Web Hosting, like several other business services, is shifting to the Cloud. Top web hosting firms now provide Cloud Hosting services along with their Dedicated, VPS and Shared Hosting services, to give their customers capacity for high traffic, enhanced reliability, and better security.
Cloud hosting service providers usually use the popular buzzword, ‘unlimited’ to describe their bandwidth and storage. However, there are limits to these. The bandwidth and storage are unlimited only as long as you do not exceed the regular use, as given in its terms of service. Such limits are more clearly defined in case of Cloud, VPS and Dedicated Hosting, as they are higher-end web hosting services.
How do you choose your Cloud Hosting service provider? You need to be extremely alert while picking up a Cloud Hosting service provider.
Determining a budget
Web companies host your website for a monthly fee and an annual registration fee. They have a variety of plans on offer with pricing structures and discounts. The costs are determined by the type of hosting you pick, the chosen plan length, or the type of contract you sign with the company.
You need to tread with caution here. Mostly, companies advertise their promotional pricing, which shows lucrative discounts, but they start charging you the regular rates after the promotion ends. So, carefully check the regular rates even while you are buying the discounted plan. Similarly, compare the pricing of the top Cloud Hosting services providers with each other to ensure that you get the best value.
Selecting the cloud hosting service
Owning a website does not just mean owning a domain name. It means you host the data and information on the site. There are services which review, analyse and test the best plans available in the market. They then rank the best cloud hosting service to help small businesses make a choice according to their budgets. You can take their help while you are doing your research.
What you precisely need to know while choosing a cloud hosting service is the structure and features of the web hosting plans. Also, insist on knowing the terms and fees, which web hosting providers are usually reluctant to disclose.
Before finalising a unique name for your website or signing up for a domain name, you must be clear of the focus of your online business and the storage that you’ll need. You will need unlimited disk space if your website is going to have blog posts, videos or images, and unlimited bandwidth if you are anticipating heavy traffic.
Which web host suits your business?
Each company forcefully promotes its Cloud Hosting service to get you to sign on with it. To be able to decide which one is for your business, you must consider these basic points:
- Unlimited: Really? The term “unlimited” is frequently used in promotional offers. However, unlimited actually means, “not exceeding regular use,” which is actually spelt out in the fine print. Companies usually claim that their customers won’t ever face network congestion, but they actually have a limited control over it. Whether a site will be weighed down by data will depend upon the amount of media stored on your site. The provider promptly sends you a warning to reduce usage if your site is overloaded. So, the promotional “unlimited” claim can be deceptive.
- Downtime Shooter: Technical problems cannot be predicted. Companies do not hesitate to claim 99% uptime. But even if your site fails or is inaccessible, and the service gets it working within 20 minutes, you can still lose business and the possible revenue from it in those 20 minutes. You can hardly do anything about it at your end. Therefore, it’s crucial to check whether the provider is giving a responsible tech support.
- Compatibility: The Cloud Hosting service that you choose impacts your website’s operation in the long run. You can’t choose it just for the bundle it is offering. Ensure that the features offered are compatible to your business.
- Security: Security, needless to say, is crucial. Look for a web hosts who promises to backup and restore your site if there is a situation without an additional fee. There are hosts who give anti-spam protection too.
Cloud Hosting is increasingly moving towards a destination with no return. It is rapidly getting into a state of consolidation as an essential tool for the future of the internet. This is because Cloud Hosting allows you to scale up or down the resources of a server within seconds, which is impossible in physical servers.
Speed is crucial for decision-making is what we understand as we go deeper in the digital world. In a Cloud Hosting service, everything is connected, which helps in immediate interaction, quick application of the required changes and, making the best use of time.
Basically, Cloud combines three critical needs of technology: self-sufficiency with high agility and cost effectiveness, the most desired condition for any business.