Cloud Vs. Shared Hosting: Which is better for your website? People will not be able to find your website if it is not hosted on the internet. Web hosting is similar to renting a space and providing the address so that people can find you.
You can host your website with any of the available hosting services. Yet, cloud and shared hosting remain the most popular, with many websites on the internet relying on one of them.
You’ve most likely heard of them. But what exactly does hosting your website in the cloud or through a shared service imply?
To service the websites it serves, shared hosting employs a sort of dispersed resources. Many websites on the internet are hosted on shared servers.
Nevertheless, shared hosting places numerous websites on a single server. When you create a website with shared hosting, it shares space and resources such as bandwidth, database storage, and mail space, among other things, with other websites housed on the same server.
One of the limitations of shared hosting is that instead of having an entire server to yourself, you choose a section of one and the hosting provider distributes it to you.
Because the hosting provider maintains the majority of the resources and technicalities behind the scenes, shared hosting is simple to maintain.
This sharing of resources with other websites, however, might result in unwanted rivalry for space, bandwidth, database storage, and performance. In essence, another website that outperforms yours may dominate the server that hosts your website, resulting in a decrease in the performance of your website.
Furthermore, because shared hosting is based on a single server, server downtime renders all websites hosted on it inaccessible.
What’s Cloud Hosting?
Although it has lately acquired popularity, the concept of cloud computing has been around for more than six decades.
Since Amazon launched its virtual Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) servers in 2006, other tech behemoths such as Google, Microsoft, and a slew of others have jumped into the fray, offering their own cloud solutions.
When you host a website in the cloud, it is accessible from multiple remote servers. Rather than sharing resources with several websites on a single server, cloud hosting provides a website with access to an unlimited number of resources available from distributed servers.
Cloud hosting does this by distributing web servers over multiple faraway locations known as data centres. Because of this distribution, all hosting resources are easily available.
This is advantageous because if one server fails due to technical issues or maintenance, another remote server will pick up your website and keep it running.
Because servers can be found anytime and everywhere, there is more storage space, improved performance, and room to grow. Cloud hosting is also available in a variety of ways, making it extremely versatile.
Yet, cloud hosting provides a more scalable, robust, and easy-to-maintain architecture. Unlike shared hosting, cloud hosting allows users to add new features to their hosting architecture whenever they want.
Even yet, most of the time you don’t have to bother about server maintenance because the hosting company does it for you. However, this is dependent on the sort of cloud service you use.
Now that you know what shared and cloud hosting are, let’s look at some of the distinctions in their features for a quick refresher.
Features of Cloud Hosting
- It distributes data from several data centres.
- Cloud hosting provides on-premise solutions, and you can add features as your business grows. As a result, it is very scalable.
- It reduces server downtime with the help of inter-server data transfer unless there is a failure from the hosting provider.
- Because it is based on virtual servers, you do not need to worry about finding extra room for actual servers.
- Data is provided more quickly since it is received and sent by the server nearest to you.
- A data breach may occur if the system is not correctly configured.
- A single server can host multiple websites at the same time.
- Although you can expand, there may be certain constraints because you cannot go beyond what you originally chose. As a result, it is not as scalable as cloud hosting.
- It does not prevent server downtime because one server supports multiple websites at the same time.
- When opposed to cloud hosting, data delivery is slower.
- Deployment is simple and low-tech.
When it comes to pricing, shared hosting is more subtle. As previously said, shared hosting is all about allocating space.
As a result, the cost of your shared hosting plan may vary depending on the amount of storage space, bandwidth, and hosting provider.
Actually, many websites utilize shared hosting because it is less expensive and offers more set costs than cloud hosting.
As a result, even if you elect to renew your plan, your hosting rates are unlikely to alter if you do not pick more bandwidth or higher plans.
Pricing Characteristics of Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting could begin at a minimal cost. Some are even free from the start. But, when you wish to expand up, the cost of maintaining the infrastructure is often extremely significant.
Depending on your needs, cloud hosting can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars each month.
Cloud hosting is also available in a variety of ways, allowing you to select the solution that best meets your requirements. You can choose an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) plan, which provides you with virtual servers and the whole hosting infrastructure.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is another option in which the hosting provider configures readily available infrastructures or software platforms on which you can swiftly develop and execute your apps.
Another prominent one is Software as a Service (SaaS), which allows consumers to access software on-demand without having to install it.
These choices are highly scalable, but if growth is the aim, you need to consider the cost of maintaining a robust infrastructure in the future. Unlike shared hosting, where you know you’ve subscribed and that’s it, cloud hosting requires you to “pay as you go,” which may get expensive.
Thus, before you get started, make sure you’re resourceful enough.
There is no formal regulation stating which apps or websites can and cannot be hosted on shared hosting. But, when it comes to speed, data transmission, data storage, and traffic tolerance, shared hosting may not be the best option.
This is due to the fact that shared hosting is not scalable. As your website reaches its capacity, everything may get jumbled and jammed.
Yet, as you are aware, the low cost of shared hosting is its strength, thus determining whether or not to use shared hosting is also dependent on your financial capability.
That being said, if your web app isn’t going to produce a lot of traffic or transmit or store a lot of data, shared hosting is a great option because it’s free.
The majority of blogs on the internet nowadays rely on shared hosting. Shared hosting is also very good, as long as you don’t go over your bandwidth limit.
When Can You Use Cloud Hosting?
If you have an enterprise program that requires a lot of resources, a lot of storage, and quick data transmission, cloud hosting might be the way to go.
While cloud hosting is expensive, it outperforms shared hosting in terms of performance.
If you have a website that receives a lot of traffic or has a lot of potential traffic, you should think about putting it on the cloud if you can afford it.
As expected, websites that send real-time data, such as those that give some type of virtual solution, such as Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), cannot afford downtime. As a result, cloud hosting is an excellent choice for them as well.
Each type of hosting has its own set of setup and deployment requirements. Once you have your website packaged in a folder, shared hosting normally requires a few upload steps to implement.
Although the deployment process differs per provider, shared hosting is more graphical and thus more user-friendly.
Deploying on the cloud is often determined by the cloud service type and hosting provider. While some cloud hosting services, such as Heroku, make it simple to install, others necessitate the knowledge of skilled cloud engineers.
In general, cloud hosting is more complex, and what’s scary is that even little configuration errors might result in excessive costs.