Launching a website involves choosing the type of site (static/dynamic), content, user journey, media (images, videos, etc.), and the web hosting service. Every website needs to be stored on a webserver to be made available online. Hence, the website’s performance relies on the way the server performs.

There are various hosting services to choose from, like Shared Hosting, Cloud Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, etc. Once you have selected the hosting type, you also need to decide if you need Windows or Linux as the operating system on the server, hosting resources, and unmanaged/managed services. It is important to ensure that you choose a plan that works best for your site.

In this article, we will talk about two of the most popular hosting services – Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Server Hosting. We will compare them to help you understand which is best for your business.

In Cloud Hosting, your website data is stored and hosted across multiple servers. The website itself is stored on a shared server, but the data gets support from the cloud network.

In Dedicated Hosting, your website is the sole user of a web server and does not share the hosting resources and server space with any other user.

Cloud Hosting vs Dedicated Server Hosting

Feature	Dedicated Server Hosting	Cloud Hosting
Server sharing	As the name suggests, in Dedicated Server Hosting, your website does not share the server with any other user and uses it dedicatedly.	Cloud Hosting services are designed on a shared server with a cloud storage network providing reliability and scalability to the hosting server.
Control	In Dedicated Hosting, since your site is the sole user of the server, you have total control over it. Hence, you can make any changes as needed to create a customized hosting environment.	In Cloud Hosting, sharing of the server restricts the control you have over it since any change to the server will affect all its users. Hence, control over the hosting environment is limited.
Price of the hosting plan	Among all hosting plans, Dedicated Server plans are the costliest since a complete web server is dedicated to your site. Hence, for the hosting company, all costs associated with running and managing the server, are passed on to you. However, if your site receives heavy traffic and/or has content that requires a lot of hosting resources, then a Dedicated Server plan is cost-efficient since the price of not being able to service site visitors can be steep.	Compared to Dedicated Hosting, Cloud Hosting plans are usually cheaper. This is because the site is hosted on a shared server. While the server is backed by a cloud storage network, it is shared between the users of the server too. Hence, the costs are lower. Talking about costs, Cloud Hosting also offers a feature called cost-scalability wherein site owners can start with basic resources and scale up as the site traffic increases. Hence, they pay only for the resources they use. This makes these plans especially beneficial for websites of growing businesses.

 

Summing Up

As you can see, both Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Server Hosting offer certain benefits. They are ideal for different types of websites. While Dedicated Hosting is a necessary choice for larger websites with significant resource requirements, Cloud Hosting is good for beginners and dynamic websites alike.

Before you choose between the two, spend some time assessing the hosting requirements of your website. Also, understand the features and benefits offered by various hosting plans to ensure that you choose the perfect plan for your site. We hope that this article helped you understand the differences between Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Server Hosting plans.

You can also check out the following video to further understand the differences between Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Hosting: