Cloud Hosting VS Web Hosting: What is the basic difference between cloud hosting and web hosting? Cloud Hosting is the future of Web Hosting and is growing rapidly. Web hosting is the traditional and contemporary form of shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, etc.
But cloud hosting is a modern and advanced form of web hosting. It is gaining more popularity with the passage of time. Because of their performance and scalability benefits, all businesses want to move to a cloud-based platform, but expensive plans are the only main deterrent.
Let’s start with cloud hosting vs web hosting comparison review.
What Is The Difference Between Web Hosting And Cloud Hosting?
The traditional form of hosting means that when you create a site you need to lease a certain amount of space on the web hosting server, where you keep or store all the website databases and files. This type of hosting has different categories based on the available resources like RAM, disk space, storage, nature of the server, etc.
Shared hosting, VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting, and dedicated hosting are the traditional forms of hosting whereas Cloud hosting is the modern and innovative form of hosting.
In the case of traditional hosting, all applications or data for sites are deployed on a single physical server. In addition, the resources for your site are fixed or specified on the server.
Due to which the burden on these resources increases as the traffic increases and the site gets loaded as a result your site might be crashed or down for a while. On the other hand, in cloud hosting, users do not face such problems.
The cloud plans are designed in such a way that can automatically increase the resources like RAM and CPU based on their requirements to handle the surge in traffic.
In the initial phase when cloud hosting was introduced, only large companies moved to the cloud platform due to the high cost. But today medium and small businesses or startups are also moving to the cloud platform.
Today, Cloud hosting has become the most popular, widely used hosting, and is gradually replacing traditional hosting.
Basic Differences In Cloud Hosting vs Web Hosting
Fundamental Differences:
| Web Hosting | Cloud Hosting | |
| 1 | This is the traditional way of hosting websites on physical locations and physical servers. | Cloud hosting is an innovative service that exists on multiple servers. |
| 2 | Web hosting provider companies offer to host your site on a rented server in which they allocate some space to your website. | Cloud hosting makes all websites and applications accessible using cloud-based resources. |
| 3 | In traditional hosting, all solutions or data for sites are deployed on a single physical server. | In cloud hosting, websites are hosted on multiple interconnected web servers. |
| 4 | Traditional web hosting has limited performance due to the fixed or limited amount of resources specified for different sites. | This maximizes the performance of websites as the load is evenly distributed among the various cloud servers connected to the network. |
| 5 | Resources like RAM, space, storage, and CPU are fixed in this hosting, so sometimes sites can be down due to high traffic on your site. | Cloud plans are designed in a way that can automatically increase resources like RAM and CPU based on their needs to handle the surge in traffic. |
| 6 | Popular Web hosting providers. Example: GoDaddy, Bluehost, etc. | Popular Cloud hosting providers. Example: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc. |
What is Web Hosting?
Traditional Web hosting is a type of service that includes saving your website files on a web server. Because of web hosting, it is possible for a site to appear every time a user requests your domain name.
However, traditionally, there are two types of web hosting, virtual or dedicated, in which in the first type, the company hosting the website buys a specific amount of space on the server. Although in most cases, server resources are used by multiple web resources at once.
Most web hosting service companies provide various services like free domain registration, daily automatic backup, free SSL, and much more.
When the user selects the second option, it is assumed that the website owner or user pays for full control over one or more hosting servers. This simply means that you do not need to share your resources with other sites or blogs.
But it costs more than other options and, however, for some companies according to the scale of their website, it is justified. But, at the same time, shared hosting service is the most common and popular among beginners due to its cost-effectiveness.
Top Traditional Web Hosting Service Providers:
- Bluehost
- GoDaddy
- Hostinger
- HostGator
- Namecheap
What is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting is a type of service that provides storage located in the virtual space of the Internet. Using this service, you will only need to pay for the resources used, rather than paying for a certain location or location on the physical server. This is a relative novelty compared to its predecessor, traditional hosting.
Top Cloud Hosting Service Providers:
- Microsoft Azure
- DigitalOcean
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Key differences: web hosting vs. cloud hosting
Traditional web hosting and cloud hosting are quite different from each other. Because each of them has many different benefits and it depends on the needs. Therefore, we have analyzed both and formulated the specific features of each hosting, so that it is clear to understand which one to use in which case.
1. Resource Availability
Most web hosting companies offer various services such as free domain registration, daily automatic backups, free SSL, and more. This allows a novice user or businessperson to quickly set up the site and launch his web resource as soon as possible.
The main advantage of moving to cloud hosting is that more resources are available for the growth of your website.
2. Scalability Option
In traditional ways of web hosting, each plan defines a certain amount of available resources for your site. And whenever you need additional resources you require to upgrade to higher plans. Which is really time-consuming and not able to solve the problem immediately.
Whereas in the state of cloud-based hosting your resources can be expanded when your site needs more.
3. Security Features
In traditional web hosting, you will get basic security features and to add more you will need to spend separately on security plugins.
Whereas in the case of cloud hosting you get advanced-level security features like logging, monitoring, automatic threat detection, data encryption, data mirroring or cloud mirroring, and cloud redundancy.
4. Control
For your site, the traditional method of web hosting only provides limited network bandwidth, space, and power. Plus, you’ll need to upgrade to higher plans if you need additional controls or features.
As a craving trend, in the early stages, beginners to build a website prefer shared hosting as it is more affordable. Because the hosting company providing the services is responsible for all the support, management, and security of your site.
Cloud hosting consists of multiple virtualized servers that are synchronized, which allows for a balanced load.
5. Cost Difference
However, the fact remains that the cost of web hosting can vary by provider. Whenever you buy a traditional web hosting plan, you pay for a certain number of resources for your site.
Whereas in the case of cloud hosting, you pay only for the resources consumed, and which is more beneficial depends on your requirement.
FAQ
Is Cloud Hosting same as Web Hosting?
Cloud hosting and web hosting both provide hosting services for your website or blog but the nature of the service is different from each other. In the web hosting of your site, all the files or data are stored in a specific place on the server.
Whereas in cloud hosting, users store website data in multiple locations on different servers. So if a particular server goes down or crashes then it will not affect you but in the case of traditional hosting, it can damage your site.
What distinguishes a Cloud host from a regular host?
In cloud hosting, you do not need to rent space on a single physical server because here essentially, all your server hardware is located virtually.
This is a completely new form of hosting whose popularity has grown rapidly in recent years. The performance and security features of a cloud-based website are far better than traditional web hosting.
Conclusion About Cloud Hosting vs Web Hosting
Traditional web hosting and Cloud hosting are notably different from each other. Because each of them has a number of different benefits and depending on the needs.
Therefore, we have analyzed both and prepared the distinctive features of each hosting, so that it is clearer to understand in which situation to use a particular type of hosting.
In cloud hosting, you do not need to rent space on a physical server as all your server hardware is located virtually here. This is a brand new form of hosting whose popularity has grown rapidly in recent years.
It enhances the performance and security features of the website hence the cloud-based website is far better than traditional web hosting.
Finally, one thing to consider before buying cloud hosting is that, given its performance and scalability benefits, it is significantly more expensive than the traditional method of hosting services. So choose wisely according to your budget and requirement.
