Cloud Hosting vs. Web Hosting – Which Is Best?

In today’s world, having a business website that functions properly is of the utmost importance. This is why you need to select a good web hosting platform.

The web host you choose could mean the difference between sales and no sales. This is no exaggeration. For instance, consider that the hosting provider and hosting type that you choose affect your site’s load speed. Internet users have no patience for slow-loading sites, and if your webpages don’t load quickly enough, they may leave, and you will lose out on their business.

Web hosting is the term applied to the method and location of your business’ web files. You can store files on a physical server (traditional web hosting) or a virtual server (cloud hosting). Let’s explore which of these hosting options is best.

Traditional Web Hosting

When we talk about traditional web hosting, we’re talking about the conventional way of hosting your website on the internet. As we’ve mentioned, this involves storing your website’s files on a physical server. Depending on the type of web hosting you choose, the server may be divided among several different accounts, separated into virtual servers, or reserved exclusively for your use.

Shared Hosting

When you use shared hosting for your website, you are essentially purchasing space on a server shared by other websites. All the websites on the server share the server’s resources, such as its RAM and CPU. As a result, if traffic increases on one site, it may affect the load speed of the other sites on the server. However, shared hosting is relatively inexpensive, and for new sites with low traffic, it is the ideal solution.

VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting involves multiple sites sharing one physical server, but each site has its own dedicated resources. Furthermore, each website is segregated from the others by a virtual partition. In this way, the resource usage of other accounts can’t affect the performance or operation of your website. Therefore, this hosting type is the optimal choice for performance and page load speeds .

Dedicated Hosting

Choosing to use dedicated hosting means that you want an entire physical server dedicated to your website and your website alone. This gives you complete control over your site’s operation and generally results in the best performance possible. However, dedicated hosting does require a certain degree of technical know-how as you are responsible for setting up and maintaining the server. It’s also the most expensive option and not really necessary unless you’re running an exceptionally large and complex site.

Cloud Hosting

A common misconception regarding cloud hosting is that it doesn’t involve the use of physical servers. While it’s true that your website files will be stored on virtual “hardware,” the creation of the cloud hosting environment is created from a cluster of servers working together. As a result, your data will be spread across multiple, interconnected servers.

You have two choices for cloud hosting; you can choose to use either a private or public cloud.

A public cloud involves a collection of networked machines that contain the data for several sites. Since several virtualized accounts are sharing the hardware, the cost of the server resources is shared. However, unlike traditional shared hosting, the virtual server’s resources are ring-fenced. This means that your site won’t share disk space, processing power, or anything else with any other account. Instead, all you’re sharing is the rack space in data centers. Therefore, you get the benefits of shared hosting without any of the downsides.

The alternative to a public cloud is a private cloud. A private cloud setup means that you’re not sharing server infrastructure with any other websites or accounts. Of course, this comes at a higher cost, but it provides you with greater security and control.

Comparing Traditional Web Hosting with Cloud Hosting

Now that you have a better idea of what constitutes traditional web hosting and what we mean by cloud hosting, you may be wondering which solution is best for you.

The type of hosting you choose will depend on your business needs and resources. For example, if your business is just starting and you have limited financial resources, you may want a cheaper option, such as shared hosting, to start.

However, if your website has decent traffic, a shared server may not be adequate. Instead, you may benefit from VPS or cloud hosting. But then the question becomes, which do you choose between these options? Let’s make some comparisons to help you come to a decision.

Security

A significant issue that all website owners face is how to secure their website data. Unfortunately, there is no fail-proof solution. However, there are things you can do to ensure a more secure site.

To begin with, the hosting type you choose will affect the security of your site. To start with, let’s consider shared hosting. With shared hosting, a server is split between hundreds of different sites. If any of those websites experiences a security breach, this puts the other sites on the server at risk.

By comparison, cloud servers operate from multiple different physical servers. As a result, a hosting service may bounce your site from one physical server to another. This helps ensure the security of your site as well as its optimal performance.

However, VPS and dedicated hosting are also fairly secure and ensure optimal site performance, but the cost is higher.

Performance

How well your website performs may mean the difference between your business’ success and its failure. For instance, shared hosting will not be adequate if you want your website to perform well, even during high traffic. Instead, you’ll need to invest in either VPS or dedicated hosting.

That being said, many credit cloud hosting with better performance than other web hosting platforms. This is thought to be because the website’s files get spread across several interconnected servers, so no one server gets overloaded.