When it comes to hosting your company website, there are a wide variety of options available to you. Choosing the right hosting solution for your business is essential – choose poorly and you can end up with something that just isn’t fit for purpose.
Two of the most popular options are shared web hosting and cloud web hosting. You’ll see many providers offering these as part of their standard hosting package. Is there a difference? Is one better than the other?
Let’s find out…
First of all, some definitions. As the name suggests, shared hosting involves multiple users (i.e. companies or individuals) hosting their websites on a single server. Cloud web hosting, on the other hand, does not confine you to a single server. Rather, it makes the resources of multiple servers available to you at any given time.
So which is better?
Like so much in the world of corporate websites, it depends on your business – what it does, where it is, and where it hopes to be in the future. We can, however, make some objective comparisons in certain key areas.
Performance
Cloud web hosting wins rather handily here. On a shared server, all of the websites are using the same resources, so the greater the demand is from the other sites on the server, the more the performance of your website can suffer. With cloud-based hosting, the website is located on multiple servers, so your website will automatically switch to using the server that provides the best performance for your site.
Security
This is another win for cloud web hosting. Because your website is not shackled to a physical server, it is much less likely to be hacked or compromised by a virus. On a shared server, you’re at even greater risk since, if one site is compromised, so are all the others on that same server.
Reliability
If you’re hosted on a shared server and it suffers some kind of glitch, then your website is down until the situation is repaired. With cloud web hosting, your provider can simply pull the glitching server out of commission and flip you to another, operational server.
Cost
This is where shared hosting pulls out a win. Compared to cloud web hosting, shared hosting can work out cheaper. This makes it attractive to individuals or small companies with little immediate cash flow.
Here at NetNerd, we offer impressive selection of shared and cloud web hosting solutions for all our customers. View our packages and purchase online, or call our team on 0333 222 4080 if you need assistance choosing the hosting package that’s right for you.
