Social media has virtually brought every adult to the internet and businesses are looking to sell products online. This paradigm shift has inspired more people to embrace online shopping, which in return attracts more businesses to the online community. But to succeed, businesses still must find their space in this crowded marketplace called the internet.

Therefore, e-commerce platforms like Allkitchenfind.com, which specializes on kitchenware, have been forced to stick to their specific market segments. Those that fail to comply have ended up closing their online stores in half the time they used to set them up. Selling products online is now as easy as on a storefront. Platforms like Shopify (NYSE: SHOP ) and BigCommerce have made it possible for new businesses to find customers with ease. But it is not as black and white as it sounds.

The rise of drop shipping means that now you do not need to have your own products to capitalize on the e-commerce marketplace and this intensifies competition. Platforms like Oberlo have made it easier for businesses to find products to sell online without having to worry about the issue of inventory. So, what happens to those that make their own products? They will have to keep up.

So, who are the obvious beneficiaries?

Companies involved in web services will be on top of the beneficiaries list. Every small business looking to launch their products online will have to use a reliable web host especially for those that are just starting out. And those that want to stand out can add auxiliary services such as customized e-commerce platforms for their products. This is where companies like GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY ), Web.com (Nasdaq: WEB ), and Endurance International Group (Nasdaq: EIGI) among others come in. These companies have enjoyed significant revenue growths over the last few years due to the increased demand for web services.

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Most of them do a lot more than just providing general hosting and domain registration services that made them famous. However, if you talk about GoDaddy, the first thing that pops into the minds of many people is that it’s a domain registrar.

Many of the people who have used GoDaddy services do not even know that it’s a publicly traded company, let alone the fact that it also provides web development services, web security services, and much more.

Just to demonstrate how diverse the company’s presence in the web services marketplace is, you could literally register, host, design, and run all the operations of your online business on GoDaddy. The same goes for the likes of Web.com and Endurance International.

This means that the moment a business goes online, that’s a new revenue stream created for the web service providers market.

While the internet isn’t new to the business world, recent technologies have made it a lot more popular over the last few years. Smartphones are behind the massive growth in the use of internet witnessed across the world.

Today, you do not need a laptop computer or a desktop to connect to the rest of the world, a small handheld gadget can do that. Now, with so many people now connected to the internet, many businesses have found their way to the online marketplace. This has boosted the performances of web service providers across the board.

Illustratively, between May 28, 2010, and March 21, 2014, shares of Web.com gained nearly 900% while GoDaddy’s stock is now 112% up since going public at an IPO price of $20 on April 1, 2015.

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On the other hand, shares of Endurance International gained more than 100% between October 2013 and April 2014 before dropping more than 60% to the current level of $8.55 per share. This also illustrates the volatility of internet stocks and the level of risk they can carry.

Nonetheless, most technology stocks tend to trade at high valuation metrics and Web.com’s P/E ratio of 114 times illustrates this fact.

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GoDaddy and Endurance International are still on negative valuation metrics given the fact they have been unprofitable since going public, but investors continue to bet on growth.

Does this support my opinion on the attractiveness of web services stocks? We will have to wait and see. As everything moves closer to automation. These companies will continue to diversify their operations to capture as many business segments as possible.

They could also reap massively from the successes of the Internet of Things and Big Data, which seem set to be the next frontier of the information age.