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When it comes to choosing hosting service, people or companies generally don’t think much about their features. They usually go for a company that’s quite popular, or the one that offers them a package at the cheapest price. But, is it really the game of popularity and price?, or there is much more to this hosting service providing! We need to understand what hosting is all about, what different kinds of hosting services there are, and what their features are, before coming to a conclusion, or making the decision to pick one of the hosting service providers. So let’s also see the 10 Best Cloud Hosting Providers as per their price, features and reviews.
In this blog, we’re mainly going to talk about Cloud Hosting Service, and in what ways it is different, or up to an extent superior, from the Standard Shared Web Hosting. In our previous post we discussed about the shared hosting and 10 best affordable shared hosting providers. The blog also features a list of Cloud Hosting Service providers, with their special features, which will help you determine, which among them is the best one for you. So, let’s begin!
Cloud Hosting and its Major Features
Cloud hosting is a form of web hosting service, but it different from standard shared web hosting in many ways. The major differences between the two are the deployment of multiple servers, the quality of hardware in the servers, and the overall caliber and transparency of the services offered. Needless to say that in all these aspects cloud hosting is better than standard shared web hosting.
A company offering cloud hosting has servers located in multiple places around the world, and the data that the user uploads may get mirrored in multiple servers if user wants, by choosing Load balancing services. So, in a situation when one of the servers don’t work, or the user wants to scale their capacity, especially when they start getting high traffic, this feature works as an advantage.
The hosting can be easily transferred, and the resources can be multiplied without much difficulty, in a matter of seconds, as all these servers work together as a unit. The service offered are quite fast and reliable. Also, the servers used for cloud hosting has the latest Intel processors that are used for processing data, Fastest Gigabit internal Ethernet network to connect multiple servers for different services and the highest standard SSDs that are used for storing data. These allows companies to offer great performance to their customers.
One of the best things about cloud hosting is the quality of the services. When you’re allocated 1 GB of memory, 2 TB of Bandwidth 50 GB of storage, these belong to you only, quite like the dedicated scheme of standard shared hosting, or even better. No one else shares your resources, and therefore, your website gets the best performance and speed.
And what makes this entire process transparent is the fact that you can keep an eye on everything, every passing minute. And the best thing about all this is that you get to pay on an hourly basis. And since there isn’t any long term commitment requirement you can quit anytime if you’re not quite satisfied with the service. The charges are mostly billed to you at the end of the billing cycle every month.
Cloud Hosting vs. Standard Shared Web Hosting
Apart from what’s already mentioned above, the major difference between cloud hosting and standard shared hosting is the resource allocation. In cloud hosting, if you’re promised 1 GB memory, 50 GB storage and 1 TB bandwidth, it all belongs to you and only you. These resources are not shared with anyone else, and you have absolutely no limitations using all these features.
However, in standard shared hosting service, you’re just told that you’re offered 1 GB memory, 50 GB storage and 1 TB bandwidth, as other users are also sharing the same resources. And most of the times, you don’t even land up using so much. So, you’re paying for more than what you’re using. And there is no instant way to monitor how much of the resources are being utilized.
Also, with some shared hosting providers, there are limitations in the number of database offered, number of websites that can be hosted, number of sub domains offered, number of inodes and files that you can have on the disk space. All these features put the user at a very helpless situation, where they need to think before making a move.
Imagine this, if a shared server is hosting 5 websites at a time, one of which includes your website as well, and at some point of time, if one of those other website gets huge traffic, your website will experience latency in the loading process. As the resources are shared, the website receiving more requests will consume most of it, and since there’s very less amount of resources left for others to share, your website along with the other three will get slower.
On the other hand, with cloud hosting there are no such limitations. If you’re allocated a space of 50 GB, staying within that space you can have as many inodes and files, database, websites, sub domains and so on. All the resources are used only by your website, so there is no chance for it to get slower, or under-perform in any way.
Why choose Cloud Hosting Service?
Cloud Hosting is preferred by those who anticipate surge in website traffic, and especially by growing companies who anticipate a significant grow in their sales and user base. A blog or news website which regularly publishes articles, and has huge traffic, or more than 4000 unique visitors visiting the site per day should definitely go for cloud hosting.
Cloud Hosting Service allows you to use your resources fully and that is why your website gives the best performance. The service is reliable, as multiple servers and data mirroring feature avoids problems like website crash or data loss, and always makes sure to keep your website running.
You can increase the size of your resources any time you want, and within a couple of seconds, with the instant scalable feature offered by cloud hosting service providing companies. So, even when you’re not prepared for the unexpected rise in traffic, you can easily counter the situation.
You pay for only the resources and that also on an hourly basis, so there is a lot of transparency involved in the process. The companies offering cloud hosting service also maintains high level of security with strong firewalls, updated from time to time, so all your data remains safe and secured. The best thing why I like cloud hosting is the total control- You get the root access ( Super User Access) and you can do anything you want. You can install and setup your own mail server, you can host multiple website in 1 GB cloud hosting plan, Install or uninstall any services, apply your own firewall rule, Deny any particular IP address to access your website, and much more than you can imagine.
Overall, Cloud Hosting is preferred by individuals who love freedom, justice and fairness. The freedom to do whatever with the set storage, bandwidth and memory boundaries; the justice to be able to utilize whatever they’re promised up to their full capacity; and the fairness to be charged only for what they’ve used. Let’s take a look at 10 best Cloud hosting Providers.
Different Cloud Hosting Companies and their Features
10 Best Cloud Hosting Providers
There are so many cloud hosting service providing companies out there, with their amazing packages, both economical and full of great deals. Most of them are mainly cloud infrastructure related services offering companies, while a few of them offer both cloud hosting and standard shared web hosting. Go through the following list of the 10 best cloud hosting providers to find out more, and choose your ideal hosting partner.
#1. DigitalOcean
Digital Ocean Inc. is a cloud computing based services providing company that is based in New York, US. As of January 2018, it is the 3rd largest hosting company in the world. One of most preferred services offered by the company is its cloud hosting service, also known as Droplets.
What makes Droplets distinct from other hosting services is its scalable feature. No matter the package chosen by the user at the time of purchase, they can always increase the capacity of their platform, without having to go through any latency issues, which is quite the case with most other hosting companies as well. Hawkdive.com is also hosted on one of the droplets from DigitalOcean. DigitalOcean also keeps offering a free $25-$100 credit to its new users upon signup which is valid for 2 Months- enough for testing and deployment purposes. You can click this offer link to claim a $100 free credit for two months.
Get $100 free credit from DigitalOcean upon Signup
Also, it focuses a great deal on the security of the clients. So, all your data stay safe, and carefully locked up in their systems. DigitalOcean also offers its users monitoring capabilities, through which they can keep an eye on the performance of the servers.
Another most significant reason why the company is preferred is the balance between the price and quality of service offered. Also, the billing system is quite transparent, works on an hourly basis, so you only pay for what you use. Hosting plan starts from $5/ month. The following table shows the price and features offered in its most affordable Standard Droplets Package.
- Memory: 1 GB
- No. of vCPU: 1
- Allowed Bandwidth: 1 TB
- Amount of Disk Space: 25 GB
- Price: $5 per month
- IPv4 Address: 1
- cPanel/ WHM Hosting: Available at Additional cost for the license from cPanel
- Free SSL Certificate: Yes, You can easily Install Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate on your server
- No of Website that can be hosted: Many, as long as you have the available resources (Usually 15-20 websites with good performance)
#2. Vultr
Vultr is yet another American cloud hosting service provider, with its headquarters based in New Jersey, and 15 virtual servers located across Asia, Australia, Europe and North America.
The company offers cloud hosting, also known as cloud compute. With its servers located in four continents, the space offered to you is deployed in the server that’s nearest you to. Its services can be activated in seconds.
Its servers use the latest generation Intel Core Processors because of which they’re able to offer you the best performance. You can deploy the operating system of your choice, and you’re offered full root administrator access.
You can also go for other hosting services of theirs, namely Bare Metal, Block Storage and Dedicated Instances. The packages have their own distinct features.
There are no long term contracts with Vultr, and it also charges you on an hourly basis. So, you can sign up for their services, or turn them down any time you want. The following is their cheapest cloud compute package details.
- Memory: 2 GB
- No. of vCPU: 1
- Allowed Bandwidth: 2 TB
- Amount of Disk Space: 40 GB
- Price: $10 per month
- IPv4 Address: 1
- cPanel/ WHM Hosting: Available at Additional cost for the license from cPanel
- Free SSL Certificate: Yes, You can Install Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate on your server
#3. Linode
Linode LLC is an American cloud hosting service providing company, which is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company has 9 data centers all over the world, and the customers are allowed to choose the one among them for space deployment.
The hosting service works mainly with Linux. Their services are quite reliable due to their powerful servers. Few of its most interesting features are its affordability with simple pricing, quick deployment of space, easy management of data, and customer service, which is offered 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
The following are the features of its most affordable cloud hosting package, Nanode 1GB.
- Memory: 1 GB
- No. of vCPU: 1
- Allowed Bandwidth / Transfer: 1 TB
- Amount of Disk Space: 50 GB
- Price: $5 per month
- IPv4 Address: 1
- cPanel/ WHM Hosting: Available at extra cost
- Free SSL Certificate: Available, You can easily install it from Let’s Encrypt Authority
- 40 Gbps Network In
- 1000 Mbps Network Out
#4. CloudCone
CloudCone is yet another American cloud hosting service provider. One of its most unique features is that it allows you to customize the features and build your own package. You can customize hardware specifications like RAM, Hard Disk and Number of Processors as per your need.
It allows you to scale your requirements up to whatever size you want any time, and within seconds. Apart from shared cloud hosting, it also offers dedicated hosting, DDoS Protection and Private Hypervisor.
The company offers you great performance as it uses the latest generation Intel processors in its servers. It allows you to monitor the performance of your servers at all time, so it’s all transparent.
The company also charges you for an hourly basis so you only pay for what you use. The following are the features of its most affordable cloud hosting package.
- Memory: 512 MB
- No. of VCPU: 1
- Allowed Bandwidth: 2 TB
- Amount of Disk Space: 10 GB
- Price: $2.67 per month
- IPv4 Address: 1
- cPanel/ WHM Hosting: $11 per month (additional)
- Free SSL Certificate: Can be installed easily from Let’s Encrypt Authority or Deploy your own
- No of Website that can be hosted: Many, as long as you have the available resources (Usually 6-10 websites with good performance)
5. Atlantic.net
Atlantic.net is another best American cloud hosting service provider, with its headquarters located in Orlando, Florida. The company has 7 data centers across US, Canada and UK.
The company offers great flexibility in cloud hosting packages that it offers, as you can choose from different packages, with distinct features and affordable price, as per your need. It offers customer service 24 hours a day and seven days a week.
It allows customers to scale their space any time they want. Their services can be used literally seconds after signing up for the package. With their enterprise grade SSDs, they claim to offer great performance. Also, they automatically backup your data on a daily basis, but it comes at an additional price.
There are different package categories offered, namely general purpose, compute optimized, memory optimized and storage optimized. The following are the features of its most affordable cloud hosting package, also known as G2.1GB. It is from general purpose package.
- Memory: 1 GB
- No. of vCPU: 1
- Allowed Bandwidth: 3 TB
- Amount of Disk Space: 40 GB
- Price: $8 per month
- IPv4 Address: 1
- cPanel/ WHM Hosting: $14.97 per month (additional)
- Free SSL Certificate: You can install free SSL from LE
#6. CloudSigma
CloudSigma Ltd. is a Swiss cloud hosting service providing company, with its headquarters situated in Zurich, Switzerland. The company’s cloud infrastructure related services have been awarded ISO 27001 Certification.
Quite like Cloudcone, this company also allows its users to design their own package. So you can choose your own memory size, your own storage capacity and your own bandwidth. Also, you can pay on an hourly basis so you only pay for what you use; it’s as transparent as that. These are the two most significant features of the company.
It allows the users a free 7 day trial to help them determine whether they should go with the company or not. Also, they have offers such as any user spending more than $10 per month gets 1GB of RAM, 50GB SSD and 5TB of outbound data transfer absolutely free of cost.
The company also offers few readymade cloud hosting packages categorized under Small, Medium and Large segments. The following are the features of the most basic customized hosting package.
- Memory: 1 GB
- No. of vCPU: 1
- Allowed Bandwidth: 5 TB
- Amount of Disk Space: 50 GB
- Price: $9.49 per month
- IPv4 Address: 1
- Free SSL Certificate: You can install free SSL from LE
7. DreamHost
DreamHost is yet another American cloud hosting company, with its headquarters based in Los Angeles, CA. Apart from cloud hosting, it also offers standard shared hosting and domain name registration service.
The servers work only with Linux, and they feature powerful processors, and accelerated network connectivity. You can scale your requirements anytime, and within seconds. The company claims that you can use its services only seconds after signing up.
The company also offers great levels of security to its customers’ data. It also offers cloud storage services.
It charges its users on an hourly basis, so they pay for what they use. The following are the features of one of its most affordable cloud hosting packages.
- Memory: 2 GB
- No. of vCPU: 1
- Allowed Bandwidth: Free Bandwidth ( Special offer of Unlimited upload and Download Bandwidth for Some Time )
- Amount of Disk Space: 80 GB
- Price: $12 per month
- IPv4 Address: 1
- Free SSL Certificate: Can be Installed easily from Let’s encrypt Authority
8. Cloudways
Cloudways is a Maltese cloud hosting providing company, with its headquarters in Mosta, Malta.
The cloud hosting offered by Cloudways has a dedicated feel, as it allows you to use all your resources and rescale whenever you want. The company offers a unique feature known as Auto-healing, which detects and resolves all the issues that might cause your website to crash.
It offers one click free SSL Certificate to all its users. Also, it maintains a very high level of security, as it protect all the servers with strong firewalls, which are updated from time to time. Also, as per the choice of the user, the company automatically backs up the data, from a period of 1 week to 7 days
Customer Service is offered 24 hours a day and seven days a week. It is affordable, and it allows you to pay on hourly basis, so you only pay for what you’ve used. Also, there are no long term contracts, so you can sign up or stop using their services whenever you want.
The following are the features of one of its most affordable cloud hosting packages.
- Memory: 1 GB
- No. of vCPU: 1
- Allowed Bandwidth: 1 TB
- Amount of Disk Space: 25 GB
- Price: $10 per month
- IPv4 Address: Not Mentioned
- Free SSL Certificate: Included
- No of Websites / Apps: Host as many as you want
9. Bluehost
Bluehost is an American cloud hosting service providing company, with its headquarters based in Provo, Utah. It is mainly known for offering standard shared hosting, however, they also have cloud hosting packages. It is one of the top 20 largest web hosting providing companies in the world.
One of the features of the company is that it offers data mirroring with cloud hosting. You uploaded data is copied in three different locations, with this attribute. This ensures protection as well as retrieval of lost data.
It also allows unlimited scaling, so you can choose to consume more space anytime you want, and it can be done in seconds. The company offers customer service 24 hours a day and seven days a week. So, you can request for any information or service at all times.
The following are the features of its most affordable cloud hosting package.
- Memory: 2 GB
- No. of vCPU: 2
- Allowed Bandwidth: Unmetered
- Amount of Disk Space: 100 GB SSD
- Price: $6.95 per month (first month)/ $9.99 per month (regular price)
- IPv4 Address: No Dedicated IP
- cPanel/ WHM Hosting: Bluehost’s Panel
- Free SSL Certificate: Included
- No of Websites / Apps: 1
- Email Accounts: 100
10. HostGator
HostGator is an American cloud hosting service providing company, with its headquarters located in Houston, Texas. Quite like Bluehost, HostGator is also known mainly for its standard shared web hosting services. However, it also offers cloud hosting service.
The company offers data mirroring feature with its cloud hosting service. With its latest processors, SSDs and other hardware, it claims to offer great performance to its users. It also puts high level of focus on security of its customers’ data.
It also allows you to scale your requirements at any time, and within a matter of seconds. Customer service is offered 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, allowing you to take any service, or ask for any information whenever you want.
The following are the features of its most affordable cloud hosting package, also known as Hatchling Plan.
- Memory: 2 GB
- No. of vCPU: 2
- Allowed Bandwidth: Unmetered
- Amount of Disk Space: Unmetered
- Price: $4.95 per month (first month)/ $9 per month (Regular Price)
- IPv4 Address: No Dedicated IP
- cPanel/ WHM Hosting: Yes cPanel
- Free SSL Certificate: Included
- No of Website that can be hosted: 1
** Plan with dedicated IP cost just $9.95 and has 6 vCPU, 6GB RAM, cPanel and Unmetered bandwidth.
A lot of users don’t realize what they’re getting into when they go for a hosting service provider, and it requires quite some research and experience to fully understand all this. Though cloud hosting services are gaining popularity, but sometimes shared hosting is what you actually need. So, your choice should be as per your need. If you are really into Independent, fully controllable, and fast web server then go for Cloud hosting. Another thing about shared hosting is that there prices and service charge keep changing from time to time or every year.
However, if we were to compare the quality of service offered, the limitations, the resource allocation and so on, we come to a conclusion that the comparative high price offered with cloud hosting service is totally worth it. Cloud Hosting Service is totally the kind of service that you should go for, if you like using all your resources without any limitation, and if you don’t mind the price.
We hope that this blog was useful to you in terms of understanding what cloud hosting service is all about, the differences between cloud hosting and standard shared web hosting, and most importantly the 10 Best Cloud hosting Providers. Now, if you feel like we missed something, or if you’d like to know more, post your comments and questions in the comment section below.
