[tchbnl]

Private equity has been a cancer for the web hosting community. A single firm bought the top two control panels (cPanel and Plesk), the top virtualization solution (SolusVM), and the top billing software (WHMCS). And each year the prices are raised further and further with no real investment. It's forced a lot of smaller providers out and caused prices for customers to skyrocket. And you have to put up with it because the alternatives still aren't quite as good, or you're too locked in.

It's the same for hosting companies. A single PE firm (Endurance) owns over two dozen hosting and domain firms. The first thing they do is lay off the staff (because they already have outsourced agents) and strip the bits away until it's nothing more than a shell with a name for one of their other platforms.

PE is a cancer, and I don't even know if I can count one that has ever been a net positive for a company. All they care about is extracting more and more until all that's left is a stone.