Web hosting is the most common method used by most companies nowadays to create, post, and manage a web-page or website on the internet. The two broad categories of popular web hosting services are traditional web hosting services and cloud hosting services. One of the leading contenders in cloud hosting is Amazon Web Services. If you are in a dilemma to choose between traditional hosting services or AWS, go through this blog that compares both services to help you finalize a decision.
What are Traditional Web Hosting Services?
Traditional hosting services usually come in two forms, namely shared and dedicated services. In case of dedicated hosting services, it is the company’s responsibility to pay for all resources utilized from a service provider. Shared hosting services, on the contrary, is a better approach in which the client pays for a specific limit of storage space on a single server. The server’s resources are further shared by a number of different websites. Whether a company chooses shared or dedicated web hosting services, it has a list of drawbacks, such as performance issues, increased risk of security breaches, and other technical issues.
Free Hosting services
As the name suggests, free hosting is a totally free web hosting service. Numerous well-known websites, such as Blogger, host some web pages for free using this form of hosting. As you can imagine, free services have their limits, so you cannot expect to scale your business using them.
Shared Hosting services
With this kind of plan, numerous users share a single server. This implies that a single machine (a shared server) will house a number of websites—possibly hundreds of them. Keep in mind that the quality of the service you receive will primarily depend on your hosting provider.
Dedicated Hosting services
Dedicated hosting offers you exclusive access to a physical server or servers. The web hosting company offering AWS (Amazon Web Services) will merely house the server for you, and you will have complete control over its setup. Dedicated servers are essentially the best web hosting choice available in the world today.
What is Amazon Web Services?
Amazon Web Services, AWS, is a virtual web hosting service popular among most organizations nowadays. The hosting service was launched in 2002 by Amazon, offering a cloud-based approach to hosting. Overcoming the different obstacles faced in traditional web hosting services, AWS is a popular option among leading companies across the globe. Along with being highly user-friendly, AWS is a cost-effective and secure way to configure, create, and manage a website.
Different types of AWS hosting services
Amazon Web Services offer a plethora of hosting options. To help you make informed decisions, let’s look at the different AWS service offerings:
Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Lightsail is effectively an easy-to-use VPS that comes in an affordable monthly package. It brings to the table all the features you need to build a website or application. If you are looking for quick installations, easier workloads, and easy-to-start infrastructure, Lightsail can be an amazing choice for you. It helps you begin your web development journey small and scale as you expand.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk can be your perfect companion if you are looking for a user-friendly tool that’s meant to deliver and scale web applications and services created using Python, Java, PHP, .NET, Node.js, Go, Ruby, and Docker on well-known servers like Apache, Passenger, NGINX, and IIS. Elastic Beanstalk will take care of the deployment, capacity provisioning, load balancing, automatic scaling, and application health monitoring once you upload your code.
AWS App Runner
One of the most fascinating features of AWS App Runner is that it is a fully managed service that doesn’t require any prior infrastructure knowledge. Developers can rapidly and easily create containerized web applications and APIs at scale with the help of AWS App Runner. You can start with a container image or your source code. The web application is automatically built, deployed, and load balanced while using encryption via App Runner. Additionally, App Runner adjusts up or down automatically based on the volume of traffic.
AWS Amplify
AWS Amplify brings a set of tools and services that assists front-end web and mobile developers in creating scalable full-stack applications. These tools can be utilized both jointly and separately. You can quickly develop app backends and connect your app with Amplify in just a few clicks. You can also deploy static web apps and manage app content outside the AWS Management Console.
AWS vs Traditional Web Services
As we have covered a brief outlook of traditional and Amazon hosting services, let’s compare five aspects of both the services.
1. Scalability
Traditional web hosting services are unable to keep up with an increase in website traffic, and therefore, it is difficult to scale and adjust website performance. AWS, on the other hand, is highly scalable and can easily add bandwidth if an increase in website traffic is detected. Another added advantage is that in case of AWS, not only can you add bandwidth, but also reduce it depending upon the traffic. Just a few clicks away, AWS adjusts to the website traffic more efficiently as compared to traditional hosting services.
2.Flexibility
When it comes to configuring hosting services to meet your requirements, it is easier in case of AWS rather than traditional hosting. AWS offers high flexibility by allowing its users to select programming language, web application programs, and operating system. You can also customize the AWS set-up to choose the services and software you wish to use. Another added advantage of AWS is the flexibility to create new and improved solutions to hosting issues.
3.Cost Effectiveness
Companies prefer to choose hosting services that help reduce overall costs, and therefore AWS is a highly popular choice nowadays as it offers a number of useful features at an affordable price. In case of AWS, you are responsible to pay for only the services you use and there is no upfront contract that ties you to the service. It is, therefore, a cost-effective method to implement effective and efficient hosting.
4. Understandability
When compared to traditional web hosting services, AWS comes out as the clear winner in terms of user understandability. AWS makes sure that a user manages and maintains their website without any hassles. The AWS console is easy on the eye and well laid-out, also allowing application providers to securely host applications. If you’re looking for an easy-to-understand hosting services, AWS is a great choice.
5.Speed
As traditional hosting services fall back on adjusting to website traffic as compared to AWS, it is evident that AWS will offer services that don’t slow down the performance of your website. Nobody, in today’s high-tech world, is patient enough to wait for a slow website. It is, therefore, advisable to choose AWS to optimize the performance of your website.
6. Requirement for physical network appliances
Web Amazon services do not require the deployment of physical network appliances. For instance, software-based solutions take the place of physical firewalls, routers, and load balancers for your AWS applications. There are many different enterprise-quality software options available, whether you need them for load balancing or creating a VPN connection. This translates to lower overheads and lesser complications.
7. Security
In classic hosting architecture, you had a straightforward demilitarized zone (DMZ) and then open communications among your servers. AWS, on the other hand, imposes a more robust and secure architecture, in which every host is locked down. One of the phases in the design of an AWS deployment is the study of host traffic. Decisions about which exact ports should be opened will be influenced by this analysis. Each hosting type in your architecture can have its own security groups. In order to provide the least amount of access across hosts inside your architecture, you may also create a wide range of simple and tier-based security models. Within AWS service, the use of network access control lists can assist in securing your network at the subnet level. That’s impressive from a networking security point of view!
Also Read: 5 Key Cloud Computing Tips for Businesses