Difference between Shared Hosting Vs Cloud Hosting

When you are tackling the confusion of creating a website or not, hosting is one of the major concerns that comes to mind.

While considering different hosting types, you must give a thought not only to the hosting company but also to the hosting package that suits you better in terms of your site’s success and of course affordability.

It may take some time for you to decide which hosting option is better as at first it may seem a little bit complicated but it is crucial to go through all of them in order to get a clear picture.

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting as the name suggests is a type of web hosting that allows multiple websites to share a physical web server.

It is like sharing your space and resources with other accounts, which is why shared hosting is one of the most affordable hosting options.

Every website on the internet is hosted on a type of computer or on a server, this is how it becomes available to the users all over the world.

With shared hosting, one particular server stores all the files, information and resources for several sites at once and is responsible for serving up the information publicly to the people.

Is Shared Hosting Right For You?

Pros of Shared Hosting

With the number of benefits of shared hosting, let’s have a look at some of them

An economical and affordable solution: Shared hosting is known to be the most affordable and cheapest web hosting option. With a number of people contributing towards the cost of the server, it is easier and economical to opt for shared hosting.
Easy to manage: One of the major pros of opting for shared hosting is that it is easily manageable as you don’t have to manage the entire web server. It is generally managed by the control panels, which means that when you purchase the web hosting you will be provided with the facility of making changes, uploading, creating and designing the website.
Utmost security: With all the shared hostings, security of the website is particularly the major concern of people. Data backup, maintenance, website hosting and upgrades are maintained in a systematic way.
Zero technical expertise required: One of the main benefits of shared hosting is that it requires no administrative responsibilities. People have this misconception that hosting networks are usually technically difficult to handle. But quality hosting servers provide extensive technical support to the users.
User Friendly: If you get a shared web hosting, then you will get the benefit of a user-friendly web interface.

Cons of Shared Hosting

With numerous benefits, shared hosting has some cons as well which are mentioned below:

Slow performance due to overload: If your website gets a lot of traffic, then the shared web hosting starts giving warning signals and it might actually go down for a while. In order to avoid websites from using many resources, shared hosting companies put restrictions in places to start killing the processes.
Vulnerable security: Due to multiple website hosting on the same server, the security of one’s website gets affected. The major disadvantage of shared web hosting is that if any website gets hacked then other websites sharing the same host are also under the threat of getting hacked.
Limited resources available: If you are creating your website by opting for shared web hosting then you would have limited access to resources. Website scaling might be an issue with shared hosting when the workload is increased.
Downtime: In shared hosting, down time is a major issue. Some companies give good support but on the other hand some companies provide services that are not good and result in crashing of websites and automatic downtime.
Other websites slowing down your website: If your website is hosted by a server that is shared by many websites then the entire server slows down due to a lot of traffic. So your website won’t only slow down if it becomes popular but it will also slow down if some other website gets traffic.
Administrative privileges: The major drawback of shared hosting is that it lacks administrative privileges.

What is Cloud Hosting?

Cloud hosting is hosting that uses the resources of multiple shared servers.

Basically, this means that your website uses the virtual resources of multiple servers to support all aspects of hosting your site.

The load is balanced, security is taken care of, and most hardware resources are available for use when needed. The server cluster is the cloud.

These computing and storage resources are spread across virtual machines to help balance the compute needs. Cloud hosting attracts lots of traffic without any hindrances.

Is Cloud Hosting Right For You?

Pros of Cloud Hosting

There are a number of benefits for opting cloud hosting which are mentioned below:

High uptime availability: Cloud hosting has high uptime built into the structure as your website will be virtually optimising the resources of multiple servers, you can simply be transferred to another server if one goes down. The system of interconnected servers ensures zero point of failure.
Speedy performance: Most cloud hostings offer blazing speed and high performance of websites. Website owners wi; receive virtual resources which will be assigned specifically to their individual websites.
Flexible pricing structure: The major advantage of cloud hosting is that you only have to pay for the resources you are using. If your website is getting high traffic then you don’t have to upgrade your package. You only have to scale your resources up during the high traffic surge.
Safety measures: With cloud hosting, your website maintains distance from any physical server issues including hacking or any type of hardware failure. If a physical server is compromised at some point of time then you can simply utilise the physical resources of another server.
Administrative autonomy: In cloud hosting, website owners can get on-demand resources as per their needs and requirements. This is the major reason that cloud hosting websites are easily scaled.

Cons of Cloud Hosting

With numerous benefits, cloud hosting has some cons as well which are mentioned below

Price: One of the biggest issues with cloud hosting is that it could be the security issues that can arise if someone without any technical knowledge tries to use the service. You need technical assistance to benefit from the service.
Missing advance knowledge: One of the major disadvantages of cloud hosting is that it requires the website owner to have some advanced technical knowledge about hosting and everything as they have to maintain the dashboard on their own. There is no control panel available in cloud hosting web servers.

Difference Between Shared Hosting and Cloud Hosting

Before discussing the differences, let us first understand that cloud and shared hosting serve different purposes, although they are both web hosting services.

Shared hosting is set up when you want to connect quickly. So as a user you don’t want an expensive or time consuming service.

Cloud hosting, on the other hand, is more about setting up the right resources, deploying the right servers with the right disk space, etc.

Parameter	Shared Hosting	Cloud Hosting
Security	Shared environment can increase susceptibility to attacks.	The security in cloud hostings is much better because of the multi layers of recovery options and anti-malware.
Traffic	In shared hosting, websites cannot serve a large number of visitors at a time as they have a risk of serving downtime	With cloud hosting, websites can serve a huge number of visitors at a time since the storage capacity and processing power is much higher.
Resources and Configurations	With shared hosting, a server’s resources are divided to host a large number of websites.	With cloud hosting, multiple servers pool resources together to host a large number of websites.
Performance	Shared hosting is not too fast as compared to cloud hosting. The performance is slow.	Cloud hosting typically outperforms shared hosting simply because a large number of servers are deployed.
Pricing	This depends on the provider but shared hosting is usually cheaper than cloud hosting.	Cloud is a little expensive in comparison to shared hosting.

Conclusion

Both shared web hosting and cloud web hosting has its advantages and disadvantages. It is clear that for beginners, it is better to choose shared web hosting as cloud hosting is good for attracting high traffic. Also shared hosting is not too fast as compared to cloud hosting.

FAQ’s

1. What is shared hosting?

Shared hosting is a type of web hosting where many websites share one server. One of the most economical options for beginners. The maintenance cost of this web hosting is contributed among various website owners.

2. What is cloud hosting?

This type of web hosting uses resources of several clusters in order to host websites. The load is maintained, security is topmost and hardware resources are available virtually so that they can be useful whenever needed.

3. Why should I host my website on shared hosting?

Because it is cheaper and affordable. Shared web hosting is easily manageable and does not require that much technical support.

4. Why should I host my website on cloud hosting?

Because cloud hosting provides speedy performance and can easily handle huge website traffic without any glitch or website crash. With this type of hosting method, there are less chances of serving website downtime.

5. When should I host my website in Cloud hosting?

Choosing cloud hosting can be one of your best decisions if your website is a hit. If you are expecting huge traffic on your website, then you should go for cloud hosting web servers.

6. Is cloud hosting better than shared hosting?

Cloud hosting is costlier as compared to shared hosting but it provides less or no website
downtime with almost zero website crashes. In terms of affordability, shared hosting is a better option.

7. Should I have to be a geek to host my website in Cloud Hosting?

Network integration with cloud hosting is important. Basic knowledge about cloud networking fundamentals and virtual networks is a must.

8. Should I host my personal blog in shared hosting?

Yes, hosting a personal blog on the website can be beneficial for your website’s business and it can help you enhance its traffic as well.

9. Should I host my e-commerce in Shared hosting?

E-commerce is not best suited for shared hosting because of the shared IP address, shared
resources and limitations. The performance is also not that consistent in shared hosting and the security measures are not enough.