What Is Cloud Hosting, How Does It Work, and When You Should Use It

If you want to create a fast, secure, and scalable website, cloud hosting is a great choice.

Instead of sharing computing power with other websites, you’ll get a dedicated resource pool. This ensures stable performance and speedy content delivery for a better user experience.

This article will explain cloud hosting, how it works, and how it compares to traditional web hosting services. We’ll also discuss whether cloud hosting is the right solution for your needs.

How Does Cloud Hosting Work?

Cloud hosting works differently from traditional web hosting. The latter typically uses a centralized approach, where a single web server hosts multiple websites.

Since computing power and storage are shared among traditional hosting users, a sudden traffic spike from a neighboring site can slow down your website.

In contrast, cloud hosting services use virtualization, which divides a physical server into multiple virtual servers. It uses a network of servers to host a website, ensuring better performance and stability than single-server hosting services.

As such, cloud hosting is suitable for high-traffic websites like eCommerce stores.

Benefits of Cloud Hosting

Whether you’re planning to host your first website or upgrade from a traditional hosting plan, cloud hosting offers plenty of benefits.

• Beginner-friendly. A managed cloud hosting solution doesn’t require any technical knowledge. The service provider will maintain the cloud servers and your site’s backend.
• High availability. When a server fails, another one in the network will act as a backup, keeping your website online at all times.
• Traffic load balancing. Traffic-handling responsibilities are spread across cloud web servers to maintain high performance.
• Scalability. Unlike traditional hosting services, site owners don’t have to share their bandwidth, data storage, and computing power. The web host provides dedicated virtual resources for each user, making it easier to scale their website.
• Greater security. Since cloud hosting services use multiple virtual machines, it’s less prone to hardware malfunctions. Moreover, the load balancing feature can help prevent DDoS attacks.

Comparing Cloud Hosting to Other Types of Hosting

Cloud hosting is a great choice, but it’s not for everyone. Some users may need advanced customization, while others prefer a more affordable option.

To help you choose the right hosting plan, we’ll discuss other popular hosting service types and how they compare to cloud hosting.

Cloud Hosting vs Shared Hosting

In a shared hosting environment, one server stores data from multiple websites. It results in limited bandwidth, storage capacity, and processing power.

Since the server maintenance costs are divided between users, shared hosting is usually less expensive than cloud hosting. As such, it is an excellent option for small businesses and personal websites.

Here are the pros and cons of shared hosting:

Pros

• Affordable. At $2-10/month, shared hosting is the least expensive hosting type. In comparison, cloud hosting costs $10-70/month or more. Check out our web hosting cost guide for more information.
• Beginner-friendly. No coding skills are required to get your website up and running.
• Easy maintenance. The web host handles the technical aspects of maintaining a website so that you can focus more on optimization.

Cons

• Limited resources. With limited bandwidth, processing power, and storage capacity, achieving top-notch website performance is difficult.
• Prone to security risks. If one site hosted on the shared server is compromised, the others may be affected.
• Shared IP address. You’ll need to share an IP address with other sites. This can hamper your email deliverability, as providers like Gmail and Yahoo tend to associate shared IPs with spam.

Cloud Hosting vs VPS Hosting

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting works similarly to cloud hosting. It uses virtualization to separate server partitions, providing each user with allocated resources to grow their website.

This hosting solution also offers root access, giving you more flexibility and control over the hosting environment. This feature is not available with managed cloud or shared hosting services.

However, VPS hosting is often unmanaged, making it more suitable for tech-savvy individuals.

Below are the advantages and disadvantages of VPS web hosting:

Pros

• Stable performance. Since each user gets dedicated resources, traffic surges on one website will not affect the others.
• Highly customizable. In terms of server configuration, virtual private servers offer more flexibility than managed cloud-based services.
• Dedicated IP address. VPS and cloud hosting providers offer a dedicated IP address for better protection. Having a dedicated IP address also improves your site’s credibility.

Cons

• Not beginner-friendly. Users must possess the required skills and knowledge to manage VPS hosting.

Cloud Hosting vs Dedicated Server Hosting

Dedicated hosting is the most powerful type of hosting. It gives you full control over an entire server – from installing custom software to using all the available resources.

However, it is significantly more expensive than cloud hosting. As a result, it’s more geared towards large organizations with a big budget.

Check out the benefits and drawbacks of dedicated hosting:

Pros

• Top performance. Dedicated hosting offers the best site performance.
• Unlimited resources. With a dedicated server, you will have all the necessary resources to grow a large-scale website.
• Complete control. Users can fully control the hosting environment, including customizing the operating system and installing server-wide software.

Cons

• High cost. Compared to other hosting plans, dedicated servers have the highest maintenance cost. Expect to spend between $80-500/month or more.
• Advanced skills required. Server management knowledge is necessary to operate and maintain a dedicated server.

When Should You Use Cloud Hosting Solutions

Cloud hosting is the right option if you need a stable website performance but don’t have the necessary skills or budget to maintain your own server.

The distributed infrastructure helps you deal with traffic spikes during promos, seasonal events, or when an article suddenly ranks first on Google.

Moreover, it’s more suitable for websites that need dedicated processing power, bandwidth, and disk space to handle large data. Some website types that would benefit from cloud hosting are news publications, large-scale blogs, search engines, and aggregator sites.

Cloud hosting is also excellent for websites that require top-notch security to protect sensitive data, such as eCommerce stores and social media networks.

Does Hostinger Offer Cloud Hosting Services

Yes, we do. Hostinger offers three plans ranging from $8.99/month to $29.99/month.

We use the latest cloud computing technology to ensure the best performance, such as CloudLinux with LVE containers to isolate resources for each hosting account. Your site will always be up and running with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and a global chain of data centers.

To help you choose the right plan, here’s a comparison of our cloud hosting options:

Features	Startup	Professional	Enterprise
Pricing	$8.99/month	$14.99/month	$29.99/month
Number of websites	300	300	300
Number of email accounts	100	100	100
Memory	3 GB	6 GB	12 GB
SSD storage	200 GB	250 GB	300 GB
Number of CPU cores	2	4	6
Bandwidth	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited

Visit the Hostinger coupons page to claim your cloud hosting discounts.

How Do IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS Relate to Cloud Hosting

IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS are business models that use cloud infrastructure to deliver their services. Let’s explore the differences between each model.

IaaS

IaaS stands for infrastructure as a service. This business type offers cloud-based computing resources such as servers and cloud storage to help companies run their operations.

Since building a physical data center is costly and difficult, many organizations buy from IaaS companies instead. Scaling cloud services is easy, and businesses only need to pay for the resources they use.

A prime example of an IaaS company is Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing platform that stores Netflix’s movie and series database.

PaaS

PaaS is short for platform as a service. It refers to a company that offers cloud-based frameworks for web and mobile apps.

Unlike IaaS, this vendor type manages the cloud server resources. Therefore, the developers can focus on creating projects.

Google App Engine is an example of a PaaS. With this service, users can create software without worrying about infrastructure management.

SaaS

Software as a service or SaaS is a business model offering full-fledged software on a subscription basis.

SaaS products are hosted in the cloud, unlike on-premise software that requires in-house servers. They’re accessible from any computer or mobile device with an internet connection.

This way, small business owners can access enterprise-grade software without making a large upfront investment. The Google Workspace suite, which includes Google Workspace webmail, is an example of a SaaS platform.

Conclusion

Cloud hosting employs a virtual infrastructure of servers to manage a website. Compared to traditional web hosting, it offers increased reliability and minimized hardware failure risks. This results in stable site performance.

Cloud-based web hosting is perfect for building large-scale projects, including enterprise websites, eCommerce stores, social networks, and aggregator platforms. Moreover, a managed cloud hosting service doesn’t require technical knowledge.

What Is Cloud Hosting FAQs

Here are more information about cloud hosting.