There are many conventional web hosting options for creating your website, including shared, dedicated, WordPress hosting, and virtual private servers (VPS).
Cloud hosting, on the other hand, distributes your website over many servers and offers a customizable method to power your website.
Unlike traditional web hosting, which allocates a fixed amount of bandwidth and RAM to a single server, the best cloud hosting distributes your website’s requirements across a massive virtual server that resides on hardware in data centers around the world.
If you’re searching for a cost-effective hosting service that can scale with your company, cloud hosting is a great option.
We’ll break down 10 of the best cloud web hosting choices in this article and teach you how to figure out which is the best fit for your requirements.
Summary
- Hostinger — Best Cloud Web Hosting
- Cloudways — Best Powerful And Easy-To-Use Cloud Hosting
- Dreamhost — Best Cloud Server Hosting
- HostGator — Best Cloud Hosting For Websites
- Clook — Best For UK Servers
- DigitalOcean — Best Scalable Cloud Hosting For Small Businesses
- Kamatera — Best Personalized Cloud Hosting
- Nexcess — Best Cloud Hosting For ECommerce Websites
- A2 Hosting — Best Affordable Cloud Hosting
- Siteground — Best For Support
What Is Cloud Hosting?
Traditional hosting makes use of a single server’s CPU, RAM, storage, and data transfers to run your website.
In shared web hosting, for example, your website shares resources with other websites that are all hosted on the same server.
As a result, there is a slew of irritating power limitations, as well as an inability to manage sudden traffic spikes.
You may pay for a virtual private server or even a dedicated server of variable power for better service. In all of these situations, you’re essentially relying on one server.
Cloud hosting, on the other hand, throws the single-server hosting paradigm out the window. Your website uses resources from many servers when it is hosted in the cloud.
The use of multiple servers in cloud hosting offers it certain benefits over traditional hosting.
For example, if your website suffers a sudden surge in traffic, it may borrow resources from another server to avoid slow page loading or, worse, the site shutting down entirely.
Furthermore, cloud hosting allows you to easily scale your website’s resources up or down as required.
In order to get the power that your website requires with traditional hosting, you may need to switch to a different hosting type (for example, from shared to VPS).
It’s worth noting that there are many types of cloud hosting. Cloud hosting services from traditional web providers like DreamHost and HostGator are priced similarly to their other web hosting packages (usually in the shared or VPS categories).
In this roundup, we’re mainly interested in small business-friendly cloud hosting options.
Top 10 Best Cloud Hosting Providers
1. Hostinger — Best Cloud Web Hosting
Through its 000webhosting brand, Hostinger is one of the largest suppliers of free web hosting.
It has well over 30 million users and, due to minimal operating expenses and overheads, some of the lowest rates.
Hostinger wants to utilize its own technology (for example, instead of the ubiquitous Cpanel, it uses its own customized control panel) in order to better manage performance and functionality.
Cloud Startup, Cloud Professional, and Cloud Global are the three options offered, each of which includes unlimited websites and bandwidth for your account.
Pricing:
- Cloud Startup: Starts at $9.99 per month
- Cloud Professional: Starts at $18.99 per month
- Cloud Enterprise: Starts at $69.99 per month
Read our Hostinger Pricing Review
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Excellent low-cost plans
- Great uptime
- Helpful customer service
- The company’s own Zyro website builder is included.
- Optional Minecraft servers
Cons
- Dedicated hosting isn’t available.
- There is no phone support.
- A Windows option isn’t available on every plan.
- Only one email address is included in the basic shared hosting plan.
Features:
- 300 Websites
- 200-300 GB SSD Storage
- 3-12 GB RAM
- Free Email
- Free SSL and CDN
- Free Domain
- Daily Backups
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Google Ads Credit
- Unlimited Databases
- Free Migration
2. Cloudways — Best Powerful and Easy-To-Use Cloud Hosting
At first sight, cloud hosting solutions seem to be split into two separate types: enterprise-level technologies from Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and others, and simpler and more user-friendly solutions from providers such as Hostgator.
Cloudways is a fascinating midway ground. The company offers managed cloud hosting that is powered by your choice of top providers such as Amazon, Google, DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr.
Also, it is jam-packed with features while being controlled through a simple online interface that is just as simple to use as the competitors.
It’s a fantastic platform. Nginx, Apache, Memcached, MySQL/MariaDB, Varnish Cache, PHP 7, PHP-FM, and Redis are all covered by Cloudways’ ThunderStack.
For developers, there are one-click cloning, integrated Git and team collaboration tools, backup and restore, and more than 60 data centers strategically located across the globe (over 25 locations).
Pricing:
- DO1GB: Starts at $10 per month
- DO2GB: Starts at $22 per month
- DO4GB: Starts at $42 per month
- DO8GB: Starts at $80 per month
- DO16GB: Starts at $135 per month
- DO32GB: Starts at $230 per month
- DO48GB: Starts at $315 per month
- DO64GB: Starts at $395 per month
- DO96GB: Starts at $555 per month
- DO128GB: Starts at $715 per month
- DO192GB: Starts at $1035 per month
Read our Cloudways Web Hosting Pricing
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Good uptime.
- Very simple to set up.
- Supports a wide range of apps.
- Plans that are pay-as-you-go.
- Several flexible account tiers.
- Before signing up, you can try the service for free.
- Site cloning.
Cons
- Email comes at an additional fee.
- There is no option to register a domain.
Features:
- 1-192 GB RAM
- 25-3840 GB SSD Storage
- 1-32 Core Processors
- 1-20 TB Bandwidth
- Unlimited sites/installs
- 24/7/365 support
- No traffic limits
- Free 1-click SSL installation
- 1-click backup/restore
- Free website migration
3. Dreamhost — Best Cloud Server Hosting
Dreamhost provides cloud server hosting, which distinguishes it from the other plans available.
Users are expected to be comfortable with a command-line ecosystem for managing their cloud hosting service if they run their unmanaged cloud servers.
The cloud hosting services provided by Dreamhost are divided into two categories: cloud computing and cloud object storage.
DreamCompute is a cloud computing service that makes developing and scaling your own cloud services simple.
It can be run on Linux, BSD, or Windows in a serverless environment with the latest SSD storage and next-generation processors.
There is no lock-in to proprietary systems since Dreamhost is built on the free and open-source OpenStack platform, and you may use Dreamhost as a place to grow before you’re ready to run your own OpenStack.
Pricing:
- Shared: Starts at $4.95 per month
- DreamPress: Starts at $12 per month
- VPS: Starts at $15 per month
Read our Dreamhost Web Hosting Pricing
Pros and Cons:
Pros
- Robust security features
- Exceptional cloud hosting packages
- Domain administration tools that are extensive
- Unlimited data transfers per month
- Useful WordPress staging feature
- Generous money-back guarantee
Cons
- There are no Windows-based servers available.
- With the Shared Starter plan, you won’t get any emails.
- There is no telephone support.
Features:
- Unlimited websites (for VPS Plan only)
- Free domain
- Unmetered bandwidth
- Unlimited traffic
- 24/7 Support
- Fast SSD storage
- SSL certificate
- WordPress pre-installed
- Free automated WordPress migrations
- WP website builder
4. HostGator — Best Cloud Hosting For Websites
If you just need to host a website and no other company data, HostGator’s cloud platform may be a better option.
Unlike traditional web hosting, Hostgator’s cloud hosting technology distributes your website’s load over many virtual server instances for more dependable and scalable hosting, but it’s only a bit more expensive.
The cloud plans provide (up to) twice as fast load speeds, additional site statistics, and the option to move your site to another server in the case of hardware failure since your site is mirrored across several devices.
The main benefit of all cloud hosting plans, however, is scalability. If your site becomes overloaded, you can easily expand up to eight cores and 8GB RAM.
You won’t have to wait for someone to process your order, and there won’t be any downtime while your webspace is reassigned – you’ll receive the additional resources right immediately.
Pricing:
- Hatchling Cloud: Starts at $4.95 per month
- Baby Cloud: Starts at $6.57 per month
- Business Cloud: Starts at $9.95 per month
Read our HostGator Pricing
Pros and Cons:
Pros
- A plethora of feature-rich hosting plans
- Ideal for inexperienced webmasters.
- A fantastic shared hosting service
- Helpful, 24/7 customer service
- E-commerce tools and site-building software
- Excellent uptime
Cons
- The Windows Server option is not available on all plans.
Features:
- Unlimited domains
- 2-6 GB memory
- 2-6 core CPU
- SSL certificate
- Upgrade to Positive SSL
- Dedicated IP
- SEO tools
- Domain included
5. Clook — Best For UK Servers
Clook is one of the best options available if your company needs to build a better digital presence in the United Kingdom.
This cloud hosting company has a single data center in Manchester, England, which allows London-based companies and customers to connect quickly.
Clook puts its clients first, unlike many cloud providers that leave you on your own after you sign up for their service.
Every package includes 24-hour phone and email assistance from knowledgeable experts who know how the company’s servers are configured and how you can use them to suit your company’s requirements.
Clook’s network is monitored by the same experts, and they do an outstanding job of it.
More than 35 monitoring services are available from the company, which works around the clock to identify security risks, hardware problems, and other issues that may affect the cloud’s operation.
Clook also stands out since all internal storage nodes and hypervisors use ultra-fast 10Gbps connectivity.
Pricing:
- Small: Starts at £105 per month
- Medium: Starts at £203 per month
- Large: Starts at £316 per month
- XL Pro: Starts at £531 per month
Pros and Cons:
Pros
- UK-based data center
- Super-fast internal connections
Cons
- Plans are expensive
- No hourly plans
Features:
- 2-24 GB memory
- 1-24 CPU’s
- 50-500 GB primary disk
- 50-1000 GB backup disk
- Fully managed & monitored
- 10Gbps + 40 Gbps Networking
- Spam protection
- 24/7 support
6. DigitalOcean — Best Scalable Cloud Hosting For Small Businesses
DigitalOcean is one of the biggest cloud hosting companies in the United States, although it serves both small and large businesses.
DigitalOcean offers highly flexible options for speeding up your website, developing a cloud-based service, or crunching through large quantities of data.
DigitalOcean’s Droplets technology is the key to this flexibility. You may buy as many Droplets—virtual CPUs—as you like from the company instead of signing up for a specific plan with a fixed amount of CPUs or RAM.
Even better, you get to choose whether you want general-purpose Droplets for web hosting or memory-optimized Droplets for storing and managing large databases.
Every Droplet can run any of six Linux distributions, as well as applications like Docker, MySQL, and Node.js.
Furthermore, performance monitoring and system-level backups are performed at the Droplet level, so you never have to worry about a single poor server slowing down your websites.
Pricing:
- 6 $ per month : Basic Droplets 1
- 12 $ per month : Basic Droplets 2
- 18 $ per month : Basic Droplets 3
- 24 $ per month : Basic Droplets 4
- 48 $ per month : Basic Droplets 5
- 96 $ per month : Basic Droplets 6
Pros and Cons:
Pros
- Very Fast Network
- Fast SSD Storage
- Amazing UI
- Numerous Data Centers
- Readily Customizable Servers
Cons
- Complicated cPanel
- Complicated Pricing
Features:
- 99.99% uptime SLA
- DNS
- Global data centers
- 40GbE
- IPv6 internet protocol
- Private networking
- Snapshot transfer
7. Kamatera — Best Personalized Cloud Hosting
Kamatera is the only cloud hosting solution that offers you full control over your cloud hosting, whether it’s selecting who has root access to your servers or allocating IP addresses.
When it comes to scaling resources up or down, Kamatera gives you a number of options.
Server capacity can be raised or reduced in minutes, and components such as CPU, RAM, storage space, and even firewalls can all be added or removed with a single click on your end.
In short, if you want a completely customized hosting plan, Kamatera is the way to go.
Pricing:
- Basic: Starts at $50 per month per server
- Extended: Starts at $120 per month per server
Pros and Cons:
Pros
- Great cloud product range
- Highly-customizable servers
- Friendly support
- Disaster recovery
- No single-point-of-failure
- Hourly and monthly billing
Cons
- Not very beginner-friendly
- Can get expensive
Features:
- Server set-up in less than 1 minute
- Scaling up or down as required in an instant
- 99.95% uptime guaranteed
- No hardware maintenance
- Total cost of ownership is low (TCO)
- Easy backup and monitoring
- Decent pricing
8. Nexcess — Best Cloud Hosting For eCommerce Websites
Nexcess comes out on top when it comes to growth and scalability. It’s a hosting service provided by Liquid Web.
This host shines brightest when it comes to its extensive managed eCommerce hosting options.
They provide high-quality managed eCommerce hosting services for Orocrm, ExpressionEngine, Drupal, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, among other platforms.
Nexcess is differentiated from the other companies on the list by a number of additional features.
For example, the Cloud Accelerator. It is a feature that affects the cloud in order to improve the speed of your website’s loading time.
It may be a significant advantage since everything relies on speed when it comes to the needs of consumers in terms of browsing and website functionality.
Pricing:
- XS: Starts at $49 per month
- S: Starts at $99 per month
- M: Starts at $179 per month.
- L: Starts at $299 per month
- XL: Starts at $549 per month
- XXL: Starts at $849 per month.
Pros and Cons:
Pros
- 100% uptime
- Managed hosting
- Dedicated support team
- 14 days free trial
- Free Website migration
- Lots of premium freebies
Cons
- No free domain
- No money-back guarantee for prepaid orders
- No dedicated IP addon
Features:
- 20-120 concurrent users
- 50-800 GB Disk Space
- 10-50 secondary domains
- 1-10 TB bandwidth
- 20-32 Gb RAM
- 24/7 remote monitoring
- 1-click installs
- Free migration
9. A2 Hosting — Best Affordable Cloud Hosting
If you’re searching for a low-cost alternative among the best cloud providers, A2 Hosting does a great job of catering to that market.
While you won’t get lightning-fast speeds, a four-core bundle with root access is available for $15 per month.
A2 Hosting’s services are notable for being VPS-like, but there is a limit to what you can expect in this pricing range.
However, all things being equal, the company does an excellent job of offering incentives. A money-back guarantee is available.
Every account comes with a free SSD disk and at least 2 TB of bandwidth per month. They also offer year-round technical and customer support, including over-the-phone assistance.
A2Hosting has you covered if you’re searching for a virtually risk-free way to get started with cloud hosting.
People looking for genuine enterprise-grade data centers with excellent responsiveness should look elsewhere, especially because their peak offerings aren’t very good value for the relatively high pricing.
However, there are several great choices at the low end of the market.
Pricing:
- 4.99 $ per month :Runway 1
- 7.99 $ per month : Runway 2
- 9.99 $ per month : Runway 4
- Supersonic 8: Starts at $34.99 per month.
Read our A2 Hosting Pricing
Pros and Cons:
Pros
- Helpful customer service
- Strong hosting packages
- Amazing uptime
- Good money-back policy
Cons
- Relatively expensive
- No Windows server options
Features:
- Any time money-back guarantee
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Unlimited bandwidth & storage
- LiteSpeed Turbo Servers – 20 times faster page loading
- HTTP/2, PHP7, SSD, free CloudFlare CDN, and HackScan
- Free website migrations
- WordPress is pre-installed.
- Free automatic daily backups
10. Siteground — Best For Support
SiteGround combines the best features with the most advanced customer support. Email, live chat, and phone assistance are available 24/7.
Not only that, but the uptime is also extremely high, at 99.98 percent. Another benefit that makes SiteGround a good choice is the excellent features.
SiteGround is a reliable service provider. However, it does lose points at times. For example, the pricing plans do not include a free domain name.
Getting a free domain name from the hosting company seems to be a lucky bonus. Many other cloud hosting companies provide a free domain name.
SiteGround scores well across the board, and the combination of 5TB bandwidth, excellent support, and high uptime makes it outstanding for the services offered.
SiteGround hosts over 2,000,000 domains while improving the productivity of your website.
It allows you to use SFTP to manage and transfer files. The cloud account also gives you the peace of mind of having your own dedicated IP address.
Cloudflare’s free CDN solution speeds up your site and attracts more visitors from all around the world.
Pricing:
- Jumpstart: Starts at $100 per month
- Business: Starts at $200 per month
- Business Plus: Starts at $300 per month.
- Super Power: Starts at $400 per month.
Pros and Cons:
Pros
- Good uptime
- All plans include a free SSL certificate.
- Monthly and yearly hosting plans
- Many valuable free services included
- Great customer service
- Customers can select from a variety of server locations.
Cons
- No dedicated, VPS, or Windows server options
- Storage space is limited.
Features:
- Support for CentOS, Apache/Nginx, PHP/MySQL
- Configure your own cloud
- Plans that are optimized for WordPress
- Full scalability
- Excellent support
- Daily backups
- Free Cloudflare CDN
How To Select The Best Cloud Hosting?
It may be difficult to find out exactly what you need with so many hosting options available.
With that in mind, here are a few things to consider when deciding which cloud hosting service is ideal for you and your company.
Scalability
The flexibility of cloud web hosting to grow with your company, whatever that looks like for you, is perhaps its most significant benefit.
For example, if you’re starting a whole new company but have specific intends to grow quickly, you’ll need a website that can scale with you.
A business with significant peaks and falls in visitor volume, such as an online store offering seasonal merchandise, is an alternate scenario.
You won’t want to be limited to a fixed number of resources on a single server in any of these situations, as you would be under a traditional web hosting plan.
Because you’re sharing space with hundreds and thousands of other websites on numerous servers all over the world with cloud hosting, your cloud hosting provider can quickly and easily increase your plan’s resources as required.
Many of the companies we’ve listed above make scaling up as simple as clicking a button.
If you’re looking to grow your business fast or if it varies a lot, cloud hosting is the logical option.
However, in certain cases, it may still be the best option for you—read on to find out why.
Reliability and Security
Security is a significant benefit of having your site hosted in so many different locations.
Because the integrity of your website isn’t linked to a physical object (a single, specified server), that object doesn’t need to be protected.
Many data centers full of servers constitute public cloud hosting, which is usually extremely secure and frequently in distant places.
Furthermore, physical equipment breaks down and has problems.
Physical issues with a server you’re hosted on won’t affect the speed of your site since the cloud’s servers may dip in and out of hosting your website.
Because of these two reasons, many cloud hosting companies guarantee a high level of uptime, or the amount of time your site is up and functioning properly.
Typically, they’ll guarantee an uptime of 99.95 percent to 99.99 percent, although it’s frequently higher.
So, if having a website that is highly dependable and safe from external threats is important to you, cloud-based web hosting is the way to go.
Cost Efficiency
Because you’re sharing a small part of a massive amount of server space with a lot of other tenant sites, the amount of resources you utilize is very flexible.
As previously said, your provider can simply scale up the number of resources you use, but if you use fewer resources, you may only have to pay for what you use.
Because you’re given a certain amount of server space with traditional web hosting plans, you’ll frequently wind up paying for more resources than you utilize, but this isn’t an issue with cloud hosting.
If cost-effectiveness is important to you, select a provider from the list below that charges by the hour rather than a flat fee.
Conclusion
By this point, you should have a clear understanding of what your cloud hosting requirements are and which provider is most suited to fulfill them.
While some options are better than others, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all option.
You should base your hosting decisions on your priorities, whether they are pricing, customer service, flexibility, or anything else.
It’s a decision that could influence the long-term stability of your website. However, with so many excellent options available, your website’s future is bright.
Read: IPage Web Hosting Pricing – Everything You Should Know
FAQs
Which website hosting service is the best?
In the hosting industry, there is no such thing as best. The market is crowded with providers, each trying to carve out their own niche and unique features.
The best way to choose a host is to first figure out how large your project is and then start looking with particular requirements in mind.
What’s the difference between shared hosting and cloud hosting?
Shared hosting involves many sites using the same server. Cloud hosting involves many sites sharing the resources of multiple servers.
Cloud hosting is less prone to outages since it is not linked to a single location. If one server goes down, another can take up the load.
How much does cloud hosting cost?
Because cloud hosting is so flexible, the price you pay is determined by the number of resources you utilize.
Cloud hosting typically starts at about $5 and may cost hundreds of dollars (or sometimes even thousands). However, most sites will only have to pay between $5 and $50.