Shared vs. Cloud Hosting: Which Saves You More Money in the Long Run

With over 1.1 billion websites live online as of 2024, the demand for reliable hosting solutions continues to grow, fueling a global market projected to reach $192.85 billion in 2025. With so many options in the market, choosing the right hosting service for your website is extremely crucial because it directly affects your website’s speed, uptime, and overall performance.

Among the many hosting options available, shared hosting and cloud hosting stand out as two of the most popular choices. While shared hosting offers simplicity and affordability, cloud hosting offers scalability. That’s why it can be tough to pick one. In this blog, we have drawn a comparison between shared and cloud hosting, examining their pros and cons to help you determine which option best suits your website’s requirements. 

Comparison between Shared Hosting and Cloud Hosting

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is a simple concept. Imagine you are traveling to Goa, and you stay at a hostel. You share the same dorm room with many people while sharing necessary services like the bathroom and electricity. Shared hosting is a similar type of space sharing, in which multiple websites share the resources of a single server, like bandwidth, processing power, and storage. It is a cost-effective way to host your website because the cost of server maintenance is shared by all users. However, if one website is overwhelmed with a traffic surge, it can affect the other websites. 

Pros of Shared Hosting

• It is affordable: Shared hosting is a cost-effective way to host your website. You share the server with many websites, but you also share the cost, which makes it a convenient choice for any small business or entrepreneur who wants an affordable option. 
• Manages multiple websites: This type of hosting allows you to host multiple domains under the same account. Big Rock allows you to do the same. Its cPanel Linux hosting supports adding multiple domains as “domain aliases”, wherein you can add aliases/parked domains under this package. 
• It is low maintenance: With shared hosting, you don’t have to worry about the server maintenance, software installations, security updates, and technical support. It will all be taken care of by the hosting service provider. 
• Security is set in place: Even though many websites share the resources in shared hosting, the security is still top-notch, with firewalls, regular monitoring, and protection against threats. Security isn’t an issue in shared hosting. 

Cons of Shared Hosting

• Limited website performance: The main drawback of shared hosting is that it can sometimes cause a lag in the website’s performance. Because you share your website resources with multiple websites, there are times when they might consume excessive resources, and it can lead to the “bad neighbor effect. 
• Security issues due to shared server: While sharing a server will reduce the hosting costs, it can also lead to security risks. If one website on the shared hosting server is hacked or infected, your website could also be compromised. 
• Scalability is an issue: There are times when your website may see a spike in traffic, and it may crash because of the limited shared resources. Shared hosting will struggle during high traffic, and your website will have to bear the brunt of it. 

Shared Hosting is Best for

Shared hosting is best for anyone who is looking for an efficient but economical solution. If your intentions are to create a reliable website without much focus on performance, then you can try out this hosting solution. It is best for:

• Small to medium-sized businesses that deal with moderate traffic and do not need the high-performance features. 
• Anyone who wants to handle multiple small-scale websites under a single account, such as entrepreneurs or agencies. 
• Clients with modest budgets: Anyone who prefers affordability over scalability should opt for shared hosting. Want to save more on hosting? You can use coupons available on GrabOn to get deals on hosting by BigRock.

What is Cloud Hosting?

Cloud hosting is another type of web hosting solution that uses multiple physical and virtual servers, rather than a single physical server like in shared hosting. 

We will use a similar travel analogy to explain cloud hosting. For example, you’re planning a trip to Goa, and you need a place to stay. Instead of booking a single hotel room, you have access to a network of hotels across the city. This network ensures that no matter when you arrive or how long you stay, there’s always a room available that meets your needs. If one hotel is fully booked, you can seamlessly move to another without interruption. This flexibility and reliability are similar to what cloud hosting offers for websites.

This hosting setup offers scalability, security, and high performance. Your website can work smoothly without any issues in cloud hosting because your data is replicated across multiple servers. Even in the case of a server failure, your website can work well without any downtime. 

Pros of Cloud Hosting

• Allows easy scalability: With cloud hosting, your website resources are distributed across various servers within the same hosting infrastructure. So, even in case of server failure or high traffic, your website won’t crash; it will be moved to another server where it works! If you want to increase storage, bandwidth, or processing power, you can do so without much downtime. 
• Pick your own payment model: While cloud hosting isn’t as affordable as shared hosting, it offers a range of pricing structures you can pick from based on the features you are using and convenience. There are pay-as-you-go, subscription-based, and reserved instances. In Pay-as-you-go, you only pay for the resource you use; subscription offers a fixed fee for a set of resources/features, and reserved instance allows discounted rates for longer subscriptions. 
• High website performance and reliability: When data is distributed across multiple servers, it increases the website’s performance. In shared hosting, the performance is limited because of one server. But in this case, if one server goes offline, another will take over, ensuring uninterrupted high performance. 
• Offers better security: In case of shared hosting, if one website is corrupted on the server, all of them are at risk of getting compromised. But in cloud hosting, you get better protection against cyber threats. Cloud hosting providers often implement advanced security features like DDoS protection, dedicated IP addresses, and automated backups to safeguard your data against cyber threats. 

Cons of Cloud Hosting

• Higher costs that can add up over time: There are plenty of payment options you can pick from when choosing cloud hosting, but the costs can add up over time. Especially, websites with higher storage requirements or needs may face substantial expenses. 
• Vendor lock-in risks: In many cases, companies can become so overly dependent on a specific provider that it may become hard to switch to a new one. This can lead to increased costs, limited flexibility, and potential stagnation. 
• Highly dependent on internet connectivity: Cloud hosting is more dependent on internet connectivity than shared hosting. One glitch in the internet connection and you won’t be able to access your data. It can be a deal breaker for many businesses where the internet is unstable. 

Cloud Hosting is best for

Cloud hosting is the best option for medium to large-scale businesses that have websites that depend on high performance and scalability. You can opt for cloud hosting when you want to scale your business or have a high-performing website. It is a perfect fit for:

• High-performing websites that experience frequent traffic spikes. These websites need to be fast and responsive; cloud hosting ensures that your website can deal with the sudden surges. 
• Businesses demanding higher reliability and lower downtime. Certain websites like e-commerce stores, SaaS platforms, and financial services need to have reliable servers. Cloud hosting ensures the site is running smoothly even in case of server failure. 
• Resource and content-rich websites like news portals, streaming platforms, and forums need to have a cloud hosting infrastructure so they can perform well, reducing load times and guaranteeing consistent speed even during high usage periods. 

Wrapping it up

Both shared hosting and cloud hosting have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. If you are on a budget and want to host your website at a lower cost, then shared hosting is the way to go. But if you have a high-traffic website or business to run, then cloud hosting would be best. You can also go for a mix or hybrid option, wherein you combine your shared hosting server with cloud hosting. This can help you scale your website without worrying about the exorbitant hosting costs.