Is cloud hosting ideal for blogs or just regular websites?

[Abdul Sami]

What are the major differences between the regular hosting and cloud hosting?

 

[Joe]

The big benefit with cloud hosting is the ease of scaling. A good example was the Pokemon Go app. The uptake of the app exploded past their "extreme case" scenario almost immediately, but it was based on the Kubernetes cloud framework (if I recall correctly), so they merely had to add more servers. No "migrating backends" and so on. Just let it dynamically add more CPU, more RAM, more Disk, servers, groups of servers, geographic locations of servers, etc, as the load increases. And vice versa, if your system doesn't get the traction you expected, you can just release those resources and save costs.

In the case of a blog (which basically is a 'regular website'), regular hosting tends to be more retail oriented, e.g. your standard godaddy website comes with all kinds of one-click installs, integrated email, and a web frontend for managing it. But it's also more static. Cloud hosting has the dynamic aspect described, but you'll have to set up more things yourself.

I'd suggest that if you're a beginner, and you're just making a simple website like a blog, stick with regular hosting.

 

[turbin3]

That's solid advice from @Joe.

The "cloud", as it were, can offer some really cool possibilities for scaling. That being said, a lot of sites may not really need all of that capability. Let me break it down into the major categories:

Shared Hosting
It's an inexpensive way to get started, while still having a site with more dynamic functionality to build from (database, CMS, etc.). You'll still be responsible for securing, managing, and maintaining the server though, so there's that to consider.

Some shared hosts reduce some of the control you have on the server side, minimizing some of that management. There's also managed hosting, which will eliminate much of this, though at a cost. WPEngine, for example, is a really popular managed Wordpress host. They're extremely fast, efficient, and easy to use. It'll set you back starting at $29/mth, which honestly isn't much if you really consider the time saved.

Virtualized Hosting (aka Cloud)
These days, hosting companies have their virtualization game on point. The real attraction with virtualization is, your server is several steps removed from the actual hardware. What this means is, there are many ways to make changes and improvements to your server with little to no downtime.

In fact, awhile back I saw one demonstration of cloud hosting using a particular virtualzed technology (I forget what it was) where they were able to actually migrate VM's between data centers with literally ZERO downtime, in realtime. Crazy stuff.

As Joe mentioned, things like increasing resources to cope with demand might be a nice capability. You can also clone these VPS machines so that you can spin up copies at will. Another nice capability is hosting multiple sites on one server. You can do this with a VPS, and each site could even have its own unique IP if you want. It definitely takes some setup, but can be nice aggregating multiple site efforts into one place to manage.

With cloud-based hosting, however, the vast majority of it will be largely "unmanaged", which means it's still on YOU to manage, secure, and maintain the backend. It can be a significant drain on your time and sanity to be sure!

Dedicated Hosting
A person might need this if they're building their "command center" with which to dominate the internet from. In all seriousness though, for some businesses, it may make sense to ensure complete and total control over not only their virtual resources, but the hardware itself. At this point, you would be taking on as much backend management overhead as possible.

Honestly, I'd say these days virtualization probably makes more sense for most uses. That being said, dedicated hosting still serves a legitimate purpose. It's also one of the most expensive options.

Static Hosting
I'll just call it that. Don't know that there's a better name for it, as it can take many forms. Over the past 5 years or so, give or take, there's been a resurgence in popularity of static site generators. Considering this, it's reopened some possibilities for hosting really light websites, that have minimal dependencies, that can be hosted just about anywhere.

For example, you can host a Jekyll-based static site on GitHub for FREE. Maybe not if you're planning on getting 1M pageviews, but it's certainly a great way to get blogging and particularly also experimenting with things like version control systems.

Also, you can host static sites on CDN's, such as KeyCDN or Amazon S3. There are even third party services designed to give you a remote front end so you have a GUI for your content writing and basic publishing efforts. Then their third party service rebuilds your site and publishes the new stuff to the CDN. Super cool. No server to manage. I have a few small sites on S3, built with the Hugo static site generator......and they each only cost ~$0.50 CENTS per month. Pretty cool.

Beware though, with static sites one of the trade-offs is a loss of dynamic ability on the site. Any dynamic capability you want is probably going to have to be through javascript and utilizing third party services, so that can complicate things. For a site that's largely static content, however, worth considering. You could always through something JS-based like SumoMe on it, to collect subscribers and build your list. Then use third party services like Sparkpost to

 

[Future State]

Even though this looks like a classic "set 'em up and knock 'em down" spam thread, I'll say that no, you don't need to worry about the newest technology for a regular blog or regular website. Most people don't need to worry about more than a $3.99 shared hosting package, let alone a VPS or dedicated server, let alone sharding and CDNs and load balancing, let alone cloud hosting. Focus on what will earn you money.