Rocket Net Revenue (2026)

Nathan Latka (00:01) Hey folks, my guest today is Ben Gabler. He's the founder and CEO of Rocket.net, launched in twenty twenty after almost twenty years in web hosting. He previously held senior roles, including the CEO of Hostgator, product roles at GoDaddy and UK two group, and chief product officer at Stack Path. Ben, you ready to take us to the top? Ben Gabler (00:18) Let's do it. Thanks for having me. Nathan Latka (00:20) You you bet we were just catching up. You gave a great keynote at our conference. You've done a lot of great interviews just helping bootstrappers online and folks wanting to scale quickly. Tell us what the company does today. Is it still fully managed WordPress hosting? Ben Gabler (00:33) Yeah, so today, you know, Rocket.net is one of the fastest growing managed WordPress hosting companies in the industry. And we started in 2020, and really the you know the USP was sort of a all in one fast, secure, and easy to use WordPress deployment. So we partnered up with Cloudflare. I'm sure everybody knows who that is these days. And you know, when we partnered with them, we were the first company to really bring Cloudflare Enterprise to market for the WordPress delivery. So our customers could point directly to Rocket.net, no different than any other hosting company in the world, and they would immediately get enterprise grade, C DN, WAF, and you know, the back end server as well. So that really kind of took us to our first hundred customers and you know, from there started working with some pretty big influencers that had just, you know, stumbled upon us and you know, we sort of transitioned from That being a checkbox of always having that on to you know really providing like industry leading support. So your customer service is a ninety eight percent success you know, CSAT. And we've maintained that all throughout the years and something we take very seriously. So, you know, over the the time frame of the last six years, we've really focused on, you know, customer first, ⁓ you know, w whether it's product or time off or whatever it might be, we always try to think about, you know, how does this affect our customer? So, you know, we've we've effectively scaled from zero to ten million in ARR ⁓ in the last six years. You know, it was a fully bootstrapped business that I took to, you know, zero to right around seven, eight million, I think, was the time of the transaction. We ended up joining forces with the World Host Group, which is hosting dot com and you know teamed up with some some capital to really take the product and platform to the next level. Nathan Latka (02:18) So let's break down the revenue growth just for a second. So you launched in April of twenty twenty. When did you break a million of revenue? Ben Gabler (02:25) So we actually, funny enough, did a a conference with you. And that would have been let me see here. It's been a while about the when we've hit some of these milestones. So I wanna say yeah, here we go. So it was October of twenty twenty two. So it took about a year and a half, I think it was, for us to hit that million dollar mark. you know, the first year you know we we got our VP out and I think it was like seventy two days. So, you know, it you ⁓ know, we kind of really perfected the platform, spent some time one on one with some customers and worked through some different big agency wins that we had and you know, before we knew it we were, you know, hosting websites like Hana Tee dot com and you know, whether you're political or not, it's just a site that gets massive amounts of traffic. And you know, as a new company you know, we were able to support that without any issues. So so roughly about, you know, a a year and a half of after our full go to market. Nathan Latka (03:25) And then what let's keep the revenue growth story here, then we'll jump more into the product. When did you break five million of ARR? What year was that? Ben Gabler (03:31) Yeah. So, you know, really when we look forward of, you know, the journey of the business, you know, once you get that first million, you really start to kind of build a following for your brand, right? You've got a lot of different, you know, ⁓ people out there really talking about you. So as we got through twenty twenty three, you know, I wanna say it was roughly a year or so later that we actually surpassed the five million. So, you know, the growth just really, you know, started snowballing and and compounding. ⁓ you know, we're we were just under I wanna say, it looks like right at the end of twenty twenty three we're about four and a half million. So right there in Q one, like of twenty twenty four, we surpassed the five million mark and then we just, you know, had some incredible growth along the way. So August twenty two, yep. Nathan Latka (04:21) Can you just I was gonna say, can you quickly just finish that off? So twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five, twenty twenty. So go from four point five million of revenue to twenty twenty three and where was twenty twenty four? Ben Gabler (04:30) So when we think you know about twenty twenty-four, you know, we we surpassed seven million in ARR. ⁓ so you know, we were just really starting to kind of hit this massive growth and inflection, right? Like we were doing a million and new ARR in a ninety-day period. You know, in twenty twenty-five we're the fastest growing c you know, named the fastest growing company in the southeast. ⁓ and then you know, in twenty twenty five, which is based on twenty twenty-four's revenue, we were actually a hundred and sixty seventh on the Inc. five thousand of all the United States. So that was really a big milestone of, you know, what we were able to achieve ⁓ back then. So, you know, it was it was really neat. Nathan Latka (05:10) So, Ben, can you finish the revenue growth story and then can we go dive into how you grew it in each year? So seven million AR let end of twenty twenty-four, where did twenty twenty five end? Ben Gabler (05:15) Sure. Right. So as we get through twenty twenty five, ⁓ so let me hold on, let me just get my date straight. So I think we closed out twenty twenty five right around eight million. So twenty twenty four I have to double check the exact numbers. I imagine you'll edit some of this. But basically the the the end of twenty twenty four was really what set the stage for us, you know, to really go. We were we're averaging about two and a half million ARR growth per year, give or take. Right? So just It it would fluctuate with different wins. We've got some very you know, we have some of our you know, one of our customers, you know, seven figures a year in spend. ⁓ so it it it was twenty twenty two would have been the million. Sorry, I haven't had to look at this in a while. ⁓ and I just trying to find a chart. Nathan Latka (06:01) Yes, seven seven seven million twenty four, twenty twenty five year you break eight million of ARR. And what do you think you'll break here by December twenty twenty six? Ben Gabler (06:11) So so we're we're at ten million error now, you know, so the goal by the end of this year is to really surpass, you know, probably about twelve million give or take. ⁓ you know, 'cause we're kind of we're we're pretty consistent now, but we're actually going through this massive change that I think we can get to in a second of like product offering and looking at sort of the market and where it's at today. Nathan Latka (06:33) So take us my audience wants to know how you grew from one million to seven million in twenty four months. So what grow drove the road between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four? Was it affiliates, ⁓ paid ads, something else? Ben Gabler (06:38) Yeah. Yeah, so really a lot of investment in the brand and support. You know, f you know, believe it or not, we never did any paid media spend when it comes to like Google or think, you the the world has just changed so much, you know, spending twenty dollars a click in our industry did not make any sense. So, you know, the product and growth, you know, in our industry, you effectively snowball, right? There's only so many hosting companies out there being talked to. You know, there's you can count on one hand how many actual managed hosting competitors we have. So, you people just really started talking about us. We won a lot of the agency world over and we worked with a lot of influencers that would be on sort of an affiliate model. And then, you know, following the success of our affiliate program, we launched an agency partner program because what we saw was we also saw a lot of agencies that wanted a recurring percentage of commission instead of just a one-time payment. So there's agencies out there that don't want to deal with hosting whatsoever. They just want to build the WordPress site and have their customer take on the hosting aspect of it. So they get a recurring commission. So a lot of the growth was really driven by sort of, you know, content marketing coupled with, you know, brand awareness and brand investment and brand development, you know. Nathan Latka (07:57) So so just to understand how significant the affiliate partner program and the agency partner program has been for you, if we look at last month, which which we're recording here in June of twenty twenty six, so if we look at May of twenty twenty six, how much just last month did you pay out to affiliate partners and agency partners? Do you remember? Ben Gabler (08:15) It was rough roughly about eight thousand dollars. Nathan Latka (08:17) that's nothing. Ben Gabler (08:18) Correct. So a lot of the growth it's Nathan Latka (08:20) I thought you said that was I thought you said that that was a huge part of your growth. I if if you're doing eight hundred thirty grand a month right now of revenue, that's ten million of ARR, I would expect if affiliates and agency partners are a big chunk, I'd expect to be paying a hundred, two hundred thousand a month in affiliate commissions. Ben Gabler (08:32) So so from zero to seven million, right, we've consistently been around eight to ten thousand dollars a month, right? So what's what happened was that was a significant part of what grew the brand and got word of mouth going. So then if you fast forward to today and you look at the percentage of growth that it that it attributes, is is not much, right? So that affiliate and influencer referral base has effectively stayed pretty much flat as far as our cost on that. What hasn't stayed flat is every month that's hundreds of new people talking about rocket.net. So we kind of solved the problem in reverse, which is what is part of what made us such a valuable company, is we had this massive amount of growth that was largely driven by word of mouth. Nathan Latka (09:13) Wha why I mean p my audience hears word of mouth and they go, How do I do what Ben did? Right. When I think word of mouth, I think no I don't talk about my hosting provider. Like when I'm at a meetup, I don't man, I love my hosting provider. Go use whatever. What do you so what do you mean word of mouth? Can you give us some tactics that you actually did to drive that? Ben Gabler (09:29) Absolutely. Being heavily involved in the WordPress community, right? So like I would say WordPress is a much different, you know, community versus a lot of the other, you know, things out in the world, whether it's health insurance or a Tupperware conference or whatever it might be. When you look at the WordPress community, it's very tight knit community and what really stands out a lot is is contributing back, right? Like we've been a you know, a a big member of the Five for the Future, which is the WordPress organization's program for contributing back. To WordPress itself. And you know, at one point we were, I believe, in the top five contributors, like you know, contributing more than like GoDaddy. That's correct. Yeah. So like whether we're helping cut releases or taking care of track tickets or whatever it might be, you know, our team was heavily involved in just contributing hours of the five of the future. So so for us, word of mouth, you know, we fo we we basically also put an identity to the brand, right? Like almost like gave the business a soul. Nathan Latka (10:05) Contributors of like open source code. Ben Gabler (10:27) So instead of just having this this WordPress company that nobody knows who runs it, we've got an entire team that everybody knows, you've got me on the website, you've got Chad on the website, you know, we've got our entire team on the About Us page, but we kind of created this this personality for this business. But also I would say that we've we earned a lot of trust early on based on you know twenty f you know, now twenty five years of being in the hosting industry. So, you know, it was really just being involved and putting a f putting a an identity to your brand, not just a bill, right? So like I still can name like a lot of our customers and and if I saw them out, like I would recognize them and you know, you build that relationship and one of the most difficult things to scale was that, right? Like that trait of the business. Nathan Latka (11:09) So what so so Ben, just to you did do tactical things though, based on what one my research team said. You sponsored WordCamp US. What does that cost on average? Ben Gabler (11:15) Yep. So that's you know, it it varies the f we had to actually work our way up. So I tried to go get the biggest sponsorship I could right away for the time that we could afford like ten grand or something. They're like, this isn't first come, first serve. You can start out at a startup table, two grand. I'm like, Okay. We ended up getting, you know, tens of thousands of dollars of business at that first WordCamp. It was one of the first ones post COVID in San Diego. So, you know, when when I talk about community, that also includes WordCamp, right? Because even though you're paying to sponsor whether it's a table or a ten by ten, that is giving back to the community through WordCamp, right? Because we're supporting the staff, the you know, we're supporting the sessions and we're just supporting the fact that the conference can exist with these sponsorships. Nathan Latka (12:00) See you right here at that startup booth table at WordCamp VOS 2025. So, guys, just so you can get a sense again of if you want to use live events to grow, this is how Ben did it. Find a find a an event that's local to your sort of niche. You know, it can be as cheap as 2K, as much as 10K. So, Ben, if we looked at your total 2025 expense structure on your PL, would the majority of your sales and marketing be event sponsorships? Ben Gabler (12:20) I would say, you know, we did a couple of decent events in twenty twenty five. you know, we were at WordCamp, you know, that was a good solid all in call it twenty K once you factor in travel and stay and all that fun stuff. ⁓ but outside of that, you know, we tried another food bloggers event that we did and and you know we ended up doing a a big dinner there. I think that dinner cost us like twelve K, right? But but really what we did is we kind of you know, our business is a little bit different in the sense of you know I would get on podcasts if I could. I would get out and go speak at events if I could. We didn't necessarily have to have a table, right? Like there was a lot of word camps where we had boots on the ground and we were giving out t-shirts or whatever it might be. So, you know, really i it was very minimal compared to the revenue generation. We were kind of, you know, trying to focus on scaling our team and figure out the right potential partner for, you know, what we consider more of a JV. to continue the scale, you know, scaling this business. Because what happens in our industry is a lot of these hosting companies hit early success. They grow too fast and they they fumble because they can't keep up with support. So what we did is we heavily invested in support leads and scaling our support team and focusing on that and then also partnering up with hosting.com. So now you know over the next you know quarter, we're gonna actually start doing some of that, you know, more more of the marketing to really you know, dri you know, poor pour gasoline on the fire. You know, our growth has been so consistent and it's all continued to drive from a lot of word of mouth and affiliates and and and the ⁓ agency partner program. Nathan Latka (13:50) Not affiliates though, Ben. It's not affiliate. I mean, you're only spending eight grand a month on affiliates. You're doing eight hundred thousand a month of revenue. I mean, affiliates does to me does not appear to be a major growth channel for you. You keep saying they are though. What am I missing? Ben Gabler (13:56) Right. Well no, I'm not I'm not saying they are. I'm saying they're a part of the the the puzzle, right? So I think the affiliates early on Right. Yeah, organic. Organic. Nathan Latka (14:05) Yeah, your top growth channel though. If you picked your top growth channel, you looked at all the new customers you signed up last month, what would they be? It just pu well it's not it's you're doing things. You're sponsoring events, you're spons Ben Gabler (14:14) Like word of mouth. R right, but right, right. But like word of mouth if we look at it, right? So like we haven't sponsored an event in, I don't know, a year almost, right, as Rocket.net. Right? So what we're seeing is we've kind of built this this trajectory that we have based on the existing customers. You know, whether it's you know customers referring folks or agencies continuing to grow, we've we've nailed this sort of trajectory that we have in place. Nathan Latka (14:19) Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Ben Gabler (14:38) And it stayed very consistent. You know, as part of the whole and A process, we had Deloitte do a full quality of earnings on the business and it aligned with one that was done by a different firm a year before, right? So what we've done yep. Nathan Latka (14:48) Yeah. Can you can Can you die? Sorry, I'm gonna keep cutting off. I just we're short on time. And I want to make sure I I I want this episode to do extremely well. Everyone, people are bootstrapping on my you know, listening to my episode, going to five to ten million, bootstrapped, and they go, man, why would I ever sell a company that's sort of bootstrapped making money? Why do you you know some context here on who you sold to, right? World host group is backed by Oakley Capital. Oakley's a $4.5 billion fund. I'm sure they've given a mandate to World Host Group to go do MA. So you fit that theme. as of May 2025, that group is at nine 900 full-time employees. 700,000 customers and a whole bunch more, millions and millions of free users as well. So, why were they the right group to exit to? And can you share what the exit price was or arrange? Ben Gabler (15:28) Yeah, so I mean, you we definitely set a record as far as I'm concerned for a multiple in the business. ⁓ you know, I I can't share the exact amount, but you know, the big what I what I will start with is the reason Nathan Latka (15:38) What would a record be? What would you consider a record multiple? Are we talking like ten X or a hundred X or forty X? Ben Gabler (15:42) pro ⁓ over thirteen times. Right? So for hosting like so in for EBITDA, but in hosting that's not necessarily a common multiple, right? Like you're looking at like five, six times Nathan Latka (15:45) Okay. ⁓ A R R. Okay, so thirteen X thirteen X E, but ⁓ I just don't know the space as well as you do. You're saying historically firms like yours might trade at three to four X E, but you were able to get a thirteen X E, but the question is why? How'd you have so much strength negotiating? Ben Gabler (16:03) So so again, it it we build a platform, number one. Ninety-nine percent of my competitors resell CPAL. They don't know how to build a product, right? They are marketing companies. Whereas we took a SaaS approach and you know, that's how we were able to grow so rapidly. So we had this growth. Most hosting companies grow at like one percent, if at all. ⁓ you know, and there were various groups that were very interested. You know, I I I went out and ran a process because we either needed to you know raise some capital and start doing our own MA. ⁓ and look at different technologies that we want to offer. You know, right now we're still kind of playing in this managed WordPress hosting space along with some enterprise hosting. But you know, we are expanding that product portfolio very soon. And you know, one of the big things and the reason I went with you know the World Host Group is, you know, it I sort of have a I have a post that's going to go out and I and I refer to it as patient capital, right? So I've been at companies, you know, before a hundred million dollar plus revenue companies where we had Boston PE firms that were constantly whipping us, you know, here's a spreadsheet, like we're this, that, the other. This this is what I call patient capital, and they understand the market. So so our investors own effectively probably upwards of half of our entire industry. Most people just don't realize that. So when we think about how we want to accelerate this growth, and you know, I've always told myself, like I'm very confident that I could take this business as a solo founder, you know, to 10 million in ARR, and I have a playbook to really scale that, but what happens next? So I found a group that I fit really well with and you know Rocket is a s is effectively the innovative growth platform. And you know, that hosting.com world host group is sort of that consolidation platform. So when we look at you know what this enabled us to do was was to scale. We have more developers now, right? We we've got H Arts Nathan Latka (17:45) The total what's your total team size today compared to the beg before the acquisition? Ben Gabler (17:49) I believe we're I I'd you know, I have a support you know, I'd have to double check, but I think we're right around thirty heads and I think before then we were, you know, right around twenty three. So, you know, but the big difference is is it's not just about like could I have gone out and hired seven people? Sure. But like, you know, the difference is when we think about operations, HR, finance, like as you surpass that ten million mark, things get a little more interesting, right? Like you COO, CFO, like Well what you know, there's a lot of money moving around. So, you know, that was part of it too. Like I want to continue to focus on product and engineering. Like I needed help focusing on finance and HR and all of these different things, right? So that was a big piece of it. You know, I think I I've also seen, you know, I'm I I follow a lot of fo bootstrap founders. You know, I've definitely seen cases where, you know, there's always this the Snapchat story where they turned down money and you know it was the best thing ever. But then there's also the other side of the coin, right? Where people turn down the capital, they want to remain bootstrapped and, you know, they don't, you know, effectively scale the business or the market changes, whatever it might be. You know, for me personally as a as a founder, you know, I was working seven days a week. You know, the hosting industry is twenty four seven. I you know, I was taking my laptop to lunch and dinner and and and I I was never able to like I couldn't go snorkeling because I was afraid of missing something. Nathan Latka (19:07) Were were you were you making were you making money? I mean, was the business profitable? Like ten percent EBITDA like thirty percent profitable fifty. Okay. So why I mean someone listening's gonna say if he did eight million of rev ARR in twenty twenty five with fifty percent bottom line profits, that's four million he could just cash and go snorkeling all day long. Ben Gabler (19:11) absolutely. Yep. Fifty. Fifty. You can't go. In my industry, it's hard because twenty-four seven three sixty five, if somebody's website goes down for thirty seconds, they're online writing a review or they're they're ready to choke you out, right? So the challenge for me mentally was, yeah, that's a great amount of money, but what good is it if you can't enjoy it, right? So, you know, there was a day that I literally was gonna go lobster diving in the Bahamas and as we pulled up, Apache died on every server we had. And I'm like, that's it. Like I gotta go, right? Like this and it's not that I it it's also very hard to find really, really, really talented people to help fill some of these gaps. And you know, I just you know, it was it's a very demanding industry and it's a and there's a reason people pay us thirty dollars a month for hosting and not three dollars. And and it's just I really needed backup in a in a scale that is far beyond just having one SRE. You know, I had one and unfortunately something happened and he didn't show up. And I had to do it myself, which is fine, right? But it it's just hard to depend on people. But when you can depend on people at scale, that is something that, you know, allows me to actually enjoy my life now. And you know but the biggest difference I will say in tr in most traditional ⁓ and A is the founders leave, right? Like World Host Group bought almost every company and the founder departs, right? They take their check and they then they then they retire. ⁓ or do something else, right? Where where my case is very different. You know, I saw an opportunity to effectively de-risk myself and my family and, you know, I did. Yeah. I mean I still I rolled over some equity and I dispersed it to myself and the team. But the reality is, you know, I I, you know, choose to wake up and do what I do every day now because I care about the customers and I care about my team. Nathan Latka (20:52) Ben, did you sell a hundred percent? Okay. What percent of the total deal value did you roll over into the p the new company's equity? Ben Gabler (21:14) No, I was I wanna say it was either thir it was roughly around thirty percent. The United States when you roll over you avoid tax events at thirty percent. So I'm I'm heavily bought in to what we're doing. Nathan Latka (21:17) Okay. Yep. And are you did you also sign is that immediately vested or did you sign a five year employment deal with with the new company or yes? Okay. Let's wrap up here on pricing. Everyone struggles with this. Your pricing page, I would not guess you have a seven figure customer, but you said you do. What's your largest customer paid today and how did you upgrade them from the initial, you know, sixty bucks a month? Ben Gabler (21:28) No, it immediately it was a it was immediately a part of the transaction. Sure. So our largest customer spends over a million dollars a year. they're a reseller customer. You know, they they take our product and they resell it to to the world. ⁓ you know, we also have, you know, very large customers like Natasha's Kitchen.com, wellplated.com, and they're delivering just massive amounts of traffic. You know, you're talking seventy terabytes of traffic on Thanksgiving. you know, they're on our enterprise tier. So, you know, those are effectively the Nathan Latka (22:06) So that's this line. This is this is that you're saying this is your most effective upselling line. Ben Gabler (22:09) No, so so if you if you scroll up a little bit and click on the enterprise hosting, you know, we sell, you know, anywhere from six forty nine to, you know, thirty five hundred dollars a month on these enterprise tiers. That includes like Slack support and certain performance tools that are needed for you like mybirdbuddy dot com. You know, we host that website ⁓ through Black Friday. Nathan Latka (22:29) But which one of these rows is the most powerful upsell? Is it CPU, RAM, storage, bandwidth? Which one drives the most expansion revenue? Ben Gabler (22:36) It'll typically be CPU. You know, WordPress it can be very CPU intense for WooCommerce and you know different you know LMS tools. Our static sites like Natasha's Kitchen, the recipe food blog website, serve at like ninety-eight percent cash hit from Cloudflare. So, you know, they they may not necessarily be on a massive enterprise CPU tier, but then they're a bandwidth intensive customer because they're delivering massive amounts of traffic. Nathan Latka (22:59) Very cool. Well, Ben, you're it's fun it's gonna be fun to see how what you do with the thirty percent of equity you rolled over, how you grow the value of the larger business now that now that you're working sort of inside the team. If people wanna follow the rest of your story over the next couple of years, where can they find you online? Ben Gabler (23:11) Totally. You know, I'm on LinkedIn and X, you know, I I kinda ⁓ partake a lot and using X to keep up on the industry and all these C V E's that have been coming out with AI. ⁓ you know, and then of course just Ben at rocket dot net. Anybody can drop me a line anytime, you know, I'm always happy to to network with other founders and and learn and and you know, from others of journeys and hopefully provide some value in theirs. Nathan Latka (23:35) Guys, if you wanna live the good life, right, and also de-risk your startup, you don't have to go become the next SpaceX trillion dollar company. Do it bended, bootstrap to 10 million bucks of revenue, sell for good multiple, launched in 2020, broke f four million of revenue in 2023, 8 million in 2025, with 50% EBITDA margins. Ultimately ran a very competitive process and decided to sell to a group called hosting.com, 13x EBITLA, multiple, 23 FTs. It was a very good outcome for everybody now. He has flexibility. Cash in the bank personally and freedom to continue serving his customers. He's got one customer that's paying over seven figures a year. That's a reseller. He's growing now today, based off a lot of sponsoring of the WordPress community, inbound affiliates, agency partners, and influencers, but no paid spend. Ben, appreciate you taking us to the top. Ben Gabler (24:18) Thank you, appreciate it. Nathan Latka (24:20) All right guys, cut. Ben, what'd you think, man? Thanks for letting me move that along. Ben Gabler (24:23) That's good. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean I I usually shoot from the hit. You know, there's I don't really have notes or anything like that. You know, I think ⁓ you know the biggest the biggest thing that I resonate with is there you know, I was cash flow and a ton of money and it was great, right? But then I found myself like not enjoying it. You know, like what do you do? Like I had my dream house that I've wanted, I have my yacht that I've wanted, I have all these things, right? Like, but I still wanna work. I still wanna do what I do every single day because I love what I do. Nathan Latka (24:49) No, I I l I love it. I love it. Hey, I'm I'm three minutes late to the next interview, but I appreciate you hopping on and we'll get this out. I'll communicate you with you via email, okay? Ben Gabler (24:53) Yeah, no worries. Cool. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. Nathan Latka (24:59) Congrats on your deal. See ya. Bye.