Best Cloud Hosting Providers Compared
Introduction
Online presence for a company has become more important than ever before. Almost every business nowadays has a website of its own. This has become very crucial for the promotion and expansion of the company. But as anyone in the IT sector would know it is very expensive to host a website on their own. This is because the infrastructure required for it is very costly to purchase and maintain. If a company wants to host a website on its own then it would need its own servers, databases, etc. But this would be too much for a company if it is a small scale organization. One can easily deal with this problem as there are many web hosting companies that offer web hosting services. An organization can host their website using the infrastructure and services provided by these companies.
There are different types of web hosting that one can use to run their websites. Some of the types of web hosting are shared hosting, reseller hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated hosting and cloud hosting. Each of these methods has its own advantages, features, and limitations. It is up to the company to choose a type of service that suits them and satisfies their needs. This article is entirely dedicated to the best cloud hosting platforms that are available in the market. The reason for this is because cloud hosting is becoming more and more popular in recent times. There are several factors that contribute to it. If you know anything about the recent developments in the IT industry then you might have definitely heard about the word cloud. Before knowing anything about cloud hosting one must understand what is the cloud. This will give an idea of how cloud hosting providers function.
What is the cloud?
Cloud is not a physical device or machine that is situated at someplace. Rather it is a virtual entity that behaves as if it is a physical device. Usually, a cloud means the servers that one accesses through the internet to get their desired applications and files. But there is a difference between accessing a server and accessing the cloud. A server is a place where the data related to a certain application is stored. A cloud is a collection of servers where portions of the data of an organization are stored. But all the data stored on these servers act as if they are stored in one place and not on different servers. There exists a connection between these servers which makes them look like a single server although they are using different resources in remote areas.
All the data in these servers are virtually connected so that anyone around the world can get to any information at the same time. Traditional information was transferred in the form of a client-server model where a client makes a query and a server responds to the query with the information. But the cloud not only responds to the requests, but it also stores the data of the users simultaneously. For example, take your Instagram account you can be using it on one device and the device can get lost or broken.
When you log in to your account again all your information and data such as photos, videos, messages will be present. This is because your data was not stored in your device but the cloud. When you are accessing the account you can only access the information temporarily as long as the connection between you and the server is intact.
What is cloud hosting?
Anyone who has been exploring the available web hosting options will definitely know about cloud hosting. Cloud hosting involves the configuration of different servers. In normal server configurations, a person is limited to physical restrictions of the servers they are using. They have to spend extra if they want to scale and stick to the same amount of resources even if they want fewer resources. The cloud hosting is an exception for that. The cloud hosting is a unique possibility where you can get your data from multiple servers. Which is great for web hosting as you will be using the exact amount of resources. This will result in ease in scalability, reliable hosting, and affordable rates to host your website. Cloud hosting is basically a network of virtual servers that are present inside various physical servers across the globe. All the resources that you need to run your website are spread across multiple remote locations. All of these resources can be accessed by the owners whenever they need to use them.
Benefits of cloud hosting
There are many benefits of using cloud hosting that’s why more and more organizations are switching to cloud hosting. The scalability, flexibility and high performance are main features that every organization looks for in a hosting platform which the cloud hosting is great at. The following are some of the benefits of using cloud hosting.
Affordable and flexible pricing
Most of the web hosting services need their users to pay a fixed amount every month. Based on the monthly plan they choose they will be allocated resources. The users may not be using all the resources provided but they still need to pay for them. A user also cannot scale up the resources if they need them for a certain amount of time. The users need to upgrade their monthly packages if they want additional resources. This may prove costly for those companies that are low on budget.
Cloud hosting provides simple solutions for all the companies that need to run their own websites. The solution is to pay for what they use and nothing more than that. Since all the data is stored on virtual servers, for example, a website does not have fixed storage that is allocated to it. That is the website will only be paying for the storage that it occupies in the cloud. In the same way, you can also scale up the resources if there is a need for it. For example, if your website is receiving large amounts of traffic than usual because of some post you can scale up the required resources. In this case, you can increase the bandwidth to make it accessible to more people at a time.
Server redundancy
In traditional hosting methods, a website is actually inside a server. Everything related to it and its functions is stored inside the server. If anything goes wrong and the server goes down there is nothing you can do about it. One can only wait until the server is fixed to see if everything is ok with their website. Until then you will not be able to go online again and your website remains offline till the problem is fixed. But when you are hosting on a cloud then you do not have to worry about all these problems as the nature of hosting is redundant. As soon as a problem occurs the backup for the sites will start to kick in. When you are cloud hosting you have multiple live versions of your website that you can load immediately and no one would notice.
The server setup is swift
It is quite a long process to set-up servers using traditional web hosting methods. Cloud hosting makes the process of server setup simple and fast. The only exception being is when you are in the middle of host migration. In such a case you need to wait until the server is ready. You can also encounter difficulties if you have signed up for a shared hosting plan. But if you want to set up the server only for your website then cloud hosting is the best option as you can set up a server in no time.
No hardware issues
You can say goodbye to all the hardware problems that one may encounter while using physical servers. When a website is hosted through cloud hosting it does not have to deal with any problems that websites with physical servers have to deal with. This is because the data and functions of a website are not limited to one server but are spread across different servers. So a website that is ran using cloud hosting does not have to face any hardware issues as it is not stored in one server. Hardware failure, system overloading and hacking are some of the issues that a site owner can be relieved while using cloud hosting. If at all something goes wrong with the physical resources of one server you can just use the physical resources of another server.
Website speed is faster
Another great benefit of using cloud hosting is the speed it offers to your website. If you use usual hosting methods then you have to rely on one server for the speed of your website. The hardware and foundations of the server greatly impact the speed of your website. But the usage of cloud hosting easily increases the capacity of the website. The speed of the website is highly increased as the resources and data are present in multiple servers rather than a single server. This allows the website to balance loads on multiple servers in a cloud hosting environment as a result, there is less strain on the resources of each server.
Increased availability and uptime
The uptime of a website sheerly depends on the environment of the physical server. If anything goes wrong with the physical servers and it goes down even your website goes offline. The only way one can stop this in a physical server is if it has CDN. If you use cloud hosting then you will automatically be having great uptime. This is because the website will be operating on multiple servers. If any user faces some problem using the website in one server then he will be transferred to another server.
Easy scalability of resources
Any business aspires to expand beyond its current state. When an organization is hosting a website it might suddenly attract a lot of traffic. It might also start to get increased traffic every day. No one knows exactly when the website resources need to be scaled as there is no fixed. What would happen if you suddenly need some additional resources for your website? If you are using other methods of web hosting then you would have to subscribe to different plans in order to scale your resources. But cloud hosting makes resource scaling easier than ever before. Cloud hosting does this through its intuitive dashboard for site management which lets its user to scale the resources up or down. This dashboard shows the performance of the site to the users in real-time. By looking at the sites the scaling of resources can be done on the spot.
Security
Security is the biggest concern of any business whether it may be a small business or large business. Cybersecurity has become most important for any organization that runs its business through online presence. This is because the rate of cybercrimes and data breaches are increasing every year. Companies all over the world are losing billions and billions of dollars annually. Once a company’s website is hacked the company may lose all the confidential information it has of its customers. This will be a massive disaster for any company because it would lose loyalty of its customers and the credibility of its brand. So security has to be on top of your list when you are looking for a good hosting platform.
Cloud hosting provides many advanced security features that can easily prevent any security breaches. Here the handling and storage of data are more secure compared to other hosting methods. Any cloud hosting service providers have baseline protection for the processing of data. It has security features like encryption, authentication and access control which are a must if you want to safeguard your precious information. In addition to this a company can have multiple layers of security to manage its data efficiently. As the data of a website is stored in multiple servers it will be difficult to steal all the information. This is because each server will have its own security measures and firewalls to prevent any security breaches.
Here’s a list of top 10 cloud hosting providers in the current market. Take a look.
Provider | Product Name | Free Trial | MYVU Score | Visit Website |
SiteGround | No | 9.7 | Visit | |
Cloudways | Yes | 9.5 | Visit | |
Hostinger | Yes | 9.5 | Visit | |
DreamHost | Yes | 9.3 | Visit | |
TMDHosting | No | 9 | Visit | |
Hostwinds | No | 8.9 | Visit | |
Google Cloud | Yes | 8.7 | Visit | |
Microsoft Azure | Yes | 8.5 | Visit Microsoft Azure |
|
AWS | Yes | 8.5 | Visit AWS | |
Liquid Web | Yes | 8.2 | Visit Liquid Web |
SiteGround
If you are searching for the top 10 cloud hosting providers then you might have definitely come across SiteGround. It is because of all the right reasons. SiteGround is known to provide cloud hosting services with great speed and value. SiteGround has come a long way from its initial days. It is a Bulgarian company that was founded in 2004 by a bunch of friends in dorm rooms of the university they were studying in. Since then it has grown tremendously and now it is competing with the giants in the web hosting industry. Currently, SiteGround has data centers in five different countries and hosts more than 800,000 domains across the globe. The most notable achievement of SiteGround to date is that it is affiliated with WordPress. SiteGround is not only in affiliation with WordPress but what’s impressive is that WordPress also endorses it.
When it comes to cloud hosting or any form of web hosting one must understand that speed is a very important aspect of it. To put things into perspective the online e-commerce giant Amazon can potentially lose more than a billion dollars if it’s website slows down by a second. So now you know the importance of speed of a website and its impact on your revenue. SiteGround has a great combination of both software and hardware which it uses to keep its site swift as well as light. It manages to do this through having SSD’s in all of its servers. SSD’s are hard drives that are capable of delivering data 30% faster than HDD’s that are normally used. Optimization is very essential to deliver the content. Without any optimization, the site will take a very long time to load which is a big deal-breaker.
Server response times is the rate at which a server responds to a request. If your site has longer response time then you may easily lose clients. The recommended response time of Google is 200 ms and SiteGround has an average response time of 129 ms around the world. SiteGround guarantees an uptime of 99.99% to its users which is incredible. Since SiteGround has built its platform using Linux Containers it keeps the site stable even during unexpected surges of traffic. SiteGround has its own server monitoring system which is quite advanced. The monitoring system automatically detects the issues and fixes them. Not only that but it can also take measures for the problems that might occur in the future. SiteGround provides 24/7 customer service to its users through tickets, phone support and live chat. It provides daily backup of data for free which is great as the data is backed up automatically. This is a great feature as backing up data of cloud hosting is difficult compared to web hosting methods. SiteGround offers fully managed ultra-fast support for its cloud hosting service along with 24/7 VIP support.
Pros
- Free site migration.
- It offers WordPress managed hosting for all plans.
- Free automatic daily backups and restore.
- Great server response time.
Cons
- It has limited resources.
- The prices get higher from the second payment.
Pricing
- The entry plan is for $80/month. It offers 2 CPU cores, 4 GB memory, 40 GB SSD space and 5 TB data transfer.
- Business plan costs $120/month. It offers 3 CPU cores, 6 GB memory, 60 GB SSD space and 5 TB data transfer.
- The business plus plan is for $160/month. It offers 4 CPU cores, 8 GB memory, 80 GB SSD space and 5 TB data transfer.
- Super Power plan is for $240/month. It offers 8 CPU cores, 10 GB memory, 120 GB SSD space and 5 TB data transfer.
Cloudways
Cloudways is not a typical cloud hosting service that you come across as it is different from other hosting providers of its kind. It is designed for users who have lots of experience and desire their projects to have maximum power. One can design their own cloud server on Cloudways. After designing is completed the server can be hosted on any of the top five cloud providers. These cloud providers are DigitalOcean, Linode, Google cloud platform, Vultr and Amazon (AWS) which gives you access to more than 60 data centers. In order to host your website on these cloud providers, you don’t even need an account in them. Cloudways automatically sets everything ready by itself. It provides you with dedicated resources that can be used to increase the speed and stability which is not possible through shared hosting. Cloudways also supports a number of other performance-boosting technologies such as Memcached, Nginx, Varnish, HTTP/2, PHP7 along with the company’s very own CDN.
Cloudways comes with many of the popular applications like Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, Magento, WordPress, laravel, and PrestaShop whose installation is purely automated. It also enables you to install manually and has a generic PHP application that you can use to install other applications. You can secure all the data transmission of your site through SSL certificates given free open certificate authority callers Let’s encrypt. This service is provided by the non-profit internet security research group, ISRG in short. Cloudways provides scheduled and on-demand backups to its customers for free. But the only problem with Cloudways is that it does not provide any email accounts for the website. Apart from it is a great service that offers one of the best cloud hosting. The only way you can have mailboxes for your domain is if you add them through add-ons. This will cost you an additional dollar for every month.
One can easily create a cloud server as a single panel contains all the main functions that are necessary for its creation. To create a server first one must choose the preferred cloud provider and server size. You can also choose the server of a country in which you want to host your website. It has options for servers like Singapore, Europe, North America, and Bangalore. One can also give their server, project or application a custom name. After you finish all these you have to just click the Launch button for Cloudways to activate your server. It also has a 3-minute tutorial that teaches you how to migrate your website from WordPress to Cloudways through its free WordPress plugin migrator.
Cloudways offers a custom control panel to manage your website rather than using a cPanel. It allocates temporary URLs if you don’t have a domain. Cloudways control panel has a monitoring tab that shows your usage of CPU. Even though Cloudways is mainly designed for experts and developers the support articles it provides can be understood by anyone. Cloudways provides 24/7 customer service through tickets and live chat. The performance speed of your website will change depending upon the provider you choose.
Pros
- It offers a free trial.
- Ability to install an unlimited number of websites.
- Free site migration.
- It provides automatic updates for free.
Cons
- It doesn’t provide email accounts.
- Not a user-friendly service
- It does not have a cPanel.
Pricing
- For $10/month you will get 1 core processor, 1 GB RAM, 25 GB storage and 1 TB bandwidth.
- The $22/month plan will get you 1 core processor, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB storage and 2 TB bandwidth
- For $42/month you will get 2 core processor, 4 GB RAM, 80 GB storage and 4 TB bandwidth.
- The $80/month will get you 4 core processor, 8 GB RAM, 160 GB storage and 5 TB bandwidth.
Hostinger
Hostinger was first established in the city of Kaunas in Lithuania back then it was called Hosting Media. After six years of its establishment, it has encompassed more than a million users and changed its name to Hostinger. The ever-growing web hosting service currently provides services in more than 39 countries and has 6 data centers across the globe. As of 2017 Hostinger has gained more than 29 million users and continued its growth at an impressive rate. The main aim of the organization was to help its customers to learn, create and grow their own websites. It has done that successfully and a part of that credit goes to its insanely affordable prices. Web hosting speed is very important as we discussed earlier. That is because it is one of the leading causes of losing customers which results in the death of businesses especially the smaller ones.
Customers in the current market want their sites to load in less than a second and if it takes more than 5 seconds you can shut down your business. Thankfully Hostinger has one of the fastest speeds in the web hosting industry. The average speed of Hostinger across the globe is less than 165 ms. Which is very less compared to Google’s recommended speed of 200 ms. The speed is even greater if you are hosting your website in European markets. The farther you are from its data centers the more time it takes as the information has to travel long distances. Hostinger has 6 data centers around the world in countries like the USA, Indonesia, Singapore, Netherlands, Brazil, and the EU. It is also building another data center in Lithuania. You have to choose a data center nearer to your location to have great speeds.
Another great quality of Hostinger is that it offers an uptime of 99.9% which only a few companies can do. This is great news for small businesses if they are looking for the best cloud hosting experience for low prices. The reason to emphasize this is because small businesses need to be up all the time as they would lose more if they are down for a long time. What’s great about Hostinger is that if your site experiences a downtime because of it you can simply contact them regarding the issue. Hostinger gives you back 5% of your monthly payment if it happens because of them. Not only this but Hostinger has its very own cache manager. Hostinger contains a 1-click installer using which you can install all your favorite applications. It has PHP 7 support which is the fastest compared to its predecessors. Hostinger has Git support which enables the developers to work together more efficiently. Apart from these Hostinger has a great support team that provides awesome customer support. It also provides free domain to its customers which is very helpful for budding entrepreneurs. There are plenty of other features that anyone would expect from a cloud hosting service.
Pros
- It provides a free domain.
- Offers unlimited features.
- It guarantees an uptime of 99.9%.
- The website loads faster with the cache manager.
- Its custom dashboard is great.
- Offers free trial for one month.
Cons
- It doesn’t offer daily backup.
- The service does not provide SSL certificates for free.
Pricing
- The Cloud Startup plan costs $15.90/month. It offers unlimited websites, 3 GB RAM, 2 CPU cores and 100 GB SSD storage.
- Cloud Startup plan is for $31.80/month. It offers unlimited websites, 6 GB RAM, 4 CPU cores and 140 GB SSD storage.
- The Cloud Global plan costs $80/month. It offers unlimited websites, 16 GB RAM, 8 CPU cores and 200 GB SSD storage.
DreamHost
DreamHost can be said to be one of the most underrated clouds hosting services on this list of top 10 cloud hosting providers. Nevertheless, it has all the abilities and qualifications to provide the best cloud hosting for its customers. DreamHost was founded in the year of 1997 in Los Angeles. Currently, DreamHost offers its services to more than 1.5 million websites around the world. DreamHost is another web hosting service that is endorsed by WordPress which only goes to show its credibility as a cloud hosting service. It has been in this industry for almost 25 years and it knows what to do in terms of cloud hosting. The service boasts many interesting features and options which not many providers would offer for the small prices it does.
If DreamHost is best for anything it is its WordPress hosting ability which is the same for all of its hosting options. It gives you an option to pre-install WordPress and website builder that is template-based. Using managed WordPress one can migrate their website within 48 hours for free. WordPress has automatic updates that ensure to install any security updates as soon as they appear. It also ensures that all of your data is backed up daily or on-demand. The DreamPress pro has additional resources using which it can handle more than one million visitors every month. The extra DreamCare support conducts advanced troubleshooting, fixing the problems without getting them to your notice.DreamHost has a dashboard that contains a Build website panel. This panel offers multiple options for its users to start creating their own websites.
DreamHost offers many templates which you can choose to build your website with a click or two. After that, you can start editing the content and configure it with your details. It also provides one-click installs for applications like Joomla, concrete5, Zen Cart, phpBB and Mediawiki. DreamHost does not consist of a cPanel it instead has a custom panel of its own that offers great similar features.it offers an uptime of 99.94% which is quite impressive. Most of the web hosting sites offer a money-back guarantee of 30 days or a maximum of 45 days. DreamHost offers a money-back guarantee of 97 days which is very unusual. The only exception is that only payment through credit cards will be refunded other payment methods like money order and checks will not be refunded. DreamHost offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth to all of its users. It is one of the few companies in the world that is trying to harness all of its energy through renewable sources. They are trying their level best to reduce their annual carbon footprint. DreamHost does not offer free migration options instead one has to pay for migrating their sites
Pros
- It offers unlimited bandwidth.
- You can host unlimited sites.
- Provides a 100% uptime guarantee.
- 97-day money-back guarantee.
- Unlimited subdomains and data storage.
- It offers a 14-day free trial.
Cons
- You need to pay extra for other features.
- Customer support takes a long time to respond.
- It requires additional cost for premium WordPress hosting.
Pricing
- For a maximum $4.50/month plan you will get 1 vCPU, 80 GB SSD disk, 100 GB block storage, free bandwidth, and 512 MB RAM server.
- The maximum $12/month plan will get you 1 vCPU, 80 GB SSD disk, 10 0 GB block storage, free bandwidth, and 2 GB RAM server.
- For a maximum of $48/month plan you will get 4 vCPU, 80 GB SSD disk, 100 GB block storage, free bandwidth, and 8 GB RAM server.
TMDHosting
TMDHosting is another cloud hosting provider that not many people have taken seriously. But one glimpse at its features and efficiency might change everything for them. There are nearly 300,000 websites that are being hosted through this web hosting platform. TMDHosting has an experience of more than a decade in the web hosting industry and has grown quite a bit since its inception. It has hosting locations in six countries but not all of them are available for each plan they offer. They use different servers for different hosting methods and plans. TMDHosting has servers in countries like Japan, Australia, Netherlands, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and America. Irrespective of the server location its support offers free installation of WordPress and some other applications. Not only that but it also ensures the installation of their templates, components. TMDHosting makes sure that it applies the update patches as soon as they appear. It also has windows hosting which might be a little inconsistent at times. TMDHosting offers a 60-day money-back guarantee on its cloud hosting services which is a pretty long period for web hosting services.
It offers unlimited bandwidth and unlimited SSD space on all of its cloud hosting plans. TMDHosting has cPanel which is very efficient in managing cloud hosting. It provides premium support, NGINX web server, and standard SSL. You can create nice websites as it provides a portal that is colorful, clean and modern. TMDHosting is designed in a way to give you quick access controls and status information like the current bandwidth of your website. It also gives you information updates about pending invoice payments, usual service messages, expiring domains and ticket responses. You can log in with one-click into any of your websites through the button on cPanel. Once you log in to the cPanel you will be given access to all the standard tools. You can use these tools to set up your accounts, emails, manage sub-domains and upload files.
Apart from that, it offers a bundled Softaculous which is a well-designed framework that performs many actions. This feature makes it super easy for one-click installation of WordPress, PrestaShop, OpenCart, Joomla along with some other applications. TMDHosting has a Weebly button on its panel but it is present as a default but you must order it separately through the provider. If you click on the support button you will be directed to an area called My tickets using which you are able to create new tickets. TMDHosting has nearly 40 tutorials all of them are text-based. These tutorials cover topics related to the installation and configuration of Joomla, PrestaShop, Magento, WooCommerce, WordPress, and others.
Pros
- The server performance is incredible.
- It offers great customer support.
- The dashboard is easy to use.
- Offers a 60-day money-back guarantee.
- If you sign up for the first time you get great discounts.
Cons
- It increases prices after the first term.
- Does not offer any free trial.
Pricing
- The starter cloud plan costs $5.95/month. It offers unlimited space, 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM and unlimited bandwidth.
- Business cloud plan is for $6.95/month. It offers unlimited space, 4 CPU cores, 4 GB RAM and unlimited bandwidth.
- The Enterprise cloud plan costs $10.95/month. It offers unlimited space, 6 CPU cores, 6 GB RAM and unlimited bandwidth.
Hostwinds
Hostwinds is a US-based hosting company that was founded in 2010 whose headquarters is located in Seattle. Most of its data centers are located in the US in regions like Seattle and Dallas and there is another one outside of the US that is Amsterdam, Netherlands. Despite offering various web hosting services it has very low prices for a company based in the US. Though it’s is a budget-friendly hosting service Hostwinds offer a wide range of features like free SSL certificates, unlimited FTP accounts, and auto-installers. It provides unlimited subdomains, email accounts, MySQL, databases and the latest version of cPanel among other notable features. Just like many of the hosting services Hostwinds also allows easy installation of necessary applications like vBulletin and WordPress. Hostwinds offers free domain name, instant setup and free website transfers. This allows you to get things going right from the moment you open your account.
It makes sure that a site is always online using several uptime protocols that it contains. Hostwinds even offers an uptime guarantee of 99.9999% which is impressive considering its prices. You might be thinking about what kind of operating systems that it is offering. Hostwinds is offering both Linux and Windows web hosting options. But you should know in advance that it’s packages for windows unmanaged hosting are costlier compared to the hosting packages of Linux unmanaged services.it has two essential tools namely wind speed and windshield that take care of the proper functioning of websites. Windspeed improves the performance of the website through optimization of the server whereas windshield improves the security preventing all kinds of security breaches.
Another important aspect of Hostwinds is its ease of use. It is a very user-friendly service compared to many other hosting providers. Anyone who has worked with a Linux server in the past would find it easier to work on it. You don’t have to wait for long periods of time to set-up your account as the process is quite simple. The process of setting up an account takes less than five minutes. However Hostwinds does not offer backups by default, one has to pay extra money if they want nightly backups. This is not a big deal as the prices are quite low and setting it up is also easy. Hostwinds offers a 30-day money-back guarantee to its users. The only problem is that the speed of the websites closer to the US is high. But as you move away from it the speed starts to drop as the websites are far from its data centers. Hostwinds provides customer support through tickets, live chat, telephone, and emails.
Pros
- It provides a free IP address.
- Offers great customer support.
- Affordable pricing
Cons
- It doesn’t provide any free trial.
- The affiliation process is confusing.
Pricing
- For the $0.006931/hr plan, you will get 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB storage and 1 TB bandwidth.
- The $0.013875/hr plan will get you 1 CPU, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB storage and 2 TB bandwidth.
- For the $0.026375/hr plan, you will get 2 CPU, 4 GB RAM, 75 GB storage and 2 TB bandwidth.
- The $0.040264/hr plan will get you 2 CPU, 6 GB RAM, 100 GB storage and 2 TB bandwidth.
- For the $0.054153/hr plan, you will get 4 CPU, 8 GB RAM, 150 GB storage and 3 TB bandwidth.
- The $0.069531/hr plan will get you 4 CPU, 12 GB RAM, 200 GB storage and 4 TB bandwidth.
- For the $0.106931/hr plan, you will get 6 CPU, 16 GB RAM, 300 GB storage and 5 TB bandwidth.
- The $0.173597/hr plan will get you 8 CPU, 32 GB RAM, 400 GB storage and 6 TB bandwidth.
- For the $0.298597/hr plan, you will get 12 CPU, 64 GB RAM, 500 GB storage and 8 TB bandwidth.
- The $0.456931/hr plan will get you 16 CPU, 96 GB RAM, 750 GB storage and 9 TB bandwidth.
Google Cloud
Google Cloud is a cloud computing services platform that runs on Google’s very own infrastructure. It is the same infrastructure that Google uses to run Gmail, YouTube, and its very own search engine. Google Cloud was launched on April 07, in the year 2008. Google Cloud platform service includes cloud computing, data analytics, data storage as well as machine learning. It was designed to manage and host web applications in its data centers that are all over the world. Google Cloud is a multilingual cloud service provider that offers services in 13 languages. These languages include German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch, English, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Its clients are some of the most popular companies in the world as it provides services to the likes of Coca-Cola, PayPal, Twitter, and eBay.
Google Cloud offers a powerful cloud hosting platform for enterprise users because it focuses only on cloud computing. This method is great for websites of businesses that tend to fluctuate or the ones that envision a possible growth in the near future. One will get features like free website transfers, free website building tools and one-click installers which are very helpful for beginners. It also has many other powerful features that are designed for developers. One of the great advantages of using Google Cloud is its network range all over the world. It has five data centers in the US alone which are located in Los Angeles, South Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, and Iowa. The other data centers are situated in Canada, Brazil, Netherlands, London, Finland, Zurich, Frankfurt, Belgium, China, India, Australia, Japan, and Singapore. When you are hosting your website on a platform offered by a company like Google you’d expect high-security standards. Well, it doesn’t disappoint you as it has all the latest technology and security features that satisfy international requirements.
Google Cloud is also in partnership with some of the largest tech companies like Salesforce. You can integrate with G suite to manage your customer relationship and integrate with Google analytics 360 to ensure good workflow. It wishes to remain an open-source platform as you can work on it using Kubernetes, Android, and TensorFlow among others. Google Cloud has the ability to switch from one open-source to another so that you do not have to stick to one provider. There are a lot of options in its menus but it will be easy to understand after you click the Get Started button. It has one-click installations on solutions like Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, Jenkins, Gitlab, and Plesk. You can be sure that your website will not go offline as Google itself is running the platform on its own infrastructure. It promises to provide an uptime of 99.99% and clearly states that it would provide financial compensation if your website experiences any downtime. One has to pay if they want any sort of tech support. It has three-tier plans that offer support through phone, chat, and web.
Pros
- Great performance.
- Incredible security.
- It offers live migration.
- Offers a 12-month free trial.
Cons
- Weak customer support.
- It contains a complex pricing scheme.
Pricing
- The pricing depends on the services you use as you go. So there is no fixed pricing list.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure which was initially known as Windows Azure is a cloud computing service that is, of course, developed and released by Microsoft on February 1, 2010. It was created so that developers can build, test, deploy and manage web applications and their services through data centers managed by Microsoft. Microsoft Azure allows all of its websites to store, backup and recover their information through the cloud. It lets its users to run large scale computing and enterprise applications along with the ability to implement predictive analytics. Using Microsoft Azure you can leverage the internet of things service and create all kinds of intuitive products. Microsoft Azure has data centers in nearly 22 regions all over the world which assures great connectivity. Unlike any other cloud hosting service,, Microsoft Azure offers free services for twelve months. You can start building and scaling your website using PHP, ASP.NET or Node.js and deploy the end product using Got, FTP or TFS within seconds.
On Microsoft Azure, one can effortlessly run and deploy Windows and Linux virtual server machines. In addition to that one can change infrastructure and migrate websites without changing even a single line of code. For your mobile applications, you can include features like structured storage, authentication, and notifications. Microsoft Azure offers its platform to build infinitely scalable and highly available applications. Apart from that it also supports automated deployments, multi-tier scenarios, and elastic scale. It has a Handoop service that is entirely compatible with enterprises.
This PaaS solution can distribute, manage and create media in the cloud as well as integrate with Active Directory and System Center. Microsoft Azure allows you to do encoding, content protection, analytics support, and streaming. Other than these features it provides CDN, virtual network, and cloud services. It also provides SQL database, caching and media services. Microsoft Azure offers customer support through training, emails, and tickets.
Pros
- The service offers high redundancy and availability.
- It provides great data security.
- The service offers a 12-month free trial.
- Scalability of resources is easy.
Cons
- A complex platform which only experts find easy to use.
- It needs a great deal of management and maintenance.
Pricing
- Microsoft Azure does not have a fixed pricing model. The customers need to pay the service depending upon the specifications and functions they need.
Visit website: Microsoft Azure
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud computing platform that was released by Amazon in March 2006. It is an Infrastructure as a Service solution that is currently leading the market of cloud computing. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has sales that exceeded $200 billion which is more than Microsoft Azure, IBM, and Google Cloud. It offers services to some of the most popular companies like Samsung, Unilever, Kellogg’s and Netflix. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is not just a hosting service as it also sells products like the Internet of things, virtual reality tools, machine learning apps, and gaming technologies. It offers its services in 15 languages as it has customers all over the world. These languages include Arabic, English, Thai, Russian, Korean, Portuguese, Turkish, Japanese, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Indonesian and Chinese.
The main target of Amazon Web Services (AWS) is developers, enterprises, and SMEs. Amazon Web Services (AWS) does not offer website building tools, automatic backups, and free website migrations. But it offers configuration of features like CDN and spam protection. It also provides SSL support to backups that are manually configured but there are no automatic configurations whatsoever. One thing that you do not have to worry about when you subscribe to Amazon Web Services (AWS) is infrastructure. With a company that is as big as Amazon it naturally has no shortage of infrastructure. Since its inception to now Amazon Web Services (AWS) has expanded to be the largest network worldwide. It offers its services from 64 zones that present in 21 regions where it has 169 presence points. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has fewer downtimes compared to any other cloud hosting services that present in the market. It guarantees an uptime of 99.99%. if you experience any downtime you will receive compensation that can range from anywhere between 10% to 100% based on the amount of time that your website was down for.
Another great advantage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) has the ability to scale resources at will. This means that if your website experiences a sudden increase in traffic then the service automatically reacts to adjust the bandwidth. You will be billed for these services afterward. Not only that but one can also buy software on the AWS marketplace. If you are a software developer then you can sell products of machine learning, operating systems, and DevOps. Despite offering a wide range of services it will take less than a minute to set-up an account in Amazon Web Services (AWS). It offers its customers a free tier where they can host websites for free in case they want to test the service. Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a container-based environment that may not be useful for small website owners but very useful for developers.
Pros
- The service is very easy to use.
- It does not put any limitations on its capacity.
- This service is one of the most secure and reliable hosting platforms in the market.
- It offers great speed and agility.
Cons
- It charges some extra fees for technical support.
- There are some general issues with cloud computing.
Pricing
- Even AWS does not have any fixed pricing list as it also employs pay as you model.
Visit website: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Liquid Web
The last entry in this list of Best cloud hosting is a US-based cloud hosting company called Liquid Web which was founded 2 decades ago. Since that it has grown into a $100 million company that has more than 300,000 customers. These customers host more than 500,000 websites through its five data centers around the globe. Compared to many other cloud hosting services it offers far more for the money it charges. For example, it provides complete access to its database and server. Liquid Web offers PHP 7, Varnish, Nginx, intelligent image optimization and daily automatic backups for everyone. It handles plugins and WordPress updates for all of its customers. The prices for Liquid Web are a little higher than other services of its kind because of the high powered products it offers. The quality and powerful features justify its pricing which does not have any hidden costs.
Liquid Web offers 100% power uptime and network along with SLA certificates to its users. It provides customer service through phone and live chat with the response time of helpdesk being 59 seconds on an average. If a problem arises the fault in the hardware is replaced within 30 minutes after finding the issue. Even then if you experience any downtime you will be compensated with more than 10 times the amount based on the length of your downtime. This will be of great help to small businesses who cannot afford to lose money due to their downtime. The management portal of the Liquid Web is full of hosting management details. It has details regarding billing details, payment information, account profile, account history server images, firewall settings, domain management, a web knowledge base and many more. It stores the information in detail such as the history feature which stores all kinds of information regarding your activities. The features keep track of activities like shutdowns, operating system configuration, license checking, reboots and more.
Liquid Web contains a site migration-center that allows its customers to request for free site migration from its support team. It provides 24/7 live chat through phone email and live chat. The standard dashboard of WordPress is just a single click away. You are able to install plugins, change site settings, choose themes along with the ability to create and publish your posts. It offers other more features like SFTP and SSH using which you can manage your WordPress site at both folder and file level.
Pros
- The scalability of resources is effortless.
- It offers powerful security features and data centers.
- Offers 24/7 and 365 days cross-platform support.
- Provides lots of resources for fewer prices
Cons
- Little costly compared to some of the other plans.
- It does not provide any freebies.
Pricing
- The Cloud Dedicated 1271 v3 plan costs $110.98/month. It offers 200 GB space, 4 CPU core, 8 GB RAM, and unlimited bandwidth.
- Cloud Dedicated 1230 v5 plan is for $179.18/month. It offers 450 GB space, 4 CPU core, 16 GB RAM, and unlimited bandwidth.
- The Cloud Dedicated Dual 2620 v3 plan costs $222.58/month. It offers 1000 GB space, 12 CPU core, 16 GB RAM, and unlimited bandwidth.
Conclusion
Cloud hosting is becoming more and more prominent with each passing day. There are many reasons for it along with benefits. Cloud hosting is currently the latest technology that is available for hosting websites. Most of the companies in the world are looking forward to hosting their website on cloud hosting services because of its flexibility. Not only that but the scaling of resources for a website is easier if it is hosted through a cloud hosting service. Providing security for a website is also easier in a cloud as the data is not stored in a single server. The website can easily be backed up and restored in another server if one server goes down. Even the cost of hosting is also cheap compared to other methods of hosting. Hope this article on top 10 cloud hosting providers has helped you in understanding cloud hosting and choosing the best cloud hosting service suitable for your requirements.