Cloud has become the buzzword today. It refers to either the Internet or an intranet in association with some service or application offering. Knowing the benefits of hosting, today most companies have started using Cloud hosting solutions for their business. Cloud hosting is the latest form of hosting and has become extremely popular.
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What Is Cloud Hosting?
In cloud hosting, the resources which are necessary for the maintenance of your website are spread across more than one web server and are used as per the requirement. Owing to this, the chances of any downtime in case of a server malfunction are reduced greatly. Further, cloud hosting allows you to manage peak loads very easily without facing any bandwidth issues. This is because you have another server that can provide the additional resources in case of any necessity. So, your website doesn’t rely on just one server. Rather a cluster of servers works together (termed as “the cloud”) to provide all the resources.
One of the best examples of cloud hosting is the giant search engine Google itself. Google is having its resources spread over hundreds of servers on the cloud. Because of this, you would hardly see Google facing any downtimes over the past decade.
So, now you know that each server in the cloud has its own particular set of tasks to be carried out, hence in the case of failure of the servers in the cloud, another server gets in and offers a backup to render the required resources.
The same is the case with overload conditions too. However, due to the usage of low-quality server hardware, the performance gets hampered significantly. Therefore, it is recommended that you choose a reliable web hosting provider who has a good reputation. So, are you ready to explore the best Cloud Hosting Servers of 2024? Let’s check them all!
Best Cloud Hosting ServiceProviders in 2024
1. A2 Hosting
When it comes to cloud hosting servers, A2 Hosting came out at the top of our research, and it also has an anytime money-back guarantee – something that isn’t offered by any other provider.
A2 Hosting can’t be beaten and it’s not very expensive either. You get a wealth of excellent features with a cloud plan starting at $4.99 per month. While the uptime isn’t the best at 99.95%, these features include up to 250GB of storage, 12 CPU cores, and 32GB of RAM. And you can host an unlimited number of websites – something you don’t see offered by other cloud hosting providers.
However, if you are looking for an SSL certificate, you will have to pay for it. But for a starting price of $4.99, that shouldn’t be a challenge.
2. Hostinger
Hostinger has three reasonably priced pricing plans for cloud hosting. It comes with some excellent features, including unmetered bandwidth, a speed boost from its custom-built infrastructure, and a free domain name. The security features are also impressive. You also get a free SSL certificate with each plan. There is an option to integrate with CloudFlare to increase protection against hackers and attacks.
The control panel is easy to use and hands-on for beginners. However, it lacks over-the-phone support and only has the option of 24/7 live chat. On the uptime side, Hostinger has a guarantee of 99.97% which is decent, but considering the others, it is not the best.
3. Cloudways
Cloudways lets you deploy your cloud servers from any of over 25 global locations and you can choose the region and city yourself. This means you will never be too far from your server, which is great for site speed.
Furthermore, Cloudways’ plans are more flexible than those of its competitors. Prices depend on your chosen data centre, but you get to choose between monthly or hourly pricing packages, depending on what’s best suited for your website.
For example, you can pay $10/month for a basic plan with Digital Ocean data centres in New York, San Francisco, London and a few other cities. Or, if you value a lot of flexibility, you can get the same plan and data centre for the pay-as-you-go rate of $0.0139/hour.
The Cloudways features do look impressive however you will have to pay for customer support. The Advanced support plan includes proactive site monitoring and investigations for which you have to pay $100/month. If you want 24/7 phone support, though, you’ll have to scale up to the Premium support plan, which is $500/month.
4. Kamatera
Kamatera is great if you want a fully personalized hosting plan. It’s the only hosting solution that gives you complete control over your cloud hosting, whether it’s deciding who gets root access to your servers or choosing your IP allocation.
You also get a lot of flexibility when it comes to upgrading/downgrading resources. You can increase or decrease server capacity in minutes, and elements such as CPU, RAM, storage space, and even firewalls can be added or removed with a single click on your end.
If you value uptime over-optimization, keep in mind that Kamatera can only guarantee 99.95% uptime. In general, this is still a strong percentage and there is only 4.5 hours of downtime a year. But compared to HostGator and Cloudways’ 99.99% guarantee, Kamatera’s uptime is a bit low.
5. InMotion
InMotion is better known for its shared and VPS hosting, but that doesn’t mean it’s got nothing to offer here. It comes with features like free domains and backups, unlimited email accounts and websites, unmetered CPU cores, and root access are just some of the features you can expect.
The main selling point is its customer service – offering 24/7 live chat and phone support, support tickets and an extensive knowledge centre if you have any problems. However, the InMotion’s RAM is quite low, capped at 8GB. Bandwidth is also a bit limited, which can leave you low when there is a sudden increase in traffic to your site.
6. HostGator
With 99.99% uptime, HostGator offers all types of hosting. Whether your website is small or large, HostGator’s unmetered storage will put you in good stead. Unmetered bandwidth will also help you serve fluctuating traffic. It has three cloud hosting plans, all of which are very reasonably priced between $4.95 and $9.95/month. You’ll also get unlimited email accounts and a generous 45-day money-back guarantee.
Due to cheap pricing, your resources are somewhat limited. With HostGator plans, you’ll get no free domain, free backup feature, and no root access, so you have to think about whether these features really matter to you!
7. SiteGround
With excellent help and support on offer (via phone, live chat, and email), as well as a very strong uptime guarantee of 99.98% and great features, SiteGround generally scores well across the board. The combination of its great uptime, great support, and 5TB of bandwidth makes it a standout in features.
However, there are some places where SiteGround loses points. Firstly, it does not offer a free domain name with its plans. If you don’t have a domain name yet, getting one for free is a handy bonus, and it’s something other providers offer. Second, the $80 starting price is pretty high compared to other providers – if you’re coming from a shared plan, it’ll feel like quite a bit of overhead.
8. Hostwinds
Hostwinds is a value-for-money cloud hosting service provider. It offers a decent amount of storage, bandwidth, and RAM on its cloud plans, plus one-click install options for most applications.
The best part of the Hostwinds plan is that it has hourly pricing. The basic cloud hosting plan comes out to $0.006931/hr, while its most advanced cloud plan costs $0.456931/hr which is cheaper than the competitors. The best part is that this provider’s 60-day money-back guarantee lasts the longest. However, you will not get services such as free backups, free domains, and server customization aren’t included.
9. DreamHost
If pricing is a concern when it comes to getting cloud hosting then look nothing but DreamHost. Their plans start at $4.50, and even the most expensive ones come in at less than $100. There are tons of features that include unmetered bandwidth, up to 16GB of RAM, 4 CPU cores, and a free SSL security certificate. You will also be on an hourly rate rather than a fixed rate.
However, with their hosting plan, you will not get a free domain or other freebies. There is no live chat and phone support available and the company does not allow for a money-back guarantee. You’ve also capped at 100GB of storage, limiting your ability to actually grow your website on the DreamHost cloud hosting plan.
10. Bluehost
Bluehost offers respectable web hosting plans, but they are not the best we have seen. The basic hosting package includes a free domain name that you can keep as long as you use Bluehost. You also get a free domain name transfer and the ability to host one site, 50GB of storage, unlimited monthly data transfers, and five email addresses.
Bluehost is known for WordPress Hosting and cloud hosting packages start at between $6.95/month and come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is standard fare in the web hosting space.
What is Enterprise Cloud Hosting?
Enterprise cloud hosting services focus on delivering extremely reliable cloud services to clients. They make use of VMware which is even better than dedicated servers. Below we have compared cloud hosting with dedicated hosting and other traditional forms of hosting. Let us see what makes cloud hosting gain an edge over dedicated servers and VPS hosting.
Cloud Hosting Vs Dedicated Servers & VPS – Comparison
Cloud hosting is much more reliable compared to dedicated servers. With it, you get multiple servers at your disposal as compared to dedicated servers that offer relief so that you can cope-up with any emergencies without breaking a sweat. Also, it is the faster page load speeds and increased reliability that cloud hosting can provide you with.
As mentioned above, cloud hosting allows resources to be rapidly provisioned on demand. You can quickly add further processors, RAM or disk capacity and can automatically scale according to peaks in traffic.
Although the price varies as per the usage, cloud architecture is a bit expensive compared to VPS and traditional shared hosting. In the case of VPS, a single server is divided into multiple chunks, and each portion is managed by a particular user. This is the reason why the cost is reasonably low.
However, you have to compromise on the reliability factor which is quite higher in the case of cloud hosting. Those businesses who aren’t very concerned about the reliability factor can choose VPS over cloud hosting.
Ending note!
Cloud hosting has multiple advantages owing to which large enterprises have been employing it for years. However, for small businesses, pricing is a factor to consider. The good news is that the cost factor has been reduced considerably over the last 4-5 years. Knowing the advantages of cloud hosting many mid-sized organizations are making a move to the cloud arena. In years to come, cloud hosting will replace both shared and dedicated server plans. Everyone will use a cloud service whether they’re aware of it or not. In the future, one can definitely expect to see more and more businesses making a shift to the cloud.
Also, noticing a trend of reducing cost in cloud implementations it wouldn’t be wrong to say that one day almost all of us will be in the clouds!
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