Cloud hosting provides hosting on virtual servers whereas shared hosting provides a server that you have to share with other users. The primary difference between cloud and shared hosting is whether you want to store your files on a single machine or multiple servers. Commonly shared hosting is chosen by the websites that are in their earlier stage because they do not need many resources and do not get that much traffic. Cloud hosting, on the other hand, is preferred by people whose websites and businesses are well established.
Both cloud and shared hosting offer different services and have their own specialties. In this article, you will read the basic differences between a cloud web host and a shared web host.
Cloud vs Shared Hosting Comparison: The Pros and Cons
1. Resources
A shared server shares the resources with many other users, resulting in limited resources for all the clients. However, mostly all shared hosting companies offers a beginners help kit and guidelines to getting started for newbies to get everything they need to get online, including free domain registration, email accounts, automatic server backups, and at times, a SSL security certificate. The technical details of your server maintenance such as operating system updates and security patches will be taken care of as well. In cloud vs shared hosting comparison, cloud hosting has multiple servers that add their resources together and host multiple websites. More resources are available to each customer because of the added hardware.
2. Scalability
When we talk about scalability in between cloud vs shared hosting, cloud hosting has the upper hand. When a website is in its beginning stages, it will not require much storage space, but once it starts to grow, you will definitely need more of it. Shared hosting is not made to fit the requirements of websites with high traffic. On the contrary, cloud web hosting has the ability to grow along with your business, and it enables you to scale up or down according to your needs.
3. Cost
Because of shared resources, the cost is also lesser than other web hosting services and the payment is done on a monthly or yearly basis. Many cloud hosting plans invoice customers for the number of computing resources they consumed over a given time period, but if you do not keep track of the apps in your cloud, you might end up paying more. If you plan out your objectives for your cloud, maybe your bill will be cheaper.
4. Speed
Your website’s speed can be very slow if it is being hosted by a shared web host. This is one of the no-nos of shared hosting! The reason is that other websites are sharing the storage space and all the resources, so in case one of them takes up too much of them, your website will get slower, or worse, even crash. In cloud hosting, every website has a separate set of resources, and your site is always up and running.
Conclusion
The advantages of a web host vastly depend on your needs. If your website does not get much traffic and you have a limited budget, a shared hosting plan will easily do the job. For businesses and websites that demand greater resources, cloud hosting is an obvious choice.
In a nutshell, both shared and cloud hosting offers wide ranges of exclusive hosting solutions and have their pros and cons and we’ve been able to highlight some of them in this cloud vs shared hosting comparison post. To drive home points for your choice hosting feature, I believe this cloud vs shared hosting comparison would have offered you some resources to help your quest.
Barbara Morgan is an IT enthusiast and tech content writer based in the USA. She is professional web developer with a passion to dig into Linux servers tuning. With years of experience in the field as an IT beginner, she has been featured on host of websites across the world including TechAtLast. She regularly posts at hostiserver.com – a Managed Hosting Provider in USA.
Nice article, brief and to the point.
Thank you Ahmer! 🙂