Cloud Hosting Made Easy
Stepping into the web industry is one of the fastest ways of making money. Ambitious individuals invest a lot of time and money to host websites and blogs and sell their content. But questions arise when it comes to choosing a hosting service. Should I opt for cloud hosting or shared hosting? Which of these two hosting services would best suit my needs? All these questions can keep you guessing, but not anymore!
As beginners, most individuals would opt for shared hosting services since they are relatively cheaper. However, it cannot manage traffic spikes, offer flexibility, and is not very reliable. This is where cloud hosting comes in. Although expensive, cloud hosting promises better web performance, speeds, data security, and reliability. In this article, we will highlight some of the benefits that cloud hosting offers.
What is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting is a network of virtual and physical servers that work together to allocate cloud resources to a website or application. Unlike shared hosting, the cloud resources are not utilized on a single server but rather on a series of dedicated servers.
With cloud hosting, you can efficiently allocate resources such as storage, bandwidth, etc., from the available sources. Since cloud hosting uses multiple dedicated servers for operations, it offers enhanced flexibility and performance to its stakeholders.
Cloud Hosting Vs. Shared Hosting: Which is Better?
Cloud hosting and shared hosting are the two most popular hosting services worldwide. However, they differ from one another in quite a few aspects. Cloud hosting is considered a much better option than the latter due to its ability to sustain high traffic flow to your website. It also provides enhanced data security and is much more reliable for web management.
Cloud hosting charges a premium price compared to shared hosting services. But if you are looking to expand your website and desire better web performance, then cloud hosting is best for you. But if you have just stepped into the web industry and have a limited budget, then shared hosting is a suitable option. However, you will not enjoy the flexibility, data protection, and higher web speeds of cloud hosting.
Benefits of cloud hosting
Unlike shared hosting, cloud hosting uses an infrastructure of multiple servers to make websites and applications easy to use via cloud resources. Although it might impose higher upfront costs, it promises maximum flexibility. In this section, we’ll give you a deeper insight into the benefits of cloud hosting:
Maximum Performance
One of the primary benefits of cloud hosting is that it maximizes the performance of hosted websites and applications. With the availability of a network of dedicated servers, the load is distributed uniformly across all the servers. As a result, the performance of websites and web applications improve significantly compared to those using a shared server. Besides, the available resources are also abundant, unlike shared hosting.
Enhanced Flexibility
Although many people worldwide consider shared hosting a viable hosting service, it lacks flexibility. Because shared hosting uses a single server to host multiple websites, managing traffic on your website can get tricky. Users might face delays while loading webpages, or the server might crash or become unresponsive if the traffic exceeds a specific limit.
However, with cloud hosting, you don’t have to face such a dreadful fate. Due to the presence of several dedicated servers to share the load, technical problems subside, and users can access the web content comfortably. Cloud hosting also offers you the luxury of efficiently managing server bandwidth. This allows the server to adapt to traffic spikes conveniently. Hence, even with a high traffic inflow, there is a minimal chance that the server will crash.
Increased Data Security
A key advantage of using cloud hosting is that it can keep your data secure. It does so through data mirroring, which allows you to copy data from one location and save it in another. You can choose your preferred location and devices to ensure your data stays safe in a data breach or hardware failure. Cloud hosting allows you to back up your data swiftly, ensuring it is completely recovered.
Cost-Effectiveness
Most people believe that cloud hosting is a far more expensive alternative to shared hosting. Consequently, a handful of website owners end up opting for shared hosting as it appears to be inexpensive. But considering the features that cloud hosting offers, experts suggest that it is significantly more economical.
For instance, cloud hosting only charges you for the resources that you use. Whereas for shared hosting, you must pay a fixed price, no matter the number of resources used. Cloud hosting promises multiple other features such as cost-free data relocation, management control, and resource monitoring that shared hosting fails to offer.
Improved Stability
It is without a doubt that cloud hosting offers incredible stability when it comes to hosting websites or web applications. Unlike shared hosting, cloud hosting promises you data mirroring capability, which can protect your data by saving it on multiple devices and locations. So, even if the server crashes or goes unresponsive, you won’t lose your data. On top of that, you can easily fetch and recover your data without any hassle.
Higher Speeds
Since cloud hosting deploys websites and web applications on multiple dedicated servers, the web pages tend to load quickly. Cloud hosting servers have a reduced density, ensuring that the hosted website operates at higher speeds. At the same time, it also boosts the performance of varnish – A web simulator that enables websites to withstand high traffic inflow while quickly refreshing pages. As a result, your website’s speed can increase by 1000%.
Pros and Cons of Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is a dependable hosting service that most website owners prefer. But that does not mean that it is all good. For your better understanding, we have compiled several pros and cons of using cloud hosting:
Pros:
Websites and web applications are hosted on a cloud network instead of a single server.
Cloud resources can be scaled as per user needs.
You only have to pay for resources that you utilize.
Cloud hosting can support multiple databases, including SQL and NoSQL.
Provides better data protection via data mirroring.
It offers increased web speeds and loads web pages quickly.
Better stability with the ability to sustain high traffic.
Cons:
High upfront cost.