Cloud hosting is the latest form of hosting that has become extremely popular over the past few years. The main concept of cloud hosting is "Divide and Rule" – the resources required for maintaining your website are spread across a cluster of servers that work together, termed as "the cloud". This greatly reduces chances of any downtimes in case of a server malfunction.
Traditional hosting sees your website leverage the power of one particular server's CPU, RAM, storage, and data transfers. For example, shared web hosting has your website share resources with other sites that are also hosted exclusively on one server.
The result is many annoying limitations in terms of power, and the inability to handle sharp traffic surges. For better service, you can pay for a virtual private server, or even a dedicated server of varying power. In all these case, you're basically relying on one server, and that's it. Cloud hosting, however, kicks that single-server hosting model to the curb in a marvelous manner. With cloud hosting, your website draws resources from multiple servers.
Cloud hosting's use of multiple servers gives it certain advantages over traditional hosting. For example, if your website experiences a sudden traffic spike, it can pull resources from another server to prevent slow page loads or, worse, the site going down. In addition, cloud hosting makes it incredibly simple for your to scale resources up or down, as needed.
Cloud hosting is often a solution for web sites that have outgrown the resources of their existing shared hosting provider. If a web site is extremely popular and causes a strain on the resources supplied by a shared server, you may need to find another solution. Often this solution is dedicated hosting where your site resides on its own server. The problem with dedicated hosting, though, is that it is both significantly more expensive and requires a certain level of IT know-how. With cloud hosting, you can have many of the advantages to dedicated hosting without most of the challenges.
One of the primary advantages to cloud web hosting is its scalability. Visualize a group of clouds. Your website is being run in these clouds but it suddenly gets busy. You can gather more clouds around your site to help support it so your users see no degradation of services. However, if you no longer need the additional clouds you can let them float away. Sites that have spikes in resource use can benefit from this option.
When you need additional resources you do not have time to wait for customer service to assist you by increasing your bandwidth allotment if needed. If you really have a spike in resources then you risk having your site suspended for causing degradation in services to other sites on your shared server. You may experience down time or slowness on your site caused by the increased traffic. But with cloud web hosting you can increase your available resources immediately, when you need it. This can save you a lot of stress and may even save some customers because the process is seamless. Customers or users on your site will not see any change.
The chart above focuses on the web hosts that boast the best cloud hosting plans of all the services we've reviewed. Note that we are still in the process of examining cloud hosting offerings as this is a new category—we're definitely going to be testing more services in the coming months. Still, with the reviews we've done so far and lots of research, we've discovered what you should look for in a cloud hosting service.
Many cloud web hosts offer unlimited monthly data transfers, so other factors may help you decide which service is best for your business. That said, if you're interested in "unlimited" anything, no matter if it's data or storage, be sure to read the tiny print to make sure that there aren't any surprises. In other words, make sure your definition of unlimited matches the hosting service's definition. They can be two very different things.
Speaking of storage, we've discovered that cloud hosts typically offer hard drives or solid-state drives that range between 100GB and 200GB in size. That said, you'll occasionally discover a web host that boasts unlimited storage. (Again, the usual caveats apply with regards to "unlimited" anything.) Solid-state drives are typically faster than their hard-drive-based counterparts, but are typically smaller in terms of storage capacity. If you're looking for sheer volume, a traditional hard drive is the way to go.
When it comes to server operating systems, Linux is typically the default option. Still, some services offer Windows hosting, too. If you have specific server-side applications that require Windows, such as SQL Server or a custom application written in .NET, then you need to make sure your web host has Windows hosting.
You'll also want a web host with responsive 24/7 customer support. Forums, knowledge bases, and tutorials are useful tools, but there's nothing like getting another human being on the horn (or at least in a web chat) when problems arise.
Security is of utmost importance, too. If your goal is to sell products or services, you need to look into Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS). Those technologies encrypt the data that travel's between a customer's computer and your company's servers to safeguard the information from people with ill intentions.
Get up and running fast with the Quick Start Cloud Hosting available at A2 Hosting. We make it easy for you! This unlike other providers where you have to read through confusing price guides and perplexing instructions just to get started. Just use our configurator tool to choose your resources! It only takes a moment to choose your RAM, cores, CPU speed, space and operating system template. Are you not quite sure how much of each resource you'll need for your project? Don't get stuck in a one-sized-fits all hosting account! With a Cloud Hosting account, you pay only for the resources you use. You're welcome to start with our base Cloud configuration if you like and resize your VPS at any time!
At A2 Hosting, we're focused on making sure our customers get the fastest page loads. That's because we understand that page load speeds impact everything from your conversion rate to your bounce rate to your SEO rankings. That's why you'll be hosted on our SwiftServers.
SwiftServers are our fine-tuned, high performance platform. Our SwiftServers include all of our speed tweaks and solutions designed to make sure you get the fastest page loads possible. They include features like our up to 300% faster solid state drives (SSDs), redundant network and our modern hardware.
You'll love the blazing fast page load speeds you'll get when you choose A2 Hosting! You can even choose our Turbo Servers for up to 20X faster page loads compared to competing Cloud Hosting solutions.
Customize your Cloud Hosting account even further with your choice of Linux operating systems. Choose from the best versions of Slackware, Debian, Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu and Gentoo.
You can even reload your Cloud on demand with a different operating system or version whenever you like.
Would you prefer to use a control panel to run your account? We recommend the award winning cPanel control panel! Use its easy interface to manage everything including your databases, files, websites and email.
Add an affordable cPanel license to your account when you configure your Cloud!
As a developer, you know there can be a lot of trial and error as you write code, develop sites and build software. Sometimes mistakes happen.
It happens to the best of us! That's why you can rest assure because your account is backed by our 99.9% Uptime Commitment.
That means you get ultimate peace of mind in addition to the best in hosting dependability.
Choosing where to host your important files and websites can be a difficult decision.
As much as we try to make it as easy for you to choose A2 Hosting as possible, we understand that it may not be easy to make your ultimate decision.
That's why we offer our Anytime Money Back Guarantee. You can try our Cloud Hosting completely risk free.
If you decide we're not the right host for you (we don't think you'll come to that conclusion), we'll be happy to offer you a full refund.
