When Site5 announced their new cloud hosting plans we wanted to check them out. Cloud hosting is a great idea and becoming more and popular. With cloud hosting your website is not located on one specific server but rather a cloud of severs which provides improved redundancy.
We moved one of our high traffic sites to this new plan for testing and after several months of test we are happy to say the results have been great. No downtime and a consistently fast server response.
Joomla Hosting Reviews wanted to learn more about shared cloud hosting. Ben Welch-Bolen, Site5 CEO, was kind enough to answer our questions.
1. Site 5 has recently rolled out a new hosting plan type called Cloud or Redundant hosting. How is redundant cloud hosting different than shared hosting?
Our Shared Cloud Hosting (http://www.site5.com/hosting/cloud/) is different than normal shared web hosting because it is fully redundant and offers a higher uptime guarantee then typical shared hosting. You are still in a shared environment with other user's but we have virtualized the entire server so that if there is a problem with the hardware we can have the server up on new hardware in real time or at most with 5 to 10 minutes of downtime. Plus if you are dugg or Slashdotted we can move the virtualized server over to a new server and expand it's resources in real time or with a quick reboot. It is just an amazing setup designed to offer inexpensive shared hosting but inside a very redundant setup which we manage and monitor day and night. We also have a FAQ with more info on the redundancy levels here (http://www.site5.com/hosting/cloud/frequently-asked-questions/).
2. What advantages does cloud hosting offer over shared hosting?
The two biggest advantages cloud hosting offers are the increased uptime and greater protection from disasters. Because of the redundancy and virtualized environment a lot of problems that might affect a typical shared server and keep it down for thirty minutes to an hour would not cause any downtime or at most only a few minutes on Site5's Cloud Hosting.
3. What prompted Site5 to create this new type of hosting plan?
We created redundant Cloud Hosting because a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs need enterprise level performance but can't afford the huge costs that were previously the only way to achieve it. With our Shared Cloud Hosting and our Cloud VPS packages customers can now afford to put their sites in that environment. And since it is fully managed they don't have to worry about anything except building their business or personal site.
4. What types of sites or customers are a good fit for redundant hosting?
The great thing about our Shared Cloud Hosting is it starts at only $22.50 a month so it is available for anyone who wants a higher level of uptime and all the protection our redundant environment provides. We have seen a lot of interest from web designers who want to make sure their sites are up for showing presentations to clients, entrepreneurs running a lot of adwords campaigns to their site, affiliate marketers, and a lot of small businesses who are willing to pay an extra $10 to $15 dollars a month over what shared hosting costs for the huge benefits cloud hosting offers.
5. How does cloud hosting keep one client from using all the resources when a script gets out of control or a sudden spike in traffic?
Our Shared Cloud Hosting environment features the same challenges shared hosting does, we monitor these 24/7 so if that happens we would jump in and stop it. Shared Cloud Hosting can also handle more of a load and we can shift specific virtual servers to our standby servers to handle short bursts of traffic. We also have divided the clients on each server into multiple virtual servers, so there is a greatly reduced chance any user on your virtual server would cause a problem. Our Cloud VPS are completely dedicated virtual servers so no other user's would impact you.
6. Cloud hosting improves server uptime, what about server response time?
Server response time should be based on location so that wouldn't be impacted, all our hardware is in a fantastic DC's in Dallas Texas.
7. What is the difference between cloud hosting and VPS hosting? When is each plan type most appropriate?
Cloud VPS is similar to normal VPS hosting except that it runs in an abstract cloud and isn't confined to a single server. So with a normal VPS if your hardware server goes down your VPS is down, with Cloud VPS you would just slide over to a working server in real time or with a few minutes of downtime. Cloud VPS also offers Redundant Centralized email and the benefits mentioned above.
8. Any other areas of Site5 or cloud hosting your would like to highlight?
Your questions have nailed the differences! We are using Cloud Virtual Servers for all our internal projects and we absolutely love it! It is a game changer!
9. How will Joomla site perform on cloud hosting?
Joomla will perform fantastically in cloud hosting! Shared Cloud Hosting will be a bit faster then normal Shared Hosting, especially on the higher packages. And Site5's Cloud VPS is equivalent to normal VPS in terms of performance. The big benefit of the cloud is the improved redundancy and uptime.
We appreciate Ben taking his time to provide more information about their new hosting service.
Based on our personal experience, if you have a site that required greater uptime and higher availability it is worth checking out Site5 cloud hosting plans. Read our full Site5 Review.
All Companies with Joomla Cloud Hosting Plans (Review Directory)
