Over the last decade, we have witnessed the meteoric rise of online marketplaces along with a tremendous growth in online marketing and advertising activities. Consumers can now compare brands, read reviews, and buy products from the comforts of their offices/homes at any time of the day or night. There are many factors that contributed to the growth of e-Commerce platforms like 24x7x365 availability, fast-loading websites, top-notch security, and a user-centric design. However, these factors have raised the bar of user-expectation and any e-Commerce site that does not offer these features is usually abandoned by the users. In order to live up to the standards, site owners have to spend a lot of time and effort behind managing and maintaining their platforms. Needless to say, choosing the right hosting partner is critical for the success of an online store. Today, we will look at two hosting types preferred by these platforms, Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting, and compare their features.
Before we begin, let’s take a quick look at what an e-Commerce platform requires from a host:
- Negligible downtimes
- Top-notch security
- Traffic-spike management
- Cost-efficiency
Cloud Hosting and Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
In Cloud Hosting, the resources required to run your website are stored on various servers, working in tandem. Also, a virtualization layer enables separation of the resources needed by different instances and/or devices.
VPS Hosting, on the other hand, is a combination of Shared and Dedicated Hosting. A physical server is divided into multiple virtual servers. Further, each virtual server has dedicated resources like CPU, RAM, etc. and is capable of hosting a website.
Comparing Cloud Hosting and VPS Hosting for e-Commerce platforms
| Features | Cloud Hosting | VPS Hosting |
| Customization | Compared to VPS Hosting, you have restricted control over the hosting settings because the resources are spread across multiple servers. | Since the resources are isolated, you have complete root access allowing you to customize the server environment as required. |
| Uptimes | In Cloud Hosting, there is no single point of failure since the resources are spread across a network of virtual servers. Most Cloud Hosting providers offer around 99.99% uptime assurance. | Since the virtual server on which your site is hosted is on a single physical server, there is a single point of failure. Therefore, if the server crashes or overloads, you might experience downtimes. |
| Security | Most providers offering Cloud Hosting in India ensure an accurate account isolation and use the latest security tools to provide maximum security for your site’s data customer’s information. | Since the site is not distributed across multiple nodes (like in Cloud Hosting), VPS Hosting offers better security than Cloud Hosting services. |
| Traffic-spike management | Cloud Hosting plans offer instant resource scalability which allows you to manage traffic spikes efficiently. You can add CPU, RAM, etc. to your hosting plan with the click of a button. | In case of traffic spikes, you can request your host for additional resources. However, the process can take time. |
| Costs | Cloud Hosting plans are extremely cost-effective and they are based on the resources that are utilised. So, there is no wastage and you pay only for the resources consumed which make it a highly cost-efficient option. | In VPS Hosting, you choose the resources when you start the plan. Hence, you receive a fixed bill every month. This also means that you might end up paying for resources that you are not currently using. |
Conclusion
As we can see from the table above, Cloud Hosting seems like a better alternative for your e-Commerce platform because of the benefits that it provides to the users. However, VPS Hosting has its own benefits too. Ensure that you research well and choose wisely. Good Luck!
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