Cloud Hosting: Improving World-Wide User Experience

Cloud technologies have been steadily on the rise in the past few years. They have finally reached a point where they are available to the general public, so everyone can reap the benefits. Cloud hosting has solved many of the problems individuals and companies had to face with single server based web hosting.

Cloud hosting services pull their resources from a massive network of interconnected computers. It provides an incredible amount of flexibility to its users. The client can tap into its power whenever they require it, use as much as they need and pay only for what they have used. Because they only pay when they access it, there are no additional fees to their web hosting services. If used wisely, this can seriously cut web hosting costs and increase a website’s performance by a great deal.

Basically all the data you upload to create your website isn’t just stored on a single server; rather, an entire network of computers. Thanks to this, your website is always available and you can always add more resources to it if it’s required.

The best example of cloud hosting users is Google. Have you ever seen Google suffering any downtime or showing you 404 errors? That’s because it hasn’t. It’s simply because they use a cloud network that’s made up of thousands of servers. If any of them shuts down for even a second, another one will take its place. Either way, the process that has been started will be finished under any circumstances.

Cloud hosting doesn’t have the popularity it deserves yet, but it’s on a steady road. In the past, only Google and other large enterprises could afford to use it, but everyone can reap its benefits now. A lot of commercial hosting companies have also adopted it. They offer an affordable, reliable and scalable hosting solution for anyone who is willing to pay a few bucks a month.

Reasons To Use Cloud Hosting

The reasons to host your website with a cloud hosting service are numerous. It will also prove to be a worthwhile investment if you move your already existing website to a cloud server.

It’s Very Affordable

You only pay for what you use, period. Your hosting costs can be measured per hours and by numerous other ways, depending on which company’s services you’re using. You can also pay a monthly subscription fee and rest assured that your website’s performance will be very consistent. If you have a large traffic spike, your website won’t slow down or shut down. The system will only apply more resources to it and won’t drive your bills sky high or shut down your account like other companies.

It’s Reliable

Cloud hosting beats every other type of hosting in terms of reliability. Your data also won’t be affected by any other website in the network. A lot of safety issues that usual hosting had have been eliminated. Keeping all of your website’s content and all of your users’ data safe is of paramount importance. With all of it being distributed on redundant servers and being backed up every day, the chance of you ever losing anything you have uploaded is very low or non-existent.

It’s Easy To Scale

It takes only a few clicks for clients to scale their services. You can easily expand the amount of resources you use in a few seconds. So whenever your website’s requirements change, your hosting service will always keep up with them.

You can tune the amount of processing power, memory, storage space and bandwidth your server has. Almost every cPanel has the possibility to configure the server’s resources or you can always reach out to the company’s support team.

How Cloud Hosting Works?

There are two different types of cloud hosting. We have public cloud and private cloud.

Public Cloud

Most companies use the public cloud model, so it is the most widely used one. Here, data is stored on multiple virtual servers that pull their resources from a pool of publicly available virtual servers. Since this model relies on public virtual servers, there are a few security issues if it isn’t maintained properly. But in good hands and security measures in place, it is definitely safe enough to host your website.

Private Cloud

If you’re working with a lot of sensitive data, then privacy is a huge concern. Which is why large companies use the private cloud model. Its architecture is similar to what other cloud hosting solutions use, but access to its resources are much more restricted. These fenced resources make this system a much safer option overall.

The Best and Most Affordable Cloud Hosting Services On The Market

Lucky for me, I’ll be reviewing some of the best companies out there. Almost every one of them comply with the definition of reliability.

Liquid Web

Liquid Web makes a bold statement with their prices, saying that they only want to play with the big dogs. But that is by no means a problem. They demand a price for their work but they also make sure that their clients are completely satisfied. Liquid Web’s VPS Cloud plans start at $59 per month and can go up to $169 per month or even higher, depending on how much resources you use.

Though this company lacks a shared hosting plan, which is by no means bad. Some companies that provide shared hosting don’t care much about quality or the users’ experience. They just take your money, however little it may be and give you a service that will end up making you frustrated at some point. So it’s actually comforting to know that even though you pay more, Liquid Web will definitely have your back on your journey to build an awesome online business.

Even big businesses like Home Depot, National Geographic, Symantec and Porsche rely on Liquid Web’s services. So they are definitely doing something right. They are also the favorites of many review sites, so Liquid Web has definitely earned its place on the top of our list.

Each of Liquid Web’s plans are flexible and feature packed. You can upgrade and downgrade each, according to your current budget. If you’re a small business owner but still require a powerful hosting solution with a trustworthy company, then the $59 per month plan might be your best choice. It offers 2 CPU cores, 40 GB of SSD Disk space, 5 TB of bandwidth. Your server will only run on Linux, but you can always upscale to a $79 per month plan, that will let you have Windows as well.

Every VPS Cloud plan on Liquid Web includes Built-in backups, support for an unlimited number of websites, DDoS attack protection, Root Access, CloudFlare CDN, a dedicated IP address, an integrated firewall, not to mention a 100% uptime and more.

Though Liquid Web isn’t the most inexpensive cloud hosting solution you could find, they will definitely give you your money’s worth.

HostGator

HostGator is one of the biggest players among commercial web-hosting providers. They have been on the market since 2006 and worked their way to the top pretty fast. This is mostly thanks to their solid hosting services and their huge investments in marketing. If you made even one search for web hosting services, it’s hard not to come across a HostGator commercial on YouTube.

Now, HostGator provides THE most affordable Cloud hosting plan on the internet. It will cost you not more than $4.95 per month. It incorporates all the benefits of cloud hosting that I’ve mentioned and far outweighs any other hosting plan in the same price range. Seeing that any statistic reports a 99.99% uptime and an average page loading speed of 520 milliseconds, it’s hard to argue. HostGator’s cloud services are more than enough to run a website smoothly and efficiently.

HostGator has three different hosting plans. These are the Hatchling Cloud ( $4.95/mo ), Baby Cloud ( $7.95/mo ) and the Business Cloud ( $9.95/mo ). The Hatchling Cloud starts with 2 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores. Each plan offers an additional 2 GB of RAM and 2 more CPU cores as you move up on the scale. You can always change your mind and upgrade or downgrade to a different package when you need to. Each plan uses SSD drives which further elevates your website’s loading speed. There’s no need to worry about your bandwidth or storage space capacity, because both are unlimited.

Each plan comes with free site migrations, automated daily backups automatic malware removal, a global CDN and more.

You can easily manage your plans and services thanks to their user-friendly approach. Handling the control panel is a walk in the park and you’ll also find plenty of guides and other resources that will help you get the hang of using it right from the start. If not, then you can always reach out to HostGator’s customer support and have your questions answered in a few minutes.

InMotion Hosting

InMotion is my favorite choice so far. The simple reason behind that is the fact that they always deliver what they promise. They are also pretty inexpensive and go out of their way to give their users a good deal, along with a high-quality service. Currently they are the home of more than 300,000 domains.

InMotion is one of the few companies that doesn’t have any pricing tricks and are honest and transparent throughout the entire service. Their success is largely due to this this transparency and it continues to attract more users every day. But doing moral business isn’t the only thing that has put InMotion in such a solid ground, they are also better in many regards than the rest of their competition.

Their servers boast about a 60% faster loading time than the rest of their competition and I’m talking about shared hosting plans here. They help sites load in about 500 milliseconds, which is insanely fast. Speed is an important SEO factor and it also directly impacts your conversion rates. The eCommerce industry loses about $500 billion every year, due to slow page loading speeds. People just close their tab if the page doesn’t load within less than 2 seconds.

InMotion’s VPS cloud plans are the fastest the company can offer, especially if you configure everything correctly. You can expect nothing less than a 99.99% uptime and an outstanding customer support. I’m not over exaggerating, because InMotion’s customer support team is really a leader in the industry. They have won many awards and received an ocean of positive reviews over the years. It doesn’t take them more than 2 minutes to respond and help you with whatever problem you’ve encountered. You can reach out to them 24/7/365, which is truly reassuring. That’s about everything you need to run your website smoothly, but they also throw in a lot of freebies.

• If you have an already existing website, they’ll transfer it for free with zero downtime. So, you can easily schedule it and have your business run as smoothly as it does on any other day.
• With great eCommerce support and plenty of useful features, it’s never been easier to run an online business. InMotion has plenty of payment processors you can use and even more apps that you can seamlessly install and use through your control panel.
• While most companies charge extra for website backups, InMotion doesn’t. They’ll give you automated daily backups for free. This saves you a lot of money every month.
• If you’re using WordPress, than you’ll be cutting some serious corners when it comes to security features. InMotion offer the premium Sucuri plugin for free, which would normally cost you $12 per month to use in a regular scenario.
• You can try their services thoroughly and decide whether you want to continue using them or not, within the 90-day trial period.

Though InMotion is awesome in every way, their services come with some minor limitations. For example, there is a lengthy verification process you’ll have to go through when you’re opening a new account. This is especially true if you live outside of the US. You’ll have to send them your passport, ID card and other documents to verify yourself. Though this is a powerful security measure, it definitely makes it much longer to start using their hosting services.

Even if you’re not running a large online business, you can still afford one of InMotion’s Cloud VPS plans. Their first plan, the VPS-1000HA- S costs 29.99$ per month. It provides you with 3 IP addresses 4 GB of RAM, and 75 GB of storage space, along with a 4TB of premium bandwidth. That’s about $20 cheaper than Liquid Web’s offer, from a just as trustworthy and reputable company. Depending on your requirements, you can always upgrade to a $49.99 per month plan or an even higher $74.99 plan. Each of these provide more RAM, Disk Space, Bandwidth and IP addresses for your money, along with other bonuses.

BlueHost

BlueHost is easily the most popular choice for WordPress users and for good reasons. They are one of the most inexpensive hosting providers out there and do a pretty decent job at delivering stability for the websites they host. They have adopted cloud hosting technologies as well, further adding to their stability and finally increasing their page loading speeds. It took a shared hosting plan 1200 milliseconds to load our pages the last time I’ve reviewed BlueHost, so this is a big step forward. Now, BlueHost provides a pretty good cloud hosting service while still keeping their prices low. They are proven to be excellent for smaller online businesses and bloggers that need their sites to be safer and perform better.

BlueHost’s support is pretty average. They aren’t bad by any means, but I was much more satisfied with what InMotion had going on. BlueHost’s support team takes about 20 to 40 minutes to respond which isn’t fast by any means but they get the job done. You can reach them every day of the year through live chat, email or phone.

BlueHost has a 99.90% uptime which isn’t perfect but its rock solid. They also provide the speed that you would expect from cloud hosting with an average of 500 milliseconds. That’s more than enough to run a smooth website. Considering how cheap it is, this cloud hosting service will prove to be a winner for many budget minded people. BlueHost probably offers the best bang for your buck. Their Starter Cloud Plan comes at $6.95 per month, offering support for a single website, a storage space of 100 GB, unmetered bandwidth, a single free domain, 2 GB of RAM, 2 CPU cores and more. You can upgrade to higher plans at any time. It can be either the Performance plan for $8.95 per month, granting 4 GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores, or the Business Pro plan for $15.95 per month, providing 6GB of RAM and 6 CPU cores.

Signing up to any of these plans is easy. It takes about 24-48 hours to get your account activated and after that you’ll have full access to your new virtual server within BlueHost’s cloud network. You can find out a lot more about what BlueHost has going on at their official website.

InterServer

You have probably seen at least one or two advertisements from all the companies I’ve mentioned above, but not from InterServer. It’s not a household name, but InterServer is definitely worthy of attention when it comes to web hosting. The company has been around for about 18 years and brought satisfaction to anyone using their services.  They have moved on to cloud hosting services during recent years and have become one of the few companies that made it flexible with a month-to-month payment system. They don’t require you to subscribe for yearlong terms, so you can just stop your service at any time you want.

The services you receive are nothing short of high quality. You can expect a 100% uptime and a 200-300 millisecond page loading speed through every second of the service. You can rest assured that your website is never down and that it’s always performing faster than you’d expect. A reliable costumer support team is always there to help you out whenever you need it. They take less than 5 minutes to respond and get on with solving your problems or answering your questions. Review sites are littered with positive comments about them, so they are definitely worth working with. They don’t just send you links and write a few short sentences to make it seem like they’re helping you, they’re actually helping you work through what you need to accomplish. There isn’t much bad anyone can say about this company. So, what kind of cloud services do they have to offer?

They are actually pretty inexpensive. You can start with 1 CPU core, 1 GB of RAM, 25 GB of storage space and 1 TB of bandwidth. This will cost you only $6 per month and you can slowly upscale your service through 9 other levels whenever you want to. Each level offers more resources and costs only $6 more. So at the 4th level for example, you’ll have 1 CPU core, 4 GB of RAM, 100 GB storage space and a 4 TB bandwidth for $24.00 per month.

So, if you’re looking for a reliable and cost effective solution that you can upscale and downscale whenever you like it, than InterServer has the solution for you.

Conclusion

With so many reputable and reliable companies offering cloud hosting solutions, it’s easy for anyone to take advantage of the benefits cloud hosting networks have to offer. If you’re looking to start a new website or upgrade an already existing one, you can do it right away for about 3$ to 6$, which is pretty insane if you think about it.

I hope you have enjoyed reading through this article and that we have helped you learn something new today. Visit us again if you have any questions about hosting!