Category: Case Studies

Cloud hosting or VPS hosting? If you’re needing to have your website hosted on the internet, you may be overwhelmed at the choices available. Two popular choices for web hosting include cloud hosting and VPS hosting – but what is the difference, and which should you choose?

In this post, we will explain what cloud hosting and VPS hosting are, what the differences are between these two hosting options, and show how to get started with VPS hosting.

If you are in a hurry, you can jump directly to our VPS hosting vs cloud hosting comparison table ->

What is Cloud Hosting?

Cloud hosting is a type of web hosting service that uses a network of virtual servers to host websites and applications. Instead of relying on a single physical server, cloud hosting distributes resources across multiple interconnected servers, creating a scalable and flexible hosting environment.

You can easily sign up for a cloud environment and take advantage of its more robust network of servers that are distributed around the globe.

Traditional cloud hosting providers only used to provide basic services such as virtual servers and storage space, but modern cloud providers offer more advanced services – such as serverless functionality, hosted database, CDNs, DDoS protection, and more.

Types of Cloud Hosting

There are several types of cloud hosting services available, each of which caters to different needs and levels of control:

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides virtualized computing resources over the internet where users have full control over the infrastructure, including operating systems and storage. For example, Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, etc.
2. Platform as a Service (PaaS) offers a platform for developers to build, run, and manage applications. Here the cloud provider handles underlying infrastructure, allowing users to focus on deployment and management. Google App Engine and Heroku are both examples of PaaS.

Top Cloud Hosting Providers

If you want to host a website, there are several good cloud providers to choose from. here are the top three that we would recommend:

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS):
   • Offers a wide range of cloud services
   • Highly scalable and customizable
   • Requires technical expertise to set up and manage
2. Google Cloud Platform (GCP):
   • Provides robust infrastructure and advanced tools
   • Known for its strong performance and global network
   • Provides powerful dashboard for monitoring
3. DigitalOcean:
   • User-friendly interface and straightforward pricing
   • Popular among developers and small to medium-sized businesses
   • Provides optimized WordPress droplets

Pros of Cloud Hosting

Even the biggest of companies these days are moving their websites to cloud hosting.

But why?

What are the main factors that make cloud hosting such an appealing option for so many businesses?

1. Scalability: If your website goes viral, you can easily adjust resources based on traffic and demand with little more than a moment’s notice.
2. Reliability: Cloud providers often provide redundant power and network connectivity to ensure especially high uptime.
3. Performance: Cloud providers make it possible to host websites closer to end users, which can lead to faster loading times.
4. Flexibility: The wide range of cloud hosting providers means that there is tremendous choice between many different service models.
5. Cost-effective: If you are running a small website, purchasing your own servers can be expensive. With cloud hosting, you pay only for the resources you use.

Cons of Cloud Hosting

Although Cloud hosting is incredibly popular today, there are a few things you should be aware of before you sign up:

1. Complexity: A cloud environment can be challenging to set up and manage for non-technical users.
2. Potential security concerns: If the cloud server is not configured properly then personal data can be compromised.
3. Dependency on internet connectivity: While the cloud is great for hosting websites, it requires a stable internet connection to work. If you need your data to be available even during a network outage, then cloud is not the right option for you.
4. Possible vendor lock-in: Cloud providers make it easy for you to sign up to new services, but make it extremely difficult to move to another cloud provider.
5. Costs can escalate: With the advent of serverless computing, it is easier to lose track of your bills. In some instances, users have even reported getting billed for hundreds of thousands by cloud providers.

What is VPS Hosting?

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting is a type of web hosting that uses virtualization technology to provide dedicated (private) resources on a server that’s shared with multiple users. It sits between shared hosting and dedicated hosting in terms of cost and performance.

In a VPS environment, a physical server is divided into multiple virtual compartments, each functioning as a separate server with its own operating system, dedicated resources (CPU, RAM, storage), and full root access.

This allows for greater control, customization, and performance compared to shared hosting, while being more cost-effective than dedicated hosting.

Types of VPS Hosting

There are several types of VPS hosting available, catering to different needs and levels of management:

1. Managed VPS Hosting: In this case, the hosting provider handles server management, updates, and security. It is ideal for users who lack either technical expertise, or time for server administration, and often includes features such as automatic backups and 24/7 support.
2. Unmanaged VPS Hosting: In this hosting, users have full control over the server and are responsible for all management tasks. It is typically less expensive than managed VPS hosting but requires technical knowledge to maintain the server.

Suggested read: What Is Managed WordPress Hosting & Do You Need It?

Top VPS Hosting Providers

If you are looking for reliable hosting providers, we would suggest that you can’t go wrong with any of the following:

1. Linode:
   • A trusted VPS provider with a high reliable servers
   • Offers high-performance SSDs and a global network
   • Provides both managed and unmanaged options
2. Vultr:
   • Offers affordable servers with hourly billing
   • Provides a wide range of operating systems and locations
   • Known for its user-friendly control panel
3. Servebolt:
   • Offers managed VPS hosting for WordPress websites
   • Provides free server management and updates
   • Known for its reliable support and first party WordPress plugins

Suggested read: Self-Managed or Managed Hosting: Which One is Right for You?

Pros of VPS Hosting

1. Dedicated resources: When you request resources from cloud providers, they can sometimes refuse you if there are no servers available. With VPS hosting, you are guaranteed CPU, RAM, and storage allocation throughout the duration of your contract.
2. Root access: On a VPS server, you get full control over the server environment to configure it as you like.
3. Cost-effective: VPS hosting often has a fixed monthly cost, and usually works out as being more affordable than dedicated hosting.

Cons of VPS Hosting

Before you sign up for VPS hosting, you should learn about following risks:

1. Technical knowledge required: With a VPS server, you need to have technical knowledge for configuring it properly, especially for unmanaged VPS.
2. Resource limitations: Unlike cloud hosting, resources on a VPS server are not instantly scalable, which means that you need to plan weeks (or even months) ahead of time should you need to increase or decrease your server resources.
3. Responsibility for security: If you are running an unmanaged VPS, you will need to handle security incidents and configure firewalls to protect your server from cyber attacks.
4. Potential noisy neighbor effect: While it is very unlikely, there is a small possibility that your website may suffer if another tenant on your physical server is consuming a lot of resources.

The Differences Between Cloud Hosting vs VPS Hosting

Here’s a comprehensive, side-by-side comparison of Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting:

Suggested read: How To Host Multiple Websites On One Server | Ultimate Guide

VPS or Cloud Hosting – Which One is Right for You?

Choosing between Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting and cloud hosting depends on a number of factors, including scalability, performance, cost, and specific use cases. Both options have their own advantages, and each can cater to different needs.

• Choose VPS hosting if:
  • You have a predictable workload and need dedicated resources at a lower cost.
  • You require more control and customization over your server environment.
  • You are looking for stable and consistent performance without the need for frequent scaling.
• Choose cloud hosting if:
  • You anticipate varying workloads, and need the ability to scale resources up or down easily.
  • High availability and reliability are critical to your operations.
  • You prefer a flexible pricing model and are comfortable with managing a more complex hosting environment.

Final Thoughts

Choosing between VPS hosting and cloud hosting ultimately depends on your specific needs, technical expertise, and budget.

Both options offer unique benefits tailored to different use cases, whether you’re a small business owner looking for cost-effective solutions, a tech startup founder needing scalable and reliable infrastructure, or a freelance developer seeking control and customization.

Understanding the nuances of each hosting type will help you make an informed decision that more closely matches your own unique business goals and technical requirements. With the right hosting solution, you can ensure optimal performance, reliability, and scalability for your online presence.

Ready to simplify your server management and streamline your hosting experience? Sign up for RunCloud today!

RunCloud makes server management easier by allowing you to deploy and remove sites with just a few clicks on your own server, no matter what cloud provider you choose.

FAQs on VPS vs Cloud Hosting

Choosing a hosting plan for your website or application can be a daunting task. There are so many options and factors to consider, such as cost, performance, security, scalability, support, etc.

How do you know which one is the best for your needs and budget?

In this article, we will explain the pros and cons of two common types of hosting: self-managed and managed hosting.

We will also introduce you to a better solution that combines the advantages of both: RunCloud.

Read on to find out more about self-managed vs managed hosting and how RunCloud can help you with your web hosting needs.

Self-Managed Hosting

Self-Managed Hosting, sometimes also known as self-hosted WordPress, is a setup whereby a website runs on a web server that the user chooses and pays for. A self-hosted WordPress website gives the user more control and flexibility over their website, but also more responsibility for managing and maintaining it.

To create a self-hosted WordPress website, you will need to:

• Buy a domain name from a domain registrar
• Get a hosting account from a suitable cloud provider
• Configure DNS records
• Manage SSL certificates
• Periodically check for new updates or vulnerabilities in plugins or themes.

These are the basic steps to create a self-hosted WordPress website.

Pros of Self-Managed Hosting

• Lower cost: Self-managed hosting is usually cheaper than managed hosting because the customer doesn’t have to pay for the additional services and features that the hosting provider offers.
• More control: Managing hosting often gives the customer more control over the server and its configuration. The customer can customize the server according to their needs and preferences. They can also install any software or application that they want on the server.
• Flexibility: This hosting allows the customer to change or upgrade the server as they wish. They can also scale the server resources up or down, depending on the demand and traffic of their website or application.
• Customization: Customers can tailor the server to their specific requirements and goals. They can optimize the server for either performance, security, or functionality.

Challenges of Self-Managed Hosting

• Technical skills: Self-managed hosting requires you to have technical skills and knowledge to manage and maintain the server. You will have to deal with complex tasks such as installation, monitoring, and troubleshooting. You also have to be familiar with the underlying operating system and the software that you use on the server.
• Security: When choosing this option, you might be faced with more security risks because you are responsible for securing the server and its data. You must implement security measures such as firewalls, antivirus software, encryption, authentication, etc., and then continually monitor the server for any potential threats or attacks.
• Maintenance: Self-managed hosting demands more time and effort to keep the server running smoothly and efficiently. You need to perform regular maintenance tasks such as backups, updates, patches, etc.
• Support: If you host your website yourself, you won’t get any support from the hosting provider. You must rely on your own skills and resources to solve any problems or challenges that you might face on the server. The hosting provider may only offer basic support, or charge extra fees for advanced support.

Managed Hosting

Managed hosting is a type of hosting where the hosting provider takes care of most of the server management and maintenance tasks, such as installation, updates, security, backups, monitoring, and support. The customer only has to focus on their website or application and its content.

The hosting provider also provides additional features and services, such as performance optimization, scalability, load balancing, caching, etc. The customer has less control over the server and its configuration, but also less hassle and risk.

Benefits of Managed Hosting

• Higher performance: Managed hosting providers work with thousands of websites, and often optimize servers for speed and efficiency. The hosting provider also uses advanced technologies such as caching, load balancing, CDN, etc. to improve the loading time and responsiveness of the websites or applications.
• Reliability: Managed hosting provides more reliability than self-managed hosting because the hosting provider monitors the server for any issues or errors – and fixes them promptly.
• Security: The hosting providers often work with a team of security experts that implements security measures such as firewalls, antivirus software, encryption, authentication, etc.
• Support: You can easily get 24/7 technical support by contacting the hosting provider via phone, email, chat, ticket system, etc. Good hosting providers also provide documentation and tutorials to help the customer with their website or application.

Drawbacks of Managed Hosting

• Higher cost: Managed hosting is more expensive than self-managed hosting because the customer has to pay for the additional services and features that the hosting provider offers. The customer may also have to pay extra fees for exceeding limits or using additional resources on their plan.
• Less control: You will get less control over the server and its configuration than self-managed hosting. You must also follow the rules and restrictions that the hosting provider sets for their plan.
• Vendor lock-in: This is one of the major problems with managed hosting. A lot of hosting providers try to “vendor lock-in” the customer by forcing them to use a proprietary solution for their website.

This is concerning because you may face difficulties in the future should the company remove a certain feature or change the pricing plans. Increase in hosting costs might tempt you to switch to another hosting provider but then you will lose some features or functionality that are specific to their current hosting provider or plan.

• Compatibility issues: Managed hosting may cause compatibility issues for the customer because they have to use the software or applications that are compatible with their hosting provider or plan. The customer may not be able to use some software or applications that they want on their website or application.

For example, If you rely on a legacy version of PHP for a certain application and the vendor chooses to phase that out, then your options are limited. You may have to update your plugin or find an alternative one that works with the newer version of PHP. In either case, you will need to solve a problem that was created by your hosting company.

RunCloud: The Best of Both Worlds

If you are fretting over which hosting option to choose, then worry not – RunCloud brings you the best of both worlds.

RunCloud is a platform that lets you host any web application on your own server, whether it’s on a cloud provider or a private datacenter.RunCloud gives you the benefits of a managed service without the drawbacks of vendor dependency.

With RunCloud, you can instantly deploy new WordPress websites with a few clicks, update DNS records with Cloudflare integration, and enable page caching with the RunCloud Hub plugin.

You can also choose from different server types, such as Nginx+Apache, OpenLiteSpeed, or Docker. Furthermore, you can use the HTTP/3 protocol on your websites for faster loading.

RunCloud provides you complete access to your server, application, database, and even underlying operating system at all times – there is no vendor lock-in. You can also back up your applications to any storage location you prefer, such as AWS S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, SFTP storage, etc.

RunCloud is user-friendly: you can manage your servers from a dashboard without needing Linux skills. But you also have the option to log in to your server via SSH as the root user to customize your server settings if you want. You can also use the Developer API to control your servers programmatically.

RunCloud ensures that your server and web application are secure and protected from any threats or attacks. We automatically update your server and apply security patches to keep it up to date and safe.

RunCloud also has a built-in firewall and configures Fail2Ban on your server to block automated attacks. Best of all, you can configure Slack, email, and Telegram notifications for key actions on your server – such as ssh login, backup failure, etc., ensuring you stay informed and alert.

Final Thoughts

In this article, we have explained the pros and cons of self-managed and managed hosting for your website or application. Here are some recommendations or tips for choosing a hosting plan that suits your needs and budget:

• Consider the type and size of your website or application, the traffic volume and growth rate, and the features and functionality required. These factors will determine the amount of server resources and services that you need.
• Compare the cost of different hosting plans based on the criteria such as storage space, bandwidth, CPU cores, RAM, backups, SSL certificates, domains, etc.
• Weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each hosting option in terms of performance, reliability, security, scalability, and support. You can use lists or bullet points to summarize the pros and cons of each option.

Givе RunCloud a tеst drivе and discovеr its capabilities in meeting your web hosting requirements. RunCloud lets you to еffortlеssly host any wеb application on your sеlf-ownеd sеrvеr, whеthеr it’s hostеd by a cloud providеr or within a private datacenter.With RunCloud, you gain the advantages of a managed sеrvicе while avoiding the limitations of vendor rеliancе. Sign up for RunCloud today!

InstaWP is the leading provider of what can most simply be described as disposable WordPress websites and it is used for everything from testing to staging and demos (for WordPress plugins and themes). Behind the scenes, they chose to power their platform with RunCloud using our API. 

For Those Yet To Hear About InstaWP – What Is It? And What Led You To Build It?

In short, InstaWP is a WordPress sandbox service. What this means, and the use cases & scenarios that it applies to are extremely varied.

For example, we recently learned that the FooEvents team had been relying on InstaWP as a part of their support process.

By using InstaWP, they were able to quickly create instances that enabled their team to explain installation issues to their customers with far greater ease and effectiveness.

More recently, extendify.com and newsletterglue.com have started using InstaWP to provide more effective ways to demonstrate their solutions. Of particular interest is that InstaWP has received seed funding from Automattic (giving them a percentage of future equity under a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity).

What led us to build the platform was very much out of our own needs. We wanted an easy way to deploy single-use WordPress sandbox environments – whether that was for testing, validating an idea before pushing something to production, debugging issues, or building a site for a client, among several important needs.

We (at ExpressTech) wanted to make a platform that would simplify a whole range of processes that were taking place in our organization, and which we knew were also highly relevant to a wide range of other users in the WordPress space (as well as organizations similar to ours).

Building InstaWP – The Challenges Faced

As we began development on the platform when it was still an internal project, the biggest challenge we faced was not wanting to reinvent the wheel when it came to server deployment and management. Realistically, that would have extended the development time, increased costs, as well as raised maintenance costs of the platform as a whole to the point where we would likely not have pursued the development.

It was at this stage that we began to explore the potential ways we could use RunCloud’s API to negate the need to bake the deployment scripts into our own systems. As it turned out, this ended up being relatively straightforward to accomplish.

Shortly after finding RunCloud, we were confident that the implementation would be suitable, and would work exactly as we wanted it to. This gave us the confidence to take InstaWP to market much, much faster than we would have (and could have) prior to using RunCloud with our free offering.

What Made RunCloud The Right Solution For InstaWP

Although there are many platforms that try to accomplish something similar to what RunCloud does, we were very quickly certain about our choice to use RunCloud to build InstaWP. The fact that they’ve been a leader in the industry for years as a reliable service provider (i.e., not offering lifetime deals, compromising quality, etc.) aligned with our values, and this made us feel confident when making the choice that we would be in good hands.

Similarly, upon connecting with the team, we received great help, support, and feedback that again made the entire process of building InstaWP more enjoyable.

Suggested read: How to create WordPress Staging site

Upcoming Plans & Where You Can Learn More About InstaWP

RunCloud gave us the perfect start with its simple API and robust infrastructure to provision instances. We had to write some WP-specific APIs ourselves, like Magic Login, DB Editor, Code Editor, etc., but from a provisioning standpoint, RunCloud had us covered.

To scale, we are looking to create our own backend of provisioning, with the sole reason being that our systems will be designed towards having short-lived sandbox environments, whereas RunCloud is meant for production-level sites.

And eventually, the goal is to integrate with RunCloud (as well as hosting providers) to provide a way to easily push from InstaWP environments over to production sites. In a way, going full circle with an integration with the solution our platform was first powered by. The first phase of this has started: