Sentrly
Cloud Hosting vs Shared Hosting
Elastic, pay-per-use compute versus fixed shared servers.
Choose shared hosting for cheap, simple, low-traffic content sites where you want a flat bill. Choose cloud hosting when traffic is spiky, when you need many managed services (databases, queues, edge), or when your team is comfortable with cloud tooling.
Cloud hosting (think AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean App Platform, Cloudflare Pages) bills elastic resources by the hour or request. Shared hosting bills a flat monthly fee for a slice of a server. The right choice depends on traffic patterns and team expertise.
| Cloud Hosting | Shared Hosting | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Pay per use (variable) | Flat monthly |
| Scales with traffic | Yes | Limited |
| Setup complexity | Higher | Lower |
| Managed services | Many (DB, queue, cache, edge) | Few |
| Predictable bills | Sometimes (with caps) | Yes |
| Best for | Spiky traffic, custom apps, multi-service architectures | Static or low-traffic content sites |
Frequently asked questions
Will cloud hosting be cheaper?
For small static sites, often no — shared hosting can be cheaper. For variable traffic or apps using many services, cloud usually wins on price-performance.
Is serverless 'cloud hosting'?
It's a flavor of it. Serverless platforms run your code on demand and abstract away the servers entirely.
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