- Cloud hosting offers dynamic resource scaling, essential for handling fluctuating traffic without physical infrastructure changes.
- Cloud hosting uses a network of servers to ensure that if one fails, others can seamlessly take over to keep the website running at all times.
- Cloud hosting offers a pay-as-you-go model that allows businesses to pay only for the resources they use, making it an economical option.
Cloud hosting is a big change in how we host things online. It makes sure that resources are available when and where they are needed. This model improves site performance by sharing the load between multiple servers, reducing the risk of downtime and slow speeds.
Cloud hosting is ideal for businesses with fluctuating traffic or high availability needs, like e-commerce sites. It simplifies IT management, as the provider handles the infrastructure, allowing businesses to focus on their core functions. This blend of reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency makes cloud hosting an appealing choice for modern businesses.
What is cloud hosting
Cloud hosting is a web hosting service that uses the power of server virtualisation. It ensures high uptime and fast performance for your website.
Also read: What is cloud migration and what types of cloud migration are there?
How does cloud hosting work
Cloud hosting works differently to traditional web hosting. The latter typically uses a centralised approach where a single web server hosts multiple websites. Because processing power and storage are shared among traditional hosting users, a sudden surge of traffic from a neighbouring site can slow down your website.
In contrast, cloud hosting services use virtualisation, which divides a physical server into multiple virtual servers. It uses a network of servers to host a website, ensuring better performance and stability than single-server hosting services. As such, cloud hosting is suitable for high-traffic websites such as e-commerce stores.
Benefits of cloud hosting
Beginner-friendly: A managed cloud hosting solution doesn’t require any technical knowledge. The service provider maintains the cloud servers and the backend of your website.
High availability: If one server goes down, another on the network acts as a backup, keeping your site online at all times.
Traffic load balancing: Responsibility for handling traffic is spread across cloud web servers to maintain high performance.
Scalability: Unlike traditional hosting services, site owners don’t have to share bandwidth, storage and processing power. The web host provides virtual resources for each user, making it easier to scale your website.
Increased security. Because cloud hosting services use multiple virtual machines, they’re less prone to hardware failure. In addition, the load balancing feature can help prevent DDoS attacks.
Also read: Hitachi and Cisco launch new hybrid cloud hosting services
Compare cloud hosting with other types of hosting
When researching hosting solutions, businesses often consider several types, each with different features and benefits. Let’s take a closer look at how cloud hosting compares to other traditional hosting options such as shared, dedicated and VPS hosting.
Shared hosting
Shared hosting is the most cost-effective option, where multiple websites share resources on a single server. This can be a disadvantage as heavy traffic on one site can affect the performance of other sites hosted on the same server. Security risks are also higher in a shared environment, as a breach on one site could potentially compromise the security of all sites on the server.
Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting is where an entire server is rented for a single client, making it suitable for businesses with high traffic requirements that demand robust performance and increased security. This exclusivity comes at a higher cost, but offers complete control over the server, including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. It’s particularly useful for businesses with specific requirements that can’t be met by shared or VPS hosting.
VPS (virtual private server) hosting
VPS hosting divides a server into multiple virtual servers, giving each user a more isolated hosting environment than shared hosting. This offers better security and performance than shared hosting at a lower cost than dedicated hosting. Each VPS can run its own full operating system and can be independently rebooted.
Cloud hosting
Cloud hosting stands out by offering scalability and flexibility that traditional hosting types cannot match. It operates across multiple interconnected web servers that supply an affordable, scalable, and reliable web infrastructure. Cloud hosting provides businesses with the ability to manage peak loads easily by scaling resources up or down depending on demand, without the need to invest in physical infrastructure. This makes it highly cost-effective as you pay only for what you use.
