Understanding The Pros and Cons of Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting benefits your website in many ways. It’s quite different from traditional web hosting since it employs multiple interconnected cloud servers rather than one physical server to host your website. 

Your website receives hosting resources from designated cloud servers, allowing you to easily scale up or down the amount of resources you need. However, to truly know if cloud hosting is right for you, you need to assess the advantages and disadvantages of cloud hosting.

Yes, there are pros and cons to cloud hosting and we are here to explore those in this blog. 

Cloud Hosting Benefits

• Scalability On Demand

Scalability is among the many cloud server benefits that make cloud hosting a rewarding option for your website. When you experience a sudden surge in traffic or a gradual increase in the demand for interaction for your visitors, you will need more resources. 

Thankfully, with cloud hosting, all you need to do is convey this requirement to your provider, and you receive the amount of resources you need. You can ask for more bandwidth, storage, memory/RAM, etc. 

• Highly Cost Efficient

Cost efficiency can fall under both the pros and cons of cloud hosting. Since it employs the pay-as-you-go cost structure, you will observe a lot of cost-saving with cloud hosting. Unlike other web hosting services, where the hosting cost is predetermined, you do not have to pay significant capital in cloud hosting. 

However, to ensure the plan remains cost-efficient, you need to keep a close eye on the resources your website uses/needs. This can prevent any underspending or overspending.  

• Reliability and Speed

Cloud hosting offers consistent uptime. Uptime refers to the period of time when your website is active and responsive i.e., remains online. 

Under cloud hosting, you’ll be able to ensure your website functions with great speed, which is a considerable determinant leading to customer retention and satisfaction.

• Resources and Performance

Cloud hosting benefits your website through speed and uptime thanks to all the resources you receive from cloud servers. This quick resource provisioning also results in good overall performance, including speed, uptime, no latency, no lagging and no shutdown. 

Cloud Hosting Drawbacks

• Potential Downtime

The primary structure of cloud hosting is designed to minimise downtime, making it one of the many cloud server benefits. However, it is not immune to the causes of downtime. 

It can happen due to network issues, maintenance, hardware shutdown and attacks. Moreover, cloud hosting requires a constant and stable internet connection to facilitate access to data. 

• Multiple Server Handling

Cloud hosting employs numerous cloud servers, which can make the overall environment complex to manage. When we talk about the pros and cons of cloud hosting, we say it is an advantage that there are numerous cloud servers since there are many servers to carry out a task if one shuts down. However, server management can be a hassle.  

• Limited Control

Discussing limited control with cloud server’s pros and cons is necessary. It has a complex structure that requires an expert to operate and control the server. You usually entrust the responsibility to a third-party provider, resulting in limited control.

• Cost Variability

With the pay-as-you-go cost structure, your expenses can get unpredictable. Your resource usage depends on the website’s traffic and utility that month. Additionally, some plans may have a lot of hidden fees. 

Ending Note

When talking about a cloud server’s pros and cons, we need to understand the nuances that come into play. Overall, cloud hosting can be a great option for websites that are data-intensive or large websites like eCommerce stores that have a lot of hourly traffic.   

However, if you value customisability and complete server control; or if your website contains highly sensitive data, this may not be the right option. Moreover, drawbacks can also vary from provider to provider, depending on how the plan is set up. 

So, it’s important to consider all of these factors when discussing the advantages and disadvantages of cloud hosting.