Caffeine is Reader Supported, If you do buy through links on our website, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Read the full disclaimer here
Getting your business up and running is very exciting! and most businesses can’t survive without a website in this digital age. Websites have become a staple for businesses to get customers, and grow their digital reach. simply put, hosting a website is a requirement for any business.
Without a website, your business will suffer tremendously, and will only rely on physical transactions as the only source of revenue. but building a website will allow you to list your services or products directly on the internet, and sell the products to customers online.
a good website will usually consist of four main parts, which are:
- Design – This is the front end of your website, usually displaying a homepage or product page
- Functionality – This is the added functions you want on your websites like a contact form, live chat support, or checkout flow.
- CMS/Backend – This stands for Content Management System and it is the backend of your website where you will manage all of your content, products, and any other website changes.
- Hosting – This is kind of like the home of your website, your website will live on a server, and serve your users with the content they are looking for. This article will get more in-depth into this.
To pick your type of hosting, you should first know the differences between web and cloud hosting.
TLDR;
if you want to have flexibility when hosting your website, your best bet will be cloud hosting, however, it will be very difficult to manage by yourself, which might lead to your server being unsecured and your data getting hacked, unless you opt into a managed cloud hosting solution like Elementor Cloud
What is Web Hosting?
when you purchase a web hosting plan, your hosting provider will allocate space on their webserver to host your website’s files and deliver your website content to your visitors.
Your domain name will connect to your web server, and direct the users to your website when your users type the domain into the address bar.
Types of Web Hosting
now that you know what web hosting does, you need to learn about the types of web hosting.
Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting is the most common type of web hosting, this is when your website and other websites share one server in one data center. This is usually the cheapest type of web hosting, and the easiest to set up.
This is good for small websites, and websites that don’t expect a large amount of traffic, and a great starter option for web hosting, however, the features will be limited, since you can’t do any server-wide changes.
VPS Hosting
Virtual Private Server, also known as VPS, is a virtual server that appears to each user as a dedicated server even though it’s actually serving multiple websites, this is a common option for users that need full configuration options for their server, and the cheap pricing of shared hosting.
This is the closest option to dedicated web hosting, without buying a dedicated hosting environment.
Dedicated Hosting
This is usually the best type of server hosting. The hosting provider will provide access to dedicated servers for the users. this is usually used by websites with a large number of visitors that need server-level configuration options. This is also the most expensive hosting type
What is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud Hosting works differently than normal server-based hosting, since cloud servers split one server into multiple virtual partitions, and connects these virtual servers together to create a network.
this means that if one server fails, has a large number of users on the website, or has any other issues, the rest will cover for it and keep the website up, unlike web hosting has to rely on its singular server being up at all times.
Differences between Web and Cloud Hosting
Now that we’ve covered the different types of web hosting, we’ll also cover the differences so that you can pick the best hosting type for your use case.
Scalability
as you grow, you are destined to scale your website to accommodate more visitors and load faster, and there are two ways to achieve this with web hosting, either pay more for a better plan or waste time by changing web hosts, which might not be cheaper in the long run.
either way, both of these options will lead to maintenance for your website, which might even take your website offline while the changes are taking place.
Cloud websites are flexible and scalable since your server can pull more resources when you need it, in a small number of actions, and you’ll only pay for what you use, which makes it better for pricing.
Pricing
Web hosting comes in plans, and you pick your hosting plan based on your budget, expected visitors, bandwidth, and any extra features included like email hosting.
cloud hosting pricing depends on providers but is typically cheaper than web hosting, so let’s compare two providers; Elementor Cloud, and Siteground’s GrowBig Plan
| Name | Elementor | Siteground |
|---|---|---|
| Allowed websites | unlimited | unlimited |
| Storage | 20GB | 20GB |
| Bandwidth | 100GB | 100GB |
| Monthly Visitors | 100,000 | 100,000 |
| Email Hosting | No | Yes |
| CDN | Yes (Cloudflare) | Yes (SiteGround) |
| Automatic Backups | Daily | Daily |
| Website Builder | Elementor Pro | WP Starter |
| Price | $99/year | $80.28/year |
| Renewal Price | $99/year | $359.88/year |
as you can see, both plans are very similar, and web hosting is cheaper for the first year, but it increases by a ridiculous amount compared to the cloud.
Web hosting also comes with extra features like staging, caching, and unlimited FTP Servers, but Elemetor Cloud also comes with Elementor Pro, which is one of the best WordPress page builders available, which normally costs $50/year, but comes for free with their cloud hosting subscription.
Security
Reliable Hosting Providers have many security measures built into their servers to protect from malicious activity and hacking, as well as safely protect your data while keeping it confidential. Some of the measures include scanning their data centers for any malicious files, and protection against Spam and DDoS attacks.
Cloud Hosting is also very secure, and it has also surpassed web hosting in many regards, so it may be a better option for storing data, you can also install complex monitoring services, and firewalls, if they don’t come pre-installed with your hosting providers.
Reliability
Most Web Hosting Providers guarantee a 99.9% uptime time, and while that is fine for most users, cloud hosting gets rid of that issue entirely, since all of your users can get transferred to another server if one goes down unexpectedly, you may experience an outage if your whole server array goes offline.
Management
Managing a web server is very easy since most providers provide you with everything you need to do to set up your domain, server, and download WordPress or any other website builder as well as a lot of documentation and excellent support.
on the other hand, cloud hosting expects you to have knowledge of how it works, and how to manage it, which can get complicated pretty quickly unless you have some prior IT and cloud server knowledge.
You can opt into a managed cloud service like Elementor Cloud which runs on the Google Cloud Servers and configure the Cloud to be the most optimal to host a website.
Which Hosting Solution Should You Choose?
Now that you know the difference between each hosting solution, you can easily pick which option matches your business and expertise with cloud hosting, but for most people, cloud hosting is the best option, especially if you opt into a managed cloud hosting platform, and our favorite is Elementor Cloud since the price doesn’t increase later, like other web hosting solutions.
