Depending on the size and scope of your business, upgrading your hosting provider can require intense deliberation. This decision can positively or negatively affect every aspect of your company’s presence on the Web. It determines how you deliver content, how you deal with server downtime and a host of other issues.
However, when it comes to cost, most small businesses can’t afford to buy and manage racks of servers. This is why more small businesses are making the jump to cloud-based virtual private servers.
In this blog post, we’ll dig a little deeper into cloud VPS hosting and why your small business should consider it.
What is a cloud virtual private server, exactly?
Before you go out and start a service agreement with a cloud host it’s important to have a little background in what a cloud VPS actually is. In very basic terms, a cloud hosted virtual private server, or VPS, is a virtualized server that is hosted across several servers in a cloud platform. You share access to the cloud, but have a private chunk of its resources.
This accomplishes two things. It allows the host to offer affordable VPS services while maintaining the costs of managing and deploying their services from a datacenter. It also gives you access to powerful computing resources at an affordable rate.
Benefits of a cloud VPS
— Affordability. One of the biggest reasons small businesses are migrating to cloud VPS hosts has to do with the reduced cost of the service. Unlike traditional VPS hosting you don’t have to pay all of those fees related to licensing, software and server maintenance. Your provider takes care of all of that for you. You simply pay for the amount of computing power you need to use.
— Performance. With a cloud VPS host you have access to all the computing power of a traditional, dedicated VPS host, but at a fraction of the price. You even have the option of scaling up your resources past what a single machine could handle.
— Scalability. For small businesses, elasticity is a major deciding factor when selecting a VPS host. Since you only pay for what you use with a cloud hosting provider, there’s no pressure to pay for immense power in your surf shop’s off season. If you need more computing resources, simply purchase more computing power from your provider. It’s that simple.
— Reliability. Finally, a cloud VPS is more reliable than a traditional VPS host. This is largely because you don’t have to deal with the stress of managing or maintaining your own servers when they go down or experience problems. Your website is hosted on multiple servers simultaneously, so when one goes down it doesn’t mean that your site goes down with it. A quality hosting provider has built-in failover technology.
While it’s important to take things like security and privacy into account when researching cloud hosting providers, most places have these under control. This is why it’s increasingly important for small businesses to do their research. Make sure the provider in question has a long history of providing a high level of security. Don’t settle for anything less.