0.11 | |
| 11 |
IONOS
Shared host
European web host and registrar (formerly 1&1), based in Germany.
|
39,580 | 2.2% → 1.7% | ▼ 0.51 | |
| 12 |
Render
Dev platform
Developer cloud for hosting apps, APIs, and static sites — often pitched as a modern Heroku alternative.
|
36,940 | 1.5% → 2.1% | ▲ 0.61 | |
| 13 |
Google App Engine
Dev platform
Google Cloud's fully managed platform for hosting web apps.
|
29,703 | 1.7% → 1.2% | ▼ 0.46 | |
| 14 |
Host Industry
Shared host
Shared web-hosting provider.
|
29,545 | 1.0% → 2.2% | ▲ 1.23 | |
| 15 |
WordPress.com
Site builder
Hosted WordPress service run by Automattic (distinct from self-hosted WordPress).
|
24,034 | 1.5% → 1.1% | ▼ 0.41 | |
| 16 |
GoHighLevel
Site builder
All-in-one marketing and CRM platform for agencies; hosts client sites and funnels.
|
20,593 | 1.1% → 0.9% | ▼ 0.26 | |
| 17 |
Railway
Dev platform
Developer platform for deploying apps and databases with minimal configuration.
|
20,402 | 1.0% → 1.0% | – 0.02 | |
| 18 |
20i (StackCP)
Shared host
UK-based hosting and reseller platform built on the StackCP control panel.
|
16,719 | 0.9% → 0.8% | ▼ 0.15 | |
| 19 |
AWS S3
Dev platform
Amazon's object storage, commonly used to serve static websites.
|
16,354 | 0.9% → 0.7% | ▼ 0.21 | |
| 20 |
GPT Engineer
AI builder
AI app builder that generates web apps from prompts (the project that became Lovable).
|
14,153 | 0.3% → 0.8% | ▲ 0.43 |
Movers of the Quarter
Biggest shifts in share between the first and last tracked week. These are the brands whose momentum — up or down — defined Q2.
▲ Gaining Share
▼ Losing Share
Platform Archetypes
Grouping the leading brands into four archetypes shows the underlying story more clearly than any single logo. Dev platforms (Vercel, Netlify, Render, GitHub Pages…) and AI builders (Lovable, GPT Engineer, Manus…) are expanding, while traditional site builders (Wix, Squarespace…) give up ground. This is our categorization, not a vendor taxonomy.
Platform-Type Share by Week (% of identified-host launches)
| Platform Type | Sites | Wk1 share | Wk12 share | Δ pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dev Platforms | 652,796 | 31.0% | 33.9% | +2.94 |
| Shared Hosts | 636,403 | 32.3% | 31.7% | -0.58 |
| Site Builders | 545,451 | 28.8% | 24.7% | -4.12 |
| AI Builders | 84,605 | 3.2% | 4.3% | +1.05 |
| Other | 94,734 | 4.7% | 5.4% | +0.72 |
How to Read This
The hosting brand is a customer-facing fingerprint — not the underlying CDN. A site fronted by Cloudflare but actually served from Vercel is tagged as the latter.
Share is computed per week against that week's identified-host launches, so the trend lines are not distorted by the overall growth in launch volume across the quarter.
Which Launches Actually Stick
A launch only matters if the site is still there a month later. This final section flips the question from who gets the most launches to whose launches survive. For every host we take the sites that are now more than 30 days old (1,317,403 in total) and read two signals from each site's launch record: whether it reached the “30 days operational” milestone, and whether it ever logged a major outage (a “service interruption detected” event). Only the 28 hosts with at least 5,000 qualifying sites are ranked, so the rates are stable. The 30-day age cut-off makes the test fair for every host.
30-Day Survival Rate by Host (% of >30-day-old sites still operational)
| # | Hosting Brand | Cohort (>30d) | 30-day survival | Outage rate | Up now |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Loopia | 6,373 | 96.8% | 2.2% | 97.4% |
| 2 | o2switch | 6,275 | 96.8% | 2.6% | 97.1% |
| 3 | GoDaddy Registrar/host | 29,795 | 95.5% | 4.8% | 94.8% |
| 4 | Bluehost | 5,055 | 95.4% | 5.2% | 94.6% |
| 5 | Sellvia | 8,294 | 95.4% | 8.3% | 92.9% |
| 6 | Epik | 5,328 | 94.7% | 5.7% | 93.2% |
| 7 | Vercel Dev platform | 233,401 | 94.6% | 5.0% | 94.2% |
| 8 | AWS S3 Dev platform | 11,527 | 94.4% | 5.8% | 93.6% |
| 9 | GoHighLevel Site builder | 14,249 | 94.4% | 5.1% | 93.7% |
| 10 | Netlify Dev platform | 86,300 | 94.4% | 5.0% | 94.1% |
| 11 | Squarespace Site builder | 61,231 | 94.0% | 6.4% | 92.5% |
| 12 | 20i (StackCP) Shared host | 11,656 | 93.8% | 6.1% | 93.2% |
| 13 | GitHub Pages Dev platform | 33,428 | 92.9% | 6.0% | 92.9% |
| 14 | Framer | 8,359 | 92.8% | 9.3% | 89.6% |
| 15 | GPT Engineer AI builder | 8,466 | 92.8% | 5.3% | 93.0% |
| 16 | Hostinger Shared host | 223,015 | 92.5% | 10.0% | 91.6% |
| 17 | Lovable AI builder | 37,566 | 92.0% | 6.6% | 92.0% |
| 18 | Duda | 8,968 | 91.9% | 8.4% | 90.3% |
| 19 | IONOS Shared host | 27,438 | 91.2% | 8.7% | 89.9% |
| 20 | WordPress.com Site builder | 15,914 | 91.0% | 8.4% | 90.1% |
| 21 | Wix Site builder | 74,498 | 90.7% | 8.6% | 89.9% |
| 22 | Webflow | 5,257 | 90.1% | 10.7% | 87.9% |
| 23 | Railway Dev platform | 13,539 | 89.5% | 12.3% | 86.3% |
| 24 | Google App Engine Dev platform | 20,949 | 88.0% | 13.8% | 84.4% |
| 25 | Render Dev platform | 22,997 | 86.9% | 13.7% | 84.9% |
| 26 | Namecheap Registrar/host | 77,554 | 85.7% | 13.9% | 84.0% |
| 27 | Manus | 6,871 | 85.6% | 16.9% | 81.3% |
| 28 | Shopify Site builder | 173,468 | 84.5% | 16.6% | 79.9% |
Volume is not the same as staying power
Most hosts cluster between 85% and 97% — the typical new site, wherever it lands, is still operational a month later. But the spread at the edges is where the story is. Shopify is the standout cautionary case among the high-volume hosts: huge launch numbers but only 84.5% of its 30-day cohort survives and 16.6% log an outage — the churn of trial stores that never open.
It is a reminder that a host topping a raw launch chart and a host whose launches last are not always the same host.
One caveat: “30 days operational” means the site stayed reachable, not that the business behind it is real or active. It is a floor on legitimacy, not a guarantee of it.
Where Hosts Specialize
Different hosts attract different kinds of sites. This matrix scores how concentrated each host's launches are in a category versus the overall average — an affinity index where values above 1.0 (green) mark where a host over-indexes. The pattern is stark: Shopify is almost purely commerce, Vercel and GitHub Pages skew to technology and developer-leaning sites, while Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy concentrate in local-business, nonprofit, and portfolio sites.
| Host | E-commerce | Local | Pro Services | Content | Technology | Portfolio | Events | Nonprofit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel | 0.4 | 0.8 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 2.2 | 1.4 | 1.2 | 0.9 |
| Hostinger | 0.8 | 1.3 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 0.7 | 0.6 | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Shopify | 3.8 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 | 0.1 |
| Netlify | 0.4 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.1 | 1.1 |
| Namecheap | 0.6 | 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.5 | 1.1 | 0.7 | 1.4 | 1.0 |
| Wix | 0.6 | 1.8 | 1.1 | 0.6 | 0.1 | 1.5 | 1.3 | 2.0 |
| Squarespace | 0.3 | 1.4 | 1.3 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 2.7 | 1.2 | 2.0 |
| Lovable | 0.5 | 1.1 | 1.3 | 1.1 | 1.5 | 0.7 | 1.4 | 1.2 |
| GitHub Pages | 0.3 | 0.8 | 0.9 | 1.1 | 1.5 | 2.8 | 1.4 | 1.1 |
| GoDaddy | 0.4 | 1.6 | 1.5 | 0.8 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 1.1 | 1.7 |
| IONOS | 0.4 | 1.5 | 0.9 | 1.4 | 1.0 | 0.9 | 1.4 | 1.4 |
| Render | 0.5 | 1.0 | 1.3 | 1.1 | 1.6 | 0.6 | 1.5 | 1.5 |
How to read it: each cell is an affinity index — a host's share of launches in that category divided by the category's overall share. 1.0 is average, 2.0× is twice as concentrated as expected, and values under 1.0 (gray) are under-represented. Based on the 12 largest hosts and the 8 largest site categories.
hosting_branded fingerprint recorded for each
newly launched site in our database. The window covers 12 complete ISO weeks
(2026-03-23 through 2026-06-14); partial weeks at the start of data collection
and the current in-progress week are excluded so trend lines compare like-for-like. Weekly share is
the brand's launches that week divided by all launches that week with an identified host
(2,013,989 total). Sites without a confidently identified host are excluded
from all share figures. The survival section uses a different cohort: every site with an identified
host whose launch is now more than 30 days old (1,317,403 sites),
with the “30 days operational” and “service interruption detected” signals
read from each site's launch_record history; only hosts with at least
5,000 such sites are ranked. Generated 2026-06-16.
