Cloud Hosting vs Shared Hosting

What Are Hosting Types?

Web hosting is an easy to understand concept. It involves placing and providing access to your website for anyone accessing your domain. Although establishing web hosting can be a difficult procedure – take a peak at our guide, What are DNS Records, if you want a basic overview – the basic concept of web hosting is relatively easy to comprehend.

That said, not all web hosting is equal. Despite the fact that the theory of having your website’s documents kept on a server and giving them to customers doesn’t change, the approach your website acquires computing resources fluctuates depending on the type of hosting you have.

Web hosts employ a variety of hosting techniques to satisfy the requirements of different websites.

For instance, an individual portfolio does not need a great deal of computing strength because it has limited material and not many guests, so it is not logical to purchase expensive, devoted hosting. Rather than relying on an outside provider, larger companies with IT teams may need to tailor their hosting to fit their exact needs, thus desiring all the resources and adaptability they can get.

The purpose of this article is to clarify the different varieties of hosting, providing an overview of the features of each one and its relevance to distinct customers. If you are new in the web hosting world and confused by the various options available, you shouldn’t be worried about the hosting types too much. Choosing a web host’s shared hosting package is usually a wise decision for those new to the field.

Hosting Types Overview

Now that you have comprehended what a type of hosting is, we shall proceed to look into the four most frequent types. We will not only detail the functions of each type of hosting but also provide advice on who should use each kind of hosting.

If you want to skip the gory details, here’s a quick overview of the different types of hosting:

Shared hosting

Allows multiple users to host websites cheaply by taking advantage of economies of scale.
Suitable for small businesses, portfolios, informational websites and personal websites.

VPS hosting

Offers the configurability and consistency of dedicated hosting without the price tag by virtualizing a private server on a shared server.
Suitable for medium-sized businesses, developers and medium-sized news outlets.

Dedicated hosting

Provides a server and all its computing resources to a single user.
Suitable for multi-site networks, large businesses, large e-commerce outlets and large media outlets.

Cloud hosting

Combines aspects of shared, VPS and dedicated hosting by allowing your website to pull resources from the cloud, effectively making it impossible to go offline.
Suitable for any website that needs high traffic and low operating costs, particularly medium to large media outlets and blogs.
Can be used by large corporations or multi-site networks with a custom configuration.

Shared Hosting

The majority of websites should use shared hosting as the default option. It should be standard to rate other hosting types in comparison to this option as many web hosts provide this type of service. iPage is a primary provider of shared hosting solutions, as demonstrated in our review.

Rather than allotting a separate server for every user, shared hosting puts multiple individuals on the same server. The server has a limited quantity of resources, so the websites utilizing it divide what’s available among them. Renting a server would be akin to having your own home, while shared hosting is equivalent to living in a group residence like an apartment.

The advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting are comparable to those of shared living. The highlight is that it’s cheap. By clustering customers into the same server, the web host can cut costs associated with servers and transfer those savings to customers. Although pricey webspace services do exist, with the Arvixe review as proof, budget friendly alternatives are also available, for example Namecheap, as assessed in our Namecheap review.

Essentially, with shared hosting, you may have to pay a cost in the form of having to deal with the people around you. All sources that are needed to keep websites running come from the same source, so if a web host is too greedy and has too many sites on one server, it could lead to your website no longer having enough resources for users (for example, take a look at our GreenGeeks review).

For sites which have low website traffic, it is advisable to opt for shared hosting. Websites which experience an influx of visitors, such as news sites, may be unable to accommodate the accelerated demand, causing page load problems or diminished speeds.

We have discovered Hostinger and Hosting24 to be the most superior when it comes to shared hosting, though a variety of web hosts provide this service. Hostinger and its services are identical, which Hostinger does not attempt to conceal. Both provide reasonably priced plans with a lot of features, and more significantly, they do not overcrowd their servers with consumers. Examine our Hostinger critique and Hosting24 evaluation to gain further insight.

Shared hosting caters to a specific audience. Websites with low levels of visitors or those that only provide information will gain from this. That includes websites for small businesses, individual portfolios and pages for conveying data. Websites like those typically don’t get a lot of visits, so it should not be difficult to prevent a lack of resources.

Who Should Use Shared Hosting:

Small businesses
Writers, artists, etc.
Personal websites
Informational pages

VPS Hosting

VPS hosting costs more than shared hosting but offers better performance. Similar to shared hosting, multiple websites are hosted on the same server, but with dedicated resources, as opposed to a random distribution.

This is achieved by configuring virtual machines on the physical server (thus the acronym VPS which stands for virtual private server). Rather than fluctuating the resources depending on the demand, the web host partitions blocks of the resources to a specific webpages, almost like they have their own exclusive hosting environment.

For instance, with a server containing eight CPU processors, possessing 16GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage, it is possible to produce four virtual servers, each using two CPU cores, possessing 4GB of RAM, and equipped with 500GB of SSD storage.

Although it may not be immediately obvious, there is a huge disparity between VPS and shared hosting. The clearest advantage is that you will have exclusive access to resources rather than having to share them with anyone else. Your website can be able to handle the demand for data regardless of any other website on the same server.

It is essential that you have the ability to tailor your server. The web hosting service has given you the ability to customize your server since it is providing a dedicated hosting experience. This usually isn’t something you’re able to do with shared hosting.

Unfortunately, not all VPS plans are the same. Be sure to look carefully at the specifics of the VPS plan you are interested in buying; the information about it can be found on the product page of the web hosting service. You could just use A2 Hosting, though. As you can tell from our A2 Hosting review, it is a really really fast host with lots of customisable options.

We encourage A2 Hosting for VPS hosting because they provide the possibility of either using Linux or Windows on your server, and offer you the selection of either managed or unmanaged plans. We’ll discuss the latter point more extensively towards the end, but for now, it is sufficient to say that A2 Hosting provides developers with maximum freedom.

DreamHost is also a great option for VPS hosting. DreamPress, featuring a virtual private server for WordPress, was included in our list of the top web hosting companies for WordPress. You can learn more about DreamHost’s array of VPS plans from basic to high-end enterprise applications in our review.

Who Should Use VPS Hosting:

Medium-sized businesses
Small to medium news outlets
Developers

Dedicated Hosting

Committed facilitating is the most clear kind of web facilitating to get it, however it can likewise be the most costly. With dedicated hosting, you are given a complete server all to yourself, unlike shared and virtual private server hosting. You don’t need to divide the resources – you can use them as little or as much as you desire, creating a wide range of options.

It is probable that dedicated hosting will be necessary for large websites or networks that require a substantial amount of resources. Those tend to be major media sources, major corporations and online shopping sites.

Although it may be said, dedicating hosting has the advantage of being able to be modified like VPS hosting. Some providers give you the opportunity to create your own personalized server, tailored to your exact needs and requirements, as evidenced by our SiteGround review. You also get unrestricted access to the server with dedicated hosting.

The cost of a dedicated server can vary greatly due to the specifications of the server itself. For instance, WebHostingBuzz has discounted servers costing less than fifty dollars per month, whereas LunarPages offers ones that are priced as high as five hundred dollars each month (take a look at our WebHostingBuzz inspection and LunarPages assessment).

The choice of where to get a dedicated hosting service will be determined primarily by your specific requirements, although we would highly recommend 1&1 IONOS. As you’ll find in our 1&1 IONOS review, the company provides cost-effective dedicated hosting plans with considerable specs, including loads of NVMe storage and Cloudflare Railgun (of which you can gain more info from our what is Cloudflare guide).

Who Should Use Dedicated Hosting:

Large media outlets
Multi-site networks
Large e-commerce outlets
Large corporations

Differences Between Cloud Hosting and Other Types of Web Hosting

Prior to creating a website, it is important to be aware of what sort of web hosting you ought to utilize for it. You should choose a service that offers adequate resources and the best possible performance to back up the website without exceeding your financial limit.

This part will compare the benefits of cloud hosting versus those of shared and VPS hosting so that you can decide what will work best for you.

Conventional shared hosting does not have the same level of strength as cloud-based hosting. It is an ideal option for those wishing to construct a private web page or a minimal online shop.

This form of hosting involves one server hosting multiple websites that all utilize the same resources.

Steer clear of the maximum number of resources to stop any performance or security problems.

Here are the pros and cons of shared hosting:

Pros

Affordable. The price for shared hosting typically costs between $1/month and $10/month . Cloud hosting, on the other hand, has a wider price range – from $10/month to $70+/month . For more details, read how much web hosting costs .
Beginner-friendly. Webmasters don’t need any technical knowledge to be able to manage their hosting. Moreover, the setup process from payment to registration generally takes a few clicks.
Easy maintenance. With shared hosting, the web hosts will usually handle the back-end aspects to optimize performance and security.

Cons

Lacks reliability. The website performance will depend on the traffic, site size, and security measures of other users that share the space. If one site gets compromised, it’s likely that others will too.
Lacks scalability. Unlike cloud hosting, webmasters can only use the allocated amount of processing power, bandwidth, and disk space given by the hosting provider. Should they need more resources, they will need to upgrade to a more comprehensive plan.

Cloud Hosting vs VPS Hosting

VPS is short for virtual private server. It’s comparable to shared hosting as several people access a single server.

Nevertheless, this is unique as it draws on virtualization, the same technology that runs the cloud-based hosting systems, to generate separate server sections. By doing this, each user will have a specific amount of resources to support their website, rather than having to divide a set amount among multiple webmasters.

Therefore, VPS is often viewed as the next level of service to move to when a website can no longer handle the requirements of a shared hosting plan. The performance of it is similar to that of cloud hosting.

Below are the advantages and disadvantages of VPS web hosting: