Cloud Hosting vs Shared Hosting: Which One To Choose?

Cloud technology is at its zenith, and it is essential to use its true potential to accelerate the application processes and to efficiently manage large loads.

The Cloud refers to a large interconnected network of remote servers that can be used to store and process a large amount of data with super fast speed. This allows businesses to store their resources on managed cloud servers without even needing to worry about buying a super-expensive software infrastructure. For an individual, this is very useful as it eliminates the need to buy a powerful PC to perform high computing tasks such as video editing, playing games, data analytics, etc.

Due to its enormous number of advantages, cloud technology become increasingly popular and is now widely used for website hosting, it is considered to be more reliable than shared hosting because it provides greater flexibility, scalability, and security. But like any technology, cloud hosting also possesses certain disadvantages that are not present in traditional shared hosting, and this can leave you confused as to whom to choose for website hosting.

In this tutorial, we will compare shared hosting and cloud hosting to help you understand the differences between the two and determine which one is the best option for your needs.

Introduction to Cloud Hosting

In the past when there was no “cloud hosting”, the website were hosted on a dedicated physical server which was super costly, later it can be seen that instead of dedicating a complete physical server to a website, one can host multiple websites on a physical server and resources are shared among all them, this is called shared hosting. 

Shared hosting was less expensive but there is a problem of resource management, as a single website out of many hosted on a single server can consume all the server’s resources, making otherwise website slow down or even crash. 

Then another concept came into action, virtual private servers (VPS), which is to divide a single physical server into virtual server having their own resources so that so the website can consume resources dedicated to some other website. Again, this makes the hosting expensive and due to its complex architecture it is hard to manage.

Here comes “cloud hosting”, the most reliable, scalable, flexible and advanced web servers.

Benefits of Cloud Hosting over Shared Hosting

Let’s see the benefits of cloud hosting over shared hosting.

1. Flexibility: The one of key differences between cloud hosting and the other is that it is highly flexible, you can add resources such as CPU, and RAM when there is huge traffic to handle and once you have enough resources you can remove them for cost-cutting as well.
2. Reliability: A cloud server is a group of multiple servers in different geographical locations, meaning if one of the servers gets affected, others are still running, so that your website never goes down.
3. Customization: Cloud hosting is super customisable, as we have already mentioned you can add or remove resources, and you can also configure the system according to your need. You can even install third-party software, this feature is messing in shared hosting.
4. Performance: Cloud servers are faster than shared servers as it has dedicated resources for each of the hosted websites.
5. Backup and Restore: Cloud hosting usually comes with automatic backup and restore features, so you don’t need to back up everything manually.
6. Security: Cloud hosting usually provides security features like firewalls, encryption of data, intrusion detection, malware scanning, DDoS protection, etc., which makes it highly secure as compared to shared hosting.

The benefits you read will make you shift to cloud hosting, but like any other technology, this also has some demerits which we will address by looking at the benefits of shared servers over cloud.

Introduction to Shared Hosting

As the name suggests, shared hosting is a way of sharing a physical server among multiple users with shared resources. Earlier we addressed the problem of resource management with shared hosting, but with the advancement of technology, shared hosting improved a lot. 

Shared hosting plans often come with limited resources, if you know that your website is required fewer resources you can deploy it on a shared server to decrease the hosting cost. Shared Hosting is the best economical way to make your website live, and this isn’t the only benefit, there are many advantages of it over the cloud server.

Benefits of Shared Hosting over Cloud Hosting

Let’s now see the benefits of shared hosting over cloud hosting.

1. Cost: As we already mentioned, the shared hosting plans start with an affordable price making it a great option for small website owners with a low budget.
2. Control Panels: The best thing about shared hosting is that it comes with a control panel, depending on the hosting platform the panel may be different, but all provide various tools to manage the website and perform configuration without any technical knowledge. 
3. Email Hosting: The shared hosting plans offered come with email hosting, giving you the flexibility to set up an email for your own domain name.
4. Technical Support: Shared hosting is mostly used by website owners who are not from a technical background, so the company provides  24/7 technical support that can help with everything.
5. Easy Setup: Setup a website in shared hosting is very easy while cloud hosting will leave you scratching your head once in a while.
6. No maintenance required: Cloud hosting requires server maintenance but here the hosting provider takes care of maintaining the server and ensuring that it continues to run flawlessly.

It may confuse you about which one to choose, both have their own speciality, let us look at one-on-one compression which will definitely clear your doubt.

Comparison Table: Cloud Hosting vs Shared Hosting

The comparison here may vary according to the hosting providers, we have done this comparison keeping in mind most of the providers.

Conclusion

So what is the conclusion of all this comparison? Well, it is seen that cloud hosting is better than shared by its features, the cost may be high, but in the long run, it is cost-efficient, and having multiple servers and load balancers will ensure that your website is up all time and never goes down. Some configuration may be required but with a little research, you can definitely do it, even some cloud hosting nowadays comes with cPanel, making it much easier to set up and the level of customization and third-party software support, make it even more useful. So if this makes sense to you, go ahead with cloud hosting.

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