This guide to private cloud hosting will help you compare cloud hosting services and decide whether it’s the right type of hosting for your website.
Quick find…
- Pros & Cons
- What Is Private Cloud Hosting?
- Benefits Of Private Hosting
- Disadvantages Of Private Hosting
- When To Choose Private Cloud Hosting
Pros & Cons
Here’s a quick glance at the pros and cons…
Pros
- High levels of cyber security
- Scalable & customisable
- Flexible
- Reliable as you have the server to yourself
Cons
- Can be expensive
- Requires technical expertise to set-up and maintain
- Can cause access issues
What is private hosting?
Cloud hosting is becoming a popular choice of web hosting for small businesses.
There are 2 main types of cloud hosting: Public cloud (being the most common) and private cloud hosting.
A private cloud service is offered exclusively to one business, which means that particular business has the benefits of cloud computing without sharing resources with other businesses.
Private cloud hosting companies offers the same level of reliability, scalability, and performance of public cloud hosting, but with higher levels of control and security. Depending on your business requirements, cloud hosting services can either be managed, or self-managed.
Services are delivered in-house or at a hosting provider’s data centre – the latter being the most cost-effective.
The alternative to cloud hosting is virtual private hosting which is provided by companies like Digital Ocean.
You may also want to consider cheaper shared hosting packages with providers such as 123Reg, GoDaddy and Hostgator if you’re looking to save money.
Liquid Web also have some awesome hosting packages.
Benefits of private cloud hosting
The main benefit of private cloud hosting is the higher level of control and security. In addition to public cloud hosting, with private, the additional benefits are:
- Higher levels of security – You will not be sharing the physical server with anyone else. This creates a very secure network on multiple levels for your website.
- More customisation – Since you will be the only user, you’ll be able to completely customise your server, including hardware, software, operating system etc.
- Excellent reliability – Cloud hosting is already incredibly reliable, but by choosing a private cloud hosting service, there’s no risk that your site will be slowed down or crash due to other websites.
You’ll have multiple different servers that are running simultaneous versions of your website, and resources can be drawn from various sources as they are needed.
Disadvantages of private cloud hosting
Private cloud hosting is not suited to every business. It’s much more expensive to setup initially – especially if you’re managing in-house with your private servers.
If you outsource to a 3rd party hosting provider, you’ll be paying for the use of numerous dedicated servers to run your cloud network. As well as the cost of the initial setup, you may experience higher costs for server maintenance, upgrades, and management as well.
This is especially true if you’ll be purchasing and self-managing the servers, instead of relying on a cloud hosting provider. The heightened levels of security that private cloud hosting offers, may create some issues with remote access and mobile users.
It’s therefore important that you have the right technical expertise on-hand should you need it.
When to choose private cloud hosting
You should choose private cloud hosting for your business if:
- You have the budget
- Your organisation has extremely high security standards
- Your site receives a large amount of traffic regularly
- You have the technical expertise to manage the hosting yourself if you choose to self-manage.
Choosing cloud hosting will require more resources in terms of time, money and technical expertise to setup and manage.
You need to consider whether this will be offset by the benefits you’ll receive in terms of performance, security, customisation and flexibility, which you won’t get with other types of web hosting.
Not every site with a high volume of traffic will need private cloud hosting.
If your site deals with sensitive customer and user information, such as health or financial records, then the security you’ll get from private cloud hosting may be worth considering. Not only will you have high levels of security, but you’ll also be able to manage your data as you see best.
If you’re considering using a dedicated server for your web hosting, but want greater flexibility, then considering a private cloud hosting service could be what you need.
Compare prices of web hosting below.
