The Difference Between Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting

If you’ve been searching for a hosting account for any period of time, then you surely have come across these terms and wondered what the difference between the two are. Both options carry their benefits and negatives, serving different purposes for different projects.

If you don’t have much technical knowledge as far as configuring a server from the ground up, then the Virtual Private Server isn’t going to be for you most likely. If you’re looking for an easy to use control panel that lets you manage your website and automatically install scripts such as WordPress, then Cloud hosting is probably right up your alley.

Let’s take a look at the two and figure out just what the differences are.

Cloud Hosting – The Basics

Cloud hosting is a fascinating subject. They network a group of computers together that act as one. This has its benefits! It’s nearly impossible to run out of resources because your website load is being balanced across many systems as opposed to being only run on one server that could become overloaded and make downtime inevitable.

Another amazing feature of Cloud hosting is that it comes installed and ready to roll right out of the box. This makes it perfect for people running a normal website, and aren’t interested in securing and maintaining the system. When you use Cloud hosting your only worry is making sure you have the most informative and useful website in town! Most of the scripts that you’d likely use are already installed, creating your emails is a breeze, and managing your FTP accounts from the control panel takes just a few moments.

The beautiful thing about Cloud Hosting is it gives you the ability to upgrade your account as needed easily. You can add resources and make sure your site never outgrows its host! So have no fear about running out of Data or Bandwidth, you’re welcome to grow as much as you like.

  • Shared computing power among a network of machines
  • No technical knowledge needed to make sure you’re secure
  • You can easily scale up your package as your site grows.
  • A helpful support team is there to make sure you’re well taken care of
  • cPanel gives you the power to manage your emails, scripts, and FTP accounts

VPS Hosting – The Basics

VPS hosting is more for the advanced developer. If you’re looking to host a website on a VPS, it is doable! But first you will need to install Apache, MySQL, PHP, and the extensions you’ll want to make it all work together. Don’t forget to secure it! Because that isn’t being done automatically when you’re using a VPS.

Virtual Private Servers run on one Dedicated Server, that means if that server has a hardware failure then you’re out of luck. With the Cloud hosting this isn’t a problem because your website is spread among multiple machines and if one goes down, another is quick to come up.

With VPS hosting you’re stuck on that one Dedicated Server that runs the multiple machines. If your website grows larger than your current hosting account, then you’re going to need to backup your files and move to a bigger VPS, or a Dedicated Server even. This can have downtime if you’re not careful! VPS is best suited to developers more than webmasters in my opinion, though some webmasters do enjoy having full control over their system and thus opt for the VPS solution.

  • No scalability
  • No pre-installed software
  • Unmanaged, must have system administration skills
  • Freedom to install the software you like

So What’s Right for Me?

 Cloud Hosting is excellent for hosting websites, and it’s scalable! You can easily add resources as your site grows and it comes with support. It has scripts installed to make everything a breeze! On the other hand, if you’re a developer that needs full control of their system, then VPS hosting is your best bet. It gives you the power to install any software you need at a system level and doesn’t come packaged with cPanel, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and the like. 

Once you know what kind of web property you’re looking to create, you can choose the solution that works best for you. If you’re looking to host business, personal, blog, or a store, then Cloud Hosting is the way to go. Then you only need to focus on setting up and managing your site. With the power of cPanel in your hands, you can quickly and easily add new domains, manage email accounts, browse the file manager, and have a wide array of scripts that can be installed in just one click!

If you’re a developer that’s working on an application in a language such as NodeJS, then you’d likely be interested in a VPS. It gives you the power to run your applications without any pre-installed software getting in the way. If you know how to keep everything secure and up to date and don’t mind upgrading as your usage scales, VPS hosting is just what you’re looking for. The only downside to Virtual Private Servers is that you cannot scale up as needed without having to move all your files to a new server, but this is possible with the right technical knowledge, and chances are your next VPS provider may even help you with your move.

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4 Comments

  1. The major difference that makes them different from each other is the computing resources used among multiple machines. However, VPS allocated by part of a machine and used it completely virtually in allocating process.
    Cloud is scalable but the VPS doesn’t although VPS is quite cheaper in compare to cloud.

  2. Thanks for such a great write up on hosting services. It will help me choose the right thing for me.

  3. Thank you for this article. This is an outstanding article to get proper knowledge about the difference so that we can easily come to a conclusion that what is the best for us. I will be eagerly waiting to get such knowledge. Expecting more and more from you for us.

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