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In the hosting market, a practice has been widespread for many years, rarely discussed openly because it benefits everyone (or almost everyone): the recognition of commercial commissions to webmasters, developers, web designers, agencies, and consultants who direct their clients to a specific provider.
In theory, a commercial collaboration doesn't necessarily pose a problem. A professional can recommend a service they know well, assist the client during the migration, handle the configuration, and receive compensation for the work actually performed. The problem arises when the commission doesn't compensate for technical work, but becomes the determining factor in choosing a provider.
In these cases, the consultant no longer selects hosting based on infrastructure quality, system expertise, support times, security, or service reliability. The choice is made based on the personal financial return obtained from the sale.
The customer, however, often knows nothing about it. They believe they're receiving independent technical advice, but they're actually dealing with an undeclared commercial activity.
Webmasters and developers are the prescribers of the hosting service
Most end customers lack the expertise to independently evaluate a hosting infrastructure. Terms like redundancy, data replication, geographic backup, virtualization, load balancing, application security, caching, SLAs, and monitoring can be difficult to interpret.
For this reason, the choice is almost always delegated to a trusted technical figure. This could be the webmaster who created the website, the developer who developed the application, the web designer overseeing the project, or the agency managing the company's digital presence.
These professionals are true technology prescribers . Their opinion directly influences the client's decision, who rarely questions the proposal received.
When a doctor prescribes a medication, the patient assumes the choice was made based on their needs. Similarly, when a technician recommends hosting, the customer assumes the provider has evaluated performance, reliability, security, and cost-effectiveness.
If the recommendation is instead influenced by an undeclared commission, a clear conflict of interest arises . Those who should protect the customer are financially incentivized to direct them to the highest paying supplier, not necessarily the most suitable one.
The best hosting is likely to become the one with the highest commission
A provider can offer excellent infrastructure, competent technicians, rapid support, and fair pricing. However, if they don't pay commissions to prescribers, they risk being excluded from many negotiations.
Conversely, a supplier with less effective service can win customers simply by allocating a significant portion of the price to sales commissions.
The result is a market where competition is no longer based solely on service quality. Providers are forced to compete on the amount of money they pay intermediaries. In practice, the best hosting provider risks not being the one with the most reliable infrastructure, but the one that pays the highest commission.
This dynamic especially penalizes companies that would like to invest their profits in technical staff, research, security, hardware, training, and support. A portion of the financial resources that could be used to improve service are instead allocated to supporting a network of commercial referrals.
The paradox is clear: those who invest more in quality may be less competitive than those who invest more in prescriber remuneration.
The cost of the commission is paid by the customer
Commissions don't arise out of thin air. Any commission paid to an intermediary must be financed through the price paid by the client.
If a provider pays hundreds or thousands of euros annually to the person who signed the contract, that amount must be included in the supply's profit and loss statement. It can be included directly in the fee or recovered through additional services, renewals, surcharges, oversized packages, or management fees.
In some cases , the annual commission can reach over €3.500 for a single customer and a single server . This figure is not a negligible commercial detail. It means the customer could be paying thousands of euros each year that don't cover the server, connectivity, backups, security, or technical support.
Those €3.500 don't make the processor faster. They don't increase available memory. They don't improve response times. They don't add redundancy or reduce the risk of downtime. They're simply the cost necessary to compensate whoever directed the customer to that contract.
The customer could then purchase a technically identical service at a much lower price, or spend that same amount on better infrastructure. They could get more resources, a disaster recovery plan, more frequent backups, advanced monitoring, or specialized system support.
Instead, he pays a commercial component that, in most cases, he is not even aware of.
A market doped by a consolidated practice
When a behavior is repeated for decades, it tends to be perceived as normal. This, however, doesn't mean it's healthy or beneficial for the market.
The hidden commission system has created a system that's difficult to break. Many suppliers know that by refusing to pay commissions, they could lose access to entire customer networks. As a result, even companies that would prefer to offer direct and transparent pricing end up adapting.
Therefore, it's not always a voluntary choice. In some market segments, the commission has become a sort of commercial toll : to be considered by the webmaster, developer, or agency, you have to pay a fee on the contract.
Anyone who tries to avoid it risks being told that other providers offer their partners better deals. Better deals for the partner, of course, not for the customer.
This creates a spiral in which everyone is encouraged to maintain the system:
- the prescriber receives a recurring income;
- the provider acquires a customer without having to reach them directly;
- the customer pays the total cost without knowing the real distribution of the price.
The only party who does not receive a certain benefit is the end customer, that is, the one who finances the entire operation.
The commission can also compromise the quality of care
The problem doesn't end with the sale. When the consultant receives a recurring commission, he or she may be tempted to defend the provider even when the service presents obvious problems.
Slow hosting, inefficient support, frequent outages, or inadequate configurations should prompt a professional to consider an alternative. However, switching providers could mean losing your commission.
The customer therefore risks remaining on an unsuitable platform for longer, while problems are attributed to the site, the CMS, the plugins, the traffic or general optimization needs.
Of course, not all webmasters, developers, or web designers behave this way. Many professionals work seriously, declare their collaborations, and put the client's interests before their own financial gain. It would be unfair to generalize.
The point is another: the lack of transparency makes it impossible to distinguish independent advice from a self-interested sale . The customer lacks the information necessary to evaluate the recommendation received.
Changing webmasters almost automatically becomes a change of hosting as well.
The same logic can also produce the opposite effect. When a company changes webmaster, developer, or agency, it often finds itself automatically having to change hosting service as well, regardless of the quality, reliability, and performance of the existing provider . The new provider tends to propose a provider with which it has a commercial agreement, presenting the migration as a technical necessity even when the existing infrastructure functions properly and fully meets the client's needs. Changing hosting allows for a new contract to be activated and, consequently, a new fee or commission to be earned. In even more questionable situations, it may happen that the consultant himself periodically promotes the transfer to another provider, every one or two years, without any real technical problems or concrete financial benefits for the client. Each migration thus becomes an additional revenue opportunity, while the client must bear the costs of switching, possible interruptions, reconfigurations, operational risks, and new administrative procedures. The change of provider no longer occurs to improve the service, but to generate a new commission . Here too, the lack of transparency prevents the client from understanding whether the migration is truly necessary or whether it primarily serves the financial interests of the person advising it.
Transparent affiliation and hidden commission are not the same thing
It is important to distinguish a normal declared partnership from an opaque mechanism.
If an agency clearly states that it is a business partner of a provider, discloses the compensation received, and allows the client to compare other offers, the relationship is transparent. The client can make an informed decision about whether to accept that offer.
The same applies when the fee covers actual activities performed: server configuration, migration, maintenance, monitoring, update management, application support, or coordination with the provider. In this case, it's not a hidden commission, but a professional service that should be described and billed as such.
The criticality arises when the compensation is tied exclusively to the choice of supplier and is hidden from the party who pays it indirectly.
Consultancy should be compensated clearly. If the webmaster performs analysis and selection work, he or she can bill the client for that consultancy. If he or she technically manages the server, he or she can bill for the management service. There is no valid reason to hide the fee within the provider's fee.
The customer must know the real price of what he is buying
In recent years, there has been much discussion about price transparency, consumer protection, additional costs, and the fairness of commercial communications, including listing the current and previously discounted prices on price tags, and similar issues. Yet, in the digital services sector, many economic components remain invisible.
A customer purchasing a server should know how much they are paying for the infrastructure, how much for support, how much for managed services, and how much for any sales intermediation activities.
Knowing the invoice total isn't enough. To make an informed choice, you need to understand what makes up that total.
If a portion of the fee is recognized as a commission to the person who recommended the service, this information should be explicitly stated. It could appear as a separate line item in the contractual documentation and on the invoice, with a clear description.
The client would thus discover that a portion of the price is not allocated to the hosting service, but to the intermediary's compensation. They would also have the option of requesting a quote without intermediation or directly negotiating their consultant's fee.
Why regulatory intervention is needed
Relying solely on the goodwill of operators will hardly be enough. The system is too consolidated and creates a significant competitive disadvantage for those who unilaterally decide to waive commissions.
A provider that eliminates commissions can reduce prices or invest more in the service, but risks being dropped from prescribers' lists. As long as other providers continue to pay, the ethical choice could turn into a commercial penalty.
For this reason, intervention by the government and the competent authorities would be desirable. Not necessarily to prevent any trade agreement, but at least to introduce clear reporting and transparency requirements.
Each component of the price allocated to a commission should be indicated in the contract and on the invoice. The client should know the beneficial owner of the commission, the method used to calculate it, and its possible recurrence.
It could also be required that anyone recommending a service inform the customer in advance of the existence of a financial relationship with the provider. A simple, explicit, and understandable statement would eliminate many ambiguities.
Transparency wouldn't prevent professionals from collaborating with providers. However, it would prevent them from presenting what is essentially a paid sale as independent advice.
A more transparent market would be better for everyone
Eliminating hidden commissions would benefit the entire industry.
Clients could compare offers based on actual cost and quality. Reputable professionals could openly promote their advice, without being confused with mere canvassers. Providers would be incentivized to compete on infrastructure, expertise, and support rather than on the percentage paid to intermediaries.
It would also reduce the pressure on those companies that currently feel forced to adopt a business model they don't agree with. Without a ban or a universal transparency requirement, forgoing commissions often means handing customers over to competitors.
The hosting market should reward those who offer reliable servers, security, uptime, competent support, and fair pricing—not those who build the most aggressive commission networks.
It's time to make visible what remains hidden today
In the hosting world, commissions aren't just a marketing ploy. When they remain hidden, they undermine the trust between client and consultant, increase prices, and impact competition.
The point isn't to deny webmasters, developers, and web designers the right to be paid. On the contrary, their work must be recognized and compensated fairly. But the compensation should relate to actual activities, be declared, and be understandable to the client.
A commission of thousands of euros per year for a single server cannot be treated as an irrelevant detail, especially when it is borne by a customer who is completely unaware of its existence.
After so much talk about price transparency, it would be appropriate to ask that these components also be made visible. Each commission should be clearly indicated on the invoice , so that the customer knows how much the purchased service really costs and how much they are actually paying for being referred to that provider.
Only by putting an end to hidden commissions will it be possible to restore the centrality of technical quality, competition, and freedom of choice. A transparent market doesn't fear debate: it finally makes it possible.
