Best Hosting Provider: Equinix

Last year was the first time that the category for best hosting provider was up for grabs and Equinix didn’t make the top four. This year, though, Equinix finds itself in the number one spot. In May, Equinix completed its $683.4 million acquisition of Switch and Data. The combined organization now operates more than 6 million square feet of global datacenter space with nearly 600 network service providers, according to the Foster City, Calif.-based firm. Additionally, Equinix expanded a number of its 20 US datacenters and opened new facilities in Atlanta and Washington, DC, and hubs in Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia and Holland. When asked why Equinix was selected as the best hosting provider by Waters readers, a spokesperson for the firm wrote: “We recently completed a customer service survey that found that more than 95 percent of clients would refer us to one of their friends or colleagues. We think this might be what your readers had in mind.”

1 Equinix (21.2%)
2 Thomson Reuters (19.8%)
3 BT (19.1%)