Web Hosting Will Soon Battle Mobile Applications

No matter what site you may favour to perform transactions on or just chat with your high school pals, that site resides on some server, hosting your databases and entire website’s presence. When this service started nearly two decades ago, companies formed and then scrambled to collect servers in preparation for the inevitable boom of websites that would soon transpire. Now that we’re in the mobile generation, nearly 1 out of 2 people in our world has at least one mobile device and the application marketplaces are booming with games, productivity tools and anything else once found on conventional websites. This raises a potential debate as to whether or not web hosting companies will survive this new direction.
Where Hosting Has Been
To simplify our argument, we look first at where web hosting has been – the long, winding and subtly priced road where customer service complaints seem prevalent and uptimes seem to not be improving despite changes in data centres.
Since the scope of web hosting seems geared mainly towards businesses desiring both physical and virtual locations, personal websites aren’t given much love when web hosting reviews, questions or features are discussed. What started out as remote servers housing thousands of websites and handling billions of requests an hour, has turned into cloud-based access. Yet one trend never stopped: customer service lacks either knowledge or tact. The fact that consumers receive poor front-line treatment has soured the industry, shutting or conglomerating companies more rapidly than before.
System reliability has also been an underlying issue for several years, especially with datacentres aging and little being done to improve the quality and maintenance downtime. Several companies, which we choose to leave unspecified, boast uptimes of 99.9%, yet continually yield numerous 500 Errors, extensive downtime or hours of slow browsing through links.
Convenience of Mobile Applications
Web hosting, no doubt, still has some necessity with new domain extensions coming out every year. Although web hosting does have some value and does still generate revenues, the mobile application platform is growing even quicker, producing new innovations, productivity and excitement for the billions of mobile phone users who download them. Once you’ve purchased and downloaded the application to your phone, you are simply connected to your cellular provider through satellite to enable services that your new application renders. More importantly, the application is yours without the need to connect to another website unless support is needed.
Mobile applications, also, are stored and accessed on one of two major corporations: Apple or Google. Although numerous servers are deployed in storage and retrieval, web hosting is not necessary for accessing your apps or even searching for them. With our future going seemingly 100% wireless, this could be a huge scare for web hosting’s “grandfather” companies not prepared to ride the waves of change. Moreover, if mass quantities of businesses begin transacting through mobile shopping platforms, the number of hosting companies could drastically reduce because the need for harnessing general web traffic will subside.
When the Battle Will Ensue
Soon enough, online traffic which is based from landline connections will begin spiralling downward, considering the majority of businesses that count on web hosting still haven’t made mobile accessible websites. Those companies who have apps, like banks and stores, will survive the need for web hosting because their sites are self-hosted within their own datacentres. Other smaller businesses who are entirely web based should entertain putting their stores into app format or at least making their site optimized for mobile usage. This should alleviate web hosting’s total disappearance.
Another web hosting battle that may occur could be when datacentres go completely green. Those who simply cannot afford to upgrade their aging servers to those which use less energy yet increase productivity may be left behind, or bought out by larger companies who can afford such upgrade luxuries. Mobile applications seemingly run on Google or iTunes cloud servers, which mean that continual upgrades should be consistent with future efforts to convert to eco-friendly hardware or even just routine firmware updates.
Web Hosting Solutions
Since the whole ideology behind charging numerous customers web hosting fees every month is getting rather old, expensive and lacks reliability, it’s probably time for some older hosting companies to re-evaluate their directives, understand the mobility of our future and lower their prices for web based hosting. It really doesn’t cost too much for hosting companies to sponsor WordPress sites or landing pages; with websites relatively small, and hard drive space amassing the Terabyte with relative ease, the need for overcharging small businesses for monthly hosting has fleeted many months ago.
Mobile applications, mobile website access and web hosting can learn to get along. There will be a battle of relevance ensuing, however, simply because one can create mobile apps used as landing pages, or continually shop around until a web hosting company decides to drop their prices so they can web-enable their sites.
Conclusions
This piece was simply meant for you to consider where our web hosting companies have been, their current underlying and obvious issues, and what mobile applications could do to prevent numerous web hosting companies from sprouting up like years passed. Considering our future is an inevitable mobile force, desktop PC’s will slowly become televisions, laptops will either get thinner or flatter, and web hosting will eventually fall by the wayside like 8-tracks and cassette tapes have. Think about it.