Cloud-based website hosting is becoming increasingly popular with its immense benefits and little to no downsides. Naturally, most experts agree that cloud-based hosting is the future. Moreover, the cloud computing market is expected to double its market share in the next decade and exceed 2.3 trillion dollars. This will only increase with more and more people getting used to having their data stored on the cloud. One of the biggest myths is that the cloud is an unsecured space where your data is extremely vulnerable. While the cloud is not 100% secure, it definitely has much less breach potential than “land”-based servers. 

Even if you are convinced you need cloud-based web hosting, you still have to decide what product and plan you should choose. As experts in this field, we at HostArmada will happily guide you on this journey. 

Why is cloud hosting the best solution right now?

Before we get started, though, let’s have a look at why you should definitely switch to cloud-based hosting. The cloud-based hosting has become a favorite among businesses of all sizes and industries simply because it offers immense benefits. For example, cloud hosting allows for easy scalability of resources such as storage, processing power, and bandwidth, making it an ideal solution for businesses experiencing growth or fluctuating demand. Moreover, it allows companies to pay only for the resources they use. This is significantly more cost-effective than traditional hosting methods that require businesses to pay for dedicated server space regardless of usage.

Accessibility is another key advantage of cloud hosting. The 2020 IDG Cloud Computing Survey found that 94% of enterprises use the cloud, with 91% using public cloud services and 76% using private cloud services. This shows that businesses recognize the benefits of remote access to data and applications, giving their tech teams unparalleled working flexibility. 

Most importantly, though, cloud hosting providers typically offer high uptime guarantees and have redundant backup systems in place to ensure that data and applications are always accessible. The same IDG survey found that 69% of respondents reported improving uptime after moving to the cloud.

Finally, one of the biggest benefits is the increased security cloud-based web hosting provides. That’s not surprising, as 93% of all users see cloud security as their top priority. Thus cloud hosting providers have invested significantly in security measures and often offer around-the-clock monitoring and support.

In general, hosting your new website or transferring your old one to a cloud-based hosting provider will benefit your business significantly. To make the best out of this deal, however, you need to know what cloud product and plan best fits your needs. But before that, you need to make the difference between these two.

The difference between hosting product and hosting plan

Hosting products and plans might sound interchangeable, but they refer to different aspects of the hosting service. 

On the one hand, web hosting products refer to the physical infrastructure used to host websites. For example, Cloud Shared Hosting, Cloud VPS Hosting, Cloud Dedicated Hosting. These products are typically sold to businesses and individuals requiring a specific hosting solution to meet their unique needs.

On the other hand, we have web hosting plans. These are used to logically separate every web hosting product based on different features and price points. Usually, web hosting plans include features such as storage, bandwidth, email accounts, and more. So typically each hosting product will have several hosting plans.

Take, for example, our Cloud Shared Hosting product. It offers three pricing plans, depending on the website count, disk space needs, CPU power, and RAM size. To determine which product and plan will best work for your business, first, you must analyze your needs and financial capabilities before taking the next step. 

What to consider before choosing a cloud hosting product

Each business is unique and thus has different needs when it comes to web hosting.

For example, a small on-site washing machine mechanic will use their website predominantly as a business card. Naturally, they won’t need much space and won’t expect significant website traffic. On the other hand, a retailer will require significantly more resources. Therefore, before you choose your cloud-hosting product and plan, you need to consider at least five cornerstone aspects of your business:

1. What is your website’s niche?

Before everything else, your cloud web hosting package depends on the business niche you will be operating in. This will dictate how big your website will be, whether you will offer products there, what features you will need, and how many people will visit it each month. For example, if your business is in a tight niche like custom furniture construction, you may offer some products online. Still, depending on your location and business size, that doesn’t mean you will have many visits each month. So while you will want some mandatory features for retail businesses, you won’t need many hardware resources.

2. How much traffic do you expect?

While the niche you are operating in will determine what cloud web hosting product will best suit you, the amount of traffic you expect will push you toward a particular plan. For example, if you are expecting just a few people simultaneously on your website, then a more inexpensive plan would be sufficient. However, if you are a news outlet, for example, and you seek to reach out to as many customers as possible when the traffic reaches the limits of your server, it will simply crash. Therefore, predicting the size of your audience will help you a great deal to avoid this uncomfortable situation.

3. What features do you need?

Before choosing your cloud hosting product and plan, you must carefully consider what features you will need. Most products and plans come with some security, technical, web hosting, caching, and other features. Still, if you are expecting more than 100,000 visitors monthly, you might want to go for a 6-core CPU with at least 6GB RAM. Moreover, if you want to have more than one website on your cloud hosting account, you must ensure your chosen plan allows it.

Furthermore, fewer backups will suffice if your website is something like a business card and rarely changes. On the other hand, if you produce a lot of content daily and want to keep it safe, you might opt for a higher number of daily backups. 

4. How fast will you grow according to your business plan?

Next, you need to consider how fast your business will grow. Naturally, you will already know this if you have made a serious business plan. So, if you think your traffic and resource needs will scale in the following months, you might want to get a pricier plan from the get-go. On the other hand, if you are planning on a small growth process without significant influx for the first couple or even three years, you can go with the most affordable plan, which usually is triennial. Yes, you can always upgrade, but then you will lose the initial pricing discount you usually get when signing up with a hosting company for the first time. 

5. What is your budget

Finally, there is the budget. Naturally, if you are just starting and not expecting high revenues in the first year, investing in a Dedicated CPU Cloud hosting plan is unnecessary. Instead, getting shared hosting or a Cloud SSD VPS Hosting plan is far more sustainable and will cost you significantly less. Naturally, this will depend on your business niche and your needs. Still, allocating the budget should be considered a top priority, as while your first installment will be at a highly reduced price, your next billing will probably be at full price. So you need to be prepared. 

What cloud hosting product best suits you

Knowing the above factors, you can finally start determining what cloud infrastructure will best suit your business. There are several types of cloud hosting products to choose from.

Cloud Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the most popular type of cloud hosting due to its user-friendliness, relatively low cost, and low maintenance. Furthermore, shared cloud hosting usually offers all the essential features a person needs to build a successful website without having any knowledge of website development. For example, our Managed Cloud Shared Hosting offers a one-click application installer, which will allow customers to install an open-source platform for building their website in a matter of minutes. On top, we offer automatic daily backups, web server cache, SSD cloud storage, tight website security, an easy-to-pilot service with cPanel, and basically everything one needs to create the online home of their business. 

Pros: 

• Cost-effective
• User-friendly
• Low maintenance

Cons:

• Limited resources
• Customization limitations
• Shared Hardware
• No root access

Who is it for?

The shared cloud hosting is perfect for hobby, personal and professional websites. It’s the ideal choice for users with little to no website-building background and who can’t maintain a server independently. Moreover, it’s an excellent choice for small businesses without the financial resources to hire an IT team to handle every aspect of maintaining their own server. 

Cloud Reseller Hosting

In cloud reseller hosting, the account owner becomes a middleman between the cloud hosting provider and their clients. They can create multiple hosting accounts for their clients and manage them through a control panel supplied by the web hosting provider. The main advantage of cloud reseller hosting is that it allows the account owner to start their own web hosting business without needing to own and maintain their own server infrastructure. Instead, the cloud hosting provider takes care of the server maintenance, upgrades, and security, saving the account owner time and money.

For example, with our Cloud Reseller Hosting, the user can enjoy a 99.9% uptime without having to upkeep their own infrastructure. Moreover, they get Litespeed web server, static and dynamic cache, object caching of complex queries, DDoS Protection,Web Application firewall, IP Based Firewall, and many other features that can push them ahead of the competition when providing their customers with top-notch web hosting plans. 

Pros:

• Easy setup
• Cost-effective
• Scalable
• Customizable
• High-end support

Cons:

• Limited control on server level
• Dependent on the hosting provider
• Support responsibility to the end-client

Who is it for?

The Reseller cloud hosting solution is perfect for entrepreneurs who want to start their own hosting company but lack the infrastructure. Moreover, it’s ideal for web designers and developers and can be used as a valuable add-on. It’s also a viable option for IT consultants and small business owners who operate a number of websites simultaneously. 

Cloud VPS Hosting

Cloud VPS Hosting is often used when a user wants a private space but doesn’t need an entire server’s resources to operate. Thus the hosting provider creates a Virtual Private Server, on top of a cloud platform, with specific features and metrics. 

Cloud VPS Hosting is considered the next step towards independence from the hosting provider, as it offers more flexibility and control than shared hosting. Naturally, as the servers are virtually composed within the cloud, they can be highly customized according to the client’s needs. For example, our Cloud VPS Hosting offers a full ROOT level of access on demand, a 99.9% Uptime Guarantee of the server, and an Nginx Web Server Cache. 

Pros:

• Reliability
• Endless customization opportunities
• Scalability
• High security

Cons: 

• You need technical expertise
• Higher cost

Who is it for?

Overall, Cloud VPS Hosting can be a good option for those who require more resources and customization options than shared hosting but do not need the complete resources of a dedicated server. The most common users are mid-sized retailers and some business niches that value private security much higher than the average website owner. 

Dedicated Cloud Hosting

As the name suggests, this hosting product provides the user with a dedicated cloud server with all its resources dedicated to the hosted websites. The user can fully control the server and customize it to their will being able to rely on guaranteed resources. 

Unlike the traditional physical dedicated server product, the cloud-based product offers higher flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. 

Naturally, you will have full access to the server, but that also means you need some hosting expertise. Moreover, in most cases, you need to be able to manage updates and other tasks the server requires.

Pros: 

• Extremely high performance
• Limitless customization
• Access to the server
• High security
• Unparalleled reliability and uptime 

Cons:

• High price
• It’s highly complicated
• You will need a dedicated IT team.

Who is it for?

Dedicated Cloud Hosting is the perfect solution if you need complete control over your server or its full potential. For example, big e-commerce businesses or dedicated email services will prefer this product over others due to its high performance and security. Moreover, resellers, database servers, and other resource-hungry websites usually go after Dedicated Cloud Hosting. 

How to decide on your next Cloud Web Hosting Plan

Now that you know which product suits you best, it’s time to look at the plans. Choosing the plan is actually easier, as it consists of only five simple steps. 

Step one: Check the available plans for your cloud hosting product

This step should come without saying. You can’t pick up a plan if you don’t know what is offered. Host providers will often offer 3-4 tires of pricing, progressively including additional features and capabilities. For example, for four of our products (Cloud WordPress Hosting, Cloud Shared Hosting, Open Source Hosting, and Development Hosting) we offer three different plans. Start Dock is the smallest and most inexpensive package, which allows you just one website with 15 GB SSD storage, 2 CPU Cores, and 2 GB RAM. It also provides significantly fewer features and is ideal for people just starting with their first website.

On the other hand, Web Wrap allows unlimited websites with double the SSD Storage, CPU, and RAM. If these specs are insufficient, we offer a third-tier plan delivering 40 GB of SSD Storage, six-core CPUs, and 6 GB RAM. So naturally, the Speed Reaper, as the last tier is called, can accommodate almost any website’s needs. 

Naturally, under each pricing plan, there is a detailed explanation of what it offers and its limitations.

Step two: Explore the benefits and limitations

The next step comes intuitively, as you must explore all the plans’ benefits and downsides and see how they fit your needs. For example, if you want to add web hosting to your website development gig, you need to consider several factors. As you probably won’t be able to create more than 20 websites in the first year, even if your schedule is full, you don’t need to go for our Site Nova offer, which gives you 200 GB SSD space, 12 TB Bandwidth, and 200 cPanel Accounts. Instead, you can go for the much cheaper Sitedust, which offers 50 GB space, 3TB bandwidth, and 50 cPanel accounts.

On the other hand, if you are a reseller and you want to go big from the very get-go, you can start with either Protoseller or Web Giant and move on to Site Nova when you reach the client numbers. Keep in mind, though, that each of these offers has its limitations, so make sure to check what they offer thoroughly and see if that will fit your business plans. 

Step three: Compare them to your needs

The third step is determining whether the benefits fulfill your needs. For example, suppose you are an e-commerce retailer and need a VPS cloud server to host your online shop. In that case, you need to consider how heavy your content is, how much traffic you expect simultaneously, and how many products you will add. If you are still a small business that operates within a city or a state alone and you sell niche products, you can go for a smaller package.

For example, our Web Shuttle offers 50 GB SSD storage, 1-core CPU, 2 GB RAM, 2 TB Bandwidth, and 2000 Mbps Speed out. This would be enough for a small store that sells bicycle parts, for example. On the other hand, if your reach is broader and you sell food supplements, for instance, with a much higher market share, you would need Web Voyager or Web Raider, as more people will come to your store simultaneously and load the system. Naturally, you will need better bandwidth and RAM to keep your website alive and just as fast. 

So, before you go forward, ensure your chosen plan will suffice your needs completely. 

Step four: Plan ahead

If you’ve created your business plan, you will already know where your business is going. It’s essential to predict how fast your website will grow, so you can properly decide what plan to choose. Changing your pricing plan during your billing term is inconvenient, as you may lose your initial discount. For example, you can expect an initial discount if you get our Low Orbit plan for Dedicated Cloud Server. If you switch it with the High Orbit solution in the middle of the month, however, this will be considered your second billing, and no discount will apply. So, make sure to have a good plan for what you will need for the next few months so you won’t lose on deals. 

Step five: Choose the billing period

The final step naturally is choosing the billing period. Usually, hosting service providers opt for several billing periods for their shared hosting options and go for monthly billings for VPS and dedicated servers. So, if you are a small business and need a shared cloud hosting service, you must decide how dedicated you are to your project. Keep in mind that usually, the most extended billing period is the most favorable. For example, if you decide to purchase a shared cloud hosting from us, a Triennial subscription will cost you 10% less per month compared to what you will pay if you take a biannual subscription. So, if you are committed to your online project, you might as well go for the longest period, as that’s where the best deals usually are. 

Conclusion

Deciding on your website hosting is definitely not an easy task. There are a ton of things to consider and a lot of products and plans to choose from. The best thing you can do is to give yourself enough time. Research all available options, check all the benefits and limitations and consider all features you might need. We know how hard it is to make this decision, especially when it comes to your first website. Thus, we offer our potential customers a free consultation with our experts. Just contact them, and they will help you choose the best hosting product and plan for your needs.