Do you want to skip the read and get right to my top picks? The best cloud hosting companies for most people is A2Hosting.
Introduction to Cloud Hosting Companies:
Cloud hosting is the perfect choice if you’re aiming for scalability and flexibility, and cope with dips and spikes in traffic. It stores your site on multiple servers and lets you commandeer resources from different locations. If you own a large website, choosing one of the leading cloud server hosting providers might seem like a no-brainer. However, despite its touted benefits to your website, it’s always better to have more insight as to which are the best cloud hosting companies to really consider.
Hundreds of cloud web hosting providers are ripe for your picking. While this is good, it can also be overwhelming. We get it – that’s why this guide we’ve written is perfect. We dug deep and tested around 20 hosting providers to determine which are the top cloud server hosting providers that should make your shortlist.
We’ve listed 5 cloud server hosting providers selected based on specific criteria, such as ease of use, features, pricing, and money-back guarantee.
Let’s begin, shall we?
What are Cloud Server Hosting Providers?
Cloud hosting is a game-changer in the web hosting space. Traditional hosting deploys various solutions via a single server. With cloud hosting, you can access multiple websites and applications through a network of interlinked physical and virtual cloud servers. In a sense, cloud hosting companies provide website owners with maximum flexibility and scalability.
If you sign up for the regular web hosting package, you get a pre-set number of resources on one server. Once you register your domain name, you can choose from a range of bandwidth, disk space, RAM, and CPU cores. This isn’t bad at all. Yet, for very large websites, working within a fixed amount of resources can be limiting. For instance, in the event of traffic spikes, you’d want to allocate more bandwidth or RAM temporarily to keep your site from going offline.
This is where cloud hosting has the fix. You can pay for an initial amount of resource, then tweak it later easily depending on your needs.
Cloud hosting vs VPS: what’s the difference?
It’s easy to confuse cloud hosting with virtual private server (VPS) hosting products. However, unlike VPS, cloud hosting servers are spread throughout multiple devices instead of a single physical server. Modifying resources under your plan is also easier with cloud hosting – you literally just have to drag a slider. Within moments, your website is going to function with extra power.
What really sets cloud server hosting providers apart from shared web hosting is its scalability. It’s a great alternative when you need a dedicated server plus colocation provider. In addition, you can choose options for managed web hosting.
Cloud hosting is applicable to everything under the sun, whether for email hosting or as a business server. While some providers offer Windows hosting, we advise you to run Linux instead to have a more in-depth feel of the virtual servers.
Our Handpicked Best Cloud Hosting Companies:
Take a look at a brief rundown of our top 5 list of the best cloud hosting companies. Read our review of each further below and decide which one of them might be a good fit for you.
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A2 Hosting: Best Overall for Cloud Hosting.
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Cloudways: Close runner up
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SiteGround: Best features.
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HostGator: Unmetered Storage.
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DreamHost: Cheapest Cloud Hosting.
How to Choose the Top Cloud Server Hosting Providers?
So how did we come up with our top 5 list of the best cloud hosting companies? We considered several factors, including:
- Ease of Use – Is it easy to modify your resources or is it a tough hill to climb? The leading cloud server hosting provider makes it super easy to adjust your resources.
- Features – We looked at some of the important factors in the best cloud hosting companies, such as disk space, RAM, root access, and CPU cores. Security, backups, and SSL are also essential features.
- Performance – We’re talking about uptime as a crucial feature. A website that experiences downtime consistently isn’t much good. Therefore, to quality as the best cloud server hosting provider, uptime should be near-perfect.
- Customer Support – Even if you’ve hosted a website a couple of times, having great support to walk you through some snafus along the way will help. So, the best cloud hosting companies offer excellent support.
- Pricing – Perhaps the biggest consideration is the cost. Of course, this also depends on how much you’re willing to spend on getting the best cloud hosting companies. Also, money-back guarantees are non-negotiable.
In Detail: Our Handpicked Best Cloud Based Hosting Services
Based on the criteria presented above, here are our tried and tested picks for the top cloud server hosting providers:
A2Hosting
A2 Hosting is famed for its super-fast page loads and excellent uptime. Founded in Arbor Ann, Michigan in 2003 by Bryan Muthig, A2 Hosting went from addressing the needs of a niche clientele to being one of the most popular hosting solutions today.
Its unique selling point is its Turbo servers which claim to power page loads 20 times the speed of average hosting providers. As one of the best cloud hosting companies out there today, A2 Hosting provides a robust solution for websites with large resource needs.
Features:
A2 Hosting claims that they “put the meaning back into Cloud” by offering more than traditional cloud hosting. As one of the best cloud based hosting services, it offers flexible standard and Turbo cloud VPS plans that allow you to choose form a range of resources and capacities such as:
- Up to 450 GB storage
- 32 GB RAM
- Up to 8 CPU cores
- Unlimited websites hosting
- Full root access
- Guru Crew Support team available 24/7/365
Pros:
- Flexible and robust cloud hosting plans
- Excellent uptime – up to 99.98% when we tested it
- Amazing customer service
- Great “anytime” money-back guarantee
- Affordable pricing
- Free SSL, site migration, and domain
Cons:
- No Windows server options
- Automatic backups limited to some plans
Pricing:
A2 Hosting Cloud VPS plans are reasonably priced, despite being somewhat on the expensive side. Plans start at $4.99 per month with the most powerful plan at $74.99 per month. It’s also unique in that it provides an “anytime” hassle-free money-back guarantee.
If you're considering A2 Hosting, do read their service terms page.
>> Click for the lowest A2 Hosting pricing plans today <<
Cloudways
If you’re seeking extreme flexibility, Cloudways gives you the weapon of choice. This Malta-headquartered cloud based hosting services gives users the choice which cloud provider to use from five, apps, free or paid SSL, and whether you’re gunning for a developer- or agency-based workflow. Founded in 2009 by Uzair Gadit, Aaqib Gadit, and Pere hospital, this cloud server hosting providers now caters to users from 43 different countries.
Features:
Cloudways give users the option to choose from various resources, including memory, disk space, bandwidth, and RAM. Its cheapest plan comes with 1GB RAM, 1 Core Processor, 25GB disk space, and 1 TB bandwidth. Meanwhile, its most expensive plan gives you 16GB RAM, 8 Core Processors, 320GB disk space, and 6TB bandwidth.
If you avail of Cloudways’ managed hosting plans, you can expect the following features:
- Free site migration for those moving hosts
- CDN add-on
- Dedicated firewall
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL
- One-click installation for applications
- Two-factor authentication for enhanced security
- 24/7 Support
- Auto-healing
- HTTP/2 enabled servers
Pros:
- Easy to set up
- Terrific uptime
- Unlimited apps installation
- Flexible pricing tiers
- Free plan to test the service out
- Pay-as-you-go plans
Cons:
- No domain registration option
- Email costs extra
Pricing:
There isn’t a fixed pricing scheme with Cloudways, but the flexibility is surprising. The cost depends on what data centre you choose, from among Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud. You can also choose between monthly or hourly pricing options.
To illustrate, if you choose a Digital Ocean data centre in the US or London, the price range is from $12 to $96 per month. Or if you want to pay by the hour, you’ll shell out $0.0176 to $0.1333 per hour.
>> Click for the lowest Cloudways pricing plans today <<
Siteground
Sofia, Bulgaria-based Siteground is becoming one of the most popular and award-winning cloud hosting companies today. From its humble origins, it now caters to 2 million website users.
Features:
SiteGround’s default cloud hosting offers 4 CPU cores, 8GB RAM, 5TB data transfer, and 40GB disk space. The resources go up along the pricing ladder, up to 16 CPU cores, 160GB disk space, 20GB memory, and 5TB data transfer.
- Direct SSH access and SFTP
- Dedicated IP
- Free CDN
- Free SSL Certificate
- Automatic daily backups
- Collaboration tools
Pros:
- Phenomenal uptime
- Free SSL certificate across the board
- Terrific customer service
- Highly configurable plans
- Hosting plans come in monthly and annual options
Cons:
- Relatively low disk space offering
- No free domain
Pricing:
There are four Cloud hosting plans for this best cloud server hosting provider contender. The cheapest plan comes at $100 to $400 per month. You can also configure your cloud hosting settings beyond the allocations provided in the plans.
If you're considering Siteground, do read their service terms page.
>> Click for the lowest Siteground pricing plans today <<
Hostgator
Hostgator is a Texas-based cloud hosting companies that's known for offering a suite of hosting services, such as shared, reseller, VPS hosting, dedicated web hosting, and cloud hosting. It is one of the first companies to come up with the concept of “unlimited” hosting services.
Features:
Here are some great features of this cloud based hosting services:
- Unmetered bandwidth and disk space – which you can't find in any other cloud server hosting provider
- Dedicated IP
- Local caching
- Free Domain
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Free SSL certificate
- 45-day money-back guarantee
- Free email
Pros
- A variety of feature-packed hosting plans
- Excellent shared hosting offering
- Good for novice webmasters
- Useful site-building software
- Good customer service
- Outstanding uptime
Cons:
- Not a Windows cloud hosting providers
Pricing:
There are 3 Hostgator cloud hosting plans – Cloud Hatchling, Cloud Baby, and Business Cloud. The cheapest plan (Hatchling) will cost you $2.75 per month while the top tier Business Cloud sets you back $5.25 per month.
Thankfully, this cloud server hosting provider has a 45-day money-back guarantee.
If you're considering Hostgator, do read their service terms page.
>> Click for the lowest Hostgator pricing plans today <<
Dreamhost
While not a household name for average internet users, Dreamhost has been a famous brand within the developer and designer communities. It is one of the oldest hosting services today, being founded in 1996. It's a WordPress-endorsed web hosting services with a robust cloud hosting platform, DreamCloud. Dreamhost's cloud hosting companies services comes in three tiers that support Linux, Windows, and BSD.
What's great about DreamCloud is scalability in terms of creating VMs or modifying existing VMs to handle different infrastructure workloads.
Features:
Dreamhost’s cloud based hosting services is called DreamCloud. It is made up of two components:
- DreamCompute – public cloud based hosting service
- DreamObjects – scalable storage solution
Its standout features include:
- Open-source
- Full root access
- Excellent speed and uptime
- Scalable servers
- Perfect for gaming
- Excellent for developers and provides great test environment
- 100GB of storage and free bandwidth
Pros:
- Open-source
- Flexible and scalable cloud hosting
- Excellent speeds and uptime
- 24/7 chat and e-mail support
- Free SSL certificate
Cons:
- Lacks telephone support
- No free domain
- Without a money-back guarantee
Pricing:
There are three cloud based hosting services pricing packages: 512 MB RAM Server, 2GB RAM Server, and 8GB RAM Server.
Their cheapest plan starts at $4.50 monthly and its top tier costs $48.00 monthly.
If you're considering Dreamhost, do read their service terms page.
>> Click for the lowest Dreamhost pricing plans today <<
Conclusion and Recommendation for Cloud Hosting Companies:
Cloud computing hosting providers aren't for everyone. In my opinion, smaller websites would benefit more with regular hosting packages rather than cloud. Yet if you're one with an ambitious project in mind, then availing of cloud based hosting services is a good idea for you.
To wrap things up, we've give you the top 5 best cloud based hosting providers. Hopefully, now, you have an idea which among the five would be most suited to your website and your needs as a business. Our recommendation is A2 Hosting.
Click for the best A2 Hosting pricing
FAQs:
How does shared hosting and cloud based hosting services differ?
With shared web hosting, multiple sites share a single server, whereas with cloud based hosting services, sites pull resources from multiple servers. Since cloud hosting isn't tied to a single location, power outages rarely happen.
How much does cloud hosting companies' services cost?
Cloud server hosting providers offer flexible pricing packages. In other words, payment is based on the amount of resources you want to utilize. Some cloud server hosting providers begin around the $5 per month figure and can cost as much as $100 or more.
That's all for now:
If you've read all the way through this best cloud hosting companies list, we are thankful. We hope you can now answer the question for what is the leading cloud server hosting provider options! We have a large collection of articles, guides, and comparison reviews of eCommerce solutions, reliable hosting providers, website builders, and more! Feel free to check them out;
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