How AI assistants recommend web hosting providers
A small business that asks an AI assistant for web hosting gets a short list of providers, and the list can differ from country to country. Here is what the assistants answered in every country the AIGROW Index asked, and what a provider can work on.
- Countries asked
- 20
- Names in the rankings
- 154
- Products named per country
- 17
- Names repeated on a rerun
- 80%
- Answers that name the leader
- 94%
The first two rows are counts; the rows under them are medians over the ranked pages. Every question was asked without a location or a chat history.
Asked for web hosting in 20 countries, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini named about 17 providers per country, and 27% of those names came up only once. Each assistant builds its list from what is published about a provider. What a provider controls is that public record: its plans, its support and its reviews.
What a customer asked, and who came first
One place of the 20, as an example: United States. Every place was asked the same questions in its own language, and its page in the Index has the full ranking.
- What is the best web hosting provider for a small business in the US?
- My company website in the US keeps going down with our current host. Which web hosting provider would you recommend?
- Which hosting company would you recommend to a small business in the US that needs a website and business email?
- Which web host has the best customer support for small businesses in the US?
- SiteGroundnamed in 94% of the answers
- DreamHostnamed in 61% of the answers
- WP Enginenamed in 56% of the answers
The names that recur
17 different businesses came first across 20 rankings, and 16 names were listed in three places or more. These are the most frequent.
- SiteGround11 places
- Google Workspace9 places
- Hostinger9 places
- Kinsta9 places
- Cloudways6 places
- GoDaddy6 places
Counted by spelling: two businesses with the same name in different places count as one.
What an owner can work on
No one can promise a place in an assistant’s answer. What an owner controls is what is published about the business, and these are the parts the questions above point to.
Publish how you handle downtime
One question came from a company whose site keeps going down. Publish your uptime record, keep a public status page and say what you do when something fails.
Say what a plan includes
Another asked for a host that gives a small business a website and business email. Say plainly what each plan includes, email among it, and who each plan suits.
Show your support
One question asked for the best customer support. Say how customers reach you, at what hours and in which languages, and keep the reviews that mention support.
Every ranking for this trade
The AIGROW Index publishes the ranking of each place with every answer, and how it was measured.
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