CloudFest buzzes with hallway demos, rapid-fire panels and the occasional standing ovations, but one conversation cuts through the noise – a sit-down between Bluehost CEO Sachin Puri and Kareem Marucchi of CrowdFavorite.
We gained insights into the future of SMB digital growth as Sachin shared his vision: the web doesn’t need more tools, it needs better connections between them.
Today’s digital world is fragmented: domains, hosting, plugins, analytics and email tools scattered across dashboards. When everything is disconnected, growth slows.
“Our mission is very simple,” he adds, “to help small businesses be successful online.”
For Bluehost, that means simplifying complexity and helping the web function as a unified, connected ecosystem.
Inside Bluehost’s big bet: From open source to open ecosystem
Puri describes the current moment as “the perfect time to be at Bluehost”. And it’s easy to see why. Bluehost now has the technological foundation to scale faster than ever. “The technology has really enabled us to bring experiences to the market that were never possible before,” he says.
At Bluehost, we are not just hosting websites anymore; we are powering connected digital businesses. Puri describes how the needs of modern SMBs have shifted and so has the role of a platform company.
The four pillars powering Bluehost’s connected web strategy
For Puri, Bluehost’s transformation comes to life through four essential pillars: the foundation of a connected digital ecosystem built for modern small businesses.
- Infrastructure – Delivering enterprise-grade reliability, security and global performance, but with the simplicity and accessibility that SMBs expect
- Content – Moving beyond pages and templates to the full lifecycle of naming, branding and storytelling, increasingly shaped and accelerated by AI
- Commerce – Supporting the many forms of how SMBs actually do business today, from online transactions to appointments, bookings and hybrid in-person flows
- Discovery and communication – Helping businesses get found and stay connected through SEO, local listings, social presence, email and now, visibility within LLMs
Together, these pillars mark a clear shift from hosting as infrastructure to hosting as enablement. Bluehost hosting solution is evolving into a holistic business platform that merges AI innovation, open ecosystems and partner collaboration to help SMBs compete in a multi-channel, intelligent web.
How Bluehost is bridging worlds: Oracle-powered infrastructure muscle meets SMB simplicity
Among the four pillars, infrastructure sits at the foundation. This is where our partnership with Oracle becomes real.
“We talked about the partnership with Oracle,” Puri says. “It is enabling us to bring enterprise-grade performance, reliability and security to SMBs with SMB simplicity and affordability.”
“OCI has really made very significant investments in cloud infrastructure locally. The data centers are everywhere, the technology stack is new and the business models are a lot more friendly to today’s time.”
This foundation now powers our global expansion. “Today we can offer easily and guaranteed, four nines or better,” Puri explains, referring to our uptime commitment. “We added about seven data centers faster than ever before and we plan to not stop there.”
OCI performance, SMB accessibility
The gains aren’t just about uptime, they’re about access. “The performance gains we’re getting from OCI are fantastic,” he adds.
“What makes it really interesting for us is our scale allowed us to bring this at a price point that is very, very liberating to us and I want our partners and customers to take advantage of that.”
This affordability is key to our broader strategy. It makes enterprise-grade infrastructure accessible to small businesses, agencies and managed service providers without enterprise-level cost or complexity.
It’s a win-win model that also strengthens Bluehost’s partner ecosystem. The company powers infrastructure globally, while partners build services, plugins and creative experiences on top.
This philosophy, partnership over ownership, reflects a deeper belief. “We’re not going to invest in everything,” Puri admits. “Optionality is critical to the customer and as long as they can stay within that platform, it’s fantastic.”
The next leap: SaaS 2.0 and the rise of service as software
If Bluehost’s infrastructure upgrades and AI initiatives are the groundwork, Puri sees an even bigger shift coming, one that redefines how digital products are built, delivered and experienced.
“Every company is rewriting SaaS,” he says. “Not just SaaS but SaaS 2.0, where it is not software as a service, it is service as a software.”
The phrase service as software captures a new way of thinking about value creation on the web. SaaS 1.0 gave us access to cloud-based tools. SaaS 2.0, as Puri frames it, turns expertise itself into a product: modular, repeatable and automated through AI.
“When you think from that paradigm, we are at one of the best times in technology because you can achieve SaaS 2.0 at a very rapid, accelerating pace. We are using AI for extremely fast, rapid development of our own tools,” Puri says.
He points out that just a few years ago, connecting all the systems, APIs and data layers that make up a modern digital business would have taken months of coding and maintenance. “With AI,” he explains, “that acceleration is extremely fast, because the new coding technology allows you to get to a starting point.” The key, he adds, is quality: “When we put something in front of the customer, it must be high quality, highly well tested. But AI is giving us a path for acceleration.”
For brands and agencies, this evolution means one thing: the wall between software and service is crumbling. What once required multiple vendors and workflows is now becoming seamless, modular and intelligent. We are moving towards an ecosystem where technology serves as an extension of human expertise.
What brands and builders can do right now?
For all its ambition, Sachin Puri’s message at CloudFest was deeply practical. The connected web isn’t a far-off ideal, it is something every brand, developer and agency can start building toward today.
The key is to simplify strategically: focus on the connections that compound value.
- Map your stack: Start by identifying where you stand across Bluehost’s four pillars: infrastructure, content, commerce and discovery and communication. Puri’s framework invites teams to find the friction points in their ecosystem: where systems don’t talk, insights get lost or customer experience breaks down.
- Automate a single process: AI now plays a central role in consolidating separate workloads and enabling faster movement than before. That kind of integration can start small. Generating on-brand content, improving a product description or automating a page layout are simple workflows that help teams feel the immediate impact of a more connected system.
- Prioritize openness: Puri is clear: “Open ecosystem is the only way you can grow.” In practice, this means selecting tools that integrate seamlessly and maintain data portability. WordPress’s endurance, still powering over 40% of the web, is proof that open systems create flexibility, not fragility.
- Build credibility: While AI drives speed, trust still drives growth. Security, domain-based email, SSL, consistent listings and backup integrity are the hygiene factors that keep small businesses credible.
In this model, growth isn’t about scale for scale’s sake, it’s about seamlessness. Each integration, each AI assist, each open connection reduces friction and amplifies impact.
Closing insights: The connected web advantage
By the end of the conversation, the room at CloudFest felt less like a conference hall and more like a briefing room for the future. For Puri, the web’s next chapter won’t be defined by bigger platforms or faster hardware but by better connections.
At Bluehost, our mission has always been to ensure small businesses can operate online with the same performance, ease and flexibility that major enterprises enjoy.
This statement loops back to the heart of the entire discussion: a belief that infrastructure and innovation mean little unless they empower the people who build upon them.
That belief not only fuels our investments in AI, open source and partner ecosystems but it also reflects something more fundamental: small businesses don’t want to manage complexity; they want to do the work they love.
The takeaway is simple but resonant: the connected web isn’t just a technological evolution; it’s a human one. It’s about freedom and the ability for every builder, from a florist to a global agency, to thrive in an ecosystem that works with them. Not against them.
In a world chasing scale, Bluehost’s bet is on seamlessness and on the entrepreneurs who turn connectivity into possibility.
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