Web Hosting Survey
Web Hosting Survey
The goal of the Web hosting survey was to determine the Web hosting services used, what the criteria were for selecting it and how likely organizations are to change web hosting services. The survey ran on TechSoup from January 15th, 2007 to February 9th 2007. There were a total of 951 respondents.
Highlights
Who Took the Survey?
As with previous surveys, survey respondents tended to be either Executive Director or IT managers with these positions representing 33.9% of respondents. There was a slightly larger representation of larger organizations on this survey. It was a close to 50-50 split between respondents from organizations below $1 Million and above $1 million. Typically, Over 60% of respondents represent organizations with budgets above $1 Million.
Vast majority of nonprofits have their own Web sites.
A full 95% of survey respondents stated that they do have their Web site.
Does your organization have a Web site?
Web sites being built in house by staff but not necessarily IT staff.
45% of respondents reported that their Web site was built by internal staff. However, the majority of the in house staff are not in IT related positions. 24.4% of respondents reported that a non-IT staff person built the Web site.
Nonprofits using Outside Web hosting provider.
Over 80% of survey respondents reported using an outside Web hosting provider. Not surprisingly, there were respondents that did know whether or not their organization used an outside web hosting provider. This is definitely information that everyone within an organization is not going to necessarily know. If anything it is almost more surprising
that 95% of survey respondents are aware of their Web hosting provider. This could be a situation where people are opting in based on the subject of the survey.
Do you use an outside Web hosting provider?
Price was the key factor in selecting a Web hosting provider.
Price was the most cited criteria for selecting a Web hosting provider with 31.5% if respondents reporting this answer. Ease of use was also reported as an important criteria with 15.2% of respondents reporting this answer.
Go Daddy and Dreamhost were the most popular Web hosting providers used by our respondents.
The most popular Web hosting providers reported by respondents were:
- Go Daddy
- Dreamhost
- One and One
- Network Solutions
- IPower
Nonprofits overwhelmingly satisfied with their current Web hosting provider.
Respondents were overwhelmingly satisfied with their Web hosting provider with over 86% of respondents reporting that they are very satisfied or satisfied with their current Web hosting providers.
How satisfied are you with your current Web hosting provider?
Nonprofits satisfied but not complacent with Web hosting provider
Despite being overwhelmingly satisfied, respondents still reported that they are considering changing Web hosting providers. A full 68% of nonprofits reported that they are considering changing Web hosting providers in the next year.
Price and Ease of use key areas of complaints about Web hosting providers
When asked why they were considering changing Web hosting provider, 16% reported that that their Web hosting provider was difficult to use. Another 13.4% reported price. Within the “other” category, technical support and service were often cited.
Cost and lack of knowledge are barriers to changing Web hosting providers
When asked about what barriers there were to their organization changing Web hosting providers, respondents reported that cost and a lack of in house knowledge as the top barriers.
Provider comparisons and worksheet on selecting a Web hosting provider were cited as information nonprofits would like to see on TechSoup
What kind of information would you like to see about Web hosting provider?
