As the times are changing, businesses are looking for a way to evolve and keep up including managing their budget and building a firm foundation with a great web hosting service. With all the new technology being introduced in the market, business owners are deciding whether to stick with traditional web hosting or to opt for cloud hosting. We are here to help you decide.
- What is web hosting?
A web hosting service takes on the task of hosting all of your website’s database on a server to be available for your users to access it online. Traditional web hosting is divided into two parts, dedicated web hosting and virtual web hosting. Virtual hosting includes an organisation renting out buying certain parts of a server along with its resources. . However there are usually multiple users hosted on the same server who have to share the resources or have them assigned to each user.
Dedicated hosting, on the other hand, includes the user gaining complete control of an entire server along with its resources. So you have monopoly on the entire server. However, dedicated servers are more expensive given the benefits they bring along.
- What is cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting includes housing your website and entire database on an interconnected array of servers. Instead of just purchasing a part of a server, you just have to pay for what you utilise. Since there are several servers involved you have the potential to expand your resources to a very high degree along with having better reliability.
- How cloud hosting differs from traditional web hosting
1. Performance
The server you choose dictates the performance of your website. So you need to ensure you have enough resources and features to ensure smooth functioning. An efficient web hosting service will boost your website’s performance and page loading time, which in turn guarantees better user experience and helps your SEO ranking.
Websites that do not encounter a lot of traffic can easily have their requirements fulfilled with traditional hosting, like shared hosting or VPS hosting. If you do have to handle huge amounts of traffic though, cloud hosting is a better choice for your website given its flexible and scalable resources. So if you experience a spike in traffic, you can easily increase your resources thus avoiding downtime and maintaining optimum performance.
2. Flexibility and scaling
The evolution of your business brings about the need for your resources to scale with it. Traditional web hosting usually includes upgrading your hosting plan or moving to a new house altogether if your business grows exponentially. You do not have the scope to increase your resources to a very great extent including bandwidth, RAM, and much more.
Alternatively, cloud hosting offers a higher amount of flexibility so that you can increase or decrease the amount of resources you pay for without delay. Cloud hosting offers an easy way to add on to the capacity of your web hosting plan. This helps to avoid downtime in case you do encounter a traffic spike.
You can also benefit from their autoscaling services that take into account the amount of traffic you encounter and scale your resources accordingly. It works wonders to ensure your website is online all the time even if traffic spikes.
3. Resources
Traditional web hosting services offer services including domain registrations, automatic backups, and many more. This is essential for businesses, especially startups to get going quickly and establish a thriving operation.
Cloud hosting does offer root access and ensures you get ample support in case you run into any difficulty. If your server is not functioning optimally, you can just move on to another server to ensure smooth functioning.
4. Security
Server security is a priority for every business owner along with the web hosting provider as falling victim to an attack could result in irreparable damage.
Traditional hosting usually results in downtime if your hardware fails. You might also permanently lose your data. While you can always backup your database, there aren’t various redundancies you can employ. Selecting the perfect web hosting provider is vital as it dictates the safety of your website and database.
Cloud hosting, on the other hand, has multiple servers located in remote places that hold backups of your entire database that can be easily replaced in case your original fails or is under attack.
- Conclusion
Both traditional hosting and cloud hosting have their individual merits. So you can’t really go wrong by choosing either of them. Traditional web hosting such as shared hosting can be perfect for startups or shall businesses that have limited needs.
However, as your business grows and you start attracting more traffic, your website will require a higher amount of resources to deal with your requirements while delivering smooth performance.
Hence, if you are looking for a higher amount of scalability and flexibility, cloud hosting is the perfect option for you.
