Website issues caused by unreliable hosting infrastructure, security gaps, and chronic downtime are costing companies a significant amount of money.
A survey of 500 business owners, developers, and IT decision-makers across industries and company sizes from Liquid Web has revealed that they lose, on average, five hours per month to downtime.
Many are affected several times a year – 61% of marketing and advertising companies, for example, 56% in information technology, and 52% in professional services. And this downtime is expensive, with one-in-five companies losing more than $2,500 per month as a result of hosting downtime, and nearly half of all businesses are affected.
Overall, businesses are spending an average of $418 per month fixing hosting issues. Education reported the highest average losses at $663 per month, followed by healthcare at $478, finance at $458, information technology at $447, and marketing and advertising at $441.
"You can't scale a business on shaky infrastructure," said Liquid Web president Sachin Puri. "Fast, reliable hosting ensures your website keeps up as your traffic, customers, and operations grow. It's the engine behind sustainable digital growth."
Meanwhile, security threats are common, with almost half of businesses facing hacking attempts in the past year and 32% suffering data breaches because of poor hosting security. Around half reported that poor hosting had led to security vulnerabilities, with nearly as many having experienced hacking attempts or website slowdowns caused by malicious activity.
Others cited extended downtime or outages caused by cyberattacks, data breaches, loss of critical data or inadequate backup recovery, and website blacklisting or compromised reputation.
The survey respondents were lukewarm about their hosting providers, with 72% saying they were somewhat or slightly satisfied. Only a quarter were extremely or very satisfied. Despite this, 42% of businesses have stuck with their hosting provider for between one and five years – and 41% reported regret after changing providers.
When asked what would make them make the switch, 43% pointed to high costs, followed by 28% who said slow website performance, and 26% who flagged frequent downtime. But nearly seven-in-ten businesses said they'd delayed changing hosting providers because of fears around downtime, migration costs, and technical complexity. These concerns were most common amongst users of WordPress hosting, managed WordPress hosting, and shared hosting.
"In 2025, businesses should stop viewing hosting as a commodity and start treating it as a critical investment in security, performance, and growth," said Ryan MacDonald, chief technology officer at Liquid Web.
Nearly half of hosting teams expect budgets to rise in 2025, with security enhancements, AI-powered solutions, and backup and disaster recovery their biggest priorities. Among large companies, 62% are planning stronger security, 59% are prioritizing AI, and 45% want more scalable infrastructure. The picture was similar for medium-sized businesses, with 56% focusing on AI, 53% on security, and 50% on faster website or app performance.
Small businesses reported that their top investments would be in stronger security (59%), AI tools (54%), and faster performance (51%).
