TL;DR

• The 2025 Digital Agency Web Host Report is live.
• There were five top hosts that ranked above average in Performance & Reliability and Agency Fit: AWS, WP Engine, Google, DigitalOcean, and GoDaddy.
• Security, site speed, and uptime were the most important core factors when it comes to agency leaders making hosting decisions.
• Agency leaders ranked partnership programs the lowest deciding core factor because the current partner programs don't do enough to move the needle. There's an opportunity here for hosts to make agency leaders' lives easier, but they need to deliver.
• The sub-average rankings are incredibly fragile, as a single pricing shift or feature release could significantly alter these rankings.
• If you participated in the study, you should have received your copy of the report already. If you missed the survey, the full report is available from our research shop.

What Would You Like to Learn About Digital Agencies?

We have some upcoming research opportunities where we'll be able to dig into more whitespace topics that are interesting to agency leaders. Please let us know what you'd like to learn more about, and if there's enough interest, we can include it in upcoming studies!

The Hosting Study Results Are In

Digital agencies can make (or lose) margin on the infrastructure decisions they make early on, yet most decisions rely on anecdotes, vendor marketing, or a CTO’s bad support experience 12 years ago. We hope to help fix this with the 118 director-level+ insights shared in this study.

Top five hosts: Only five providers (AWS, WP Engine, Google, DigitalOcean, and GoDaddy) beat the market average on both Performance & Reliability and Agency Fit scores. Knowing where true leaders sit helps agencies justify premium host pricing or gives evidence to defend a switch.

Top performers at a glance: AWS: 3.1× better than average for Agency Fit and 4× for Performance & Reliability. WP Engine: #1 for support and partnership programs, 2.8× above average in Performance & Reliability. Google: Pure performance play as speed and uptime carry the score while support trails.

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Core factors that leaders care about: Security, site speed, and uptime, ranked well above perks like partnership programs or brand perception when agency leaders ranked their host selection criteria. Aligning vendor evaluations to these metrics protects client trust and billable hours.

A problem with partnerships: Partnership programs were the lowest-rated core factor when it came to agency leaders making hosting decisions. We looked at the partner programs of many of these hosting companies and, after talking with agency leaders, have determined that this factor scored low because the programs just don't seem to do enough for the agencies. The leaders we spoke to were interested in partner programs that delivered, but so few did, and there was little differentiation between them. There's an opportunity here for hosts to make agency leaders' lives easier, but they need to deliver on what actually moves the needle, and generic agency directories aren't it.

Fragile rankings in the crowded middle: Ten hosts ranked below average. Mid-tier vendors shine in one area but miss in others, creating a “crowded middle” that’s easy to outgrow. Because a simple feature release or price change could reshuffle rankings, agency leaders can benefit from taking an evolving portfolio approach to their hosting decisions.

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Where the value hosts win: Hostinger and Bluehost ranked well for Pricing, Site speed, and Uptime. Webflow outranked them in Site speed, but ranked worse for Pricing and Uptime. Use cases: brochure sites, MVPs, and cost-sensitive campaigns.

Get The Full Report

If you participated in the study, you should have received your copy of the report earlier this week.

If you missed the survey, you can still purchase the full 39-page report for detailed scorecards, quotes, and the decision framework from our research shop.