Cloud Hosting Vs. Shared Hosting – Was ist im Jahr 2025 besser?
Web hosting is essential for the infrastructure used to store and deliver website data such as text, videos, and images. It enables your business to create, manage, scale, and share data with a global audience. Web service providers offer two popular options for hosting your website: cloud hosting and shared hosting. Understanding the key differences, as well as the pros and cons, will help you make informed decisions when launching websites or applications.
What is cloud hosting?
Unlike traditional hosting, which relies on a single server, cloud hosting primarily utilizes a network of connected physical and virtual cloud servers to ensure your website has instant access to resources when needed. The key feature of cloud hosting is its decentralization, which ensures business continuity even in the event of server outages. Cloud hosting gives you complete control over your virtual server, including configurations and software installations.
Advantages of cloud hosting
- Scalability:
As your business grows, you’ll need more storage space, bandwidth, and processing power to scale your operations and data online. Cloud hosting allows for easy scalability, typically with no significant downtime. With this type of hosting, your website’s resources are distributed across multiple physical servers. This ensures your website remains accessible even if a server fails. From a scalability perspective, this also means cloud hosting is ideal for websites with rapidly growing or fluctuating traffic. - On-demand resources:
Cloud hosting providers offer the ability to scale web resources to meet your website’s real-time needs. This flexibility allows you to easily handle spikes in web traffic without the need for costly server or system upgrades or manual intervention. - Continuity:
The distributed architecture of cloud hosting with multiple servers provides customers with high availability and website functionality. Websites running on such servers are less susceptible to downtime because their operation isn’t dependent on a single server. This feature is essential for businesses that need to be continuously operational.
Disadvantages of cloud hosting
- High Costs:
The performance, flexibility, and features of cloud hosting come at a high cost for customers. If you’re on a tight budget and don’t need the extra features, this type of hosting is probably not the best option. - Vulnerability to Cyber Threats:
With cloud computing, every component is online and accessible. This can expose websites to potential cyber threats. Customers who don’t have the necessary data security measures in place to prevent these are often victims of serious attacks and security breaches.
What is shared hosting?
As the name suggests, service providers host your website along with other websites on a shared server. The foundation of such a service allows for the sharing of resources such as disk space, bandwidth, and hard drive space among all websites hosted on the server. This type of service is typically used by small and medium-sized businesses due to its ease of use and significantly lower costs.
Advantages of shared hosting
- Data Security:
Although web space and resources are shared across multiple websites, shared hosting doesn’t compromise on data protection and cyberthreat defense. Single-server hosting providers implement robust security measures such as regular monitoring, regular patching, and the use of firewalls to protect websites from common threats. Unlike cloud hosting, shared hosting doesn’t permanently store data online, further reducing the risk of cyberthreats. - Low maintenance costs:
Shared hosting prices are significantly lower than the competition. Most providers offer monthly plans. Estimates suggest entry-level plans start at around $2 to $3 per month, while mid-range plans average $4 to $5 per month.
Disadvantages of shared hosting
- Affected reliability and uptime:
Because your website shares server space and resources with other websites, performance, data speed, and scalability are limited with this hosting option. A shared server outage or other issues will also impact your website’s functionality and make it inaccessible to your audience while it’s running. This puts shared hosting at a higher risk to your business continuity. - Limited Control for Website Owners:
Shared hosting typically uses a one-size-fits-all approach for all customers. This means you have limited control over pre-approved software and plugins. You can’t install your own software to customize features and enhance your user experience. This lack of control is in stark contrast to cloud-based hosting.
Comparison of shared hosting and cloud hosting
| Features | Shared hosting | Cloud hosting |
| Performance | More suitable for small websites. Loading times and performance issues increase with increasing traffic and the number of features on the site. | Offers significantly faster performance and loading speed thanks to multiple servers. Thanks to efficient resource allocation, this hosting is twice as fast as shared hosting. |
| Traffic volume | Comes with traffic restrictions. Websites on the server run into problems when their visitor numbers increase rapidly. | This alternative is designed to handle large volumes of visitors and data, making it ideal for large websites with high traffic. |
| Server administration | Very simple and user-friendly, as clients don’t have to perform any server administration tasks. These are handled by the host. | While the hoster takes care of maintenance and administration tasks, customers must pay for managed hosting packages. The presence of multiple servers increases the complexity of this hosting. |
Cloud hosting vs. shared hosting: How to choose the right option?
Choosing the right option can be made easier if you consider certain factors before investing in one of the alternatives.
Features
You need to analyze the hosting provider’s specific security measures, performance optimization tools, and scalability options to ensure your investment is worthwhile.
Prices and packages
Compare pricing structures and packages to find the best deal for your budget and website needs.
Dedicated server options
Consider whether your site needs a dedicated server for more control and resources tailored specifically to your website’s needs.
Other factors include customer service, server location, level of complexity, reliability, and uptime.
FAQs
Which is better for small websites: shared hosting?g or cloud hosting?
Smaller websites have fewer visitors and require less monthly work. Shared hosting is a cheaper and simpler option for customers, as cloud hosting is likely beyond the budget of smaller website owners.
Is cloud hosting more expensive than shared hosting?
Cloud hosting is more expensive than shared hosting due to the number of servers, features, and promised business continuity.
Which hosting is easier to manage – shared hosting or cloud hosting?
Shared hosting requires no administration effort from customers, making it easier to manage between the two options.