The number of companies designing websites and taking them online continues to grow daily. But some of these businesses are not consistently visible to internet users because of web hosting challenges.
When your business signs up for web hosting services, it rents space to store data and files on a physical server. Websites require this data to run correctly. On the other hand, web host providers allocate you space, keep their servers secure, and provide other services.
For some years, companies have been hosting their website on traditional hosting. However, with increased digitalization, website owners are slowly switching from a tried and trusted version to a shiny and smart option – cloud hosting.
So then, does it means cloud hosting is a superior option? Cloud hosting offers scalability and flexible hosting solutions, while traditional hosting offers a wide array of benefits that makes it still relevant today. Therefore you need to consider other factors before choosing cloud hosting or traditional hosting.
Here are the factors that can help you narrow your selection.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is a relatively new hosting service. With this option, websites are hosted across different servers and locations but are interconnected through the internet. Usually, website owners access the different servers across the cloud or manage websites using a virtual machine.
Modern businesses prefer cloud hosting because of its unique web architecture. It’s more flexible and scalable based on your website’s growth and traffic volume. Cloud hosting is comparable to utilities like electricity because you pay for what you use.
Many small, medium, and well-developed businesses prefer to cloud server hosting because of its exceptional features and benefits.
Traditional Hosting
The traditional hosting option hosts websites on a singer server and datacenter. Shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting are some of the traditional hosting types you choose, depending on your website size, the volume of traffic, and technical expertise level.
Major Differences between Cloud Hosting and Traditional Hosting Solutions
1. Data Storage
Cloud hosting stores data in multiple interconnected servers and locations. So your website remains online even when one server goes offline since there are other servers to fill the gap.
Traditional Hosting stores data on a single server and datacenter. The shared hosting option hosts multiple new websites with minimal traffic on a single server. VPS host multiple websites on a common server but with complete server isolation. Dedicated hosting hosts websites with huge traffic volumes on an exclusive dedicated server. Traditional hosting stores data in a single server, which makes it unreliable because the server can fail anytime.
2. Scalability
Cloud hosting is scaled based on the volume that your traffic website or application receives. The cloud servers automatically scale up and down when there is more or less traffic. So, it’s a perfect solution for growing a website with ever-increasing or fluctuating traffic.
Traditional hosting offers limited scalability. So, you must upgrade from shared hosting when resources are overused to either VPS or dedicated hosting. Unfortunately, you might be paying more for underused resources.
3. Data security
Cloud hosting is a smart option because it offers maximum data security. You can easily restore your data when one server is rendered inaccessible because there are multiple interconnected servers in different locations.
Website owners using traditional hosting must perform regular backups because sharing a single server exposes your website to security issues and data loss.
4. Performance
Cloud hosting offers high page loading speed and website performance because hosting service offers low-density servers with advanced caching and is easily scalable.
The page loading speed and website performance depend on the hosting type (shared, VPS, or dedicated) and the volume of the traffic.
5. Uptime Guarantee/Reliability
There is a high uptime guarantee with cloud hosting because your website is hosted in interconnected servers storing similar information but spread across different locations. So, your website will always be online, even when there is an online attack or server failure.
There is no guarantee that your website will be online because the single server is susceptible to human error, server failure, attacks, crashes, etc.
The Verdict
Cloud hosting is a better solution based on its data storage, scalability, protection of privacy, security, maximum performance, and uptime guarantee. Although cloud hosting has many benefits, it’s a relatively new technology. As a result, many website owners who have been using traditional hosting for many years are hesitant to switch. Even so, moving to the cloud is ideal for brands looking for flexible, easily scalable, low-cost hosting solutions.
