Today’s cloud has evolved. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all plans that meant you either paid for services you didn’t need, or purchased plans that didn’t fit your business. Scalability has arrived! Most affordable cloud hosting plans allow you the freedom to purchase services a la carte, so you can build an IT infrastructure precisely tailored to fit your unique needs.
Companies who plan to see large growth are by definition unpredictable. Who could say whether a start-up company’s website will need a certain amount of data each month? If a contract gives you, let’s say, 6 TB, only half of that may get used. Or maybe your website will need double! That’s why scalability is so important for small business.
What Is Scalability?
Scalability is the backbone of affordable cloud hosting. When you place your website on the cloud, your initial traffic may be modest. As you build your web presence, your traffic may grow. If, for example, your marketing hits and drives huge amounts of traffic to your site, the cloud allows you to add additional bandwidth on an as needed basis, quickly and efficiently. This is scalability in action.
The other option you have is to host your site on a dedicated server. While this may be a viable solution for some businesses, if your traffic grows, or suddenly “spikes” you will need to purchase additional servers to handle the increase.The problem with dedicated hosting is that adding servers is a significant expense, takes time to set-up, and requires IT support. In addition, when your traffic moderates, you may find yourself with unneeded server space that is costing you money to maintain. The cloud gives you all of the benefits of dedicated hosting, while eliminating most of the challenges and expense
The Cloud = Immediacy
On the cloud, adding additional services or bandwidth can happen immediately. Often, simply visiting your host and adding bandwidth online can take minutes. In fact, most affordable cloud hosting companies include the ability to automate your bandwidth needs.
Simply, you can set a threshold that when reached automatically triggers an increase in bandwidth or storage! The process is seamless and your visitors will have no loss in the quality of their web experience. When your traffic subsides, so does your bandwidth. Scalability is seamless, automatic and works both ways. This results in significant cost savings over time because on the cloud, you only pay for what you use. This gives you the ability to focus on running your website, your hosting solution takes care of itself!
In the event of a crisis, because the cloud offers immediate, redundant, back-ups your data needs are not only instantly expandable, your data is safe, secure, and instantly restorable.
Scalability, security, immediacy and cost savings let you run your web business efficiently. On the cloud, you can grow or shrink resources based on your needs, immediately, automatically, and only pay for what you use. Affordable cloud hosting on is a smart business solution!