The Benefits of Cloud Web Hosting
It wasn’t that long ago when cloud technology was seen as futuristic, or even a bit of a fad. However, it’s now a very real part of our digital world, and cloud web hosting solutions are becoming more and more popular. Although it’s not the cheapest web hosting option out there, it certainly gives you far more scope than your average hosting package.
Cloud web hosting replaces the more traditional web hosting methods and essentially means that rather than having your website physically located on one server at a data centre, your entire site is hosted on the virtual resources offered by several servers. It’s the same as how other forms of cloud computing works, in that there is no physical hard drive, programme or in this instance, server.
Despite early scepticism, cloud web hosting is becoming popular with some of the biggest digital companies in the world, as well as companies of much smaller scale. Here are some of the reasons why:
1. Scalability
Increased scalability is one of the key advantages of using a cloud web hosting solution. Thanks to the spread of the site across a cloud of virtual servers, large volumes of traffic and spikes in traffic can be handled effortlessly, often requiring just a few small updates to get the job done.
The cloud approach also acts in some ways like a Content Delivery Network (CDN), in the sense that if your website was to go down on one server then the cloud can continue to deliver your site through the other virtual servers it uses.
The upshot of all this is that a website which is hosted on a cloud solution is highly unlikely to suffer from any outages.
2. Cost effective
Another big advantage of using cloud web hosting comes down to cost. When using traditional forms of web hosting, you will have a plan that includes a set amount of storage and bandwidth. If you exceed these, your website could go offline or you could incur huge overage charges.
With cloud web hosting, as outlined above, any additional load is spread on to other virtual servers, but perhaps the biggest advantage is that with cloud web hosting you will only ever pay for what you use. This means you do not have to speculate what disk space you will need, nor base your visitor estimates on last year’s traffic. Instead, you can manage your website as you see fit while safe in the knowledge that you will not pay for anything you don’t use.
3. Easy to manage
Cloud web hosting is managed centrally through a network of services and servers, so it’s easy to manage without compromising service or quality. Additionally, cloud web hosting also allows the administrator tochange any storage and size settings easily and instantly as they see fit, meaning new virtual servers can be created with no limit on capacity whenever they are required. It’s an incredibly flexible way of hosting a website.
4. Security
While cloud technology sometimes gets a bad write-up when it comes to security, using cloud web hosting has advantages in the way of security. One such advantage is in the way that virtual servers are spread around delivering the website. If one server was to get hacked or become infected in some way, it will not affect any of the other servers, nor spread. Each has their own high levels of security.
5. Easy setup
Cloud hosting servers can be set-up quickly and without hassle, and if you’re self-hosting, this frees up resource, money and physical space. You do not need a room full of servers or anything near the same amount of hardware or licenses as normal web hosting.
Furthermore, once they are up and running, changes can be made seamlessly to the virtual servers, right down to which operating system they are using. This is not something that is possible, or certainly not simply, with traditional forms of web hosting servers.