This article will focus on trying to reveal which web hosting is better between shared and cloud hosting.
Before you can have a website running live on the internet, you need to purchase a web hosting plan from any web hosting company of your choice.
And oftentimes, especially for beginners; choosing the right kind of web hosting is often very challenging because there are so many kinds of web hosting and you will always be caught up with the problem of knowing which one is the best; especially if you are just starting out.
And on this article, we are going to focus on trying to see which of the two common web hosting choices, i.e. cloud and shared, is better.
Though there is no one right choice for everyone; the choice you make will depend entirely on the purpose or needs of your website.
So without further ado, let’s dive into this article to help you understand the difference between shared hosting and cloud hosting.
Difference Between Shared Hosting And Cloud Hosting.
The main difference between shared hosting and cloud hosting is that with shared hosting, as the name implies, you are sharing the server with others, while cloud hosting helps you have a dedicated server to yourself.
Because of sharing the server with others, shared hosting will often have downtime and low page speed when too many people are being connected to the server at a particular time, whereas cloud hosting will seldom have downtime and low speed when maintenance is going on in the server.
In order to know whether cloud or shared hosting is good for you, you have to first and foremost be able to define your website needs. That is what you are going to use the website for.
You also have to be clear about your financial capability, the type of data you are going to handle, the size and your traffic flow, the experiences your team has in web development, as well as the budget you are setting aside for your security.
If you are going to run a small website that will not have much traffic flow, then shared hosting is going to be your best option.
An example could be a personal blogs, reference sites, informative sites, personal storage sites, or testing platforms.
If however, you are going to run a high-performance site that will require much security and scalability, then cloud hosting should be your best option.
Cloud hosting is also best for low-traffic visitors who are performing heavy computational tasks, or users who have specific needs or custom frameworks.
Sites like streaming platforms, gaming sites, and hosting data sites are some of the common websites that require cloud hosting.
Cloud hosting is often seen as a substitution for shared hosting because of its ability to handle very heavy traffic, its improved security protection, and its overall reliability.
However, these extra features come with a price, and most cloud hosting options are very expensive than shared hosting plans.
But if your plan is to run a large website, then you need a website that has a very high-performance rate, and cloud hosting is the best option and choice you must make.
What is shared hosting?
Shared hosting is a type of web hosting where a single server is divided up between several users.
Each of the users will receive a certain amount of bandwidth depending on the plan they bought; either to host a single or unlimited domain.
In essence, just one server can be split up between several accounts; which can sometimes end up costing thousands of websites.
Shared web hosting is often the cheapest form of web hosting; it is a very popular and widely available type of hosting solution.
You’ll usually see it being advertised for $9.99 or less a month.
The disadvantage of shared hosting is that your website will have the tendency to perform poorly; if another website on the same server is taking up too many resources.
However, the engineers or owners of this type of hosting usually try their best to eliminate or control these effects.
While shared hosting can be a great choice for those who plan to run a very small website or has a tight budget; cloud hosting is always the number one choice for websites that expect to accommodate several visitors.
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What is cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting also called cloud VPS hosting; is a type of hosting which will give you the opportunity of using the resources of multiple servers instead of having your site confined to a single server location.
This is the reason why cloud services are highly sought after.
The main advantage of cloud hosting is that it will allow for unlimited expansion and thus it’s a better choice for websites that has heavy traffic.
Cloud hosting also has a greater means of protection from an overwhelmed server. If one server seems to be overwhelmed, you will simply switch to another cloud server.
Cloud hosting is better than shared hosting because of the following reasons:
- Higher performance.
- Reliability.
- Control and customization.
1. Higher performance.
Unlike shared hosting, cloud hosting is designed to handle high volumes of traffic and still be functional.
This is because the sites are running on a virtual instance, and scalability can never be an issue because resources can be scaled to the users’ needs at any given point in time.
2. Reliability.
Some of the main features of cloud hosting are redundancy and high availability.
And the result of this is that hardware failure on any of the physical servers will never cause downtime to the website because the data or resources will be allocated to another server.
Additionally, the dedicated servers will provide a more secure environment and isolation protocols in case of any protocols.
3. Control and customization.
With cloud hosting, you are going to have total control of the virtual machine; which will also include root connections as well as the ability to access the system core files and configuration. This is especially good for users who have very specific setups, such as:
- Deployment of NoSQL databases.
- Custom APIs and web applications.
- Specialized web server software or configurations.
Conclusion.
I began my blogging career with shared hosting, but when I began to have steady 100+ organic traffic every day, I usually observed that once my traffic gets past 100, no more traffic will be coming again.
And worst still, I will be receiving downtime alerts from the monitory platforms I am using.
So I began to research and realized that I need to upgrade to better hosting, and cloud hosting was my number one choice.
And the very first day I upgraded to cloud hosting I had 298 visitors and ever since my traffic has been growing excessively.
But if you plan to have a small website like a portfolio to share your brand’s or services work to your followers on social media without utilizing shared content, then shared hosting is a much better choice of web hosting for you.
Good luck!