When choosing a hosting provider for your website, a key aspect you will have to consider is whether you are going to house your site through an in-house server structure, or through a cloud-based model. In recent years cloud-based hosting has seen a surge in popularity because of its scalable storage and processing capabilities and our modern-day technological advances have led to cloud hosting enjoying ever increasing levels of reliability and effectiveness.
Up-time, or the amount of time your website is running effectively online, is a key aspect of your company’s site success. This is particularly true for the many companies that heavily rely on web-based transactions, who will need to prioritize high up-time levels as their profitability is directly linked to their site functioning effectively. Cloud-based hosting utilizes multiple virtual online servers and does not rely on a single server to be functioning effectively in order to be online which means that cloud-based servers can provide a more reliable service for your company. Oracle cloud connect is one example of a secure, reliable cloud for businesses.
Cloud-based web hosting is also, counterintuitively, a more secure place to store your website’s information as your data is never stored in one fixed place but is rather stored across multiple virtual and secure servers. This is especially good news for businesses in sensitive areas like personal injury attorneys. For fixed server hosting, unless you can afford a dedicated server, you will often need to share a server with other companies, and this can often increase your site’s vulnerability.
Hosting your site through cloud-based hosting can also be more cost effective for larger companies that require a tailored plan and flexible scalability. Because there is no need for hardware or capital expenses with cloud-based hosting, you are not paying for a fixed section of an allocated server, which will afford you more flexibility to choose a tailored storage, and processing plan. Because there is not a single server in which your site is housed, cloud-based sites also see increased performance levels as they are not bound by the same restrictions as other hosting providers.
The only potential downside of cloud-based hosting is that with added features, there are increased costs which may mean that smaller businesses are unable to afford cloud-based hosting.
So, who are the most prominent web hosting services?
Hostinger is one of the largest cloud hosting providers and they are most notably known for offering load speeds that are twice as fast as their traditional web hosting services.
Another prominent hosting provider, HostGator, offers customers an exceptionally well-priced and easy to scale service offering. They facilitate easy and inexpensive web capacity and memory scalability and are another top pick for cloud-based hosting.
Cloudways is a powerful and user-friendly site that offers extensive range of functionality and provides a happy middle ground between ease of use and capability. They offer managed cloud hosting which is powered by your choice of provider.
Bluehost is a prominent player in the traditional web hosting sector although they don’t offer cloud hosting as a separate service, they provide free access to CloudFlare cloud hosting with all of its plans which provides noticeably increased efficiencies. It offers a domain name and a free Weebly powered website built with their web hosting package. It also offers seamless setup from WordPress which can be very helpful when transitioning your site.
Dreamhost runs on an open source platform and has the easiest cloud set up of all the industry providers and they have an excellent pricing agreement where companies will only pay for the resources that they used. Their customer service is one of their weakest areas, but the
If you are starting a small business, although a less prominent player in the industry, InMotion offers the best range of plans for small businesses, giving customers their choice of 10 plans and respecting tiered pricing for cloud hosting.
Finally, Siteground offers plans that offer the best scaled resource options, making them perfect for rapidly growing sites that have outgrown their current hosting capabilities and require additional resources at regular intervals and the plans have an auto scaling option where the site can automatically adjust your required resources according to your site traffic.
Ultimately, given that cloud-based hosting’s increasing popularity is very much in line with society’s broader shift to cloud based storage, cloud-based hosting is an effective and safe way to host your website.