Creating own website is becoming quite a buzz nowadays.Every business is now getting its own online presence. But did you know there are different types of website available in the market and every website needs and support different web hosting types like shared, dedicated, VPS or Cloud. Let’s talk about medium e-commerce websites.

What actually is an E-commerce website?

E-commerce websites generally sell products and services. That they also exchange money and other personal information’s right. So it definitely needs to have best web server to host and secure all the critical data. Generally dedicated server is the best choice to choose but cost matters right. Not everyone is going to pay thousands when you can get better in less cost.

Features and factors for E-commerce Website

Let’ssee which web hosting or web server suits best to an e-commerce website, VPS or cloud?

First make a list of the features you want in your web hosting before purchase any to host your e-commerce website:

• Security
• High-performance
• Scalability
• Cost

Due to lack of awareness about difference between different hosting, people think they all are same. But that’s not true every hosting have its own factors and features that make one different from others. So let’s switch & take a look towards VPS and Cloud and know that what actually they are.

Virtual Private Server — Basically VPS is a partition of a whole dedicated server. You share additional resources with the other virtual servers but your virtual server is owned by you only. In this you get a server operating system (OS) with root access, and you can install any software you want.

Cloud Web Server — Cloud web hosting is a trend nowadays. It is served by many hosting providers. It allows you to access your data and use potentially unlimited number of physical machines that are connected in a network and act as one. Means your site is hosted on different servers at different location. Relax I know you are thinking that it means you have to pay much for this hosting service, but actually not it is really one of the affordable, pocket friendly and cost effective hosting.

Now back to main point, which is better for e-commerce website? So let’s roll the sleeves up and compare to know which is best VPS or Cloud?

1. Security

As you already know that VPS is a part of dedicated server with shared features but it’s not as secure as dedicated server.If it were a whole separate machine then it may be the most secure hosting but this is only an assumption. It have some add-on offers to secure critical data and restrict location with security regulations. But obviously you have to pay extra for it according to you service need.

In this case I think cloud is much better. Its security is quite high as compared to VPS. It divides all the data of the website and hostsit at different physical machines. It’skind of difficult for anyone to attack into your website data. Or if by any chance it happens then it will only happen with just one physical machine and cloud have the feature to recover from disasters easily. That means nothing is going to happen to your website and its data.

2. High-performance

VPS assures you a fixed level of performance. Providers guarantee you to give high uptime right? But it does all depend on your physical server or you can say another virtual server with same physical machine. If anything is wrong with another virtual server then it might affect your data and website performance as well. Or if your physical host fails your VPS will fail as well. Don’t worry providers have backup plans but again it costs little high.

But on the other hand cloud assures high performance, availability and 100% uptime because cloud have different physical server at different locations. Whenever memory capacity and CPU power needs to expand it did on demand to meet your needs. It never gets overload. And whenever any physical host fails down it drives traffic to another physical server automatically. Because obviously not all the physical server will get fail at a same time.

3. Scalability

VPS hosting has a limit to scale the resources in other words to increase the resources. It depends on the physical host machine. Sometimes provider give you access to use some extra memory and CPU power but it also has a limit. If limit is crossed you have to upgrade your planand have tomove your website to a new physical server.

Cloud hosting is much more scalable, it has the ability to add resources in real time. Data storage is unlimited you can add any resource you want. It’s the biggest advantage of cloud that availability of the resources is almost endless.

4. Cost

VPS usually less expensive but resources are limited and all depends on the deal that provider offers you as well as cost. To upgrade or add some other services you have to pay to service provider to give you the access to increase your resources.

On the other hand cloud costs is all depends on. You pay for what you use. It’s as same as your electricity bill right. Well time has changed cloud has introduced to overcome all the drawbacks of traditional hosting. That’s why it is the new trend of web hosting market and every business wants to host their website on the cloud server only. Because it’scheap, provides best resources, high performance uptime, secure and best for every website.

To make your choice easier let’s take a look on the below table:Features/factorsVPS HostingCloud HostingServer Deployment and ManagementYesYesServer Sharing ModelPrivate ServerDedicated Cloud ServerScalability (auto/manual)limited& manualautoLow CostYesYes (depends on what you use)Pay As You GoNoYesFlexibilityNoYesCustomizationLimitedYesSecurityYesMore secure than VPSInstant ProvisioningNoYes (in managed hosting)PerformanceDepends on the vendorFastReliabilityYesYesMultiple Data CentersNoYes

Final words

Now it’s up to you that what you want to choose in between VPS hosting and Cloud hosting for your e-commerce website. I know it’s kind of difficult to choose one when both are best. But from this article we just want you to know that there is a lot difference between these two and your choice matters. It will decide your website’s future growth. So choose wisely. Wish you good luck.

This article has been written by Neeraj Sharma. He provides his service at hostnetindia. This web hosting company offers VPS, Cloud and dedicated server infrastructure.

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