Choosing the right type of hosting for your website can be a challenge. There are many types of plans to pick from, including cloud hosting. However, you might be wondering: what is cloud hosting, and is it the right solution for your website? 🤔
With this type of hosting plan, your data is stored on virtually isolated resources powered by a network of servers (the “cloud”). By utilizing a resilient network of servers instead of a single physical server, it offers benefits in terms of speed, reliability, and scalability.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look 🔍 at how cloud hosting works and what makes it different from other plans. We’ll also discuss its pros 👍 and cons 👎. Finally, we’ll explore some of the best providers of this service. Let’s get to it!
📚 Table of contents:
What is cloud hosting?
With a traditional web hosting plan, your account gets to use resources on a single physical server. This can be the entire physical device (in terms of dedicated hosting), a virtual private server (VPS), or even a setup where you share resources with other accounts on that server (shared hosting).
When web hosts talk about “the cloud,” they’re referring to networks of servers. These can be physical or virtual, depending on the provider.
This infrastructure gives you unparalleled freedom when it comes to choosing the resources that you need to host your website:
The primary advantages of this service are scalability and redundancy. Since you have access to a network of servers, your hosting provider can allocate more resources to your site if you need them.
That is, it’s very easy 🤩 to add or remove resources from your server depending on your current usage. Many cloud providers even offer hourly billing so that you’re only paying for the hours where you’re using those resources.
Moreover, cloud hosting offers near-perfect uptime. If one server goes down, other servers in the network can pick up the slack. The one exception is if the entire data center goes down, which can happen in some rare circumstances.
What makes cloud hosting different?
While you might know what cloud hosting is, it can be difficult to understand what makes it so different from other types of services. Let’s take a look at how it differs from other plans:
- Dedicated hosting. With a dedicated plan, you “rent” a full server. This way, you don’t have to share resources with other customers. Cloud hosting offers dedicated resources as well, but with easier scalability because the provider can easily allocate more resources from the cloud network.
- Shared hosting. If you use a shared hosting plan, you share a server with other users. This means you don’t get dedicated resources, which can negatively impact your website’s performance. Using cloud
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This article was written by John Hughes and originally published on ThemeIsle Blog.