What Indeed is Cloud Website Hosting?
What is cloud website hosting actually? The term 'cloud' appears to be quite fashionable in today's IT, Internet and web hosting jargon. Yet, only a select few actually are aware of what cloud hosting is. Possibly it is a clever idea to inform yourself about cloud website hosting services. To render a quite long tale short, we will firstly disclose to you what cloud hosting is not.
1. Cloud Website Hosting is Not Restricted to a Remote Data Storage Only.
1. Supplying a remote file storage solution, which involves one single file storage tool for all clients, does not transform any specific hosting firm into a genuine cloud website hosting company.
The cPanel web hosting providers name the ability to distribute remote disk storage services a cloud website hosting solution. Up till now there is nothing wrong with the cloud designation, but... we are talking about website hosting services, not remote file storage solutions for individual or corporate purposes. There's invariably one "but", isn't there? It's not sufficient to call a shared web hosting service, driven by a one-server web hosting environment, precisely like cPanel, a "cloud website hosting" service. This is so because the remaining components of the entire web hosting platform must be working in precisely the same way - this does not relate only to the remote disk storage. The rest of the services involved in the whole hosting procedure also need to be remote, separated and "clouded". And that's quite difficult. Very few hosting suppliers can really achieve it.
2. It Entails Domains, Mailbox Accounts, Databases, File Transfer Protocols, Hosting CPs, etc.
Cloud website hosting is not restricted to a remote file storage exclusively. We are discussing a hosting solution, serving a lot of domains, web portals, email boxes, and so on, aren't we?
To name a hosting service a "cloud website hosting" one calls for a lot more than supplying simply remote data storage mounts (or perhaps physical servers). The e-mail server(s) must be devoted solely to the mail linked services. Doing nothing different than these concrete tasks. There might be just one or possibly a whole stack of email servers, determined by the total server load produced. To have an authentic cloud website hosting service, the remote database servers should be performing as one, regardless of their real amount. Carrying out nothing else. The same is valid for the users' hosting CPs, the File Transfer Protocol, and so on.
3. There are Cloud Domain Servers (DNSs) as well.
The DNSs (Domain Name Servers) of a true cloud website hosting solutions provider will support multiple datacenter sites on multiple continents.
Here's an instance of a DNS of a real cloud website hosting provider:
dns1.itsokay.us
dns2.itsokay.us
If such a Domain Name Server is provided by your hosting services provider, it's not a sure thing that there is a cloud hosting environment in use, but you can definitely be confident when you notice a DNS such as the one below:
dns658.hostgator.com
dns659.hostgator.com
that there isn't any cloud hosting platform. This kind of Domain Name Server merely indicates that the web hosting platform in use is one-single-server based. Perhaps it's cPanel. cPanel is a one-single-server web hosting solution and holds a market share of more than 98%. In cPanel's case, one server tackles all web hosting services (web, e-mail, DNS, databases, File Transfer Protocol, Control Panel(s), web site files, etc.).
Remote File Storage - The Warped Explanation of Cloud Website Hosting.
So, a cloud website hosting service is not limited only to a remote disk storage service, as plenty of web hosting service providers wish it was. Unfortunately for them, if that was the case, the majority of the file hosting firms would have been categorized as cloud web hosting ones a long time back! They are not referred to as such, since they merely supply file web hosting services, not cloud hosting solutions. The file web hosting platform seems indeed very simple, in comparison with the hosting platform. The remote data storage platform is not a cloud web hosting platform. It cannot be, since it's only one small component of the whole cloud hosting platform. There's plenty more to be found in the cloud web hosting platform: the web hosting Control Panel cloud, the database clouds (MySQL, PostgreSQL), the DNS cloud, the File Transfer Protocol cloud, the electronic mail cloud and... in the not too distant future, perhaps a bunch of new clouds we currently are not informed about will surface out of nowhere.
| Business | Startup | Professional | Enterprise |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | 1 website hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $5.00 / month | $6.08 / month | $17.00 / month | $21.25 / month |