Before you can decide which type of hosting is best for your business, you need understand what it is. The best option for you will depend upon what is best for your business.
Although there are many web hosting options for every size and type of business, there are two main types of hosting options available today. They are cloud hosting and web hosting.
For you to make an informed decision about cloud hosting vs web hosting, you need to understand what they mean and what each one can do for your business. It is also important to think about your short and long-term goals for your business website. You want to make sure that the plan you choose will continue to fulfill your needs as your business grows.
Why do you need Web Hosting?
Every website on the internet requires a place to be hosted upon. A web hosting service is like a home for a website, it is where your files, databases, and content lives. Your web hosting provider of choice can make or break your website. One very important aspect to consider while choosing a web hosting provider is to anticipate how much traffic your website is going to get. If you anticipate your website to go viral and see a lot of traffic, a higher level of a plan such as a managed vps hosting plan is what you should consider. Secondly, you want to be as close to your visitor as possible. For example, if your website is primarily targetted towards the Indian audience, you would want to host your website on a reseller hosting India plan.
What is Web Hosting?
Generally speaking, web hosting is where your website files are stored. The easiest way to explain web hosting is to compare it to a neighborhood where your site is a house in that neighborhood.
The hosting company provides you with a specified amount of space and bandwidth so others will be able to access your website online.
There are several different types of web hosting. The one you choose will depend upon several factors including:
- The size of your website
- Your level of technical expertise
- How much traffic you get to your website
There are also several different types of web hosting options. Some of them are:
- Shared hosting: This is where several sites share the same server
- Dedicated hosting: A dedicated server with dedicated resources is given to a single client
- Reseller hosting: Account owners can allot bandwidth and hard drive space to others
What is Cloud Hosting?
With cloud hosting, your website draws its resources, such as storage space, processing power, and memory from multiple servers. The server hardware you are using is virtual rather than being on a single physical server.
Based on cloud computing technology, cloud hosting relies on a set of unlimited servers that essentially behave like one system called the “cloud”.
Sudden Spikes in Traffic
Depending upon your business, there might be times when your website experiences a sudden spike in traffic. For example, if you are selling swimming pool supplies, chances are you can expect to have more traffic during the summer months.
Also, if you are running an ad for a special promotion, if you are successful, the traffic to your site will increase exponentially while the ad is running. During these high traffic times, if you are hosted on a cloud server, your website can pull resources from another server. Whereas if you are not on the cloud, your site speed will slow down and your site could actually crash.
Scalability
Scalability refers to the ability to increase or decrease resources efficiently, easily, quickly, and as needed.
With web hosting packages, you are given a specific amount of processing power, disk space, and bandwidth. If you need more, you will have to upgrade your account or add more services.
On the other hand, cloud hosting makes it easy to add or subtract resources. Scalability is one of cloud hosting’s best advantages. Because your website is hosted on many different servers, resources can be adjusted quickly.
If your business would benefit from virtual on-demand space rather than paying for a specific amount of server space, cloud hosting is your best option.
Reliability
When it comes to your website, reliability is essential. The last thing you want is for someone to visit your site and find out that it is running too slow or even worse that it is down.
Depending upon which package you choose, web hosting can provide a certain amount of reliability. However, there is no way to guaranty that your site will never experience any down time.
The very nature of cloud hosting guarantees 100% uptime. If one server experiences any problems, there are other servers ready to fill in if something breaks.
Web hosting and cloud hosting differ in many ways. To determine which one is best for your business, you will need to examine the needs of your business and how each option best fits with regards to cost, performance, reliability, security, and website traffic.