The Best Cloud Host: VPS.NET
VPS.NET is our pick for the cloud host. They win against others in price, ease of use, support, and reliability. We’ve used them for many projects and have always been happy with them. You get full root access, choice of Linux distributions/setups, and dedicated cloud resources. We highly recommend VPS.NET for your cloud hosting needs. Here are some sample configurations and pricing:
| Example Config | CPU | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | 0.6Ghz | 378MB | 10GB | 250GB | $20/mo | Order |
| Enhanced | 2.4Ghz | 1.5GB | 60GB | 1.5TB | $68/mo | Order |
| Extreme | 10.8Ghz | 6.7GB | 180GB | 4.5TB | $234/mo | Order |
Other Cloud Hosts
Rackspace is a very well respected hosting company for dedicated servers. They have recently gotten into cloud hosting and offer two services, CloudSites and CloudServers. CloudSites is a platform that is easy to setup but has some management limitations (no SSH, for example). CloudServers is a VPS cloud service that provides full root access, but can be complicated for a beginner. The prices here are for CloudServers:
| Setup Example | CPU | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | n/a | 256MB | 10GB | 250GB | $70/mo |
| Enhanced | n/a | 2GB | 80GB | 1TB | $311/mo |
| Extreme | n/a | 4GB | 160GB | 4TB | $1,059/mo |
* Cost estimated with 50GB of incoming bandwidth
Amazon EC2 is a well-known and respected cloud hosting solution. Unfortunately the process is not user-friendly and can be complicated. If you’re a tech wiz looking for a solid cloud setup, this is an excellent solution, though more expensive and complex than VPS.net. However, you can get larger instances with EC2 and the platform is proven to be very stable.
| Setup Example | CPU | RAM | Storage | Bandwidth | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | n/a | 1.7GB | n/a | 250GB | $112/mo |
| Large | n/a | 7.5GB | n/a | 850MB | $422/mo |
| Extra Large | n/a | 15GB | n/a | 1.6TB | $828/mo |
What Is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting is a type of web hosting that enables your website to scale without replacing or upgrading hardware. It lets you focus on making your website great, instead of how to keep it running.
This can happen because of “the cloud” — multiple servers linked together to form one platform. Because there are many servers instead of one, it balances the load, increases capacity, and eliminates a single point of failure.
