As of May 2019, the total number of domains hosted was 154,608,076. The top two hosts were GoDaddy and Amazon Web Services. They account for 19.4% and 5.8% of the sites hosted.
GoDaddy has mixed hosting both dedicated servers and cloud hosting whereas AWS is completely cloud server-based. They make up over 30 million and approximately 9 million of those websites, respectively
The question is, how do people decide between a dedicated server and a cloud server? Time to figure that one out!
How Hosting With A Cloud Server Works
Cloud hosting is a method using several machines sharing their resources. Users then use a virtual machine as an access point to interact with these servers and their data.
Cloud technology allows for an unlimited amount of servers to link together. Doing this they can act as if they were a single machine.
Multiple virtual machines may have the appearance of individual systems. But they are only pieces of software running on a single system.
How Hosting With A Dedicated Server Works
While cloud hosting utilizes the resources of a cluster of servers. A dedicated server is a single server for one website.
A consumer knows what the specifications of any given machine are. They can pick the best fit based on hosting needs. A dedicated server is generally more expensive but also more secure.
Determining Your Needs
While each is serving the purpose of hosting your website, they both come with a set of pros and cons. Depending on your needs or the needs of your business the selection you make will change.
Cost plays a role but much of the decision depends on the needs of your organization.
Cloud Server
These are quick, flexible, and can scale up or down as needed in minutes. A cloud hosting configuration has a much lower upfront cost. When comparing maintenance and upgrade costs it drops even further.
Because there are clusters of servers being utilized there is less of a chance of downtime and if it does occur the time of outage is much shorter than a dedicated server’s.
You need little to no intensive training for the team as the cloud hosting team manages the technical “backend”.
But there is the loss of customization and hosting management that a dedicated server has. Cloud hosting has more security concerns as well.
Dedicated Server
Security is one of the big benefits that a dedicated server has over cloud-based hosting. Your in-house team is the only group managing the system and is the only “tenant” hosted on the server.
This is essential if the business operations plan requires a “single-tenant” serving environment. Because of the nature of cloud computing, all configurations are multi-tenant.
Specialization and customization are completely under your control. If your business is operating with a large amount of custom software or modifications to current software you will lose a great deal of that control in a cloud-based setup.
Swift flexibility is lost and expansion is far more expensive when dealing with a dedicated server, however. So a dedicated server is a better choice for a team that does not see a need for a huge amount of expansion soon.
No Losers With Cloud Server vs Dedicated Server
When operations are very specialized it often will serve a business best to go with a dedicated server. It can be said that the budget will probably allow if they are in that situation.
The flexibility, scalability, and access to tools that a cloud server offers can provide a very cost-effective option, especially for smaller businesses just starting up and looking to grow.
At UpTime our team has a range of skills to help you decide the best platform for you budget and needs. Talk to one of our support techs today to find out more.