Organizations looking for a web hosting solution will be interested to learn more about the similarities and differences between virtual private servers and cloud hosting.
Web hosting services are vital to modern organizations with websites, applications, and other digital assets. While organizations might understand the need for a hosting plan, there are several hosting solutions to choose from, not to mention a bevy of hosting providers.
This crowded marketplace, full of technical terms like shared and dedicated hosting, can make it difficult for companies to choose the right hosting plan for their needs.
This post will help your organization understand cloud hosting and VPS hosting and how they differ.
Hopefully, you will be able to use the information in this post to help your organization choose a hosting platform and plan that best meets the needs of your website or application.
Understanding the Terms Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting
Unless you have an IT background, you likely don’t know the difference between VPS and cloud hosting. However, it is important to understand the terms involved before your organization can choose a web hosting provider or solution.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these hosting options before exploring their differences.
What Is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting relies on a network of virtual machines connected to an underlying network of physical servers. Cloud computing has become one of the most popular choices for organizations due to its high availability, flexibility, and scalability.
Essentially, an organization’s cloud server is endlessly scalable. However, cloud servers share computing resources amongst all users on a particular cloud server.
Still, if a cloud server reaches maximum resource utilization, your traffic can be diverted to another server in the cluster. So while your organization will have to share resources on a cloud hosting platform, it rarely, if ever, causes availability issues.
What Is VPS Hosting?
VPS stands for virtual private server. Instead of multiple physical servers, VPS hosting uses one physical server that is partitioned into multiple servers.
Despite sharing a physical server, each virtual server is completely independent from the rest and acts as a dedicated server. Dedicated servers can be configured in any way your organization wants, and they don’t share computing resources.
Virtual private server hosting is a way for businesses to get a dedicated server isolated from the other users and websites hosted on a single physical server.
Comparing VPS and Cloud Hosting
Now that you have a better understanding of cloud and VPS hosting, it will be helpful to compare the two hosting options in greater detail.
The important considerations for many organizations are:
- Cost
- Performance
- Scalability
- Security
- Customization
Let’s see how these two hosting options compare on these key considerations.
Cost
Businesses are always considering costs and how to maximize their financial resources. However, when it comes to cost, the differences between VPS and cloud hosting depend on the desires of your organization.
Prices vary between hosting companies, so comparing similar plans between providers is important. However, typically, cloud hosting will cost less than VPS hosting.
Yet, we shouldn’t rush to say that cloud hosting wins the cost comparison question. VPS hosting offers organizations control they can only get with dedicated servers, and VPS is cheaper than dedicated servers.
As you can see, both options are cost-effective options for certain goals. However, with everything else being equal, VPS is generally more expensive than cloud hosting.
Performance
Beyond cost, performance is the most important consideration for most organizations. But, again, the differences between these hosting options are minimal.
VPS hosting guarantees your organization its own dedicated resources, but if the physical server fails, your business is in trouble. On the other hand, businesses share resources in cloud hosting, but if one server fails, there is a cluster of others to keep websites and apps running.
Many organizations worry that resource demand will slow down their assets. However, cloud computing is robust, and while the possibility exists that there will be a surge of demand that leads to computing resource scarcity, this is not a common occurrence.
Organizations must consider whether they want to share computing resources or be greatly affected by a single physical server failure. Both conditions could potentially affect performance, but both are uncommon events.
Scalability
Cloud hosting is a popular option because it is nearly infinitely scalable. However, when comparing cloud and VPS hosting, the cloud is far more scalable.
If your computing resource usage is consistent, scalability might not be a major consideration for your organization. However, if your website or app experiences large fluctuations in user demand, cloud hosting is a better choice.
VPS solutions can be scaled, but not as effectively or quickly as cloud services.
Security
Cloud computing is generally very secure but not as secure as VPS hosting. VPS is isolated from all other users, which leads to greater security than shared hosting options.
However, while VPS is inherently more secure than cloud hosting, security strength depends on the hosting company. A cloud hosting provider that takes security more seriously than a VPS host can eliminate most of the security advantages VPS has over the cloud.
As a result, it is important to closely review a provider before purchasing their services.
Customization
VPS hosting is more customizable than cloud hosting. In a VPS environment, your organization has complete control over the configuration of its virtual server. Your organization will have far less control over configuration in a cloud environment.
Final Thoughts
There are benefits to both hosting options. Neither option is inherently better than the other. The best choice for your business will depend on its processes and needs.
If you want to learn more about cloud and VPS hosting, reach out to an experienced cloud development expert like Koombea to figure out which option is best for your organization.
