When creating a website, whether it’s e-commerce or informational, you have many decisions to make. You must choose the design and layout of the site, decide what e-commerce platform you want or what type of shopping cart.
You’ll spend hours examining each of those decisions, but likely overlook the types of hosting available. Every site requires a host and you have many different choices from clouding hosting to shared hosting. It’s not a decision to be taken lightly and the wrong decision can wreak havoc on your site.
We’ll examine some of the differences between these types of hosting and which is the best for you.
What is Shared Hosting?
Shared hosting is ideal for smaller websites that don’t expect a lot of traffic right away. We all want to get thousands of views in the first week, but it takes time to build that. With shared hosting, your website is placed on a server that you share with several other websites.
Think of it like an apartment building where everyone shares a finite resource of electricity. When all the websites are working at the same level, everyone gets a steady supply of electricity. If one website suddenly requires more, then it’s taken away from everyone else.
If your website is on a shared server and another of the websites require more resources, then it could impact the speed of your site and in extreme circumstances cause it to go down.
What is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud server hosting is like shared hosting in that your site is sharing resources, but the main difference is it’s hosted over multiple servers. If the resources of the current server you’re on get taxed, it can move you to a different server such as if you used Azure web hosting.
This way your site isn’t impacted by the other websites. Using the apartment analogy, it’s like everyone is using the same resources, but if one site requires more, you’re moved from that apartment building to another instantaneously.
This way your site doesn’t get the lag or go down because of the resources needed for another website.
Which is Best for You?
Which one is best, shared or cloud hosting services depends on your needs. Shared is the least expensive and easily adaptable and upgraded once your site gets more traffic. The biggest downside is the lag caused by the resource pull and security. If one site on the server is hacked, then it could put all the sites at risk of being hacked.
Cloud hosting providers are more expensive but can handle high traffic loads with ease and provide more security than shared hosting. If you expect high traffic or spikes in traffic due to holidays, etc., then clouding hosting is the one for you.
Choose What Fits You Best
Take the time and choose if shared or cloud hosting is right for you. It’s a big decision and one you don’t want to take lightly. They are both good methods of web hosting depending on your needs.
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