In this post, we will see the Difference Between Cloud and VPS Hosting. As you begin the adventure of creating your website or blog, you have faced challenges of the never-ending maze of choices. Every one of these decisions makes a difference in the performance and success of your site. Unfortunately, it is easy to continue on each crossroad, dominating which route to pursue and why.
If you are not impressed by shared hosting, you will for sure, Take cloud and virtual private server (VPS) hosting, for example. Each has its specific implications for managing your website.
As you read this article, you will learn the advantages of these plans and any disadvantages, and you will be able to apply these key points to your situation. This will help you to choose the platform for your future website.
At the starting of my website AppDividend, I have used VPS, and then I have moved my blog to Digital Ocean Cloud. If you do not know what cloud is, check out my post on cloud computing.
When the time comes to choose your web hosting plan, you’re probably going to have many questions. Hosting can seem a little complicated. You have cloud hosting, shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, and dozens of hosting companies to choose from. Before we start, let’s understand what VPS hosting is and what cloud hosting is.
What is VPS Hosting
VPS servers are also known as Virtual Private Servers. It is the technique of hosting in which there is one physical server, which is then divided into several smaller virtual servers. Each one of these virtual servers reacts as its dedicated server.
Since you have your dedicated server section, you have your own set of allocated resources, and you can customize and configure your server partition precisely the way you want. Additionally, there’s no exchange of data or file access between the accounts on the VPS server.
However, they can tend to be less stable because if one physical server fails, then every VPS using that server will fail. Their performance can also vary if one site happens to be hogging resources on the physical server. So load balancing can be quite difficult.
Setting up and managing the server can be expensive and challenging. Purchasing web hosting allows someone to rent a space on a web server, making it easier for the average person to have hosted a website online because all they need to do is upload their site files.
With the help of dedicated servers, you rent an entire server. This is optimal for people with very high traffic to their websites or who need to set up their server in a particular way. Not everyone needs to have a fully dedicated web server, however. If you’re just getting started with the new website, you can save quite a money if you rent a small portion of the server. Shared hosting is reliable when you share the portion of the server with other users rather than rent an entire server to yourself. If you consider the dedicated server and are unsure if it is right for you, perhaps you will need to get the VPS hosting.
What is Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting refers to a conceivably unlimited number of connected machines in a network and acts like one: They contain a cloud. The virtual machines all use the same data stored on separate networked servers, also joined in a system that operates as one data warehouse center. So you get an entire infrastructure of connected servers and data storage.
There is no physical thing you can point to and label as the cloud when it comes to cloud computing. Like with cloud hosting, there isn’t a single physical server; you can point to and say, “that’s a cloud host.”
Instead, it’s a way of storing the data across multiple computers and accessing the information via a network connection like the Internet. As a result, the cloud behaves like a single physical computer, with infinite processing power and warehouse space. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are major cloud services players.
Difference Between Cloud and VPS Hosting
VPS hosting offers total and complete freedom. Free to manage your server as you like, you have access to everything, and you can install all the software you need.
Cloud hosting is relatively reliable because your website is hosted on a virtual partition that uses multiple physical networks.
Hosting in VPS is very efficient. Unlike shared hosting, the VPS is not dependent on traffic or audience. As a result, you have your resources and are isolated from other servers.
Cloud hosting is also tricky, and you require some extensible knowledge about DevOps concepts as well as some serverside configuration as well.
Hosting in VPS is secure. All your files are private and inaccessible to other clients regardless of their rights on the server.
Cloud hosting is secured by many physical servers protected from third parties who want to access their premises or interrupt their services.
The main difference between the two server environments is scalability. If you’re looking to launch your website as quickly as possible and don’t care about scalability, choose a VPS server that can be a great starting point.
However, if you demand a flexible hosting setup and a high website performance and storage level, it’s worth checking out the cloud hosting environment.
With cloud hosting, you get access to near an unlimited supply of server resources. Cloud hosting can be the perfect solution for websites with variable traffic levels or websites that are scaling quickly. Cloud hosting offers excellent server power and ultimate flexibility, from resource usage to pricing.
VPS hosting will be less efficient and limited in its level of resources available to your site compared to Cloud hosting.
Cloud hosting is extensible, flexible, and scalable. It does not have the same constraints as a single server. Resources are available according to your requests and in real-time.
Cloud hosting is economical because you only pay for what you use.
VPS Hosting is an excellent fit for people who want to launch the website and have outgrown the limits of their shared hosting environment. Although, it will cost higher than shared hosting, less than cloud hosting.
The website’s chances of going offline or running into the resource issue are higher with VPS hosting than cloud hosting.
Cloud hosting offers you decent customization options. Cloud hosting truly shines in its ability to scale. Cloud servers also offer you incredible speed and performance.
VPS hosting offers savings over a dedicated physical server and is usually less expensive than a cloud server.
Cloud hosting costs more than a VPS because you are paying for a lot of hardware, complex networking, and the resulting uptime guarantee.
Conclusion
My final take is that if you have an informational website and your traffic is low to medium, and you can use the VPS hosting and do not go for either shared hosting or cloud hosting.
If your website is growing rapidly fast, then at some point, VPS will fail for sure, and you have to move your application to cloud hosting.
So, depending on your website’s traffic and other factors like security, accessibility, robustness, you have to choose your hosting.
That’s it for this example.