EnglishBoth Cloud and Dedicated servers are two types of hosting solutions that you will find across many professional web hosting companies. Whether you're a small business or a thriving enterprise, the question remains: what is the difference between Cloud and Dedicating hosting and which one is the best solution for you?
Simply put, cloud hosting is using a large group of servers that share resources and contiguous virtual space. One typical asset of a cloud environment is a Cloud VPS. A Cloud VPS server contains a fully functional operating system which resides inside this shared space. While dedicated servers is using a server with dedicated resources and spaces.
Cost
Cloud hosting usually wins over with price, as there is no hardware to purchase and, you usually only pay for what you use or need. As your business grows, you’ll be able to scale up by adding more space for more or larger websites or scale down to utilize only what's needed. Because Dedicated Servers are actual physical pieces of hardware that you own, sometimes a setup fee can be associated with them.
Having your own Dedicated Server also means you’ll have the freedom of paying for maximum power, even though the server may not be utilizing all of its resources. Your hosting provider can maintain both Cloud VPS and Dedicated servers but, dedicated servers will often need an additional team with a deeper understanding of resource monitoring and troubleshooting. Lastly, Cloud VPS average entry-level VPS servers start at around $60 per month while an entry-level dedicated server starts off around $199 per month.
- An average entry-level server runs about $60 per month
- No hardware to buy
- Unlimited resource scaling
- You only pay for what you use
- Average entry level $199 per month
- Increased stability
- limited resource issues
- May include an initial setup fee
Uptime
Uptime is defined as the amount of time your server is online and available to your users. For most, uptime is of the utmost importance because businesses rely on the revenue or information that their site provides. More frequently, cloud environments uptimes are improving although, there is always the chance of downtime due to resource abuse from other customers residing on the same server.
Dedicated servers face similar issues but, those issues can be due to different reasons such as hardware failures. You’ll also find cloud environments are very resilient and, redundant with their environmental setup and also are ideal when scaling up is needed as this usually involves minimal downtime. When scaling up within a dedicated environment, downtime can have an initial impact on your overall uptime but, this is usually limited to the actual time that's needed to complete the hardware swap. Regardless of the minimal downtime involved in scaling up, dedicated servers are well known for their superb uptime and stability. Dedicated servers are also a favorite of larger e-commerce businesses that need solid performance and speed larger mission-critical websites need.
- More for small to medium business because uptime can sometimes be an issue
- Resilient and Redundant
- Can have occasional downtime due to shared resources
- Great uptime for larger websites, such as e-commerce businesses and high-traffic sites
- One point of failure
Speed
Because the speed of your website is most often the number one concern among website developers and users when differentiating whether the cloud or a dedicated server, the short of it is, dedicated will usually be faster. It can be difficult to compare the VPS or dedicated environments because not all websites are optimized for speed and, front-end and backend development can come into play.
- Average page load times
- Extra work needed to implement caching
- Quicker website load times
- High-performance due to unshared resources
You’ll find that determining the current need of your business will help to ease the choice of hosting environments. Dedicated servers remain the best choice where performance is critical if you have the money to spend but, can be somewhat of a downside when scaling up. Most small to medium sites are optimal to run on the cloud or can stand for the occasional downtime and are best for growing businesses. For a side by side comparison, visit our products to see our Dedicated Servers and Cloud VPS .
