subject: Cloud Web Hosting Vs Virtual Private Server - Advantages And Disadvantages [print this page] Cloud web hosting and virtual private servers both need much to recommend them. Which is actually the best choice for your business depends on a mixture of factors. For instance, what is the current size of your business? How much power does the daily operation of your site require? What are your long term plans for growth? You should need the way outs to all these questions in place before you even think about choosing one over the other. Once you are at the point of decision, it is time to turn your attention to the benefits and the disadvantages of each. Whichever weighs out the greatest in your favor is the one that you should move forward with.
Understanding Cloud Web Hosting
Cloud web hosting is considered a more "top of the line" plan. The reason for this consideration is that a cloud offers more power and more redundancy than the VPS. While that may sound like a certain win for cloud web hosting, keep in mind that it is much more expensive, and that it can often be much more than your business truly needs. Nevertheless, the benefit of having a cloud working in your favor is that there is almost never any downtime, thanks in part to the multiple servers running the same site. It also means that your site will load much quicker than the VPS. In any way, if you do not need a great customer base, the difference may not seem all that much significant.
Understanding the VPS
Virtual private servers (VPS for short) are designed for the growth minded business professional, who still needs to focus on keeping expenses as low as possible. This day and age, that is a lot of you. With a VPS, you essentially operate on a shared hosting platform with other sites. But the sites themselves do not "know" about each other, and their activities are cordoned off. That means what one site does will not affect other's. Meanwhile, expenses are kept as low as possible due to the shared nature of the hosting. The bad thing about this is that you never need the power or the redundancy to keep your site running smoothly as often as you would like for it to. In any way, with a somewhat small client base, the differences won't be all that noticeable. VPS hosting come in between shared hosting and dedicated server, and offering as an upgrade option from shared web hosting. You can get shared web hosting for three dollars, and VPS hosting for twenty dollars, and dedicated server for above one hundred dollars. Webmaster can get started from shared hosting, for example our fatcowreview.org is hosted in shared web hosting and receiving ten of thousand visitors each month. If you need more capacity, you will need a VPS hosting upgrade to serve more online visitors.
So now that you understand how the VPS and the Cloud work, it's time for you to head back to the questions presented at the beginning of this article. If you can see where there is a need for cloud web hosting, then by all means make use of it. But if you've still got room to grow and a limited budget, then VPS may be your best bet.
