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The web hosting landscape has evolved to offer a wide array of hosting services like dedicated hosting, Cloud Hosting, VPS, etc., to meet the varying requirements of different businesses. While each service has its pros and cons, in recent years, Cloud Hosting services are being preferred by many big and small websites for various reasons. As a website owner, you must ensure that you choose the host carefully since the performance of your website depends on the right choice of hosting service. In this article, we will look at the differences between two popular hosting types – Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Hosting.
Dedicated Hosting
In Dedicated Hosting, your site is dedicatedly hosted on a web server with all its resources. Therefore, you have the option to select the configurations and computing power as required.
Cloud Hosting
In Cloud Hosting, your website is not hosted on a single web server. All resources required to run and manage your website are spread across multiple servers.
Difference between Dedicated Hosting and Cloud Hosting services
| Feature | Dedicated Hosting | Cloud Hosting |
| Cost-Efficiency | Since you have a physical server dedicated to your website, the up-front payment is higher. You also require to spend on technical experts to manage it. | Most Cloud Hosting providers offer competitive plans that are loaded with features. To add to it, the on-demand scalability of resources increases its cost-efficiency as it avoids idle resources during less traffic period. |
| Scalability of Resources | Being hosted on a physical server, adding computing resources can take time and involve high costs too. This makes it difficult to manage sudden spikes in traffic. | Being hosted on a cluster of virtual servers, you can increase resources like CPU, RAM, etc. instantly. This enables you to manage traffic spikes with relative ease. |
| Reliability | Once in a while, even the best systems crash. In dedicated hosting, since your website is hosted on a physical server, it has a single point of failure. This means that a system crash can make your website unavailable to users leading to losses in business and reputation. | Cloud Hosting services are more reliable than most traditional hosting types. Since the site is not hosted on a physical server but a cluster of virtual servers, one system crashing does not affect the website. This is because another virtual server immediately takes its place. In other words, Cloud Hosting services do not have a single point of failure. |
Conclusion
While Cloud Hosting services offer many benefits, dedicated hosting has its own set of advantages too. Before you purchase a hosting service, assess the requirements of your website and try to find a service that is the best fit for your site. If you decide on Cloud Hosting then look for providers who own the Cloud infrastructure, use redundant storage architecture (like Ceph), have a solid backup policy, offer maximum uptime assurance, and a great support team. Good Luck!
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