Cloud Hosting vs VPS Hosting: Understanding the Features, Benefits, and Key Differences

The technological differences between Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting are a hot topic in the web hosting industry. Thanks to virtualization and remote operations advancements, both options are commonly chosen for hosting websites and web apps.

Whether you’re an established organization or a startup, finding a dependable internet solution for hosting your website is crucial. However, many people do not understand the differences between cloud and VPS hosting and mistakenly believe that any option will suffice.

But the truth is, choosing the right hosting solution requires careful consideration of various factors, such as your resource requirements (CPU, RAM, Storage, etc.), expected traffic, and the platform on which your site is built (such as WordPress, Magento, Drupal, Joomla, etc.).

To help you make an informed decision, let’s compare Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting. By the end of this comparison, you’ll have a clearer picture of which hosting solution best suits your business.

Cloud Hosting: Overview and Benefits

Cloud hosting utilizes virtualization technology to distribute resources across multiple servers, creating a scalable hosting environment. This allows websites and apps to be hosted on interconnected servers that work together to ensure high availability hosting server and optimal performance.

One of the main benefits of cloud hosting is its ability to easily scale up or down resources such as CPU, RAM, and storage as needed. This makes it ideal for handling unpredictable workloads, ensuring that websites or apps perform optimally.

Websites also are accessible anytime, anywhere, since hosting resources for each website are replicated on every cloud server in the cluster. Even if one cloud server experiences maximum traffic, the query for a specific site will be automatically routed to another server in the cluster.

Furthermore, allocating equal resources to the cloud servers in the cluster provides great reliability. If one of the machines malfunctions, it will not cause failure or disruption in the entire hosting service, ensuring continuous operation and high performance.

According to Market.us, it’s estimated that 2023 will conclude at a market valuation of $633 billion for cloud (hybrid, private, and public) computing. And by 2032, the numbers are expected to soar to $2321 billion.

– Source: Market.us

Benefits of Cloud Hosting

• Cloud hosting is relatively reliable because your website is hosted on a virtual partition that takes advantage of multiple physical networks. When one of the servers goes offline, it will slightly reduce the resource level to the cloud but will not add up to your website. No inaccessibility or anything else.
• Cloud hosting is secured by many physical servers protected from third parties who want to access their premises or interrupt their services.
• Cloud hosting is extensible, flexible, and scalable. It does not have the same constraints as a single server. Resources are available according to your requests and in real time.
• Cloud hosting is economical because you only pay for what you use.

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VPS Hosting: Overview and Benefits

Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting involves dividing a physical server into multiple virtual servers, each running its own operating system and hosting environment. Each virtual server has its own server resources, giving it more control and customization than shared hosting.

One of the major drawbacks of VPS hosting is its vulnerability, which can cause a particular slot or resource to go down in any crash scenario. When that happens, the website in that particular space will be unavailable, with no online backup available until the issue is fixed.

There remain exceptional possibilities where major trouble hitting a certain slot, such as an unexpected traffic surge on a random day or a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, can cause the entire machine and the subsequent applications to go down as all the resources belong to the same machine.

VPS hosting does have some useful points as it brings the margin closer between dedicated and shared hosting. It is commonly used for hosting medium to high-traffic websites, online applications, and databases. The top 1 million sites use VPS with a 40% share of DigitalOcean.

Benefits of VPS Hosting

• VPS hosting offers total and complete freedom. Free to manage your server as you like, you have access to everything, and you can install all the software you need.
• Hosting in VPS is very efficient. Unlike shared hosting, the VPS is not dependent on traffic or audience. You have your resources and are isolated from other virtual servers made on the physical server.
• Hosting in VPS is secure. All your files are private and inaccessible to other clients regardless of their rights on the server.

Cloud vs. VPS Hosting: Key Differences

First, let’s compare cloud and virtualization (VPS). The hardware, operating systems, and management methods separate the cloud and VPS infrastructures. That makes them different regarding reliability, flexibility, security, and availability.

Features	Cloud Hosting	VPS Hosting
Scalability	High scalability with the ability to scale resources up and down on-demand	Limited scalability, with the option to upgrade to a larger server or add more resources
Performance	Generally good performance with the ability to distribute resources across multiple servers	Performance is dependent on the hardware of a single server but can be improved by adding more resources
Pricing	Can be more expensive compared to VPS hosting due to the on-demand usage billing model	Generally more affordable, with a fixed monthly fee for dedicated server resources
Flexibility	High flexibility, with the ability to easily scale resources up and down and access a wide range of services and tools	Limited flexibility compared to cloud hosting, but still offers more control over server resources compared to shared hosting
Reliability	High reliability with multiple servers, backups, and automatic failover systems	Varies depending on the provider, but generally, good reliability and uptime with the option to add redundancy and backup systems
Security	Generally secure with multiple layers of security, firewalls, and data encryption	Secure, but may require additional security measures to be implemented by the user
Support	24/7 support and maintenance provided by the hosting provider	24/7 support and maintenance may be provided, but the level of support may vary depending on the provider

Cloud vs. VPS Hosting: Features Comparison

Let’s now take a deeper look at the features of Cloud hosting vs VPS hosting.

1. Scalability

Scalability refers to the ability of a web hosting solution or infrastructure to handle an increasing amount of traffic, data, and resource demands without experiencing performance degradation or downtime of the website.

It involves the ability of a hosting system to effectively handle growing levels of workload or traffic seamlessly and efficiently without impacting the performance or availability of the hosted websites or applications. Let’s see how both these perform in terms of scalability.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is highly scalable. Because of the nature of the infrastructure, you can easily add resources on the go.

Suppose you have a site on a 4GB server and are launching a sale and expecting more traffic. You can turn your server into 8, 12, or even more GBs, within a few minutes. This means your site won’t ever crash because of the lack of resources.

VPS

On the other hand; scalability is unavailable with VPS. You can choose the size of resources you need when launching your VPS server. But when it comes to scaling, you’ll be limited.

Adding more resources with VPS comes under the maintenance category. This means that you’ll have to temporarily take down your site and may need expert assistance.

Final Verdict: Cloud hosting wins the cloud vs. virtual server battle regarding scalability. It lets you add up resources instantly, and VPS fails there.

2. Performance

Performance is what the site owners seek now. Without high-performing hosting, your site will likely never see top ranks on Google. Performance is a broader term encompassing several aspects, such as scalability, TTFB, Uptime, etc.

And to understand its importance, here are 3 stat values for you by Thrivemyway.

1. Average hourly server downtime costs between $300,000 to $400,000.
2. 84% of customers said they don’t visit websites offering a poor experience.
3. Slow websites amount to a cumulative loss of $500 million in the US alone.

With that in mind, let’s compare the performance between VPS and Cloud.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting delivers top-notch performance. That’s largely because of its server infrastructure. With cloud hosting, your data doesn’t just rely on one server. With a better content distribution system, cloud hosting delivers data at amazingly fast speeds.

Plus, with high scalability options, your site will never have to be taken down because of a lack of resources. This also ensures better uptime stats.

VPS

It’ll require manual management, but VPS is equal to cloud hosting.

The downside with VPS is that a site’s performance can take hits because of a lack of resources since it’s one server where the site exists. Plus, the site will also go down if a server is down since there’s no backup to fall back to.

Final Verdict: Cloud hosting wins the performance side. Regarding speed, both are almost equal in fetching the data and delivering content to the visitors.

However, cloud hosting’s backup system and easy scalability take its performance up a notch. And even with such backups, 92% of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy so that their online operations never go down. So, choosing a VPS wouldn’t be a viable solution for them.

3. Pricing

Pricing is a major factor when it comes to choosing a hosting service for websites. But the pricing in the hosting industry varies so vastly that it’s hard to put the finger on the exact average ranges. Service providers constantly offer price cuts, discounts, and promotions, which can help you grab low-price deals.

Just as you strive for the best value, our Web Hosting Pricing Calculator aids your quest. This tool recommends an optimal server size based on your traffic and compares the top providers.

Cloud hosting 

Cloud hosting packages average between $10-100, depending on the website’s needs. The pricing can go even higher depending on your choice of provider or service.

Cloudways offers managed hosting starting at $11/Month, one of the lowest-priced offers in the market. However, pricing with cloud hosting can be variable, depending on your website’s demand fluctuations.

VPS

VPS also has an average pricing range between $10-100. However, you might get some deals that cost less than $10. Also, pricing with VPS is fixed on a monthly basis because you can’t scale up the resources on demand.

Final Verdict: Both are almost similar in pricing; however, some providers offer VPS for slightly lesser costs, so VPS is the winner here.

4. Flexibility

Flexibility refers to the ability of a web hosting solution or infrastructure to adapt and adjust to changing requirements, configurations, or environments without significant disruptions or limitations.

It involves the versatility and agility of a hosting system to accommodate different hosting needs, configurations, or settings based on the specific requirements of the hosted websites or applications. Let’s see the results of cloud vs. virtual servers in this regard.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting offers solid flexibility with resource management. You can allocate or de-allocate resources within minutes and pay only for the resources you use. Cloud providers also offer pricing flexibility with the pay-to-go model.

This is possible with cloud hosting because the infrastructure isn’t existent in one single spot.

VPS

VPS offers flexibility in terms of customizations. You can manually adjust everything. VPS is a good resource for those who want to micromanage their servers. However, that’ll take time and resources and should be done only in cases of extreme need.

Final Verdict: Both are flexible in different aspects. So it’s a tie here, and it’ll depend upon the preferences of the site owner or manager whether they want micromanagement or a managed server service.

5. Reliability

Ideally, your website should never go down. It negatively affects the rankings if it does. So, reliability and uptime are significant factors to consider when choosing your hosting services. Let’s see how the cloud and VPS compare here.

Cloud hosting 

Cloud hosting’s infrastructure is brilliant in this regard. Because the data doesn’t rely on one single physical server’s operation, the reliability is high. Even if a single component fails, there are backups available that keep the sites and software up and running.

Because of this infrastructure setup, cloud server providers boast 99.99% uptime for their users.

VPS

VPS is also a reliable infrastructure but falls slightly short compared to cloud hosting. That’s because it’s dependent on one single source, and if that takes any hit, the site goes down until the hosting providers fix the servers.

Final Verdict: Cloud hosting wins the reliability and uptime game.

6. Security

Keeping your website secure is the first priority. That’s one reason why VPS and cloud hosting trump shared hosting easily. Both provide ample cushions against online mal actors and keep your site from getting hacked or cyber-attacks.

But the security comparison between VPS and cloud hosting is an interesting one to see.

Cloud hosting

With cloud hosting, the data is spread across multiple servers and nodes. That could leave the data a little more exposed when compared with VPS.

However, cloud providers implement multiple security measures so that the data isn’t compromised. Several layers of firewall and data encryption ensure high levels of security.

Users can also implement several security measures to ensure the site’s security isn’t compromised. Safe to say that with those measures in place, cloud hosting is sufficiently secure. Stats from Cloudwards show that 48% of organizations choose to store their classified and high-value data on the cloud.

Another interesting stat shows that by 2025, only 1% of security mishaps will be because of the service providers. 99% would be because the mishaps would be business’s fault.

VPS

VPS is a generally secure infrastructure because the data isn’t floating. The data stagnation in one location makes it easy to manage it.

However, VPS users must also take additional security measures, such as using a VPN for Windows, to protect their sites from cyber-attacks.

Final Verdict: Both these infrastructures come equal in terms of security. Innately, the cloud servers are slightly more exposed than the VPS servers. But with additional security layers, cloud providers compensate for the lack, which brings both the infrastructure providers at par.

7. Support

There will be times when you’ll need a helping hand to manage your server requirements. And if it’s not provided timely, you can face losses. So, let’s see how cloud hosting and VPS do in terms of support and maintenance.

Cloud hosting

Cloud hosting platforms require less maintenance because most server-side operations are taken care of. In a way, you can easily do away without the technical expertise because the cloud providers manage most server-end issues themselves.

That automatically brings down the need for additional support and maintenance. However, most cloud hosting providers offer excellent support. Cloudways, for instance, offers 24/7 support to all its users. You can also avail premium support for some additional charges, and you’ll have dedicated server resources to help you at all times. Check out why Cloudways ranks as one of the best Siteground competitors.

VPS

Managing VPS will require more technical support than managing cloud hosting. This means that you may need technical support at various times.

VPS requires more manual maintenance than compared to cloud hosting. Some people consider it the freedom to make their site operate on their terms, while many see it as a hassle. So, be sure to see the quality of support your VPS service provider offers before choosing one.

Final Verdict: Support and maintenance depend greatly on your chosen provider. However, cloud hosting’s reduced need for micromanagement wins the support and maintenance game.

Cloud vs. VPS Hosting: Trends

Let’s now look at Google Trends worldwide! It’s evident that users prefer Cloud Hosting as compared to VPS Hosting. And there must be multiple reasons.

The trends are in high tides for Cloud hosting. And it seems that things are on the upside only for the industry. Because Cloud hosting is more suited for the masses compared to VPS, which is beneficial for certain use cases only.

Cloud vs. VPS Hosting: Key Takeaways

Honestly, both infrastructures have their pluses and minuses. Cloud hosting is a bit more advanced than VPS hosting. It requires less micromanagement, offers better speed, and clearly wins regarding uptime and reliability.

However, there may be times when you may need VPS hosting for highly sensitive data. Plus, cloud hosting can be a tad bit more pricey compared to VPS. However, the price is worth it for better support and website operations.

I believe that cloud hosting is clearly a better option in most cases. Especially for non-technical businesses who just want a functional site without glitches so that they can focus on running their business operations.

Most businesses don’t even have extra resources to deploy technical experts to maintain the VPS hosting.

Summary

Cloud hosting and VPS are two popular options for hosting websites, software apps, and web applications.

Both offer different pros and cons. But if you want limitless growth without worrying much about the scalability of the resources, website uptimes, and micromanagement of your servers, then the cloud is the way to go.

Cloud providers do the heavy lifting for the most part so that users can focus more on business operations and running the site rather than worrying about crashed sites.