Startups are always on the move, and they need a reliable and affordable cloud hosting solution to keep their data safe and running. Whether you’re creating a new website or holding down the fort for an existing one, you need to be able to keep your data safe. That means keeping your blog posts up-to-date, store images and videos in a secure format, and more. If you’re looking for the best cloud hosting solutions for startups, we’ve got just what you need.
What is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting is a technology that allows websites and applications to be stored on remote servers. This can involve either software or web server solutions. Software cloud hosting solutions allow you to install the software on your computer and then access it from anywhere, while web server cloud hosting solutions provide a web server that can be used by your website or application.
There are several benefits of using cloud hosting solutions:
1) They can be very cost-effective, as they often offer discounts for users who use them for multiple purposes. For example, Cloud Hosting Solutions can be used to run your business website and also serve as a data storage solution for your data files, making it easy to access and manage them from anywhere in the world.
2) They offer an expansive range of features and services, giving you the ability to choose what type of security you want (and need), as well as how much control you want over your site’s settings. For example, some cloud hosters offer an unlimited number of websites and applications that can be hosted on their servers, whereas others only allow a limited number of applications per site.
3) They are often scalable – meaning they can grow rapidly with increasing traffic levels – making them perfect for businesses with large amounts of online traffic or growing needs for space.
4) They often have low monthly charges if used in conjunction with other services such as domain name registration or email marketing service, making them an affordable way to get started with online marketing.
Best Cloud Hosting Solutions for Websites
Hostinger — Most Bang for Your Buck
- NORMALLY $29/MONTH
- MONTH-TO-MONTH PRICING
- FREE DOMAIN AND SSL CERTIFICATE
- 30-DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
Hostinger offers quality web hosting at competitively low prices. Their most affordable cloud web hosting plan is currently $9.99 per month.
You’ll have to sign a contract to get this deal, but it’ll let you host up to 300 websites for less than 10 bucks a month.
It’s one of the lowest prices for cloud web hosting out there. Couple that with their 99.9% uptime guarantee and decently fast speeds, and you have yourself an excellent host.
These are fully managed plans with 24/7 support. You might think that the low price would mean no customer service, but Hostinger takes care of and the server uptime, monitoring, and automated daily backups.
One thing that really sets Hostinger out from the rest of the pack is their dedicated IP. Customers receive free dedicated IP with any of their cloud hosting plans—which is incredible.
Their hPanel dashboard is also very intuitive and user-friendly. Even if you’re new to using a dashboard like that, you’ll have no trouble getting the hang of it.
Full pricing is as follows. Overall, it’s a very lucrative cloud hosting plan that’ll give you the most bang for your buck.
Pricing for Hostinger cloud hosting starts at $9.99 per month, though the monthly price will go up when you renew. This is completely standard in the hosting industry, but it’s something to be aware of.
A2 Hosting
Best Overall for Cloud Hosting
4.1out of 5
Disk Space
3 out of 5 stars
Help and Support
5 out of 5 stars
Uptime
2.5 out of 5 stars
Pricing
3.25 out of 5 stars
Features
4.1 out of 5 stars
| Pricing | $4.99-$98.99 |
|---|---|
| Bandwidth | 2TB – 8TB |
| Storage | 20GB – 250GB |
| Free backups? | Yes |
| Free domain name? | No |
| Root access? | Yes |
| Money-back guarantee? | Yes – anytime |
What we like about A2 Hosting
When it comes to cloud hosting, A2 Hosting can’t be beaten. It came top of our research for features, and it also has an anytime money-back guarantee – something not offered by any other provider.
It’s not too expensive either, with cloud plans starting at $4.99 per month; while the uptime isn’t the best at 99.95%, you do get a wealth of excellent features.
These features include up to 450GB of storage, 8 CPU cores, and 32GB of RAM. Oh, and you can host an unlimited number of websites – something you which other cloud hosting providers don’t offer.
It is worth noting that on its website, A2 Hosting doesn’t offer traditional cloud hosting packages. Instead, you’ll be directed to their cloud VPS plans, instead. You can choose from both managed and unmanaged plans, however, both emphasize speed and performance.
Kamatera — Best for Affordable Versatility
- EXTREMELY FLEXIBLE AND SCALABLE
- STARTS AT $4 PER MONTH
- 99.95% GUARANTEED UPTIME
- 30-DAY FREE TRIAL
Kamatera has been in the IT business since 1995 and has become a global cloud services platform provider working with startups through enterprise-level organizations.
One of Kamatera’s most attractive features happens before you ever pay one cent for its services: a full 30-day free trial. The free trial is available for all cloud-based products and requires no contract or commitment.
Free trial users get full access to Kamatera’s cloud management platform, a designated account manager, 24/7 tech support, and includes the following:
- 1 cloud server (up to $100 of any configuration you choose)
- 1000 GB cloud block storage
- 1000 GB outgoing internet traffic
Kamatera has a 99.95% uptime guarantee but every speed test I’ve seen has shown 100% uptime. Along with affordable rates and instant scalability and flexibility and you get a fantastic VPS cloud hosting experience.
Kamatera has 13 data centers around the world, including one in Canada (Toronto), three in the United States (New York, Texas, California), three in Europe (the Netherlands, Germany, the UK), one in Asia (Hong Kong), and five in Israel (Petach Tikva, Rosh Haayin (2), Tel Aviv, Haifa). Each data center is AICPA SOC 2 Type II-compliant or better and every single component has a parallel backup, including the main power supply.
Cloudways
A Close Runner-Up
4out of 5
Disk Space
4.5 out of 5 stars
Help and Support
4.15 out of 5 stars
Uptime
4.5 out of 5 stars
Pricing
3.85 out of 5 stars
Features
3.45 out of 5 stars
| Pricing | $10 – $3569.98 |
|---|---|
| Bandwidth | 1TB – 20TB |
| Storage | 25GB – 3840GB |
| Free backups? | No |
| Free domain name? | No |
| Root access? | No |
| Money-back guarantee? | No |
What we like about Cloudways
Cloudways is a strong second-place option, and it could be number one depending on what you’re looking for. This platform lets you deploy your cloud servers from one of over 25 global locations, and you can choose the region and city yourself.
This means that you’ll never be too far from your servers, which is great for site speed. It also means that Cloudways’ plans are more flexible than those of its competitors. Prices depend on your chosen data center, but you also get to choose between monthly or hourly pricing packages, depending on what best suits your website.
For example, you can pay $10/month for the basic plan with a Digital Ocean data center in New York, San Francisco, London, and a few other cities. Or, if you value a lot of flexibility, you can get the same plan and data center for a pay-as-you-go rate of $0.0139/hour.
What could be improved
Cloudways offers very impressive customer support on all of its plans, including 24/7 live chat and an easy ticketing system. However, you’ll have to sign up to one of two paid support plans if you’d like more than those basic features. For $100/month, the Advanced support plan includes proactive site monitoring and investigations, plus help with customization. If you want 24/7 phone support, though, you’ll have to scale up to the Premium support plan, which is $500/month.
HostGator — Best Cheap Cloud Hosting
- STARTS AT $12.95/MONTH
- $4.95/MONTH IF YOU PAY ANNUALLY
- FREE DOMAIN AND SSL CERTIFICATE
- 45-DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE
HostGator offers some of the most cost-effective cloud hosting on the market today. They’re certainly the most affordable options on this list.
Let’s take a look at some the three basic cloud hosting plans offered by HostGator:
Hatchling Plan
- Starting at $4.95
- 2 CPUs
- 2 GB of memory
- Single domain
Baby Plan
- Starting at $6.57
- 4 CPUs
- 4 GB of memory
- Unlimited domains
Business Plan
- Starting at $9.95
- 6 CPUs
- 6 GB of memory
- Unlimited domains
These rates are for for 36-month contracts. They are 45% cheaper than the actual price, which you’ll end up paying when you renew your contract.
All HostGator cloud hosting plans come with a free SSL certificate. The Business plan comes with a dedicated IP, free SEO tools, and free domain as well.
Not only are they affordable, but they don’t sacrifice quality either. HostGator’s dashboard makes it easy for you to monitor the performance of your website. You can quickly view data related to page speed, uptime, reach, and more.
Scaling your server resources is simple as well. This can be done with just one click, without any downtime, reboots, or data migrations.
Best Cloud Server For Small Business
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon’s AWS offers a wide range of cloud hosting services. Plans include Pay as you go, Pay less when you reserve, Pay even less per unit by using more, Pay even less as AWS grows, and Custom pricing. “Pay as you go” allows one to pay only for the resources actually used, without any long term commitments or upfront costs. The “Pay less when you reserve” plan allows one to invest in reserved capacity, and later get discounts and savings. “Pay even less per unit by using more” allows one to get benefits of reduced costs with increased storage space and data transfer. “Pay even less as AWS grows” plan allows one to receive benefits when AWS optimizations result in reduced operational costs. Custom pricing, as you might expect, is for clients needing customized solutions.1 AWS claims its unique selling proposition (USP) in computation and dedicated application services, including website hosting, mobile data backup, business apps hosting and gaming. Pricing details vary widely across multiple product offerings, and one can start with AWS free tier to get a firsthand experience of services and expected costs.
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure most commonly assists businesses with Paas, SaaS, and IaaS needs. One of the reasons so many users choose Azure is its speed. Azure makes creating and deploying applications, recovery data, and scaling a quick process. The number of premade tools, templates, and guides is readily available to users.
Another considerable benefit of this cloud server is that it provides flexibility in coding languages, locations, and service levels. As a result, having freedom and flexibility to choose your service level allows you to select the features you need without paying for the things you don’t.
To sum up, Azure’s security is also solid and comes with excellent disaster recovery capabilities.
Box
Box for business offers features such as secure file sharing, enterprise-level security, file sync, cross platforms, IT and admin controls, reporting and dedicated technical support. Their personal plan is free, offering 10GB of storage, and the personal pro plan costs $10 per month for 100 GB storage. Business plans include a starter plan costing $5 per user per month with 100GB of storage; for $15 per user per month, and with at least three users, businesses can get unlimited storage. Clients can request customization under the enterprise plan. Features, such as Microsoft Office 365, active directory, and maximum allowed file size, vary across business plans and users can choose what best meets their needs.
Dropbox
Dropbox is an excellent option for people new to the cloud realm. Consequently, it’s a popular service many individuals use to organize their files, photos, and schoolwork. Dropbox is comfortable and familiar for many as a service.
Along with the comfortability of Dropbox, this service offers a variety of cloud storage options for small and large businesses alike. Therefore, Dropbox is great for file sharing, backups, syncing, and more. File recovery is a critical feature for many business owners. Additionally, Dropbox keeps a copy of every deleted file or folder for up to 180 days, depending on your plan.
With free and paid options starting at $15 a month, Dropbox is a great way to join a cloud server if your business is starting.
JustCloud
JustCloud offers more than 50 features, including an admin control panel, network drives, access and permission management, geo-redundant storage, file versioning, and hourly backup.8 The business plan costs $29.95 per month and includes 100GB of storage for five computers, while the enterprise plan costs $59.95 per month and includes 500GB of storage space for 20 computers. You can also get a custom plan if you’ve got greater backup requirements.
How to Choose the Best Cloud Hosting Solution?
Charlotte, NC
Cloud hosting solutions are a great way to start your business. But if you’re just starting out, it can be hard to know which service is the right fit for your needs. Here are some tips to help you choose the right cloud hosting solution:
• Do your research before signing up for a service. Look at reviews and compare prices between different providers. This will help you determine whether a particular provider is worth your time and money.
• Make sure you understand the benefits of using cloud hosting solutions. Many providers offer discount codes or other incentives that can make using their services more affordable.
• Compare the features of different cloud hosting solutions. Be sure to read customer reviews to get an idea of what other customers think about the quality of each service.
Tips for Choosing the Best Cloud Hosting Solution.
One of the most important factors to consider when choosing a cloud hosting solution is the size and function of your business. For small businesses that don’t need or want all the bells and whistles offered by more widespread cloud hosters, there are often simpler solutions available.
Some easy-to-use cloud hosting solutions include GoDaddy, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. You can also explore various public cloud services like Rackspace Cloud or Microsoft Azure IaaS. If you have a large business looking for a more complex solution, you may want to consider using a private cloud provider such as Blue Coat or IBM Cloud.
finding the best cloud hosting solutions for your business can be difficult but it’s definitely worth it to have access to all the features and capabilities of a major player in the space.
Find the Best Cloud Hosting Solutions for Your Business
Another important factor to consider when selecting a cloud host is whether your business needs unlimited scalability and local access to data, or simply limited storage and access rights with some clouds (like Google Cloud Platform). Depending on your needs, you can find different options including self-hosted applications (like WordPress) or dedicated clouds (like AWS). However, both these options come with some costs – typically higher start up costs and longerterm maintenance fees than traditional hosted applications or clouds.
Compare Cloud Hosting Solutions
In order to make the best decision for your business, it’s important to compare cloud hosting solutions and measure their performance and features against each other. To do this, you can use a variety of metrics such as website load time, data throughput, customer satisfaction, and price. These comparisons can help you determine which cloud host would be the best fit for your specific business needs.
Conclusion
Cloud Hosting is a powerful technology that can be used in many ways for businesses. By understanding the benefits and using the best Cloud Hosting Solutions for your business, you can achieve success.