Cloud Hosting: Is This Powerful Hosting Best For Your Business?

Is cloud hosting best for your business? 

That is the question this post tries to answer.

Cloud web hosting employs a virtual server to host websites and is rapidly becoming popular for its simple and effective functionality. 

It makes applications and websites accessible using cloud resources. 

Cloud hosting has also been used for managing databases, and all this without purchasing a server.

This article takes a deeper look at cloud hosting, compares it with other hosting types and explores its main benefits.

But first.

What is Cloud Hosting?

It’s simple. Cloud Hosting is a hosting type that enables a website to use the resources of multiple servers, thus resulting in a faster performance.

Reliable cloud hosting is a key business tool that has transformed how businesses store, access and share data.

Cloud hosting providers offer an efficient way for businesses to securely store and securely access their data through a software interface. 

Cloud hosting is not just for storing photos and videos online.

It is a component of a business model that spans the globe, and one of the great things about the cloud is that small, medium-sized, and large businesses can benefit from it.

Instead of storing your information and data on your physical servers, putting them on a cloud server means they are easily accessible from any device, at any time, on the internet.

If you’re considering switching your business website to a cloud web hosting service, some really great options to look at are;

• DreamHost – starts at $4.50/month

• Hostinger – starts at $9.99/month

• InMotion Hosting – starting at $6/month

• LiquidWeb – starts at $149/month

• HostGator – starts at $4.95/month

• CloudWays – starts at $12/month

• Nexcess – starts at $49/month

But first you need to understand the difference between this hosting type and other types of web hosting and the benefits of cloud hosting to take full advantage of it.

Differences Between Cloud Hosting and Other Types of Web Hosting

When building a website, one of the most important considerations to make is which type of web hosting you should use. Whichever one you choose should;

• Offer optimal performance

• Provide ample resources

• Not over-blow your budget

In this section, we will try to compare cloud hosting with two other very popular web hosting types – Shared hosting and VPS hosting – to help make your decision easier.

Cloud Hosting vs Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is good if you’re building a personal website, blog or even a small online store. 

But it’s not as powerful as cloud hosting.

In shared hosting, multiple websites ‘share’ one server and its resources. 

Because of this ‘sharing’, there’s a limit to what your website can do, in order not to disturb the other ‘neighbours’.

For instance, you get limited amount of traffic, bandwidth, storage capacity and processing power. 

To avoid any performance or security issues, you’re advised to avoid hitting the resource usage limit.

Here are the pros and cons of shared hosting:

Pros

• Affordable. You can get very cheap shared hosting plan, with prices ranging from $0.99/month to $9.99/month. 

Cloud hosting however, will set you back between $10/month to well over $100/month.

• Beginner-friendly. Shared hosting is easy to manage, and Webmasters don’t need any technical knowledge to be able to manage their hosting. 

Moreover, the setup process from payment to registration generally takes a few clicks.

• Easy to maintain. It’s easy to maintain shared hosting as the web hosting provider usually handles back-end maintenance to optimize security and performance.

Cons

• Unreliable. Shared hosting is not reliable. 

The performance of your website on a shared hosting plan will depend on a lot of factors like; 

• the size of your website

• how much traffic you have, and 

• the security measures in place, both for yours and for other websites sharing the same server. 

If one site gets compromised, it’s likely that others will too.

• Lacks scalability. With cloud hosting, you can scale. But with shared hosting, webmasters can only use the allocated amount of processing power, bandwidth, and disk space given by the hosting provider. 

You will need to upgrade to a costlier plan if you need more hosting resources.

Cloud Hosting vs VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Server (VPS) is just like shared hosting, in a sense. 

With VPS, multiple websites also share the same server space.

So, how’s it different from shared hosting?

VPS hosting uses a technology called virtualization. 

This is the same technology that powers cloud hosting to create separate server partitions. 

With this virtualization, every website inside a server, gets its own resource pool. 

It doesn’t have to share resources with other websites.

Most shared hosting users consider VPS hosting as the natural next step once they have outgrown shared hosting. 

Because, in terms of performance, it is comparable to cloud hosting.

That aside, with VPS hosting, webmasters get full root access to their own server. 

That way, they can configure their hosting environment to meet their exact needs. 

This is something you don’t get with shared hosting services.

VPS web hosting has the following advantages and disadvantages:

Pros

• Reliable performance. Your website is shielded from the issues of the websites sharing the same server space with it. So, performance is more predictable and hence, reliable.

• Full root access. This feature is useful for technologically-savvy users who need to install a custom operating system or software for their projects.

• Dedicated IP address. Most web hosting providers include this with their VPS plans. 

Compared to a shared IP address, it’s a much safer option as it will protect your email reputation, preventing your website from being associated with spammy sites.

Cons

• Technical skills required. You will require some level of technical know-how to use VPS hosting, as most VPS services are unmanaged. 

Because of this, VPS is usually less beginner-friendly than cloud hosting.

Advantages of Cloud Hosting Services – My top 5

By now, you must have already started sensing that cloud hosting is superior to shared and VPS hosting. 

To further buttress that fact, here’s some benefits of using cloud hosting over VPS and shared hosting.

1. Lower Costs

The cost of buying and maintaining server hardware could be beyond your budget if you’re a small or medium-sized business. 

You could look to cloud hosting instead as it guarantees lower costs.

Again, cloud hosting rarely experiences downtown. 

So downtime costs are reduced as you won't have to spend money resolving downtime issues. 

Also, your cloud provider manages the cloud data center operations, so you don’t have to employ a large IT team to manage your hosting.

2. Better Security

Data security is a big concern for businesses operating online. 

So, they require cloud hosting because if offers better security than traditional hosting.

There are industry-specific security protocols that cloud hosting providers follow. 

Each node in the cloud hosting, provides a safety net for your data. 

They offer all the baseline protections, such as encryption, authentication and access control. But these are just basic security measures.

Most cloud hosting providers go beyond that. 

They add higher security measures like data encryption, SSL certificate, multi-tenacity resources, multi-factor authentication and backups to boost cloud data protection and store your data securely.

Additionally, your data will be very difficult for anyone to steal because it is not stored on a physical server or drive. 

So, their comprehensive encryption and login security system keeps intruders away.

3. Backup and Data Recovery

Cloud hosting makes it easy to backup and restore your data.

Since with cloud hosting, all your data is stored in the cloud, it means you can easily access it from anywhere and from any device. 

And because your data is stored in the cloud without regard for capacity, that helps with restoration and backup.

With physical servers, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to recover critical data when it is badly damaged. So businesses can lose crucial information

But this is not so with cloud hosting, as there is no risk of losing your data if you damage your computer, because the data saved on the cloud will not be lost.

To take it further, with cloud hosting, your data is stored in multiple (server) locations, meaning that a problem with one of the server locations, will not affect your data, because there’s a backup.

4. Easily Accessible Data

When critical business tools, documents and other resources are easily accessible from any location, that’s a good thing for any business.

That is what cloud hosting brings to your business table. 

It makes it possible to connect to your business resources by phone, desktop, tablets, etc whether you’re home or abroad. 

Hosting in the cloud means that your documents, backend files, software, and the company website are easily accessible.

If you’re a company with remote employees, it’s easy to connect to the company database and resources through its cloud interface. 

All that’s needed is an internet enabled device.

Cloud infrastructure boosts organizational productivity and efficiency by ensuring that your business’s data is always accessible.

5. Flexibility and Scalability

Whether your company requires extra computing power or more storage space, cloud hosting can easily scale to meet your needs. 

The constraint of a physical server is removed.

This means that you have greater flexibility, and your business can efficiently and quickly scale up or down as your need changes. 

This scalability also reduces the dangers related to internal operational issues and maintenance.

If your business has fluctuating bandwidth requirements or you’re on a growth path and need higher computing resources, cloud hosting is perfect for you, as without investing in physical infrastructure, you can easily increase your cloud capacity.

Types of Websites (Businesses) that Need Cloud Hosting?

Cloud hosting is perfect for businesses that require lots of bandwidth, processing power and disk space to accommodate high traffic and larger amounts of data and files in storage.

The type of websites that fits the description above are;

• eCommerce stores

• Social networks

• News publications

• Search engines

• other high traffic websites

During large sales events, or when a news post goes viral, websites experience large traffic fluctuation. 

The cloud hosting architecture anticipates this traffic hike and uses load balancing to make sure that this spike in traffic doesn’t overwhelm the resources of any virtual server.

Also, businesses that generate revenue from digital sales, require tighter security measures to handle sensitive customer data and payment details.

This type of businesses can opt for a private cloud hosting instead of hosting on a public cloud. 

Private cloud hosting usually comes with dedicated cloud infrastructure, hosted on a private network to prevent unauthorized parties from gaining access.

This is the reason cloud hosting is generally more expensive than VPS or shared hosting. 

Cloud hosting offers a lot more benefit to bigger businesses while VPS or shared hosting is better suited to medium and smaller-sized outfits.

Conclusion

Cloud hosting offers a lot of benefits, and it's easy to see why. 

It provides better security, excellent flexibility, scalability, more accessibility and better data recovery at a low cost.

Businesses can avoid a lot of issues by implementing cloud hosting solutions.

The primary benefit of cloud hosting is in its reliability. 

When one server is down, another takes its place to make sure that your website stays online. 

Being able to scale your hosting resources, avoid hardware failure and anticipate traffic spikes are a few other benefits.

Does cloud hosting sound like the best option for your business?

You should definitely check out these top 5 cloud hosting providers;

• DreamHost

• Hostinger

• InMotion Hosting

• LiquidWeb

• CloudWays