You may be familiar with cloud computing, but who provides the best cloud server? With the dramatic advancement in technology, the internet has become more accessible to people over the last few decades. It has made business owners look for scalable, fast, and distributed hosting platforms coming at affordable rates. Thanks to cloud computing, that has led to a boom in website or web-application hosting choices with cloud servers while keeping the cost significantly low.
But to take your business to the cloud, you have to select the best cloud server that meets your business specifications better.
In this post, we will look at the best cloud server providers in the market and what you should consider when choosing which is right for your business.
What is Cloud Server?
A cloud server is a virtual server that runs in a cloud-computing environment rather than a physical server. It is hosted and delivered via the internet using a cloud-computing platform that is accessible from anywhere.
In cloud hosting, your web app or site does not get hosted on a single server. Your site gets hosted across several interconnected servers and uses server resources from a centralised virtual pool for maximum uptime, scalability, and optimal load balancing.
Benefits of the Best Cloud Servers
The benefits cloud servers offer are:
Cost-efficiency:
Unlike traditional hosting services, you do not have to break your bank to build a robust IT infrastructure in cloud hosting. Moreover, you don’t have to pay a monthly fee for server resources; instead, you can only pay for the services you utilise and go for the pay-as-you option.
Scalability:
Cloud servers are also scalable, meaning that you can upscale or downscale the resource usage, like data storage capacity, RAM, bandwidth, etc., according to your requirements.
Convenience and Collaboration:
Hosting your website via a cloud platform means having no restriction of time or location to use or access the site. Any authorised user with log-in permission can access data stored in the cloud from anywhere with any device at any time! Moreover, cloud hosting enables users to share data or files among themselves and collaborate in a single document in real-time that ensures uninterrupted business operations.
Improved Uptime:
Hosting your site across a network of servers ensures your website is always up and rarely experiences downtimes. If a server goes down, another server of the interconnected system executes a request for smooth operation.
Top-notch Security:
A cloud server offers a sophisticated IT infrastructure and network wrapped by layers of protection: cutting-edge firewall technologies, data backup, data retrieval, standard encryptions like SSL/TLS to ensure your website, data, and visitors are safe from data breaches and cyber threats.
Effortless Integration:
Cloud hosting enables you to integrate different software to scale up your business quality. Furthermore, you can effortlessly upgrade software, applications, boost processing power, and more!
Risks in Cloud Hosting
Though few, there may be some risks in using a cloud hosting platform:
- Possibility of Downtime: As cloud hosting service is a factor of the internet functionality, you may face hurdles accessing the cloud services if there is an issue with the internet. Again, your business website may experience downtimes if there is any maintenance issue in the data centers, power loss, etc.
- Less Control: As the hosting service provider owns and administers the server infrastructure, you do not have the control you want over the system.
- Attack Vulnerability: As you have to share the server with multiple users in cloud hosting, you are not entirely safe from cyber attacks. Though cloud service providers ensure top-notch protection, your data is still vulnerable to potential attacks, data stealing, etc.
Best Cloud Server
Hostgator: Best for small websites and businesses
Technical Specifications:
SSD Storage: Unlimited
CPU Cores: 2/4/6 Cores
RAM: 2GB/4GB/6GB
Bandwidth: Unmetered
Fully Managed: No
Price: Starts at $4.95/month
Offering quality features and 3-varying plans with affordable rates, Hostgator is a market-leading cloud hosting provider.
Founded in 2002, HG was owned by Endurance International Group (EIG) in 2012. Besides getting a free domain, you now can leverage the power of cloud computing to make your website run more efficiently, experiencing less downtime and more speed.
With over 2 million users, Hostgator stands out from the pack by enabling its users to personalise the services better than other platforms.
Features
Let’s get insight into some of the surpassing features of this hosting service:
- Hostgator promises 99.99% uptime to ensure your website can rank on Google and is always available for your visitors.
- HG cloud hosting comes with optimal caching. So you can ensure your website does not experience latency and loads faster than ever before!
- It comes with intuitive dashboards to make system monitoring seamless, let you track your site performance, and analyse the essential matrices.
- All its 3-cloud hosting plans Hatchling, Baby, and Business, come with free domain, unlimited subdomain, and Baby and Business plan feature unlimited parked domain.
- With HG cloud plans, you can power your website by allocating resources as you need whenever the site experiences heavy traffic. It is a unique feature of the HG cloud hosting platform as other hostings of Hostgator would require you to upgrade your existing plan in case of resource limitations.
- Hostgator cloud hosting offers free-of-cost server monitoring. So you will immediately get notified if there is any hardware issue, and your website will be hosted by another server of the interlinked server network.
Pros
- 45-days money-back guarantee
Unmetered disk space and bandwidth
- Free SSL certification with all three plans.
- Unlimited website hosting with Baby and Business plan
- Free migration services
Cons
- Poor customer support
- Window-based VPS hosting not supported
Nexcess: Best for Ecommerce
Technical Specifications:
Disk Space: 50/75/125/400/600/800GB
Secondary Domain: 10/5/20/300/40/50
RAM: 20GB/26/32GB
Bandwidth: 1TB-10TB (Magneto)
Fully Managed: Yes
Price: Starts at For managed Magento hosting, 49/month
If you are searching for the best cloud server for hosting your eCommerce website, Nexcess can be your ultimate pick. With the facility of WooCommerce, Magneto, and WordPress integration, this high-performance hosting platform enables you to power your business with immediate sales.
Specially tailored to eCommerce websites, whether it is a small/midsized site or a big one, Nexcess cloud solutions promise to offer a high level of scalability, flexibility, and faster loading for bringing more dynamicity to your business.
But if you need access to unlimited server resources and bandwidth, Nexcess may not be a viable option.
Features
- All Nexcess plans come with auto backups saving your database and files for 1-month. This nightly backup is crucial for restoring your mission-critical business data in case of an accident.
- It comes with automatic traffic surge scaling. It is especially essential for eCommerce websites when they experience heavy traffic spikes. So during busy hours, your website will not crash or slow down and can run optimally. Though auto-scaling is free for the first 24-hours, you have to pay $6/hr after that time.
- This high-power cloud server also offers a Content Delivery Network (CDN ) service having data centers (PoP) in 22 geographic points for faster content delivery and a better user experience.
- It comes with free site migration with all hosting schemes.
- This hosting service is PCI compliant and provides top-notch security measures like advanced firewall technologies, remote monitoring, standard encryptions, etc.
- Nexcess Client Portal enables you to control user access. You can also track end-users, get system analytics, and more.
- With Nexcess dynamic staging environment, designing a new site or modifying a live site has become effortless.
Pros
- 100% uptime guaranteed
- Advanced caching for boosting your site performance and limit loading time
- 1-click auto-installation and optimisation of Nexcess cloud solutions
- Different CMS supported
Cons
- Limited server resources and bandwidth
- The siteWork control panel may seem troublesome to use
- Expensive
DreamHost: Best for coders
Technical Specifications:
SSD Storage: 30GB
Website: 1 to unlimited based on different plans
RAM: 8GB maximum
Bandwidth: Unmetered
Price: Starts at $4.50/month
If you are searching for a quality hosting platform with a competitive price that lets you shine, DreamHost is just for you. It is one of the oldest yet high-power web hosting platforms, getting founded in 1996.
This industry-leading web hosting offers you cloud services that grow with you. It has secured a trustworthy position in the hosting industry serving over 400000 users from 100+ countries.
But to get the most out of this cloud-based platform, you must have some technical knowledge.
The server resources coming with DreamHost plans are great for online Linux or Windows OS-powered application development, customisation, and management.
With unlimited resources and products, DreamHost is not only a hosting-focused provider. You now have the power to integrate email hosting or website builders effortlessly into your site.
Features
- DreamHost cloud hosting is built on a sophisticated architecture: super-fast networks, SSD disks, next-generation processors, etc., to ensure high-performance websites and applications with faster site loading, database queries, and intelligent caching.
- Its free and open-source OpenStack-compatible API enables users to automatically modify the server environment with DreamHost’s rich coding libraries and command-line tools.
- With this platform, you can even get help deploying your private cloud server.
- DreamHost cloud plans promise 100% uptime to ensure your website or web app is always available for end-users and does not go down.
- It comes with the facility for the 1-click installation and integration of various CMS and web applications.
- DreamHost features an easily customisable control panel.
- This cloud server supports applications like Python, Ruby, and Redis to run.
Pros
- 3-cloud hosting tires in MS Window, Linux, and BSD
- Free SSL certificate
- Flexible domain configuration
- 97-days money-back guarantee.
- Responsive and expert customer service around-the-clock
Cons
- Tracking hosting performance could be better
- Limited integration facility with external services
Hostinger: Best for small to large businesses
Technical Specifications:
SSD Storage: 100-200GB
Bandwidth: Unmetered
CPU: 2/4/8
RAM: 3/6/16GB
Fully Managed: Yes
Price: Starts at $9.99/month
If you want to leverage the power of cloud computing blended with shared hosting to boost your site performance and speed, Hostinger cloud hosting can be your ultimate choice.
Making your website run 3X faster and handling the backend, this versatile hosting service enables you to concentrate on your business. Built on advanced technologies, this robust and fully managed platform ensures you get highly redundant, scalable, and flexible hosting services. Now, your site can respond to any server requests quicker than ever before!
With over 29 million clients throughout 78 countries worldwide, Hostinger has become one of the most popular hosting services.
Though the price may seem a bit high if paid month-by-month and the uptime may fluctuate sometimes, it is worth investing, considering the system functionality and top-notch features.
Features
- Hostinger comes with a highly optimised, custom-made, simple yet powerful control panel that fits businesses of all sizes. So you can efficiently manage and control the server.
- Hostinger hosting service ensures 99.99% uptime to make your website operate optimally and keep it uninterruptedly available on the internet.
- Its top 2-tier plans come with impeccable email tools with access to unlimited emails and enable users to use Webmail from anywhere.
- With this cloud hosting, your database and files are backed up regularly. You can also restore or transfer your database when you need to move to another cloud plan.
- With Hostinger integrated in-built caching, now, your projects can run at lightning speed and rank higher on the search engine.
- This fully managed hosting service provider ensures performance and software updates as soon as they are available, enabling you to focus on the core business.
- It is integrable with Cloudflare to ensure your system is wrapped by layers of protection and out of reach of cyberattacks.
- Besides a free domain name, Hostinger cloud plans come with a website builder. It is excellent if you are a beginner or have limited technical knowledge. Though the website builder is not a market-leading product, its templates are good enough for designing a small business site.
- Hostinger cloud plans come with free hPanel with future updates.
Pros
- Quick installation
- Free SSL certificate
- Easy-to-use
- 30-days money-back guarantee
- Supports live chat
Cons
- Slow customer service
- Bit expensive compared to other platforms.
A2 Hosting: Best for Speed and flexibility
Technical Specifications:
Maximum Storage: Unlimited
Bandwidth: 2TB-9TB
Core: 2/4/6/8
Maximum RAM: 32GB
Price: Starts at $4.99/month
Founded in 2001 to help small businesses get published online, A2 Hosting has become an industry-leading hosting provider for its blazing-fast website hosting service.
With A2 Hosting cloud Hosting plans, now you can scale up your website performance, enjoying more speed, reliability and flexibility. One of the best benefits of opting for A2 cloud hosting plans is, you can host an unlimited number of websites within your approved bandwidth.
Though it does not offer a free domain name, if you require a cloud hosting platform for a resource-intensive site, nothing can beat A2 Hosting.
Features
- A2 Hosting comes with top-notch security measures. Site backup, advanced firewalls, spam detection, malware detection tools, and other security features are some of many.
- It offers support for different database types like PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL, etc. So you can pick anyone according to your convenience and administer the database within the control panel coming with your hosting plan.
- A2 Hosting allows users to manage and access files using .htaccess, FTP, and shell access.
- It supports various server-side programming languages and web frameworks.
- A2 Hosting features a free SSD that makes your website load 300X faster.
- One of the surpassing features of A2 Hosting is it guarantees superior and reliable service, ensuring 99.99% uptime.
- It supports one-click installation of CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magneto, and OpenCart.
- A2 Hosting service comes with free SSH access. So you can run a command-line environment in your hosting server for protected file transfer via encryption.
Pros
- Anytime money-back guarantee!
- Around-the-clock customer support
- Free SSL certificate upon one-year payment
- Supports root access for server environment customisation
- Free site migration
Cons
- Windows Server not supported
How to Choose the Best Cloud Server provider
If you are in a fix, how you can pick the best cloud server to make your business run smoothly on the internet; check out the following guide:
Consider Your Budget
Your budget plays a crucial role in selecting the best cloud hosting platform and scheme for your website. Determine how much you can spend and which package can suit your website requirements better within your budget.
Customer Support
No matter how sophisticated a hosting provider is, unless the team can ensure immediate solutions to hosting issues or hiccups, you cannot get the best out of the service. Spend on a provider that provides 24/7 customer support.
Money-Back Guarantee
Pick a hosting provider that comes with a money-back guarantee for a specific period. So if you are not satisfied with the features, you do not get trapped in that hosting service.
Uptime
For uninterrupted business development, ensuring your website is always live on the internet is crucial. So before going with a hosting platform, make sure it guarantees optimal uptime, so your site is rarely down.
Security
Always go with a provider that offers network, applications, operational/physical, and data security.
