When you’re looking to create a website for your business you’ll have to decide how your website will be hosted. Hosting refers to the servers that handle the “weight” of your site. It’s where all your website information is stored and impacts security and speed. For your website, you’ll likely need to decide between shared and cloud hosting.
Shared Hosting
Traditionally, most websites use shared hosting to bring a site to life. Shared hosting refers to the shared use of a server where multiple websites use the same bandwidth, storage, and security. Shared hosting can be a cheap option since multiple websites are essentially splitting the cost of a single server. Shared hosting is still a popular option today and is provided by most web-hosting providers.
What is Cloud Hosting?
Although cloud hosting has existed as an alternative to shared hosting since the late 1990s, its rise to popularity has moved relatively slowly. It’s only in the past couple of years that cloud hosting has become a popular option for web users.
Cloud hosting uses multiple servers to host your site. This means that if one server is moving slowly or has a security breach, you have other servers to keep your website moving quickly and securely. With cloud hosting, a website’s bandwidth, storage, and all aspects of web hosting are shared across the servers virtually. The group of servers hosting your site is the cloud.
Why is Cloud Hosting Useful?
Cloud hosting offers users a variety of benefits. One of the biggest benefits that come with cloud hosting is the adaptability. With your website “load” spread across multiple servers, you have more flexibility than shared hosting can provide.
This is most notable as a business grows. When a business is first starting out, their website might see a moderate amount of traffic that is easily manageable through shared hosting. But as a business grows, or if a business undergoes a sudden spike in success, it may start taxing the allotments of a shared server. This problem requires acquiring more space within the shared server (which can become expensive as your business grows) or outgrowing the space available with a shared server entirely.
Traditionally, once a website outgrew the abilities of a shared hosting server, the only option was to establish a dedicated server solely for that site. This is an expensive endeavor and requires the IT knowledge to keep everything running smoothly.
With cloud hosting, businesses who have outgrown their shared hosting setup (or those who want to experience the benefits of cloud hosting right from the start) have the option of expanding their cloud network to accommodate increased traffic. There’s no longer the need to establish expensive and time-consuming designated servers.
If your business experiences fluctuations with hosting needs, using the cloud allows you to acquire new servers when needed and then drop them when your traffic slows down. Cloud hosting also offers enhanced security and speed due to the multitude of servers.
Cloud Hosting with Borelli Designs
If you’re interested in using cloud hosting for your website, get in touch. Borelli offers Hosted, a cloud hosting service for WordPress sites to improve your site speed and security.
