We by now know how quickly the concept of cloud computing is catching fire. With this proliferation, there are numerous brands setting their feet in this business, making it hard for the buyer to choose one from the many options available.
Even before gauging cloud hosting options against one another, there are certain terms we need to be clear about, which eventually will help you in choosing the right cloud hosting provider for your business.
Public Clouds
Public cloud hosting is synonymous to shared hosting, wherein, the hosting infrastructure is managed by the hosting provider and the resources like database, space, bandwidth, etc., are shared among multiple hosting buyers.
The buyers of this cadre of cloud hosting benefit from economies of scale as the server maintenance cost is shared between many end users. However, this also means that your cloud hosted website’s or software’s performance can be hampered by excess usage of resources by some other website hosted in the same cloud. In short, there is not much security or uptime guarantee with public clouds.
Private Clouds
Private cloud hosting is synonymous to the traditional VPS (Virtual private servers), wherein, though the infrastructure is shared among many end users (read – websites), each of them have a dedicated portion of the infrastructure, which means that the resources are not shared in a way that one user’s website’s performance may affect another’s.
This feature gives better control over the hosting resources (thereby better security) which again comes at a higher cost as compared to a public cloud.
Hybrid Clouds
Hybrid cloud hosting is an amalgamation of private and public hosting, wherein the buyer can choose which information to be kept in a private dedicated server and which to be kept in a public domain. This way, users can opt to secure only the most vital aspects of his business instead of paying for the security of all of his data through a private cloud.
The company can further reduce cost as they get the opportunity to increase or decrease the public hosting capacity with a hybrid cloud hosting.
Considerations for Choosing a Cloud Hosting Provider
Once you have a clear idea of which type of cloud hosting suits your business best, use the below indicators that help you assess a cloud hosting provider.
Customer Support
Since cloud hosting is still in its baby days, not many of us are equipped with enough knowledge to tinker with it. Hence, having a strong customer support, whose working hours preferably match with yours, can be a great advantage.
Security
Security is inevitably one of the most considerable issues in any form of online business. You ought to know what technology is being used to keep your applications and data safe within the cloud. Also, having multi step authentication and specific access grants helps improve security. Check if the cloud hosting provider gives you this power.
Billing
You may want to scale your cloud usage up or down depending on your need at a particular instance. So opt for a cloud hosting provider who gives you this flexibility, instead of going for one that offers prefixed packages that force unutilized space or features on you. You can check out some cheap VPS providers at www.cheaper-vps-hosting.com; though all of the listed providers may not offer cloud hosting but most of them do.
By deciding to satisfy your business’ hosting needs with the cloud, you can tremendously increase your productivity. However, this can be a long term commitment. So be sure to check for all the above mentioned facets and also look into some of the cloud hosting reviews from trusted sources before you shell out your hard earned money.
