Thinking of selling your hosting business?

OUR COMMITMENTS

• 0 €No commissionFrom either side. No mandate, no exclusivity, no fees.
• 1 × 1Agreed deal by dealYour name reaches a buyer only if you accept, for that buyer.
• 0Nothing publishedNo listing, no mention on your review page. Your rating does not depend on it.

Which multiples to expect?

An indicative grid, to place a first conversation. The categories overlap: no revenue threshold guarantees a multiple.

Starting points, not a price list. A declining business, or one needing serious catch-up investment, can trade below. The large platforms can exceed these ranges without being relevant comparables for an independent host.

Size does not set the multiple, but it changes who is at the table. Below roughly €1M of revenue buyers are usually individuals paying with their own money; above it they are groups that borrow, and above €10M the consolidators compete with one another. That is the mechanical reason a €20M host does not sell on the same numbers as a €2M one — not a better business, a deeper pool of buyers.

Selling a book rather than the company? That is a different analysis: transferable revenue, margin retained, expected renewals and the cost of migration.

Adjusted EBITDA: the number to prepare before talking price

EBITDA measures profit before interest, tax and depreciation. In a sale, what a buyer really wants is a normalised, repeatable annual profit. Adjustments typically cover:

• +Genuinely exceptional, documented expenses.
• ±Owner pay above or below what a replacement would cost.
• −Costs that are necessary today but absent from the accounts.
• −One-off income that will not repeat.

Owner pay is not simply added back to profit if somebody has to be hired to do that work.

And revenue multiples?

Recurring revenue is a second way of reading the same business. But a euro of domain revenue does not necessarily carry the same margin as a euro of shared hosting or managed services. The link between the two methods is simple:

Revenue multiple = EBITDA multiple × EBITDA margin

Same €500,000 of revenue, same hypothetical 5 × EBITDA — only the margin changes.

• 15 % EBITDA margin75 k€ → value 375 000 €0,75 × revenue
• 30 % EBITDA margin150 k€ → value 750 000 €1,50 × revenue
• 45 % EBITDA margin225 k€ → value 1 125 000 €2,25 × revenue

At identical revenue, profitability can therefore move the value considerably. These are illustrative calculations, not observed transactions.

Comparing recurring revenue also means separating recognised revenue, invoices issued and cash collected: a subscription paid three years up front is not three years of revenue in the year it was banked.

1. 01

   Revenue quality and renewals

   I can document this

   A buyer will want to understand how monthly revenue moved over 24 to 36 months, how it splits by product, and how much of it is genuinely recurring.

   Customer churn

   The share of customers lost over a period.

   Gross revenue retention

   Revenue kept on the starting book, excluding upsells.

   Net revenue retention

   Revenue kept once upgrades, expansions and contractions are counted.

   Strong recent acquisition does not demonstrate good retention. Customer cohorts — grouped by when they signed — show what survives the first renewals.

2. 02

   Margin by product family

   I can document this

   The analysis covers infrastructure costs, licences, registrars, commissions and support. A product that bills a lot but ties up a team can contribute less than a smaller, automated book.

   TO SEPARATE

   • Shared hosting
   • Managed WordPress
   • VPS
   • Dedicated servers
   • Domains
   • One-off work
3. 03

   Technical and operational handover

   I can document this

   How well the environment fits drives the cost and risk of integration. A buyer will also look at supplier commitments, hardware condition, security procedures, incidents and documentation.

   ENVIRONMENT

   • WHMCS or other billing
   • cPanel / Plesk
   • Virtualisation
   • Backups
   • DNS
   • Email
   • In-house code

   Future savings should be assessed after migration costs and risks.

4. 04

   Owner dependency and customer concentration

   I can document this

   The point is to identify which functions must transfer, and what they cost. Likewise, losing a large customer has to be measured in revenue — and in margin.

   • Who is on call?
   • Who holds the critical credentials?
   • Who maintains the relationships with the largest customers?

Equity value = enterprise value + cash retained under the agreement − debt and debt-like items ± agreed adjustments

An enterprise value of €750,000, plus €80,000 of cash and less €130,000 of debt, gives an equity value of €700,000 — before any other adjustments, fees and tax.

THE AGREEMENT MUST ALSO SET OUT THE SHARE THAT IS…

• At completion Paid when the sale is signed.
• On a schedule Paid later, on agreed dates.
• Earn-out Conditional on future results.
• Held in escrow Possibly held back to cover risks.

A nominally higher offer is therefore not necessarily the better one. The certain amount, the schedule and the payment conditions matter as much as the multiple.

• 0 €commission
• 0mandate required
• 0exclusivity
• 0public listing

Why free? We build this network because it serves our work as a comparison site: knowing who owns what is exactly what we document. And confidential: your name reaches nobody without your explicit agreement, deal by deal — a sale that leaks scares customers away before it attracts a buyer.

• 60taken over by someone else
• 96closed with no buyer
• 10have a review page here

A host that waits too long does not get sold: it closes. Its customers rehouse themselves, and the value goes with them.

WHO BUYS THE MOST takeovers we followed

• Network Solutions 8
• Hosting.com 4
• HostPapa 4
• ExactHosting 3
• Hostway 3
• Equinix 2

Who owns whom, group by group: the market’s consolidators.

Our own watch, cross-checked with our review pages — the names that link through are the ones we cover. “Taken over” means the brand continued under a new owner, or disappeared into it.

More of our measurements in English: what we measure, including hosting renewal prices.

Ready to talk, even without a date in mind? Tell us about your business →