5 Best Cloud Hosting Providers for 2018

Last updated on April 26th, 2020 at 06:12 am

There are lots of cloud web hosting providers across the globe. These providers offer reliable, flexible and secure hosting packages.

On this guide, we review the 5 best cloud hosting providers (2018).

This rating is based on their reliability, scalability/flexibility, physical security and affordability with preferences given to cheaper cloud hosting companies.  

Reviews of the 5 Best Cloud Hosting Providers.

1.  InMotion Cloud Hosting

Inmotion hosting beginner package hosts up to two websites at a time with unlimited domains and subdomains per account. The customer care supports they offer are exceptional.

This company has tools to help anyone develop, promote and manage their website, irrespective of their level of experience.

Hosting Package

InMotion Hosting gives you the option of three different cloud hosting packages. Thus providing their clients the flexibility of choosing a starting plan and they can upgrade as the need arises.

Inmotion’s basic plan is called the VPS-1000s and the plan enables users to have unlimited domains and subdomains. InMotion Hosting provides a disk space of the 60GB and dedicated memory of 4GB.

The only limitation here is that you do not have access to a CPU core and you can’t attach more than one IP address to your account.

You can monitor the bandwidth used by your websites and how much disk space the sites are consuming on the dashboard of your control panels.

The hosting control panel provides App integrations that make’s it very easy to add apps like WordPress.

However, some more advanced features like e-Commerce are not covered by the basic plan.

Help & Support

This cloud hosting provider offers basic support and priority support. You can reach help and support via phone, email or live chat 24 hours any day.

The live chat and phone support focus heavily on solving client’s problem while the other supports helps in making clients understand how to better use the tools their platforms have access to.

The customer support representatives are very reliable and knowledgeable. Irrespective of the time of day you request help, there wait time does not exceed eight minutes, which is quite lower than the industry standard.

Security

Along with its top security features, this secure cloud hosting provider offers site backup and restoration. They give their clients one free restore every four months. So you can reset using the most recent automatic backup of your site. They also have a backup tool that enables you to run manual backup and restore your site at any time and choose which backup to restore.

2. Bluehost Cloud Hosting

Bluehost is a web host service provider that has been providing cloud hosting solutions to business owners and individuals for over a decade.

Bluehost’s cloud hosting services offer great features to people that want a reputable service to host their sites. The company’s help and support are slow to responses, but they are still reliable, friendly and knowledgeable.

Bluehost hosting package has excellent security for your websites but the bandwidth and disk space are a little limited.

Hosting Package

Blue host hosting packages provide a decent amount of flexibility. Blue host cloud service allows you to create unlimited email addresses from your account.

They also give you access to create unlimited domains, subdomains, and unlimited MySQL databases. However, with their most basic package, you have 1TB of bandwidth and 30GB of disk space.

Bluehost cloud hosting platform is fully optimized for WordPress compatibility and it’s quite easy to use. The basic feature allows access to eCommerce solutions. Transfer of an already existing domain name to Bluehost cloud servers attracts no additional cost.

Help and Support

Blue host offers just an average customer support. They have U.S. based representative that you can contact 24 hours a day but wait times are much longer than average.

There customer care service is however friendly and reliable.

Security

Bluehost has all of the top features you can ever want for a secure cloud hosting. Their package includes site backup and restoration, making it obvious, if your server crashes, your data will still be intact.

SSL certificate and anti-spam software are also included as part of the hosting package.

3.  HostGator Cloud Hosting

HostGator offers cloud hosting to small businesses and individuals. The company offers multiple plans; giving their clients a wide range of opportunity to make a choice from.

The flexibility of their package allows for expansion of a website as the website grows. Each package includes an SSL certificate to secure online transactions made through their client’s website.

Hostgator is strong in security features. The company’s help and support are accessible 24 hours daily via live chat, email or phone. One drawback of Hostgator is that it limits the amount of disk space you have in its basic package.

Hosting Package

HostGator provides some of the best cloud hosting packages across the globe. The flexibility and scalability of the packages rank near the top.

You can create an unlimited number of domains and subdomains with the HostGator cloud server. Unfortunately, the amount of disk space included with your hosting package is limited.

HostGator disk space is as low as 25GB and the bandwidth as low as 500GB. Hostgator allows you to attach two IP addresses to one account and are allotted half of one CPU core.

Its cloud hosting platform is very easy to use with the colorful icons clearly indicating their functions. You can transfer an existing domain name to Hostgator cloud hosting at no additional cost. 

Help and Support

You can contact the friendly and knowledgeable help or support staff 24 hours a day through live chat, phone, and email. The company has an online user forum which you can always access.

Security

HostGator provides nearly all of the security features that are necessary as part of its basic package.  Use HostGator if your priority is secured cloud hosting.

You’ll get automatic weekly backups and shared SSL certificate with any of their packages. You can also restore at any time with this cloud hosting package.

4.  FatCow Cloud Hosting

FatCow cloud hosting offers great features to people that want a reputable service to host their sites. The company’s help and support are quite reliable, friendly and knowledgeable.

If you want maximum performance and security for your site at a very affordable price, FatCow should be on your list of prospective cloud web hosts.

Hosting Package

FatCow provides some of the best and affordable cloud hosting packages across the globe, with flexible and scalable packages.

You can create an unlimited number of domains and subdomains with the FatCow cloud server. They offer nearly unlimited disk space, estimated to be between 500GB and 1TB.

You’ll get tons of bandwidth up to 1TB, which is a very competitive size. Fatcow allows you access to 2-4 CPU core.

Their complete package comes at a very fair rate and there is room to grow and scale up with FatCow as your demands increase. You have 3 dedicated IP addresses per plan

Help and support

FatCow has very friendly help and support, available 24/7 via live chat, phone, and email.

Security

You have backup and restoration as complementary to your plan.

5.  iPage Cloud Hosting

iPage is a good choice for your cloud. The company offers many features, most of which are unlimited. The man control panel uses vDeck which is very compatible with the popular add-ons like WordPress.

The help and support center is very friendly and knowledgeable and they have videos tutorials that can help understand their platforms.

Hosting Package

iPage offers unlimited domains and subdomains as part of your personal cloud server. The company’s basic cloud hosting package allows a dedicated disk space of 40GB and 1TB of bandwidth.

iPage allows you to create an unlimited amount of email accounts for your websites and unlimited MySQL databases.

The basic package also allows you to use just one IP address with your account and one assigned CPU core.

The control panel utilized by this cloud host is a vDeck, rather than a typical cPanel. However, vDeck is slightly less user-friendly than cPanel. vDeck is very compatible with apps like WordPress.

It gives you the ability to transfer your existing domain names to your iPage cloud account free of charge and you can also create custom 404 pages.

Help and support

You can contact their friendly and knowledgeable help and support 24 hours on any day via live chat, phone, and email. Phone support is based entirely in the U.S.

They have the most satisfactory customer relations, though wait times are longer than the standard.

 Security

Along with the basic cloud hosting package, you get security features such as spam assassin and raw access logs. You also get backup and restoration, for an additional charge per month.

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Some FAQ – Skip if not interested

What is cloud hosting?

The creation of Cloud hosting technology was inspired by the fractal structure of clouds.   The idea is that you have a single network with interconnections of many servers.

All servers have the ability to take on extra loads, substitute each other and even provide new possibilities.

Cloud hosting services use virtual servers to provide hosting for websites; these servers pull their computing stratagem from ample concealed networks of physical web servers.

It uses the utility model of computing so that depending on the client’s need, they can tap into their services and they will only pay for what they use based on the demands of their website.

Why Cloud hosting?

Cloud hosting is the reason why so many web projects grow quickly today, without any crash.  Cloud web hosting becomes very vital for your project when the project start growing with immense speed because more reliable solutions would be required.

Cloud hosting allows your website to process a huge number of visitors while maintaining a good quality.

The cloud is mostly structured in a way that, the same information is contained in a range of servers, which permits a redistribution of the load among several racks.

That’s how popular services like Google and Facebook work.

Cloud hosting packages serves as alternatives to shared and dedicated single servers and could well be termed “an extension of clustered hosting concept”

where multiple servers are used to host websites. The network of servers used in cloud hosting is vast and majorly pulled from several data centers in different locations.

Types of cloud hosting

There are three types of cloud hosting that you can find on the web, these are; Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud hosting.

Public Clouds are very efficient and highly agile. They offer a set of servers that are wildly used. Using public clouds, allows you to host your files along with some other data.

Private Clouds provide you with your own cloud but require more finances. They give you huge storage and incredibly fast computing.

You’ll get all the benefits of public clouds along with some other fantastic bonuses. For instance, your webmasters can have instant access, if you install the private cloud in your location.

Hybrid Clouds combine the features of public and private cloud hosting. Different service providers can have different solutions, but normally you will be offered a certain part of a public cloud for your dedicated usage.

Additionally, you can connect one or several dedicated servers to such hybrids — that will add even more capacity.

There’s a bunch of key factors to consider before choosing between a public, private or hybrid cloud. It is, however, up to you, depending on your needs, nature of your project and the resources at your disposal.

For an outstanding performance; you can opt for a private cloud if your project is solid and requires lots of resources.

What makes cloud hosting exceptional?

The best cloud hosting providers have the following features and benefits;

Scalability and Flexibility; the resource is available in real time on demand and not limited to the physical constraints/capacity of one server.

If a client’s site demands extra resource from its hosting platform due to a surge in traffic or the implementation of new functionality, the resource is accessed seamlessly.

Reliability; cloud hosting allows the website to be hosted on virtual servers which draws its resources, from ample concealed networks of physical web servers.

Therefore if one server goes offline, the virtual server will continue pulling resources from the remaining network of servers. Thus, there will be no effect on the availability of the website.

The fact is that the risk is spread in such a way that it’s almost impossible for the website to go offline since the network of servers used in cloud hosting is majorly pulled from several data centers in different locations.

Physical Security; it is difficult for people to disrupt or access because the underlying physical servers are still housed within the data centers. They, therefore, benefit from the security measures that those facilities implement.

Affordability/Economical; In cloud hosting, the client only pays for what they actually use. There is no unused wasted capacity when demand is lower, and resources are available for any surge in demand.

Normal Hosting vs. Cloud Hosting

Normal web hosting is majorly in two packages; shared and dedicated.

In shared hosting, the client pays some amount of storage space for a single server and a number of other websites share the server’s resources.

The shared hosting is more popular among small and medium-sized businesses. Shared hosting is cost-efficient.     The hosting company takes on the responsibility of maintaining, managing and updating the units.

When a client buys dedicated hosting, the client pays the service provider for the complete resources of one or more servers. The client receives a set amount of dedicated bandwidth, RAM, CPU, and drive space, and the client has full control over the server resources.

Normal hosting especially shared hosting, has its drawbacks because a number of different websites share the resources of a single server. With shared hosting, you pay for processing power and a set amount of storage.

Thus, if you experience a sudden spike in traffic due to a new feature or product, you will be limited to the amount of storage you currently have.

More also, in shared hosting; the resources of a single server are shared among a number of different websites.

A surge in traffic to some of those websites would automatically result in a slower and decreased performance for your website.

Security breaches on other websites can also affect your website negatively. The bottom line is that if there is a technical problem with the server, the problem will affect everyone hosted on that server.

On the other hand, cloud hosting packages are very flexible and scalable. The providers provide virtual space on an on-demand basis.

The user pays as they go, for what they actually use and not a set amount of space up front on a single server like we have in the normal hosting.

Apparently, the users don’t need to pay upfront for extra storage or processing capacity that they don’t use.

Cloud hosting is very scalable because you don’t need to manually add or remove server space as we have in shared hosting.

If a website or an application receives more or less traffic, the cloud servers scale up and down automatically.

The load, in cloud hosting, is balanced across a cluster of multiple servers and there is no loss of information or downtime when one server goes down.

This makes cloud hosting much more resilient and reliable. Unlike the shared hosting, a problem with one website is not likely to affect your website performance.

Cloud hosting providers provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). They maintain, run and accommodate all the necessary hardware, while the customer pays for the resources they use just as we pay for our electricity bills.

If you are looking for a flexible, easily scalable, low-cost hosting solution, then you need to move to the cloud.

How we Compared Cloud Hosting Providers

The best cloud hosting providers are compared above are based on domains hosted, subdomains, dedicated disk space, bandwidth, email accounts, MySQL Databases, and money back guarantee.

Flexibility: the line shows a number of different plans each service offers. While offerings of two or three plans are the industry standard, the best services offer more options than that.

Bandwidth; Bandwidth helps you measure your traffic and data levels between your site and your users.

Dedicated disk space; The amount of storage space the service you choose specifically provides for your website, measured in gigabytes (GB).

Most services claim to offer unlimited storage for their clients, which is often more than anyone website would need or use.

Domains hosted: This line represents how many domains you can manage a single hosting plan through the cloud host you choose. Most services only allow you to host one domain, but exceptional services allow you to host more.

Subdomains; The number of subdomains you can host through your cloud hosting service. The industry standard falls around 25 subdomains.

If you find a service that offers unlimited hosted subdomains, you can rest at ease with more flexibility for navigation.

MySQL Databases; The number of content-generating databases your cloud host uses to run your website. These databases allow you to run unique programming languages, such as Python, C++, and Perl.

Email accounts; the number of email addresses with your domain name that the cloud host gives you.

Money back guarantees; if you aren’t pleased with your service within this period of time, the cloud host refunds your money.

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There are so many outstanding cloud hosting companies competing for your hosting needs. This gives prospective users a wide range of opportunity to choose the best fit for their business needs.

Most of them offer an unlimited amount of bandwidth and an impressive amount of dedicated disk space.