CloudLinux and WebPros launch 2027 Industry Year in Review survey

CloudLinux, together with WebPros, opened the 2027 Industry Year in Review survey on 3 September 2026, aimed at hosting providers of all sizes. For anyone managing servers and reselling hosting, this is an opportunity to have your figures counted in the report that last year captured an industry in growth but under margin pressure. The survey is open now and closes Friday 16 October 2026.\n\n## What the 2026 edition revealed\n\nThe previous edition gathered responses from 446 hosting providers, compiled into the 2026 Web Hosting Trends Report. The opening finding was a contradiction: 65% of providers reported revenue growth in 2025 (37% moderate growth between 6% and 19%, 28% growth above 20%), yet the most cited threat to profitability was price competition from low-cost providers, cited by 29%, followed by rising costs (energy, software licences, hardware) at 28%.\n\nOn customer churn, price remains the primary reason for 56% of providers, but 41% reported customers lost to SaaS platforms such as Wix, Shopify or Squarespace. Lower down the list are factors providers can address directly: performance issues (29%), missing features (25%), security incidents (19%), poor support (18%).\n\nTo increase revenue per customer, 50% of providers focused on expanding professional services, 39% on adding features to premium plans, 36% on reselling third-party products and similarly on moving towards higher-value customer segments.\n\nOn support load, email issues top the list (spam, blacklisting, deliverability) at 42%, followed by CMS and customer application issues at 39%, with performance and security incidents both at 35%.\n\nOn artificial intelligence, 53% of providers expected AI to have the greatest impact in 2026, ahead of growing security threats (33%). The AI capabilities considered most useful were automatic malware and security issue detection (65%) and predictive server performance monitoring (48%), but actual adoption focused primarily on customer support (36%), and 27% had not yet implemented AI in any area.\n\n## Why participate\n\nThe 2026 report enabled comparisons by fleet size: nearly 60% of providers with up to 10 servers listed new customer acquisition as a top priority, whilst among providers with over 200 servers efficiency and churn reduction carried nearly as much weight as acquisition. These comparisons by size bracket only work if providers of all sizes participate.\n\nThe 2027 Industry Year in Review survey is available on the official CloudLinux blog and closes on 16 October 2026.