While many people are asking “Which is Better, Traditional or Cloud Hosting?” That is not what needs to be asked. There are many unique factors for each different client. The choice should go to what is best in their case.

Cloud hosting is starting to dominate in the hosting market. So most would assume cloud hosting would be the best. Not always, 80% of all websites in the world do not need better than a basic server-based hosting site. Traditional hosting can still serve most websites cost-effectively.

Many web hosting companies are replacing old servers as they wear out and need replacing. Cloud will probably become the standard for a website that active and growing.

What is a shared hosting service?
Shared web hosting is a server where many websites reside with one internet connection. This economical plan is economical since they share the overall server maintenance cost among all the sites.

Advantages of Shared Hosting

Budget-friendly

• Shared hosting is a less expensive hosting plan. They keep the cost low by sharing the maintenance cost between many websites. $30 to $100 per year.

Easy self-management interface

• With the control panel, you manage your website. The interface is supplied by the hosting company. The process is simple and easily understood. The administrative tasks and monitoring are on your control panel.

Adjustable

• The hosting plan can be updated when your website grows and traffic increases.

Ability to host multiple websites

• If you need to maintain a few sites with one directory, shared hosting is a great choice. Be sure that all domain names you purchase connect to the hosting.

Handles dynamic (responsive) websites

• With over 60% of all google inquiries coming from smart phones, websites need to be responsive. When mobile phones or tablets, the websites will appear different. The page will match the screen dimensions. Many web design platforms support this configuration model. The platforms also support various programing languages. Perl, Python or PHP are common.

Professional management

• In shared hosting, they take care of maintaining your server. Guaranteeing you low maintenance. Supplying you with professional technicians for your server. Keeping the server security up to date, thus protecting your site from hackers.

Disadvantages of Shared Hosting

Downtime

• With shared web hosting, you get an uptime guarantee of 99.9%. This means your server will be down for a little less than 9 hours a year for maintenance. You will not schedule this downtime.

Speed restrictions

• With shared web hosting, the traffic will affect the server’s speed to other websites. While the hosting companies attempt to guarantee the speed, sometimes it is lower than you would like.
• Page load speed is essential to not only Google rankings, it affects how many people abandon the page. Page loads of 2 seconds or fewer is ideal. At 7 seconds 90% of visitors will leave the page.

Disk space limit

• With the average size of a hosted website being 1GB, the storage space on the server is limited. When deciding which plan to take, make sure you take into account how much your site will grow. Also, keep track of your bandwidth.

Limited customizations

• With shared hosting, the hosting company will limit your customization ability. This can make it harder to monetize your website.

No email hosting

• Your website cannot host its own email. Email may be available from the hosting company. I will limit the number of emails users.

Shared IP address

• All the websites on a server have the same IP address. This can become a problem if one of the shared websites turns spammy or adult. Google and other search engines may penalize the whole server's websites.

Market share

• The shared web hosting market in 2019 was $20.29 Billion, with an expected growth to $22 Billion in 2020.

Advantages of Managed Hosting

Reduced risk

• The managed hosting company will maintain a high level of oversight and maintenance on the back end of the servers.
• Ensuring the OS is up to date and all security patches are completer
• Cybersecurity threats are identified and fixed. They report the attacks to the website owners.
• Promote the flow of good traffic and stopping suspicious traffic at the firewall.

Better support

• 24/7 tech support for everything from migrating a web page to restoring a website that has been hacked. The next best thing to hiring your own IT staff.

Scalable

• With analytics, you can scale your website by projecting its growth. With good communications between the managed IT staff and your company, we can make transitions painless.

Automatic Backups

• The software allows you to set up periodic backups of your website. So in the unfortunate occurrence of hacking or a system crash, the site can be restored with minimal loss of data. The managed IT staff can help restore your website.

Disadvantages of Managed Hosting

Costs

• Since the managed hosting provider is supplying a 24/7 IT staff. The cost will be much higher than an unmanaged host. If your site suffers a malware attack, the cost of removing a malware will easily cover the cost of managed hosting.

Plug-in restrictions

• To protect the entire server, the host may place a plug-in restrictions. This may impede monetizing your website. For more control of your site, you would have to go for a dedicated server.

Storage limitations

• Since managed servers are shared, they must restrict the size of your website storage. This will allow them to have an optimal number of sites serviced per server.

Faster but not the fastest

• Again, being a shared server, the bandwidth is assigned for each website. On the average, managed hosting’s speed is 3 to 4 times faster.

No htaccess

• The hosting company will not allow you access to the main hosting software. If you need to access it get a dedicated server.

Market share

• The market for managed hosting in 2019 was $79 Billion.

Virtual Private Servers appear as dedicated or private servers. Even though it is running on a server with multiple operating systems running. Also known as a Virtual Dedicated

Server (VDS)

Each server has its own resources.

• CPU resources
• Memory resources
• Hard drive memory
• IP address
• Independent

Advantages of Virtual Private Servers

Better performance

• With VPS, your page speed will be independent of what other websites are on the physical server. This is because you are not sharing the RAM, CPU or any other resources.

Flexibility

• With VPS hosting, you can start with your present needs and easily customize or change the plan. So you can upgrade the memory or bandwidth or hard drive size. All of this without long-term contracts.

Security

• VPS hosting’s privacy and security levels are high. Since you are leasing the server straight from the hosting company.

Cost effectiveness

• VPS is somewhere between shared traditional hosting and dedicated hosting. So if you are looking to upgrade from shard hosting to get better security or performance, VPS is a good choice, without going all the way to a dedicated server.

Support

• VPS servers are a managed hosting. This gives you 24/7 tech support.

Disadvantages of Virtual Private Servers

Limited resources

• It divides the total resources of the physical server between the VPS’s. So you buy what you need.

Technical knowledge

• You will need to take responsibility with installing software and patches. Ensuring your server has the

Market share

• The market for VPS servers in 2019 was $2 Billion with a 15% growth rate predicted. The servers are 30% unmanaged and 70% managed.

Advantages of Dedicated Hosting

No shared resources

• You get to have the server configuration you want. You determine the CPU type, memory and storage.

Enhanced performance

• Since you design it, you will have quick page speeds The only limiting factor is your internet connection.

Better security

• One of the major security risks is from servers getting hacked through one of their web sites. With this eliminated, you can have a tight security regiment and firewalls.

Flexibility

• Upgrading a server is your option. You can change out everything from CPU to hard drive. So you can grow as needed.

• With a dedicated server, you can install an IP address for each webpage. This will protect your page from getting listed with bad sites.

Disadvantages of Dedicated Hosting

Costs

• Dedicated servers are expensive. You not only have the physical hardware costs, you have IT staff costs. For a small or starting business, it may be out of your budget. If you are a large and growing business, it is worth a look.
• Signing up for a managed dedicated server costs more per month, but you do not need the IT staff.
   

Technical expertise needed

• Managing a dedicated server requires system technical expertise. Needing to install and update all programs and patches.

Maintenance intensive

• Unless you are renting a managed dedicated server, you must check what is going on with it. Monitoring for intruders and maintaining all security updates.

Market share

• 27.9% of the world web hosting is done on dedicated servers. I expect this amount to triple by 2026.

Cloud hosting is outsourcing your business’s web hosting to the cloud. Instead of having one server, it stores the website on multiple off site servers. This allows for fast responses to inquiries. It also is secure that if any one server goes down, the others pick up the slack.

Advantages of Cloud Hosting

Cost-effective

• When compared to on premises servers, cloud servers are easily the monetary winner. The costs of an onsite server entail not only the cost of a server. Servers need great ventilation to dissipate heat. Their power usage is high. You also need redundancy of systems in case of failure. Losing your internet connection will cause a complete failure of your entire online presence.

• You must have your own IT staff, both technicians and administrators. Since most major companies have locations all around the world, they will have to be available 24/7. We should not underestimate personnel costs with dedicated servers.
• Maintenance and upgrading can be problematic. You take the system down until it is finished. A cloud hosting has built in redundancy. So while you take down one for maintenance, the others will still serve.
   

Easy to implement

• Virtual cloud hosts make applications and websites available through multiple virtual machines. With traditional dedicated hosts, enormous demands can slow or crash a server. With cloud as the demand increases, the other virtual servers kick in. Installation of new virtual servers can be accomplished in seconds.
• Virtual servers and its infrastructure uses software to split a single physical server into multiple virtual servers that are functionally identical to a dedicated server.
• Each virtual server can host and store the website or application. This built in redundancy makes it very hard for the website to go down. The virtual machines often have separated locations.
• So if a power failure at 1 location or loss on internet connection will not cause the site or application to fail.

Flexible and Scalable

• With a cloud server, a company only needs to pay for the resources used. So if the economy causes the company to grow or shrink, it is simple to adjust your current needs.

Backups and recovery

• Every company has a risk of data loss or even financial loss from data breaches and loss. Cloud hosting data recovery is rarely needed since the data backups are automatic on each virtual machine. This makes data loss unlikely.

Accessibility

• With clients and satellite offices around the world, if your website needs accessed it is available to people 24/7. So when someone makes a request, it will be routed to the nearest virtual server. If there is a local failure, they will be routed to another server. It will also balance requests between servers so one server is not overwhelmed.

Bandwidth

• When you set up enough virtual machines your bandwidth is better protected since you have multiple IP addresses. This is a good to help in protecting your site from DDoS attacks. Since they try to keep your legitimate visitors from gaining access by keeping it to busy to answer.

Disadvantages of Cloud Hosting

Bandwidth problems

• Cloud hosting requires a fast and reliable internet connection with enough bandwidth to work. So if your company is not in an area with a good internet connection, it may limit the usefulness.

Limited control

• Cloud hosting is a managed hosting or unmanaged hosting. The physical servers belong to the hosting company. When you upload your website to them, they control some aspects of the server that you may not use. If you need to have complete control cloud serving would not be a good choice. They have yours and their other customers' sites to protect. If left unmanaged you can sometimes expect high bills due to traffic spikes.

Privacy

• This becomes a problem when someone without proper skills and knowledge messes with server settings. Allowing unauthorized access to the server.

Vulnerable to hacking

• By the very nature of the internet there are over 90,000 hacking attacks every minute of the day. There will always be those who will try to profit at others’ expense. With the high cost of data breaches, constant security updates need to be maintained. For every hack discovered and countered, another one is being made.
• The only way to protect all your data is to not have any connection to the internet. Even then the data is vulnerable to personnel hacking.

Dependent on internet connection

• Every type of hosting relies on the internet. Cloud hosting has many connections involved in its integration.. It needs a good connection to you for sending files and updates. If you are also service applications for your company, an internet problem can cause the shutdown of the entire company.

Shared Hosting
Ideas for small to medium-sized businesses and personal websites, shared hosting is the most popular hosting option. An average of 900 to 1100 websites resides on a server and share the CPU, Memory and hard drive. While they try to guarantee bandwidth there is no way to control how many people are accessing those sites. If you are trying to monetize your website, the restrictions and speed problems may be a problem. This is the cheapest type of hosting.

Managed Hosting
This can apply to any of the other hosting types. The hosting company offers 24/7 technical support and higher bandwidth. They also give better storage, they can also offer limited email addresses per site. With these extras they restrict what plug-ins you can use and restrict how much control you have. There is no access to the root. Good for small and medium businesses that need higher speed and reliability.

Virtual Private Servers or VPS
Virtual private servers are like dedicated servers, except they are sharing the physical server with others. The virtual server has its own operating system, CPU resources, Memory, Storage space. The server also has its own IP address. Since you have root access, you can install software and change the root.

Scalability is one keyword, it is easy to change your server with more memory, storage, CPU capacity. This allows you to grow as your needs change. It also allows you to shrink. There are no long-term contracts, so you are free to get what you need. Best thing is it costs less than a dedicated server. Idea for large businesses and hosting resellers.

Dedicated Servers or Dedicated Hosting
A dedicated server is a go to for many large businesses. You own the actual server, giving you complete control. This is the most expensive type of hosting, since you have to hire an IT staff to run and maintain it. You share the same data center, but only you have access to the server. If you build your own data center, it can get expensive. The dedicated server will allow you to not only host the website, but to serve applications to your company and your clients.

Cloud Servers
Cloud servers are a variation on the Virtual Private Servers. What it does is creates several virtual servers and copies the websites and storage on each of them. With each having their own CPU resources, Memory and Storage. This redundancy gives better speed and can handle more traffic than a dedicated server. Very scalable, since you can add more resources. It reduces downtime. If the virtual servers are in different parts of the world, they will service regions faster. Great for large businesses that require reliability and speed.

So which server is right for you?
You need to talk to your web designer. It takes careful planning to implement major websites. The need to weigh the cost of hosting to the cost of infrastructure is important. The designer will make suggestions, but only you can decide. Plan for growth and understand that the cheapest is not the best choice.

Which server do I use for my website projects?

I mostly use cloud hosting and some shared hosting depending upon the project. Cloud hosting is fast that helps with SEO. That is the main reason I use it.

Give me a call if you need help with choosing web hosting.