Opting for the right hosting is a crucial decision to make, as it is the bedrock of your business website. There is a bevy of web hosting options made available today. Two such examples are cloud hosting and shared hosting, which you are very likely to come across when searching for a solution. Having a sound understanding of the difference between the two can help choose the ideal web hosting service type, which best fits the requirements of your site. Keep reading to find out how Cloud Hosting stacks up against Shared Hosting.
Overview: Difference Between Cloud Hosting and Shared Hosting
Both types of hosting appeal to individual website owners and businesses (small scale and large scale alike). The difference between cloud and shared hosting comes into play when you consider storage options, among other things like high availability, performance, isolation, access to the server itself, etc.. You can store your files and data on a single server or on a network that holds a cluster of servers (which provides better uptime and performance)
What is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting is a high-end option that involves connecting several servers together to improve processing resources and storage capacity. This type of hosting plan boasts superior performance and reliability compared to most other hosting types. Furthermore, extra servers are always ready to provide backups if something breaks down or has to be put offline temporarily.
Cloud engineers can quickly and efficiently pull resources together to meet high traffic demands. Cloud hosting is an ideal option for growing and thriving businesses in the modern age. If you would like to learn more about cloud hosting, other hosting types, and how to improve your site, you can read more here.
What is Shared Hosting?
Shared Hosting is, by far, the most common option on the web hosting market. This is an ideal service for individual web developers and novice site owners. An individual server can host thousands of websites that share resources like bandwidth and CPU/RAM usage. Shared hosting plans often include extra features like single-click installers to helps users get started with their work as soon as possible. However, this is not an ideal hosting plan for websites that draw a lot of traffic.
The most common usage for shared hosting is hosting a WordPress website. You can compare both shared and cloud hosting providers for WordPress here.
The crucial parameters that help to compare cloud hosting and shared hosting include security, performance, and pricing. Read on to find out how the two services are different, and get a better understanding of which one suits you better.
Security:
On the subject of safeguarding your data from hackers, it is generally difficult to gauge whether a particular hosting provider is more secure than the other. The security of a website is most often rellies on the skill and expertise of the person who runs it. However, you can still do some research for a specific hosting provider and check if they had a data breach or frequent DDoS attacks in the past. For example, 2 data breaches in a year is not a good sign.
With shared hosting, security depends on applications that make them susceptible to hackers. It is easier to gain access to all the websites once you have access to the said server. It’s worth mentioning that such an event, like an entire server being compromised, is highly unlikely.
Usually, only a single website is breached, and that’s due to user error, most astute hackers leave a back door to ensure they can gain re-entry later on.
When using cloud hosting, customers have more control and authority over the configuration of security. In addition to tackling conventional security issues, cloud hosting typically uses measures to protect data further and bolster privacy against security issues like side-channel attacks and network eavesdropping.
Performance:
Even though shared hosting services feature custom-built servers, the resources available are more limiting, which hinders performance. Shared hosting is made to be a more affordable option for people with fewer resource needs. Moreover, you might have to contend with issues like occasional downtimes, which tend to frustrate users.
On the other hand, cloud hosting offers a customizable and lightning fast platform. It’s made to handle high-traffic and to have serious data redundancy. Cloud hosting is recommended for websites that tend to draw high traffic.
It would be safe to conclude that cloud hosting upstages shared hosting in the performance department.
Pricing:
Shared hosting is the more affordable option for users that don’t mind sharing resources and have non-resource intense websites, or don’t expect to have very high traffic surges.
Using cloud hosting services tends to be more expensive, but it definitely is a premium hosting solution. You’ll get to experience the simple controls of shared hosting while enjoying more resources.
Final Verdict:
To summarize, shared hosting has leverage over cloud hosting when it comes to affordability. It is an ideal service for small website owners or bloggers. They can have complete access to all of the basic features at an affordable price, which allows their sites to be up and running easily.
Alternately, cloud hosting takes the cake when it comes to performance, speed, and security. It is perfect for medium and large businesses and the websites that draw a lot of traffic.
We hope this article will help you make a more informed decision for your site.
This article was submitted to us by a third-party writer. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views and opinions of ThisHosting.Rocks. If you want to write for ThisHosting.Rocks, go here.
