Every website begins with two decisions: what builds it, and what hosts it. This guide — the founding guide of LIKE® Magazine's New Technology department — maps both decisions worldwide: 16 builders and platforms in Part A, and 19 hosts and infrastructure companies in Part B, 35 companies in all.
For every company the guide gives the full field set: leadership with exact titles, what it sells in full, customers and scale with dated company figures where they are officially published, pricing posture in words only, published contact details, headquarters and footprint, founding and ownership. Where a field could not be verified, the entry says so plainly. Two companies, GoDaddy and Hostinger, appear once each as dual entries covering both parts. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are carried at the end of Part B as the hyperscale majors — context for the whole roster, framed honestly as hyperscale clouds and not as shared hosts. Leadership was checked for October 2026 currency, a year of change at the top: a new chief executive at Hostinger, a founder restored at OVHcloud, and a two-day interim at Automattic that ended with its founder confirmed again as chairman and chief executive.
PART A — BUILDERS & PLATFORMS
1. WIX.COM LTD. (WIX) — TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
Founded 2006 · Public — Nasdaq: WIX · Pricing posture: Premium posture — free tier with paid premium plans at entry-to-mid levels; Studio and commerce tiers at premium level
Leadership: CEO & Co-founder: Avishai Abrahami; President: Nir Zohar; CFO: Lior Shemesh (all confirmed in Wix Q2 2026 reporting, August 2026)
Sells: Website builders Wix Editor, Wix Studio and AI site generation (Wix Harmony); Base44 AI app builder (acquired 2025); hosting included; domains; e-commerce; business email via Google Workspace; marketing, SEO and payments (Wix Payments)
Customers & scale: More than 260 million registered users worldwide and millions of premium subscriptions (company reporting, 2025–26); serves creators, small businesses and agencies in 190+ countries
Contact: Official route: wix.com contact and support centre; investor relations at investors.wix.com. No general public sales email published · Website: wix.com
Footprint: Offices in Israel, the United States, Europe and Asia; cloud delivery worldwide
In May 2026 Wix announced a restructuring of about 20 percent of staff as it rebuilt around AI, including its Base44 platform and proprietary models for Wix Harmony.
2. SQUARESPACE, INC. — NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
Founded 2003 · Private — owned by Permira funds since the take-private completed October 17, 2024 (about $7.2 billion transaction value); Accel and General Atlantic remain investors; delisted from the NYSE · Pricing posture: Premium posture — single all-in-one subscription ladder from entry personal plans to premium commerce tiers
Leadership: Founder, CEO & Board Chairman: Anthony Casalena (continued in both roles at the take-private, per the joint October 2024 release). CFO and CTO titles are no longer published on a public leadership page since the company went private — not disclosed in the sources consulted
Sells: Website builder with designer templates and AI design tools (Blueprint AI); domains (including the former Google Domains business, acquired 2023); e-commerce; Acuity Scheduling; email campaigns; payments
Customers & scale: Millions of subscribers worldwide (company wording); last public filings before the take-private reported about 4.9 million unique subscribers (2024). Serves entrepreneurs, creators and small businesses
Contact: Official route: squarespace.com contact and help centre. No general public sales email or phone published · Website: squarespace.com
Footprint: Headquarters New York; offices and staff in the United States, Ireland and other locations as published; hosting delivered via its own platform infrastructure
The October 2024 Permira acquisition is the defining ownership fact: Squarespace is a private company again, and several formerly public disclosures (including a full named C-suite) are no longer published.
3. SHOPIFY INC. — OTTAWA, CANADA
Founded 2006 · Public — TSX/NYSE: SHOP · Pricing posture: Premium posture — tiered subscriptions from entry to premium, with Shopify Plus at enterprise premium level
Leadership: CEO & Founder: Tobias (Tobi) Lütke; President: Harley Finkelstein; CFO: Jeff Hoffmeister; CTO: Mikhail Parakhin (joined 2025)
Sells: Commerce platform and store builder; hosted storefronts; Shopify Payments, Shop Pay and point of sale; domains; business email and marketing; AI tools including Sidekick and AI store generation; enterprise offer Shopify Plus and Commerce Components
Customers & scale: Millions of merchants in more than 175 countries (company reporting); fiscal 2025 gross merchandise volume of $378.4 billion (company results, February 2026)
Contact: Official route: shopify.com contact and 24/7 support centre; investor relations at shopify.com/investors. No general public sales email published · Website: shopify.com
Footprint: Remote-first workforce centred on Canada; platform delivered globally on Google Cloud infrastructure
Shopify is carried here as a commerce platform first: its builder is a store builder, and its scale figure that matters is merchant GMV rather than website counts.
4. AUTOMATTIC INC. (WORDPRESS.COM) — SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES
Founded 2005 · Private — venture-backed; founder-led · Pricing posture: Mid posture — free tier, with paid plans from entry to premium and enterprise VIP at premium level
Leadership: Chairman & CEO: Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress. In September 2026 the board briefly placed Mullenweg on leave and named CFO Mark Davies interim CEO; Automattic then confirmed Mullenweg's return as chairman and CEO with board support (company statement via TechCrunch, September 12, 2026). CFO: Mark Davies
Sells: WordPress.com managed WordPress hosting and site building; WooCommerce e-commerce; Jetpack; Tumblr; Day One; Pocket Casts; Beeper; WordPress VIP enterprise hosting
Customers & scale: WordPress software powers about 43 percent of all websites (W3Techs, long-running survey); WordPress.com itself hosts tens of millions of sites — Automattic does not publish a single current WordPress.com site count, so none is asserted here
Contact: Official route: automattic.com contact page and wordpress.com support. Published press route via automattic.com. No general public sales phone published · Website: automattic.com / wordpress.com
Footprint: Distributed company with staff in 100+ countries historically reported; no central campus model
The September 2026 leadership episode is reported plainly because it is the current governance fact: Mullenweg is chairman and CEO as of October 2026.
5. WEBFLOW, INC. — SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES
Founded 2012 (launched 2013) · Private — venture-backed (Accel, CapitalG and others); $120 million Series D in October 2025 at a $4 billion valuation as reported · Pricing posture: Premium posture — free starter tier; site and workspace plans at mid-to-premium levels, enterprise at premium level
Leadership: CEO: Linda Tong (became CEO in June 2024, after serving as President and COO; co-founder Vlad Magdalin moved to Chief Innovation Officer). Co-founders: Vlad Magdalin, Sergie Magdalin and Bryant Chou. A named CFO and CTO are not published on the company's public leadership page consulted — not disclosed here
Sells: Visual website builder and CMS; hosting on its own platform and Webflow Cloud; e-commerce; AI site building and App Gen; Webflow Optimize and Analyze; agency and enterprise workspaces
Customers & scale: More than 3.5 million users and 300,000+ businesses reported in company and profile reporting (2025); enterprise customers named by the company include Dropbox, Upwork and Jasper
Contact: Official route: webflow.com contact, support and sales pages. No general public sales email published · Website: webflow.com
Footprint: Headquarters San Francisco with a distributed workforce; sites delivered on global cloud and CDN infrastructure
Webflow has repositioned since 2024–25 from visual builder to a Website Experience Platform, adding Webflow Cloud hosting and AI app generation.
6. DUDA, INC. — BOULDER, COLORADO, UNITED STATES
Founded 2009 · Private — venture-backed · Pricing posture: Mid-to-premium posture — per-site plans sold to agencies and platforms, which set their own client prices under white label
Leadership: CEO & Co-founder: Itai Sadan (confirmed in Duda announcements through July 2026); CTO & Co-founder: Amir Glatt. A named CFO is not published on the company's public pages consulted — not disclosed here
Sells: White-label website builder for agencies and SaaS platforms; hosting included; e-commerce; client management and billing tools; AI Stack including AI site generation, Duda Vibe conversational editor and AI widget generation (2026)
Customers & scale: More than 22,000 agency and platform partners building about 1 million active websites (company figures published 2025–26)
Contact: Official route: duda.co contact and sales pages; published press contact has appeared in company releases (for example shawn.davis@duda.co in a 2026 release). No general public support phone published · Website: duda.co
Footprint: Offices in Boulder and Israel, with staff in additional countries; hosting on AWS-based infrastructure
Duda is the agency channel's builder: it sells to the professionals who build sites for small businesses, not principally to the businesses themselves.
7. FRAMER B.V. — AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
Founded 2015 (company roots in the founders' earlier design work) · Private — venture-backed; $100 million Series D in August 2025 at a $2 billion valuation (Meritech Capital and Atomico led) · Pricing posture: Mid-to-premium posture — free tier; site plans from entry to premium business and enterprise tiers
Leadership: CEO & Co-founder: Koen Bok; Co-founder: Jorn van Dijk. Framer does not publish a full named C-suite (CFO/CTO) on its public pages consulted — not disclosed here
Sells: Design-led website builder with CMS; hosting included; AI site generation (Wireframer and related tools); forms, analytics, A/B testing, localization and enterprise security features
Customers & scale: More than 500,000 monthly active users (company figure, August 2025); customers named by the company include Miro, Perplexity and Scale AI; the company reported 40 percent of a recent Y Combinator batch building on Framer
Contact: Official route: framer.com contact, support and enterprise sales pages. No general public sales email published · Website: framer.com
Footprint: Headquarters Amsterdam; offices in San Francisco and Barcelona as reported at the Series D; hosting delivered on cloud infrastructure
Framer's August 2025 raise made it a 'double unicorn' and funded its push from designer tool to the platform on which companies run their entire .com, in the founders' phrase.
8. GODADDY INC. — BUILDER AND HOST (DUAL ENTRY) — TEMPE, ARIZONA, UNITED STATES
Founded 1997 (as Jomax Technologies; GoDaddy brand from 1999) · Public — NYSE: GDDY · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — aggressive entry offers with mid-level renewal pricing across domains, builder and hosting; premium tiers for commerce and security
Leadership: CEO: Aman Bhutani; COO: Roger Chen; CFO: Mark McCaffrey; Chief Technology Officer: Charles Beadnall; Chief Strategy and Legal Officer: Jared Sine (GoDaddy Q2 2026 company overview, August 2026)
Sells: Builder: Websites + Marketing builder and Airo AI builder. Host: shared, WordPress, VPS and dedicated hosting. Plus the world's largest domain registrar business, SSL certificates, business email (Microsoft 365), GoDaddy Payments and point of sale
Customers & scale: About 21 million customers worldwide and more than 80 million domain names under management (company reporting, 2025–26). Serves micro and small businesses and the professionals who serve them
Contact: Official route: godaddy.com contact and 24/7 phone support published on godaddy.com (United States support number published on site); investor relations at investors.godaddy.com · Website: godaddy.com
Footprint: Headquarters Tempe; offices and care centres in the United States, Europe, India and elsewhere; data-centre footprint in North America, Europe and Asia as published
DUAL ENTRY: GoDaddy appears once and covers both parts of this guide — it is simultaneously a top builder (Websites + Marketing, Airo) and a top host and registrar. It is not double-counted in the roster.
9. WEEBLY / SQUARE ONLINE (BLOCK, INC.) — SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES
Founded 2006 (Weebly); Square Online launched 2019 · Public parent — Block, Inc., NYSE: XYZ (formerly SQ); Weebly acquired by Square in 2018 for $365 million · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — free tier with paid plans at entry-to-mid levels, monetised principally through payments
Leadership: Parent level: Block Head, Chair & Co-founder: Jack Dorsey; Block CFO & COO: Amrita Ahuja. Weebly and Square Online are product lines inside Square and do not publish a separate named C-suite — leadership is at Block/Square level
Sells: Square Online website and online-store builder (the current product); the legacy Weebly editor for existing sites; integrated Square payments, point of sale, appointments, invoices and business email via domains
Customers & scale: Block reported 4 million+ sellers across Square (company reporting); a separate current user count for Square Online or Weebly alone is not published — not disclosed
Contact: Official route: squareup.com contact and support centre; weebly.com for legacy accounts. No separate Weebly sales email published · Website: squareup.com/online-store / weebly.com
Footprint: Block is distributed-first with offices in the United States and internationally; Square Online delivered on Square's platform infrastructure
Presented honestly as one entry: Weebly survives as a legacy editor inside Block, while Square Online is the active builder. New users are directed to Square Online.
10. HOSTINGER GROUP — BUILDER AND HOST (DUAL ENTRY) — VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
Founded 2004 (as Hosting Media; Hostinger brand from 2011) · Private — employee and investor owned; ConHostinger private-equity stake of about 31 percent taken in 2021 as reported · Pricing posture: Entry posture — among the lowest entry prices in the industry, with mid-level renewals; premium cloud and VPS tiers above
Leadership: CEO: Giedrius Zakaitis — appointed May 26, 2026, moving from Chief Product and Technology Officer and succeeding Daugirdas Jankus (Hostinger announcement, May 2026). Chairman of the Board: Arnas Stuopelis (CEO 2011–2023). CFO: Domantas Beržanskis, as listed in company materials consulted
Sells: Builder: Hostinger Website Builder and AI Builder; Horizons AI web-app builder; Kodee AI agent. Host: shared, cloud, VPS and WordPress hosting. Plus domains, business email, Hostinger Reach email marketing and e-commerce
Customers & scale: 4.6 million customers in more than 150 countries at the end of 2025, with 2025 revenue of €275.4 million, up 51 percent (Hostinger, March 2026). Horizons passed 800,000 customers in its first year as reported
Contact: Official route: hostinger.com contact and 24/7 live-chat support; published press contact has appeared in company releases (for example eiviltas.parasciakas@hostinger.com, +370 611 11694, in a 2026 release) · Website: hostinger.com
Footprint: Headquarters Vilnius; about 900 employees, roughly 500 in Lithuania (company, March 2026); data centres in North America, Europe, Asia and South America as published
DUAL ENTRY: Hostinger appears once and covers both parts — a top host that is also a top AI builder business (Website Builder, Horizons). It is not double-counted in the roster. Note the May 2026 CEO change, the freshest in this guide.
11. JIMDO GMBH — HAMBURG, GERMANY
Founded 2007 · Private — founder-led after investors' exit; independent · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — free tier with paid plans at entry-to-mid levels
Leadership: CEO & Co-founder: Matthias Henze. Jimdo does not publish a full named C-suite on its public pages consulted — other titles not disclosed here
Sells: Website builder (Jimdo Dolphin AI builder and Creator editor); online store; domains; business email; logo and legal-text tools for the German market; bookings and marketing tools
Customers & scale: Millions of websites created historically reported by the company; a current audited user figure is not published on the pages consulted — not disclosed. Serves solo founders and small businesses, with strength in Germany and Europe
Contact: Official route: jimdo.com contact and help centre. No general public sales email or phone published · Website: jimdo.com
Footprint: Headquarters Hamburg; service delivered on cloud infrastructure, principally for European and Japanese markets historically
Jimdo is the German small-business builder: its distinguishing offers are compliance and legal-text tools built for German and EU traders.
12. STRIKINGLY, INC. — SAN FRANCISCO / SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
Founded 2012 · Private — venture-backed (Y Combinator alumnus) · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — free tier with paid plans at entry-to-mid levels, including a lifetime-deal tradition in its early market
Leadership: CEO & Co-founder: David Haisha Chen; Co-founders: Dafeng Guo and Teng Bao. Strikingly does not publish a full named C-suite on its public pages consulted — other titles not disclosed here
Sells: One-page and multi-page website builder; online store; domains; business email; memberships, forms and analytics; AI-assisted site creation tools
Customers & scale: Millions of users worldwide historically reported by the company, with particular strength among creators and in Asia-Pacific markets; a current audited figure is not published — not disclosed beyond company wording
Contact: Official route: strikingly.com contact and support pages. No general public sales phone published · Website: strikingly.com
Footprint: United States headquarters with a substantial team in Shanghai; hosting delivered on cloud infrastructure (AWS-based, as described by the company)
Strikingly built its name on elegant one-page sites and keeps a distinctly creator-focused, mobile-first editor.
13. BIGCOMMERCE HOLDINGS, INC. (NOW COMMERCE) — AUSTIN, TEXAS, UNITED STATES
Founded 2009 · Public — Nasdaq: CMRC (the company rebranded from BigCommerce to Commerce in 2025, as reported) · Pricing posture: Premium posture — mid-to-premium subscriptions, with enterprise agreements at premium level; no free tier
Leadership: CEO: Travis Hess (appointed CEO in 2024, succeeding founder-era leadership under Brent Bellm). A full current named C-suite should be taken from the company's investor-relations page; roles beyond CEO are not asserted here beyond public filings
Sells: SaaS e-commerce platform and store builder (BigCommerce); headless commerce; multi-storefront; B2B edition; Feedonomics and Makeswift (visual building) within the Commerce group; payments via partners
Customers & scale: About 60,000 stores historically reported across 150+ countries, from small businesses to enterprise brands; a single current store count is published in company filings rather than marketing pages
Contact: Official route: bigcommerce.com contact and sales pages and published sales phone on site; investor relations via the Commerce group · Website: bigcommerce.com
Footprint: Headquarters Austin; offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine and Australia as published; delivered on cloud infrastructure
Carried as the enterprise-leaning commerce peer to Shopify: a store builder for established and B2B merchants rather than first-time sellers.
14. TILDA PUBLISHING LTD. (TILDA) — OPERATING INTERNATIONALLY; FOUNDED IN MOSCOW, RUSSIA — CURRENT CORPORATE HQ DETAILS ARE PUBLISHED ON TILDA.CC LEGAL PAGES
Founded 2014 · Private — founder-led · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — free tier with paid plans at entry-to-mid levels
Leadership: Founder: Nikita Obukhov. Tilda does not publish a Western-style named C-suite on its public pages consulted — other titles not disclosed here
Sells: Block-based website builder (600+ blocks and Zero Block editor); hosting included; e-commerce and payments; forms and CRM; email campaigns; website export on higher tiers
Customers & scale: Millions of projects created historically reported by the company; a current audited user figure is not published on the pages consulted — not disclosed. Serves designers, agencies, media and small businesses in 100+ countries per company wording
Contact: Official route: tilda.cc contact and support pages. No general public sales phone published · Website: tilda.cc
Footprint: Distributed team; hosting delivered on cloud infrastructure with CDN delivery
Tilda is the design press's builder — widely used for editorial and long-form pages — and is included as a verifiable international peer, with its thin public leadership disclosure stated plainly.
15. CARRD INC. (CARRD) — UNITED STATES
Founded 2016 · Private — independent, founder-run · Pricing posture: Entry posture — free tier with Pro plans at notably low entry prices, billed annually
Leadership: Founder and operator: AJ. Carrd publishes no named C-suite — by design a very small, single-operator-led company; further titles not disclosed
Sells: One-page website builder; custom domains; forms; payments and embeds; site templates; Pro tiers adding forms, widgets and analytics
Customers & scale: Millions of sites published historically reported; a current audited figure is not published — not disclosed. Serves creators, founders and link-in-bio and landing-page users worldwide
Contact: Official route: carrd.co contact and documentation pages. No public sales email or phone published · Website: carrd.co
Footprint: Delivered entirely on cloud infrastructure; no public office or data-centre footprint published
Carrd is the minimalist end of the builder spectrum — proof that a one-page builder run at very small scale can serve a worldwide creator market.
16. SITE123 LTD. — ISRAEL
Founded 2015 (service launched 2016) · Private · Pricing posture: Entry posture — free tier with premium plans at entry level
Leadership: SITE123 does not publish a named C-suite on its public pages consulted — leadership not disclosed here
Sells: Guided website builder; hosting included; online store; domains; business email; appointment scheduling, forms and multilingual sites; AI-assisted setup
Customers & scale: Users in 190+ countries per company wording; a current audited user or site count is not published — not disclosed. Serves small businesses and personal sites
Contact: Official route: site123.com contact and 24/7 live-chat support. No general public sales email published · Website: site123.com
Footprint: Delivered on cloud infrastructure; no public data-centre list published
Included as a verifiable high-volume entry-level peer: SITE123 competes on guided simplicity and multilingual reach rather than design depth, and its lack of published leadership is stated rather than filled in.
PART B — HOSTS & INFRASTRUCTURE
Part B opens with the delivery and developer clouds through which much of the modern web actually reaches its readers, continues with the shared, managed and value hosts that carry most small-business sites, and closes with the three hyperscale majors. GoDaddy and Hostinger, the two dual businesses, are entered in full in Part A and cross-referred here: both are also top-tier hosts — GoDaddy as registrar-host and Hostinger as one of the world's fastest-growing hosting companies.
1. CLOUDFLARE, INC. — SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
Founded 2009 · Public — NYSE: NET · Pricing posture: Premium posture at paid tiers — generous free tier; paid plans from entry professional to premium enterprise agreements
Leadership: CEO & Co-founder: Matthew Prince; President & COO & Co-founder: Michelle Zatlyn; CFO: Thomas Seifert (all confirmed in Cloudflare Q1 2026 reporting, May 2026)
Sells: Hosting and delivery: Pages and Workers hosting, R2 storage, D1 and Durable Objects, Registrar domains, DNS, CDN, DDoS protection, WAF and Zero Trust security; AI Workers and AI Gateway. Cloudflare is a connectivity cloud, not a conventional shared host — stated plainly
Customers & scale: Millions of websites use Cloudflare's network; the company reports about 20 percent of all websites sit behind its reverse proxy in long-running industry measurement, and paid customers number in the hundreds of thousands (company reporting). Fiscal 2025 revenue was $2.168 billion (company results)
Contact: Official route: cloudflare.com contact, sales and support pages; investor relations at cloudflare.com/investor-relations. No general public sales email published · Website: cloudflare.com
Footprint: Network in 330+ cities in 125+ countries (company figure); headquarters San Francisco with offices worldwide
Cloudflare opens Part B because, for millions of sites, it is the effective host-facing layer — even where the origin server sits elsewhere.
2. DIGITALOCEAN HOLDINGS, INC. — NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
Founded 2011 · Public — NYSE: DOCN · Pricing posture: Mid posture — transparent, flat per-resource pricing positioned below hyperscale clouds; premium GPU tiers above
Leadership: CEO: Paddy Srinivasan; CFO: Matt Steinfort; Chief Product and Technology Officer: Vinay Kumar (appointed early 2026, as reported). Srinivasan confirmed as CEO in DigitalOcean's 2026 results releases
Sells: Cloud hosting: Droplets (VMs) including GPU Droplets, Kubernetes, App Platform hosting, managed databases, Spaces storage, serverless functions; AI inference cloud and Gradient AI platform; domains via partners
Customers & scale: More than 640,000 customers historically reported in company filings, from individual developers to AI companies; Q1 2026 revenue was $258 million, up 22 percent (company results, May 2026)
Contact: Official route: digitalocean.com contact, sales and support pages. No general public sales email published · Website: digitalocean.com
Footprint: Data centres (leased, in third-party facilities) in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, India, Singapore and Australia per its annual report; committed capacity of about 155 MW as reported in 2026
DigitalOcean is the developer cloud of Part B: not a shared host, but the first host most developers graduate to — and, since 2025–26, an AI inference cloud.
3. SITEGROUND HOSTING LTD. — SOFIA, BULGARIA
Founded 2004 · Private — founder-led · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — low entry offers with mid-level renewals; premium cloud tiers above
Leadership: CEO: Tenko Nikolov, co-founder; Founder: Ivo Tzenov. SiteGround does not publish a full Western-style C-suite on its public pages consulted — other titles not disclosed here
Sells: Shared, cloud and reseller hosting; managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting; website builder (SiteGround Website Builder); domains; business email; Site Tools control panel and security suite
Customers & scale: More than 3 million domains hosted and millions of websites, per company reporting (2024–25); serves site owners, agencies and resellers worldwide
Contact: Official route: siteground.com contact, sales and 24/7 support pages with published phone support routes on site. No general public sales email published · Website: siteground.com
Footprint: Headquarters Sofia; data centres on Google Cloud infrastructure in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia as published; offices in Bulgaria, Spain and elsewhere
SiteGround built its reputation on support quality and WordPress performance, and now runs its hosting on Google Cloud infrastructure rather than its own data centres.
4. BLUEHOST / NEWFOLD DIGITAL, INC. — JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES
Founded 2003 (Bluehost); Newfold formed 2021 · Private — Newfold Digital is owned by Clearlake Capital and Siris Capital (formed from Endurance International Group and Web.com) · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — low entry offers across brands with mid-level renewals; premium managed WordPress tiers above
Leadership: Newfold Digital CEO: Sharon Rowlands. Bluehost Group CEO: Sachin Puri (as profiled in 2026 industry leadership guides). Newfold does not publish a single consolidated public C-suite page for all brands — brand-level titles vary
Sells: Shared, VPS, dedicated and managed WordPress hosting (Bluehost, HostGator and sister brands); website builder; domains (Domain.com, Register.com, Network Solutions); Yoast SEO within the group; business email and marketing tools
Customers & scale: Newfold serves millions of customers across its brands worldwide (company wording); Bluehost is among the hosts recommended by WordPress.org since 2005. A single current audited customer count is not published — not disclosed beyond company wording
Contact: Official route: bluehost.com and newfold.com contact and support pages, with published phone support on bluehost.com. No general public sales email published · Website: bluehost.com / newfold.com
Footprint: Headquarters Jacksonville; offices and operations in the United States, India, the Philippines and elsewhere; data centres in North America and partner facilities as published
One entry covers the group deliberately: Bluehost is the flagship host brand, and Newfold is the private-equity-owned parent behind a shelf of legacy hosting and domain brands.
5. IONOS GROUP SE — MONTABAUR, GERMANY
Founded 1988 (as 1&1; IONOS brand from 2018) · Public — Frankfurt: IOS; majority owned by United Internet AG · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — low entry offers with mid-level standard pricing; premium cloud tiers above
Leadership: CEO: Achim Weiss (confirmed in 2026 industry leadership guides and company reporting). IONOS publishes its management board on its corporate site; the full board should be taken from ionos-group.com
Sells: Shared, WordPress, VPS, dedicated and cloud hosting (IONOS Cloud); website builder (MyWebsite); domains (among Europe's largest registrars); business email and Microsoft 365; e-commerce; AI website and image tools
Customers & scale: More than 6 million customers and about 10 million domains under management in company reporting (2024–25); Europe's largest hosting provider by its own long-standing description. Serves small businesses across Europe and North America
Contact: Official route: ionos.com / ionos-group.com contact pages with published phone support by country. No single global sales email published · Website: ionos.com / ionos-group.com
Footprint: Headquarters Montabaur and Karlsruhe operations; data centres in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, France and the United States as published (about 100,000 servers historically reported)
IONOS is Europe's mass-market host: the former 1&1, now a listed group in its own right under United Internet's majority ownership.
6. OVH GROUPE SA (OVHCLOUD) — ROUBAIX, FRANCE
Founded 1999 · Public — Euronext Paris: OVH; Klaba family is the controlling shareholder bloc · Pricing posture: Mid posture — value pricing on bare metal and VPS, positioned as a transparent European alternative to hyperscale clouds; premium sovereign and private-cloud tiers above
Leadership: Chairman of the Board & CEO: Octave Klaba, founder — the board reunited the chairman and CEO roles under Klaba effective October 20, 2025, ending Benjamin Revcolevschi's term as CEO after one year (OVHcloud release, October 21, 2025)
Sells: Web and shared hosting; VPS; dedicated and bare-metal servers; public cloud (OpenStack-based) and private cloud; domains; business email; AI and GPU cloud. Builder offer is limited to hosting-attached tools — OVHcloud is an infrastructure host, not a design builder
Customers & scale: About 1.6 million customers in more than 140 countries (company reporting, fiscal 2025). Serves developers, businesses and public-sector clients, with a sovereign-cloud offer for European institutions
Contact: Official route: ovhcloud.com contact, sales and support pages by country. No general public sales email published · Website: ovhcloud.com
Footprint: Headquarters Roubaix; 40+ data centres across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific as published, most designed and built by the group itself, including server manufacturing in France and Canada
The October 2025 return of founder Octave Klaba as combined chairman and CEO, with the 2026–2030 'Step Ahead' plan, is the current governance fact for Europe's largest independent cloud host.
7. HETZNER ONLINE GMBH — GUNZENHAUSEN, GERMANY
Founded 1997 · Private — founder-owned · Pricing posture: Entry posture on infrastructure — widely regarded as among the lowest prices for dedicated and cloud servers in Europe, with transparent monthly pricing
Leadership: Founder: Martin Hetzner. Hetzner is managed as a German GmbH by its managing directors and does not publish a US-style C-suite (CEO/CFO/CTO titles) on its public pages — titles beyond founder are not asserted here
Sells: Dedicated root servers and server auctions; cloud servers (Hetzner Cloud) including GPU servers; shared web hosting and managed servers; storage; domains; colocation. No proprietary visual website builder — hosting only, stated plainly
Customers & scale: Hundreds of thousands of customers historically reported in company profiles; Hetzner does not publish a current audited customer count on its public pages — not disclosed. Serves developers, agencies and businesses, with strength in Europe
Contact: Official route: hetzner.com contact and support pages (ticket support). No general public sales phone published · Website: hetzner.com
Footprint: Data-centre parks in Nuremberg and Falkenstein (Germany), Helsinki (Finland) and Hillsboro, Oregon and Ashburn, Virginia (United States), as published
Hetzner is the value engine of European hosting: founder-owned, publicity-shy, and the default recommendation of developers who price servers by the month.
8. KINSTA INC. — LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
Founded 2013 · Private · Pricing posture: Premium posture — premium managed-hosting pricing throughout, with no budget shared tier
Leadership: CEO: Jon Penland (confirmed in 2026 industry leadership guides; previously COO). Co-founder and former CEO: Mark Gavalda. A named CFO is not published on the company's public pages consulted — not disclosed here
Sells: Managed WordPress hosting; application hosting and database hosting; static-site hosting; agency programme; built on Google Cloud Platform with Cloudflare integration. No visual builder — premium managed hosting only
Customers & scale: More than 140,000 businesses and brands historically reported by the company, including agencies and enterprises; a current figure should be taken from kinsta.com. Serves WordPress sites that need performance and support at premium level
Contact: Official route: kinsta.com contact, sales and 24/7 support chat. No general public sales email published · Website: kinsta.com
Footprint: Distributed team across the United States, Europe and beyond; hosting delivered on Google Cloud regions worldwide (35+ regions as published)
Kinsta is the premium WordPress host of the roster: it sells performance, support and calm — at premium prices, without apology.
9. WP ENGINE, INC. — AUSTIN, TEXAS, UNITED STATES
Founded 2010 · Private — majority investment by Silver Lake (2018) · Pricing posture: Premium posture — premium managed WordPress pricing, with agency and enterprise agreements above
Leadership: Chairwoman & CEO: Heather Brunner (long-serving; confirmed across company communications). Founder: Jason Cohen (served as CTO after stepping back as CEO). A current named CFO is not asserted here beyond company filings
Sells: Managed WordPress platform: hosting, Genesis themes and StudioPress, Flywheel and Local development tools, Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) within the group, security, performance and e-commerce hosting for WordPress and headless WordPress (Atlas)
Customers & scale: More than 200,000 customers and 1.5 million+ websites in company reporting in recent years (figures vary by year — see wpengine.com for the current published count); serves brands, agencies and publishers in 150+ countries per company wording
Contact: Official route: wpengine.com contact, sales and 24/7 support pages. No general public sales email published · Website: wpengine.com
Footprint: Headquarters Austin; offices in the United States, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Poland and Australia as published; hosting delivered on AWS and Google Cloud infrastructure
WP Engine and Automattic have been in public dispute and litigation since September 2024 over WordPress trademarks and ecosystem terms. Both entries in this guide report the companies' hosting offers on their merits and note the dispute here once, factually.
10. AMAZON WEB SERVICES, INC. (AWS) — HYPERSCALE CLOUD (CONTEXT ENTRY) — SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES
Founded 2006 · Public parent — Amazon.com, Inc., Nasdaq: AMZN (AWS is its cloud segment) · Pricing posture: Premium posture at scale — pay-as-you-go utility pricing; economical only with engineering discipline; Lightsail at entry flat pricing
Leadership: Amazon President & CEO: Andy Jassy; AWS CEO: Matt Garman (since June 2024). Full AWS leadership is published on aws.amazon.com
Sells: Hyperscale cloud: EC2 compute, S3 storage, Lightsail (its closest offer to conventional VPS and site hosting), Amplify and Amplify Hosting, Route 53 domains and DNS, CloudFront CDN, plus 200+ cloud services. AWS does not sell shared hosting or a consumer website builder — framed here as a hyperscale cloud, not a shared host
Customers & scale: Millions of active customers worldwide (company wording), from startups to the largest enterprises and governments; AWS is the largest cloud provider by revenue in industry measurement (Synergy Research, long-running series)
Contact: Official route: aws.amazon.com contact and sales pages. No general public sales email published · Website: aws.amazon.com
Footprint: Infrastructure Regions across North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific (30+ geographic Regions as published, expanding annually — see aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure)
MAJORS CONTEXT: AWS is one of three hyperscale clouds carried for context. A large share of the builders and hosts in this guide ultimately run, in part, on infrastructure of this class.
11. MICROSOFT AZURE (MICROSOFT CORPORATION) — HYPERSCALE CLOUD (CONTEXT ENTRY) — REDMOND, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES
Founded 2010 (as Windows Azure) · Public parent — Microsoft Corporation, Nasdaq: MSFT (Azure sits in its Intelligent Cloud segment) · Pricing posture: Premium posture at scale — pay-as-you-go utility pricing with enterprise agreements at the top tier
Leadership: Chairman & CEO (Microsoft): Satya Nadella; Executive Vice President, Cloud + AI: Scott Guthrie, the long-serving Azure engineering leader. Azure has no separate CEO — leadership is at Microsoft level
Sells: Hyperscale cloud: Azure App Service and Azure Static Web Apps (its closest offers to conventional site hosting), virtual machines, Azure DNS and domains via partners, Azure Front Door CDN, storage, databases and AI services including Azure OpenAI. Azure does not sell shared hosting or a consumer website builder — framed here as a hyperscale cloud, not a shared host
Customers & scale: Millions of organisations via Microsoft's cloud (company wording), including most of the Fortune 500 per Microsoft reporting; Azure is the second-largest cloud provider by revenue in industry measurement
Contact: Official route: azure.microsoft.com contact and sales pages, with published sales phone routes by country. No general public sales email published · Website: azure.microsoft.com
Footprint: 60+ Azure Regions worldwide as published — more than any other provider by Microsoft's count — across the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific
MAJORS CONTEXT: Azure is carried for context alongside AWS and Google Cloud. For most readers its practical relevance is indirect — through Microsoft 365 email, enterprise hosting and the clouds beneath other platforms.
12. GOOGLE CLOUD (ALPHABET INC.) — HYPERSCALE CLOUD (CONTEXT ENTRY) — MOUNTAIN VIEW / SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
Founded 2008 (App Engine); Google Cloud Platform brand from 2013 · Public parent — Alphabet Inc., Nasdaq: GOOGL/GOOG (Google Cloud is a reportable segment) · Pricing posture: Premium posture at scale — pay-as-you-go utility pricing; Firebase and Cloud Run offer entry tiers with usage-based growth
Leadership: Alphabet & Google CEO: Sundar Pichai; Google Cloud CEO: Thomas Kurian (since 2019). Full leadership is published on cloud.google.com
Sells: Hyperscale cloud: Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run and App Engine hosting, Firebase Hosting, Cloud Storage, Cloud DNS and Google Domains' successor arrangements via Squarespace, plus AI services including Vertex AI and Gemini. Google Cloud does not sell shared hosting or a consumer website builder — framed here as a hyperscale cloud, not a shared host
Customers & scale: Millions of customers via Google Cloud (company wording), including a majority of the Fortune 500 in Google reporting historically; third-largest cloud provider by revenue in industry measurement. SiteGround and Kinsta in this guide both deliver hosting on Google Cloud infrastructure
Contact: Official route: cloud.google.com contact and sales pages. No general public sales email published · Website: cloud.google.com
Footprint: Cloud Regions across the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific (40+ Regions as published — see cloud.google.com/about/locations)
MAJORS CONTEXT: Google Cloud completes the hyperscale trio. Its sale of Google Domains to Squarespace in 2023 — noted in the Squarespace entry — is the majors' most direct recent touch on the builder market.
13. VULTR (CONSTANT / THE CONSTANT COMPANY) — WEST PALM BEACH, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES
Founded 2014 · Private — The Constant Company · Pricing posture: Mid posture — flat, transparent pricing positioned as a simpler alternative to hyperscale clouds, with premium GPU tiers above
Leadership: CEO: J.J. Kardwell (confirmed in 2026 industry leadership guides). Founder: David Aninowsky. A named CFO is not published on the company's public pages consulted — not disclosed here
Sells: Cloud compute (VMs), bare-metal servers, GPU cloud for AI, Kubernetes, object and block storage, CDN and load balancers; one-click WordPress and application hosting. No visual builder — developer cloud hosting
Customers & scale: Millions of registered users historically reported by the company and hundreds of thousands of active customers in company profiles; a current audited count is not published — not disclosed beyond company wording. Serves developers, businesses and AI teams
Contact: Official route: vultr.com contact, sales and support pages. No general public sales email published · Website: vultr.com
Footprint: 32+ cloud data-centre regions worldwide as published (see vultr.com locations) across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia
Vultr is DigitalOcean's closest independent rival in the developer cloud — larger in region count, quieter in brand — and a principal host for AI inference workloads in its recent positioning.
14. AKAMAI CLOUD (LINODE) — AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES, INC. — CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES
Founded 1998 (Akamai); 2002 (Linode, acquired by Akamai in 2022) · Public — Nasdaq: AKAM · Pricing posture: Mid posture — flat developer-cloud pricing on Linode-heritage plans, with premium enterprise delivery and security above
Leadership: CEO & Co-founder: Tom Leighton. Akamai Cloud (the former Linode) is a business unit without a separate public CEO — leadership is at Akamai level; other C-suite titles are published on akamai.com
Sells: Cloud hosting: Linode virtual machines (now Akamai Cloud compute), Kubernetes, object storage, managed databases, plus Akamai CDN, DNS and security. No visual builder — developer cloud and edge delivery
Customers & scale: Akamai serves thousands of enterprise customers (company reporting) and Linode brought a large developer customer base at acquisition; a combined current customer count for the cloud unit is not published separately — not disclosed
Contact: Official route: akamai.com and linode.com contact, sales and support pages. No general public sales email published · Website: akamai.com / linode.com
Footprint: Core cloud regions in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific as published, on top of Akamai's global edge network in 130+ countries
Carried as the Linode lineage inside an edge giant: developers still buy 'a Linode' — Akamai now sells that same simplicity as Akamai Cloud.
15. DREAMHOST, LLC — BREA / LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
Founded 1996 · Private — New Dream Network, LLC · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — low entry shared pricing with mid-level managed WordPress tiers above
Leadership: DreamHost is led by its co-founders (Dallas Kashuba, Josh Jones, Michael Rodriguez and Sage Weil) in company accounts; it does not maintain a prominently published current CEO title on the pages consulted — leadership described as founder-led, with the specific current titleholder not asserted here
Sells: Shared, WordPress (DreamPress managed WordPress), VPS and dedicated hosting; cloud storage (DreamObjects); domains; business email; website builder (Remixer and WP Website Builder)
Customers & scale: More than 400,000 customers and 1.5 million+ websites historically reported by the company; a current audited count is not published — not disclosed beyond company wording. Serves individuals, small businesses and WordPress users
Contact: Official route: dreamhost.com contact and 24/7 chat and ticket support. No general public sales email published · Website: dreamhost.com
Footprint: Headquarters in California; data centres in Virginia and Oregon (United States) as published
DreamHost is one of the last large independent American shared hosts — employee-owned in spirit, founder-led, and a WordPress.org-recommended host.
16. INMOTION HOSTING, INC. — VIRGINIA BEACH, VIRGINIA, UNITED STATES
Founded 2001 · Private · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — entry shared offers with mid-level VPS and premium dedicated tiers above
Leadership: Co-founders: Sunil Saxena and Todd Robinson have led InMotion since founding in company accounts; a current published CEO title on the pages consulted is not asserted here — leadership described as founder-led
Sells: Shared, WordPress, VPS (managed and unmanaged), dedicated and reseller hosting; website builder offers; domains and business email
Customers & scale: More than 170,000 customers historically reported by the company; a current audited count is not published — not disclosed beyond company wording. Serves small businesses and agencies in the United States and internationally
Contact: Official route: inmotionhosting.com contact and support pages with published phone support on site. No general public sales email published · Website: inmotionhosting.com
Footprint: Headquarters Virginia Beach with a Los Angeles office historically; data centres on the United States East and West Coasts and in Amsterdam as published
A steady, founder-led American host carried as a verifiable peer in the shared and VPS market, with its thin public leadership disclosure stated plainly.
17. LIQUID WEB, LLC — LANSING, MICHIGAN, UNITED STATES
Founded 1997 · Private — part of the Liquid Web family of brands (with Nexcess) under private-equity ownership as reported · Pricing posture: Premium posture — premium managed-hosting pricing throughout, justified on support ('Heroic Support')
Leadership: Liquid Web publishes executive leadership on liquidweb.com; the current named CEO should be taken from that page — it is not asserted here because it was not confirmed against the live page in this check
Sells: Managed VPS, dedicated and cloud hosting; managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting (Nexcess); enterprise hosting and high-availability clusters. No entry shared tier — managed hosting only
Customers & scale: More than 45,000 customers and 500,000+ sites under management historically reported across Liquid Web and Nexcess; a current combined count is published on liquidweb.com. Serves agencies, stores and mission-critical sites
Contact: Official route: liquidweb.com contact and sales pages with published phone support on site · Website: liquidweb.com
Footprint: Headquarters Lansing; data centres in Michigan, Arizona and Amsterdam as published, plus cloud regions
The managed-hosting counterpart to Kinsta for non-WordPress and mixed stacks — and, through Nexcess, a WooCommerce hosting specialist.
18. HOSTPAPA, INC. — BURLINGTON, ONTARIO, CANADA
Founded 2006 · Private — founder-led; growth by acquisition · Pricing posture: Entry-to-mid posture — entry shared offers with mid-level business and VPS tiers above
Leadership: Founder & CEO: Jamie Opalchuk (confirmed in 2026 industry leadership guides). A named CFO is not published on the company's public pages consulted — not disclosed here
Sells: Shared, WordPress, VPS and reseller hosting; website builder; domains; business email (Oxen App Suite and Google Workspace / Microsoft 365 resale); hosting under acquired regional brands
Customers & scale: Hundreds of thousands of customers across its brands historically reported; a current audited count is not published — not disclosed beyond company wording. Serves small businesses in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and beyond
Contact: Official route: hostpapa.com contact and support pages with published phone support by country. No general public sales email published · Website: hostpapa.com
Footprint: Headquarters Burlington, Ontario; data centres in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe via its brand network as published
Canada's roll-up host: HostPapa has assembled a portfolio of regional hosting brands while keeping its own small-business offer at the front.
19. NAMECHEAP, INC. — PHOENIX, ARIZONA, UNITED STATES
Founded 2000 · Private — founder-led · Pricing posture: Entry posture — among the lowest entry prices for domains and shared hosting, with mid-level renewals
Leadership: CEO: Hillan Klein (as profiled in 2026 industry leadership guides; founder Richard Kirkendall led the company for its first two decades). A full named C-suite is not published on the company's public pages consulted — other titles not disclosed here
Sells: Domains (among the world's largest registrars, with 20 million+ domains under management as reported); shared, WordPress (EasyWP), VPS and dedicated hosting; website builder; business email (Private Email and Spacemail); SSL and VPN (FastVPN)
Customers & scale: More than 2 million hosting and domain customers historically reported, with tens of millions of domains under management in recent company reporting (see namecheap.com for the current published figures). Serves individuals, creators and small businesses worldwide
Contact: Official route: namecheap.com contact and 24/7 live-chat and ticket support. No general public sales phone published · Website: namecheap.com
Footprint: Headquarters Phoenix; distributed workforce; data centres in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe as published
Namecheap completes the roster as the registrar-host hybrid most developers know by name — the low-price pole, opposite Kinsta and Liquid Web's premium pole.
NAMED GAPS
Private builders including Framer, Jimdo, Strikingly, Tilda, Carrd and SITE123 publish no full C-suite; their entries say so rather than guessing. Squarespace, private under Permira since October 2024, no longer publishes a full leadership page. Hetzner, DreamHost, InMotion and Liquid Web publish no current United States-style chief executive title or audited customer count in the sources consulted. Separate customer counts for Weebly and Square Online, and for the Akamai Cloud unit, are not published by their parents. Every such field in this guide is marked not disclosed. Nothing in the roster was padded to reach a number.