The popularity of cloud hosting has continued to rise in the past several years and has become a worthy contender in the hosting world. It’s fast, flexible, convenient, and has plenty of helpful functionality to host websites, manage databases, and house domain names. So what exactly is cloud hosting and how does it work?

Cloud Hosting: Breaking it Down

The main concept of cloud hosting is that the resources required for maintaining your site are distributed across several servers and rendered on a per-need basis. This reduces the risk of downtime in case of a server issue.

Another critical component of cloud hosting is that it allows you to easily manage peak loads since there are other servers available to provide additional resources if needed. This helps you avoid facing bandwidth issues.

A great example of cloud hosting which you might be familiar with is the king of search engines: Google. Their resources are spread over hundreds of servers on the cloud, which is probably why you haven’t seen any downtimes while browsing the internet.

What’s happening behind the scenes is that each server in the cloud helps carry a set of designated tasks. If there is a malfunction or failure, another server can step in and easily pick up the slack.

Cloud Hosting vs. Traditional Hosting

In an era of constantly evolving technology and tight budgets, companies are looking for the most efficient ways to manage their web hosting needs. With a changing hosting environment, there are now more options available than the traditional web hosting setup, such as cloud hosting.

Traditional hosting is primarily comprised of dedicated and shared hosting. Dedicated hosting allows a company to pay for all the resources they need from one or more servers from a hosting provider. This is done by establishing a set amount of CPU, RAM, dedicated bandwidth, and drive space. The client has full control.

With shared hosting, a company or individual is paying for a single server with a set amount of space and whose resources are shared by other websites. While cost-efficient, shared hosting comes with some drawbacks. Since resources are being shared, there can be spikes in traffic which can decrease performance for your own website. There can also be security issues and problems if there is a server failure.

Traditional hosting can be a great option if you have a predictable and steady flow of traffic, but for companies looking to scale easily or introduce new features that can lead to a spike in traffic, it may not be the best solution. In this case, you’d be restricted by the amount of storage you have and could only adapt by purchasing additional server space. If traffic slows down again, you’d be paying for resources needlessly. However, there are definitely a lot of good shared hosting choices to go for. Hosting.Review is a good resource website where you could perform your research before purchasing your preferred hosting package.

So what about cloud hosting, and how does it offer a higher level of scalability? With cloud hosting, you are provided with virtual space on a per needed basis. This sets up a more pay-as-you-go system rather than paying for a set amount of resources up front, making it very appealing.

With cloud hosting, if an individual server goes down, there will be no data lost or downtime because the load is spread across a cluster of servers. This is great news for your site’s performance and bandwidth.

Cloud hosting companies house and maintain all of the hardware necessary and the customer only needs to worry about paying for the resources they use. Think of it as being similar to your water or electricity bill. No one is allotted a set amount of water or electricity to use per day. We simply use what we need and pay for just that.

Benefits of Cloud Hosting

Now that you have a good understanding of the differences between traditional hosting and cloud hosting, here are some good reasons to start considering a move to the cloud:

 

• Reliable – Traditional hosting has an ever-present possibility of failure. Cloud hosting is made up of hundreds of servers that can protect against problems and ensure ongoing availability to your web traffic.

 

 

• Physical Security – The data centers that house cloud servers have solid security measures that can prevent security breaches or a disruption of servers. Additionally, multiple layers of IT Security are often deployed on the networks to prevent cyber attacks and data breaches.

 

 

• Scalable and Flexible – Your company can easily scale with the bounty of resources provided in a cloud hosting environment. You aren’t limited to the constraints of a single server. Spikes in traffic are handled by the use of additional servers.

 

 

• Cost – Since you are only paying for the resources you use, you can save a lot of money in the long-run.

 

If you’re more familiar with using traditional hosting services, start thinking about what the needs of your company are. While cloud hosting is still a fairly new technology, it has become widely popular due to its low cost, flexibility, and scalability. Cloud hosting just may be the hosting solution you need.