You rely on your company’s website for just about everything from sales to data harvesting to promotional offerings. It is the foundation of how you grow and maintain your business. So if your website goes down for any reason, it can dramatically affect your bottom line. That’s why choosing the right web hosting service is such an important factor for your business and there are certainly options to choose from.
Here we will look at shared hosting and a cloud host to see what each one offers, how they differ, and which might be best for your business.
What to Look for in Your Web Hosting Services
While shared hosting and cloud hosting do essentially the same thing, keep your website up on the internet, they do it in different ways, which can affect how your business functions to maintain your site.
Shared hosting houses your site and all its data on a single physical server, so it’s like putting all your eggs in one basket. That means, if you develop a hole in that basket, otherwise known as the hosting server going down, that could be a big problem for your entire operation. After all, you are looking for not only security, affordability, and ease of use, you also want reliability in keeping your website up as much as possible.
Alternatively, cloud hosting maintains your website on a network of secure servers, so if one drops, you don’t lose any data and your site remains online. It may not offer the same cost savings as shared hosting plans, but when downtime costs your business money, staying available to your customers can offset the additional cost of cloud hosting.
Plus, cloud hosting can handle traffic surges with ease as the network of servers directs that traffic as needed. That may not be so for shared hosting that relies on one server. If that server is struck with a sudden spike in traffic, it can slow your website down to a crawl, or worse, shutting it right down.
As noted above, security is a major concern too. With so many websites housed on one shared hosting server, if that server becomes compromised, your website data could be at risk. But on a cloud hosting platform, your hosting company can act fast to adjust your hosting server and protect against security breaches.
Is One Hosting Method Better Than the Other?
The term “better” is relative, so the answer is, it depends. It’s always best to go with what will work best for your business in terms of functionality, resources, and budget.
You may have a small amount of manageable traffic and a tight budget with the site that doesn’t require much management. In which case, shared hosting might be the best option.
However, if you are looking for scalability, flexibility, and resources that you can use as your business grows without concern for online budgeting, then cloud hosting is the way to go.