The best cloud hosting providers offer hardware and software platform combinations that are cheap, fast, and scalable. Public cloud providers, such as Amazon, mainly target larger companies, whereas many web hosts rely on small business customers.
Web hosting companies have traditionally operated datacenters independently of public cloud service providers. Now some web hosts use Google, AWS, and Azure for their own requirements.
The best cloud hosting vendors are innovating in the datacenter industry, providing new tools to developers to use in programming, with managed WordPress being one of the fastest-growing sectors. The companies listed here have ranked as the best cloud hosting solutions in the marketplace.
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Best Cloud Hosting Vendors
The cloud hosting vendors we recommend offer a cheaper alternative to more expensive public cloud options. Our picks align with the unique requirements of small business eCommerce development.
Agile programming teams building custom software for independent startups, online stores, website design companies, and mobile app publishers will benefit by using the services from the cloud hosting providers listed below.
1. Kamatera.com
- Ultimate scalability with limitless customizations
- Create and deploy servers in 60 seconds
- Easily add load balancers and firewalls
- Stellar 99.95% uptime guarantee
- Sign up today for a 30-day FREE trial
- Get started on Kamatera now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
5 minutes | 20 GB SSD – 4 TB SSD | 1 – 32 cores | 1 GB – 128 GB |
Kamatera offers cloud infrastructure servers, billed by the hour for a fixed price, and the vendor offers fully managed services as an optional upgrade. All Kamatera servers run Ubuntu and are suitable for development with container virtualization and version control for Agile teams.
Get the best deals on cloud hosting at Kamatera:
- Recommended plan: Cloud Servers (Type-T Burstable)
- Configuration: 2 vCPUs, 4 GB RAM, 60 GB SSD storage, + 500 GB bandwidth
- Cost: $0.029 per hour (hourly billing)
With Kamatera, the General Purpose servers guarantee hardware availability through dedicated resource allocation. Type-T Burstable will scale elastically to support extra CPU usage for web traffic at an additional 10% charge.
The burstable plans at Kamatera will be billed at the same rates as Type-A Availability plans unless the extra resources are used in production.
This helps to guarantee a website the best web hosting uptime even if links go viral on social media. Kamatera’s fully managed services are another recommended add-on for cheap cloud solutions.
2. Cloudways.com
- Managed cloud hosting with 24/7/365 monitoring
- Choose from 5 popular cloud providers
- Auto-healing cloud servers with FREE backups
- 3-day free trial with no credit card required
- Host unlimited apps with no contract lock-in
- Get started on Cloudways now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
8 minutes | 20 GB SSD – 4 TB SSD | 1 – 96 cores | 1 GB – 384 GB |
Cloudways has an innovative managed cloud platform that works in partnership with major public cloud service providers. Web and mobile app developers have the choice between managed service plans of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Digital Ocean, AWS, Vultr, and Linode.
Cloudways managed cloud plans are priced mid-range between shared hosting and VPS plans, with full elastic scalability on all accounts.
Get the best deals on cloud hosting at Cloudways:
- Recommended plan: Managed AWS Services
- Configuration: 2 vCPUs, 2 GB RAM, 20 GB SSD storage, + 2 TB bandwidth
- Cost: $8.25 a month (monthly billing)
The introductory hosting option for AWS hardware at Cloudways is priced at $8.25 per month. Alternatively, you can run the starter plan on Digital Ocean hardware, but the configuration options are limited. The managed Google Cloud Platform plans would be our recommendation for deploying multicloud architecture.
3. Hostwinds.com
- Choose your OS or application configuration
- Hourly or monthly billing for convenience
- Optional upgrades for cPanel, backups, and more
- Managed services, SSDs, and HDDs available
- Block and object storage, plus enterprise firewall
- Get started on Hostwinds now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
6 minutes | 30 GB SSD – 750 GB SSD | 1 – 16 cores | 1 – 96 GB |
Hostwinds has a cloud server platform that is scalable in real-time, so you can build custom web server runtime environments that grow with your required levels of web traffic.
The 2 CPU, 4 GB RAM, 75 GB SSD Storage, and 2 TB monthly bandwidth plan bills at $ 0.026375 per hour. You don’t need to commit to long-term contracts at a cloud host. Search for the lowest prices with Hostwinds’s pay-as-you-go billing approach to cloud web hosting.
The managed cloud services at Hostwinds make it easy to deploy cloud servers with Debian, Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu, and Windows operating system options.
Get the best deals on cloud hosting at Hostwinds:
- Recommended plan: Cloud Server
- Configuration: 2 CPUs, 4 GB RAM, 75 GB SSD storage, + 2 TB bandwidth
- Cost: $ 0.026375 per hour (hourly billing)
Hostwinds has a proprietary control panel for VPS management that uses snapshots to record the full-stack software installation as a backup file. This service is great for development teams using Docker containers and version control.
You can also set up staging environments on multiple servers and use lint tools for software pipeline support more cheaply with the hourly use billing offered by Hostwinds. Hostwinds is also excellent for Bitnami development solutions on cheap cloud servers.
4. Bluehost.com
- Top hardware powered by OpenStack and KVM
- Instant provisioning and guaranteed resources
- Options for 2-4 CPU cores and up to 8GB of RAM
- Quickly manage and scale resources
- Dedicated IP and domain privacy available
- Get started on Bluehost now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
6 minutes | 120 GB SSD – 240 GB SSD | 2 – 4 cores | 2 GB – 8 GB |
Bluehost has built its cloud hosting platform on the basis of extensive experience as the leading web host for WordPress. If you are looking for a fully managed cloud VPS server at the lowest prices, the Enhanced plan at Bluehost offers 2 CPU cores, 4 GB RAM, 60 GB SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth.
Get the best deals on cloud hosting at Bluehost
- Recommended plan: Standard
- Configuration: 2 CPUs, 2 GB RAM, 30 GB SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth
- Cost: $31.99 a month (36-month billing)
The Bluehost managed VPS platform is an easy choice for businesses on shared hosting that need an upgrade for better performance. Take advantage of Bluehost’s experience with WordPress and run on an optimized platform without the lengthy configuration requirements of unmanaged VPS plans.
If you are familiar with cPanel on shared hosting, you can use the same software with a license on your Bluehost VPS plan, which is a great deal (equal to $15 a month).
5. Hostinger.com
- User-friendly hosting powered by Google Cloud
- Isolated resources and integrated CloudFlare
- Built on CloudLinux with LVE containers
- Automated, daily backups and integrated caching
- Instant setup with intuitive custom control panel
- Get started on Hostinger now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
6 minutes | 50 GB NVMe – 400 GB NVMe | 2 – 6 cores | 3 – 12 GB |
Hostinger is another company with solid innovation in the datacenter management space, offering a platform based on CloudLinux with LVE containers.
The company has built a proprietary control panel for account administration and provides scalable hardware allocations on three tiers of pricing for a fully managed service.
The Cloud Startup plan bills at $8.99 on a 24-year contract, making it the best deal for independent website and mobile app developers.
Get the best deals on cloud hosting at Hostinger:
- Recommended plan: Cloud Startup
- Configuration: 2 CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 200 GB SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth
- Cost: $8.99 a month (24-month billing)
The price on the Hostinger plan is cheap for the configuration provided. Both Hostinger cloud hosting plans support up to 300 websites with a free SSL certificate for every domain.
You also receive a free domain name registration and free monthly CDN integration on the platform. Other bonus offers compare to those of popular shared hosting plans, including Google Ad Credits.
The fully managed cloud platform at Hostinger includes multiple datacenters, WordPress acceleration, one dedicated IP address, and free migration. Take advantage of container virtualization for Docker support and managed WordPress hosting.
Other Cloud Hosting Packages
The companies below offer cloud services for programming and development that are professional in support of most project requirements.
The best cloud hosting provider companies are utilizing virtualization to make more hardware resources available to developers at lower prices than AWS cloud services.
6. ScalaHosting.com
- Fully managed VPS with cloud performance
- FREE site migration executed by experts
- NVMe SSD storage and unmetered bandwidth
- Anytime unconditional money-back guarantee
- HostingAdvice readers get 36% off the first term
- Get started on ScalaHosting now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
6 minutes | 50 GB SSD – 200 GB SSD | 2 – 12 cores | 4 GB – 24 GB |
If budget and infrastructure performance are competing priorities for your project, consider ScalaHosting. Host your website on AWS hardware through a managed cloud service provider at a competitive price. The $29.95 plan presents a lower barrier to entry into the cloud hosting realm.
ScalaHosting offers retail customers the ability to manage domain and server settings through its proprietary control panel: SPanel. One of our experts recently took this particular vendor for a spin, and you can check out the detailed review here. With the instant setup feature, you can be up and running on AWS-powered cloud infrastructure in mere minutes.
7. HostGator.com
- 2x as fast and 4x the computing resources
- Tons of storage with the scalability of the cloud
- Low-density servers and multiple caching layers
- Unlimited domains and MySQL databases
- Upgrades available for security, backups, productivity, and domain privacy
- Get started on HostGator now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
7 minutes | 120 GB SSD – 240 GB SSD | 2 – 4 cores | 2 – 8 GB |
HostGator introduced its new cloud platform in 2018 with a tier of shared hosting services. HostGator cloud offers a higher level of dedicated hardware resources and guaranteed scalability to websites.
The HostGator Business Cloud plan is recommended for developers who prefer to continue to use the cPanel environment for managing domains on VPS servers with better configurations.
8. DreamHost.com
- Options for cloud computing & object storage
- Launch cloud servers in 30 seconds or less
- Servers engineered around OpenStack & Ceph
- S3-compatible and redundant object storage
- Support for MongoDB, Redis, Ruby & Node.js
- Get started on DreamHost now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
N/A | 30 GB SSD – 240 GB SSD | New or Transfer | 6 minutes |
DreamHost was one of the first companies to adopt the cloud computing paradigm with its DreamCompute and DreamObjects platforms. The latter is built on Ceph and operates like Amazon S3 for the best web hosting.
The DreamCompute platform is built on OpenStack (originally developed by Rackspace and NASA) for better performance through datacenter engineering and pioneered hourly billing.
9. InMotionHosting.com
- Fault-tolerant SSD storage and up to 8GB of RAM
- FREE control panel with choice of Linux OS
- Full root access or managed servers available
- FREE live-state or scheduled snapshots
- FREE Ansible control mode for automation
- Get started on InMotion now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
6 minutes | 90 GB SSD – 360 GB SSD | 4 – 16 cores | 4 GB – 16 GB |
InMotion Hosting has built a cloud VPS platform that is fully managed and built for the requirements of any level of business. We recommend the cVPS-4 plan as an upgrade.
If you are migrating from shared hosting because of the requirements of your websites needing better performance, InMotion Hosting’s Cloud VPS platform offers low prices and reliability. They also have managed WordPress options.
10. SiteGround.com
- Scalable, speedy, and fully managed
- FREE Cloudflare CDN and choice of 3 datacenters
- Google Cloud partners for top-tier performance
- cPanel/WHM, SSH access, and private DNS
- 24/7 VIP support and a dedicated IP
- Get started on SiteGround now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
6 minutes | 40 GB SSD – 160 GB SSD | 4 – 16 cores | 8 GB – 20 GB |
SiteGround provides a KVM-based environment for cloud servers that builds on the company’s experience in datacenter engineering for CMS scripts like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.
The Jump Start plan is recommended for migrations to SiteGround from other shared hosting platforms. You get a full suite of developer tools and free SSL certificates for every domain.
11. InterServer.net
- Choose Linux or Windows cloud hosting
- Up to 16 cores and 16TB of data transfer
- Plenty of RAM and redundant cloud storage
- FREE control panel and several OS options
- Pay $.01 the first month with HOSTINGADV coupon code
- Get started on InterServer now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
6 minutes | 30 GB SSD – 480 GB SSD | 1 – 16 CPUs | 2 – 32 GB |
InterServer takes the top of the list because of the low prices on its Linux VPS plans. InterServer’s cloud VPS platform offers independent programmers and development teams a scalable option for web hardware that can be configured for script and database requirements.
12. LiquidWeb.com
- HostingAdvice fans get 75% OFF
- Cloudflare CDN, DDoS protection, and backups
- Performance-boosting SSDs and cloud flexibility
- Rock-solid reliability with 100% uptime guarantees
- 24/7 Heroic Support® via phone, chat, and email
- Get started on Liquid Web now.
Setup Time | Disk Space | CPU | RAM |
---|---|---|---|
7 minutes | 30 GB SSD – 150 GB SSD | 1 – 8 cores | 1 GB – 8 GB |
Liquid Web was one of the first web hosts to pioneer elastically scalable cloud server hosting services with its acquisition of Cloud Sites from Rackspace. Liquid Web is the best cloud hosting provider for elite hardware specs.
If you need a high-performance environment with elastic scalability to support any traffic spikes, the Cloud Sites platform at Liquid Web is highly recommended and comparable to AWS EC2 for cloud infrastructure.
13. AccuWebHosting.com
- High redundancy means 100% uptime guarantee
- Powered by Intel Dual Xeon E5 and E7 servers
- Auto-scaling easily handles abrupt traffic increases
- 24/7/365 support available via email and live chat
- FREE account transfer, emails, and daily backups
- Get started on AccuWebHosting now.
Money Back Guarantee | Disk Space | Domain Name | Setup Time |
---|---|---|---|
7 days | 40 GB – 125 GB | New or Transfer | 6 minutes |
AccuWebHosting is one of the best solutions for independent ASP.NET development teams. Get Windows VPS plans with higher performance allocations for cloud applications.
AccuWebHosting has made its brand reputation through budget Windows VPS services and is one of the few companies in the industry that offers a free one-month trial offer on plans.
What is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting primarily refers to hardware and software services provided by a hyper-scale datacenter operator like AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. IBM and Oracle compete with these companies for market share with enterprise corporations.
Companies like Ali Baba, Cloudflare, and DigitalOcean are also major independent cloud companies. Web hosts have been providing cloud services since before virtualization was invented.
Main Elements that Define a Cloud Hosting Plan:
- Uses virtualization to offer a higher level of performance on hardware configurations.
- Based on elite web server hardware with multi-core CPUs and SSD storage drives.
- Includes datacenter optimization like reverse-proxy load balancing and data mirroring.
- Multiple datacenter locations globally with elastic scalability for peak performance.
Another way of looking at cloud hosting outside of the hyper-scale datacenter definition is to consider Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solutions.
“The use of virtual hardware with version control tools like Git is a major aspect of cloud computing today.”
Public cloud companies compete with private cloud costs and hybrid cloud solutions. Most enterprise corporations and small businesses have already adopted multi-cloud approaches to service provisioning.
That’s how cloud computing and hosting share the fundamentals of remote outsourcing of datacenter products and services, primarily to programmers and developers.
How Much Does Cloud Hosting Cost?
For the purposes of our survey, we categorized the cloud hosting companies above into four tiers based on the price level of their plans. The cheapest tier is cloud hosting products marketed in the $6.95 to $14.95 a month range, which include optimized Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Cloud VPS plans.
The plans in this range offer elite hardware configurations, low-density hardware, support for custom server configurations, and DevOps tool kits.
What to Expect in Each Price Range of a Cloud Hosting Plan:
- $6.95 – $14.95: Introductory cloud hosting plans with scalability and optimization
- $15.99 – $29.99: Cheap cloud VPS plans with high-performance configurations
- $35.99 – $69.99: More RAM and CPU cores for cloud VPS, plus VM runtime support
- $99.99 – $149.99: Cloud VPS plans with high SSD allocations
The cheapest Cloud VPS plans start in the $15.99 to $29.99 range. These solutions provide a significant performance upgrade for CMS or eCommerce store websites with active traffic. Scale to higher levels of RAM, SSD storage, and CPU core allocations on Cloud VPS plans in the $35.99 to $69.99 range.
At the top end, the price of most plans was $99.99 to $149.99 per month, which offered cloud VPS configurations equivalent to more than 10 million page views a month.
How Do I Choose the Best Cloud Hosting Plan?
To choose the best cloud hosting plan, you will first need to perform an IT audit on all of the resources the datacenter hardware will support.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platforms provide bare metal servers at scale for rock-bottom pricing on commodity hardware in hyperscale datacenter facilities.
“If you determine that the total requirements for your websites in cloud hosting will exceed the level of support provided by a single web server, go with an elastic cloud hosting plan.”
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) products provide developers with tools like database frameworks, programming support, or runtime environments.
Factors to Consider When Purchasing a Cloud Hosting Plan:
- The Size of the Web Traffic: the total number of page views for all domains
- The Difference Between Peak & Mean Rates of Usage: determines scalability
- The Requirements of the Scripts: programming language & database
- DevOps: version control, backups, sandbox testing, and CI/CD requirements
If you are purchasing datacenter hardware, consider whether you require a single-tenant environment with bare metal servers on an unmanaged platform or multitenant VM solutions that will work with container virtualization and Docker.
Choose the plan that best supports the code and database requirements of your business.
How Does a Cloud Server Work?
Each cloud server operates as part of a wider service mesh in a hyperscale or independently owned datacenter. The service mesh allows systems administrators in web hosting to manage all of their resources within public, private, hybrid, or multicloud constructs.
Each web host uses different solutions for datacenter management, which may include data mirroring across multiple facilities, request caching, or reverse-proxy load balancing for better performance.
Major Cloud Server Stack Components in Datacenters:
- Operating System: Windows, Linux, or BSD (Bare Metal or Virtual Server)
- Web Server Framework: Apache, NGINX, Windows Server, Caddy, Tomcat, etc.
- Programming Language and Database: PHP, Python, ASP.NET, JavaScript, etc.
- Service Mesh: OpenStack, VMware, Kubernetes, Mirantis, and other solutions.
With virtualization, VPS platforms require a hypervisor to share operating systems across partitioned hardware in multitenant environments. Parallels, OpenVZ, Virtuozzo, Xen, and SolusVM are popular solutions for orchestrating VPS platforms professionally.
The most popular VPS hypervisors are KVM and Hyper-V, both of which support running Windows and Linux on the same hardware with a shared kernel. Container virtualization is now used for VMs.
Why Should I Choose Cloud Hosting?
The main benefits of cloud hosting are access to a hyperscale datacenter facility with elastic hardware that can manage any level of web traffic and platform services for developers.
The concept of elastic scalability was developed first as a commercial hosting platform on Amazon Web Service plans. AWS EC2 offered companies the ability to outsource the majority of their on-site datacenter facilities to public cloud hardware with security on S3 storage options.
Key Features to Look for in a Cloud Hosting Plan:
- Elastic Scalability: a key aspect of AWS EC2 and Kubernetes solutions
- High-Performance Hardware: available on Cloud VPS and Shared hosting plans
- Datacenter Optimization: varies between web hosting companies and datacenter
- Virtualization Footprint: 1-3% of hardware resources (hypervisor vs. containers)
Kubernetes was developed and used to manage the requirements of Google’s datacenters internally before being released as an open-source project to compete with AWS EC2.
AWS EC2 and Kubernetes are the top solutions for businesses with the highest level of processing, database, and web traffic requirements.
For small business users, ecommerce stores, and web publishers, a Cloud VPS plan can be configured to support up to 10 million page views per month with WordPress. Support custom code or other CMS and ecommerce scripts affordably.
Shared Web Hosting, VPS, Dedicated Server, Cloud Hosting: What’s the Difference?
The term cloud computing has become ubiquitous as sales and marketing of web hosting products have increased.
Cloud hosting is defined by elastic scalability in hyperscale datacenters where companies like DigitalOcean, Alibaba, and Cloudflare are challenging AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, and other established IT companies like Oracle and IBM for market share.
Comparing Shared, VPS, Cloud, and Dedicated Server Plans:
- Shared Hosting: the best value in the cloud with prices as low as $1.99 per domain
- VPS Hosting: the best price-to-performance among all web hosting products
- Dedicated Servers: important when single-tenant occupancy is a security requirement
- Cloud Hosting: elastic frameworks in a hyperscale datacenter or PaaS/IaaS solutions
Dedicated servers used to max out at 10,000 simultaneous users, but are now much more powerful with multi-core processing. You can still use the figure to determine whether your apps and domains will require elastic scalability or a dedicated server.
“Cloud VPS plans compete with public cloud service products on value.”
The advantage of shared hosting is that it is built for small business web development requirements. The performance of custom scripts, online stores, WordPress sites, and other applications is improved through deployment on a cloud VPS plan with hypervisor virtualization and elite hardware.
Cloud Hosting is Easy With These Budget Offers
The cloud hosting plans reviewed above were selected as the best options for Agile programming teams working on custom code for websites and mobile applications that require an advanced runtime environment.
Cloud VPS plans are designed to scale in real-time through the allocation of additional resources (RAM, CPU cores, SSD storage) without the need to reinstall the software stack. Cloud VPS plans are recommended for WordPress hosting.
Around 40% of all websites globally are published with WordPress, leading to major industry specialization in building optimized cloud runtimes for the script.
The same platform optimizations used by WordPress will also generally benefit other CMS publishers or eCommerce scripts. The most efficient optimizations for WordPress are PHP 8, Memcached, Redis, NGINX, and Varnish.
You can build your own custom environment with Cloud VPS plans to support code.
The advantages of managed VPS plans over those of unmanaged VPS plans differ depending on the business or project that will be utilizing the hardware. Access AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure when you specifically need the database or programming tools to support projects for enterprise clients.
Choose Cloud VPS plans for the best performance of WordPress and other CMS scripts, or for the fastest page load speeds in eCommerce.
Start with what you need for hardware configuration and scale CPU cores, RAM, and storage in accordance with metrics. By employing this method, small businesses can use the cloud most affordably for high performance.
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