Simon Jones
We have covered the nitty-gritty of domain names and website builders in many of our detailed guides. In this article, we will talk about web hosting, and our focus is on cloud hosting.
Cloud hosting is relatively new type of hosting, and a lot of people are turning to it for good reasons.
Here’s why:
Traditional forms of hosting require you to purchase a fixed amount of hosting resources such as RAM and bandwidth on a single server. If you exceed the amount you bought, your website will begin to lag or not work at all.
And no, you can’t add more resources on the stop. You need to upgrade to a plan that gives you more resources.
The drawback is that the higher plan could give you much more resources than you would ever need. Plus, if the server goes down, your website goes down with it.
Cloud hosting changes all of that. First, you don’t have to purchase a fixed amount of resources. It’s a pay-as-you-use service. You only have to pay for what you need.
Plus, your hosting is spread across multiple data centres in different parts of the world. This way, you are not dependent on a single server. If a server goes down, another one will take its place. This means your sites would always be up and running.
This is why cloud hosting is the latest alternative in web hosting. It ticks all the right boxes: it is easy to add resources, cost-effective, and reliable.
Cloud hosting is great for anyone who wants a flexible, efficient and cost-effective way of hosting websites. You can use cloud hosting for more than just hosting websites. You can also use it to host your emails or even replace your business servers with it.
The opportunity to add or remove resources based on needs is excellent for small and medium businesses. If you have on and off seasons, you can easily prepare for those periods without migrating from one plan to another.
That said, there are hundreds of cloud hosting to choose from. You don’t have to test all of them to find out which works best for you. We have done that, and we have a list of the best cloud web hosting platforms for 2021.
Best Cloud Hosting UK Guide 2021
Here is a list of the hosts we’ve selected. We realise that people have different needs, budgets, and goals, so they need options. However, we included only the best hosts here, so you won’t be paralysed by too many options.
A2 Hosting Overall Best Cloud Hosting Platform
Cloudways Best Cloud Hosting for Flexibility
Kinsta Best Cloud Hosting for WordPress
Siteground Best Cloud Host For Features
Kamatera Best Cloud Hosting for Customisation
Liquid Web Best Managed Cloud Hosting
Nexcess Best Cloud Hosting for eCommerce
Hostgator Best Cheap Cloud Hosting
How We Choose the Best WordPress Hosting Companies
Our list of best cloud hosting companies was compiled using our comprehensive research process. To determine our ratings, each web host was tested and analysed based on the following criteria:
Let’s take a look in more detail of the Best Cloud Web Hosting providers, and keep reading for some extra tips on how to choose the best service for you.
The Best Cloud UK Web Hosting Providers
#1. A2 Hosting – Overall Best Cloud Hosting Platform
A2 Hosting Pros
A2 Hosting Cons
A2 Hosting Key Features
A2 Hosting easily makes it to the top of our review due to its fast servers. If you want your webpage to load with lightning speed, this is the hosting provider to consider. The hosting plans are also fully customisable and come at affordable plans. The best part is that you only have to pay for the resources you use regardless of your plan.
The starter plan comes with up to 250GB of storage, 12 CPU cores, and 32GB of RAM. You can also host as many websites as you like – even on the starter plan! The hosting provider also ranks high on customer support. If you run into any issues, you can reach out to the 24/7365 customer support team for help.
They also promise 99.9% uptime. (There are contingencies to this offer, so make sure to read the fine print.) To crown it all, A2 Hosting offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. This is excellent news for those who are edgy about trying new products.
A2 Hosting Pricing
Runway 1: from £3.66 per month – Paid monthly, 36 month plan
Runway 2: from £6.60 per month – Paid monthly, 36 month plan
Runway 4: from £8.80 per month – Paid monthly, 36 month plan
Supersonic 8: from £26.42 per month – Paid monthly, 36 month plan
#2. Cloudways – Best Cloud Hosting for Flexibility
Cloudways Pros
Cloudways Cons
Cloudways Key Features
Cloudways comes highly recommended for people who want powerful Hosting but can’t access enterprise-level providers such as Amazon. The company provides top-tier clouding Hosting in a user-friendly and flexible manner.
To start with, Cloudways offers servers from over 25 global locations. You can choose the city and region in which you want your server to be located.
A closer server means fast loading times. The customisation options don’t end there. You can also choose the servers you want to work with. There are five server options: Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, Amazon AWS and Google Cloud.
Regardless of your choice, you can also customise how you pay for resources. You can choose to purchase a plan (starting as low as $10/month) or sail your boat with a pay-as-you-go plan.
The help and support system provides 24/7 live chat and a ticketing system for all plans. There is also a paid support plan for those who want proactive site monitoring and other benefits.
There is no money-back guarantee, but that isn’t an issue. You can simply use the trial period to test out the service. If you like what they offer, you pay.
There are also extra benefits such as a free SSL certificate, free website hosting migration and dedicated firewalls.
Cloudways Pricing
There are five servers to choose from. These are Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, Amazon AWS and Google Cloud. The pricing is determined based on the server and the plan you choose.
Digital Ocean: from £7.47 per month – Pay as you go billing
Linode: from £8.97 per month – Pay as you go billing
VULTR: from £8.22 per month – Pay as you go billing
AWS: from £27.28 per month – Pay as you go billing
Google Cloud: from £25.12 per month – Pay as you go billing
All plans come with a free SSL certificate, free migration, CDN add-on and automated back-ups.
#3. Kinsta – Best Cloud Hosting for WordPress
Kinsta Pros
Kinsta Cons
Kinsta Key Features
Kinsta packs a lot of features that make them worth a second look. Overall, if you are looking for a web cloud hosting provider guaranteed to integrate well with WordPress, you should consider Kinsta.
All the plans come with WordPress installs, free CDN, premium migrations, backup retention, and multiple PHP workers per site.
You can also extend the features available with each plan. The add-on features include Redis, Nginx reverse proxy, external backup, extra backs and more disk space.
Redis is a structured store that is used as a database, cache and message broker. Nginx reverse proxy is used to load websites from a subdirectory.
Furthermore, you can also choose your server out of the 25 Google cloud platform regional data centres worldwide.
Other features include security protocols, firewalls, uptime check, staging area, and an easy to use interface.
You can also contact the customer support team via email and the ticketing system.The only complaint we have here is that Kinsta neither offers a free trial or a money-back guarantee.
Still, if the provider has all the features you need, and the price looks good, then you should give it a shot. You can start with a monthly plan and then move to a yearly plan when you are satisfied with the service.
Kinsta Pricing
Starter: from £22.42 per month – Pay yearly and get 2 months free
Pro: from £44.84 per month – Pay yearly and get 2 months free
Business: from £74.73 per month – Pay yearly and get 2 months free
Enterprise: from £448.40 per month – Pay yearly and get 2 months free
All plans come with a free premium migrations, automatic back-ups, free CDN and a 30 day money back guarantee.
#4. Siteground – Best Cloud Host For Features
Siteground Pros
Siteground Cons
Siteground Key Features
Siteground is the recommended cloud hosting provider for websites that have outgrown their shared hosting plans. They provided fully managed plans. This means they handle all the technical aspects of hosting while you focus on other areas.
They also offer flexibility. You can increase the number of resources available to your website with a click of a button. If you don’t know how many resources you need, you can use the auto-scaling feature.
The auto-scaling feature calculates how many resources your website needs at a particular time and makes the necessary changes.
Siteground maintains an excellent customer support system. You can reach the 24/7 help and support team via phone, email or live chat.
Other benefits include free CDN, free SSL certificate, dedicated IP, private DNS, and daily backups.
Overall, Siteground is an excellent place to start for websites looking for flexible and cost-effective ways to manage high traffic/ traffic spikes.
If you change your mind after signing up with the provider, you can opt out and keep your money by taking advantage of the 15-day money-back guarantee.
Siteground Pricing
The site offers its Hosting in four plans. The plans are flexible. You can configure them to accommodate your needs.
Jumpstart plan: £60 /month
Business plan: £120 /month
Business plus plan: £180 /month
Superpower plan: £240 /month
All plans come with a free SSL certificate, free CDN, free email, daily backups and a 30 day money back guarantee.
#5. Kamatera – Best Cloud Hosting for Customisation
Kamatera Pros
Kamatera Cons
Kamatera Key Features
Kamatera stands out as a bespoke cloud hosting solution. It gives you full control over your cloud hosting. You have complete root access, so you can configure your server environment. You can also choose your IP allocation.
The controls do not stop there. You can also increase or reduce the resources available to your website as you see fit. Your changes will be reflected in server capacity in minutes. Resources such as storage space, RAM and CPU can be increased or decreased with simple clicks. You can also add or remove firewalls.
There is also the operation of choosing data centres and operating systems. The company also provides a sound customer support system for times when you run into issues.
In adding to the customisation features, Kamatera still ranks well when it comes to uptimes with their 99.95% uptime guarantee.
The only downside is that this provider does not offer a free trial or money-back guarantee. This doesn’t take away from its great features.
If you are looking for complete control over your website hosting, you should consider signing up with Kamatera.
Kamatera Pricing
Kamatera doesn’t have fixed pricing plans. However, their basic configuration come at specific prices. You can tweak the configurations based on your needs.
Plans: from £2.99 per month
#6. Liquid Web – Best Managed Cloud Hosting
Liquid Web Pros
Liquid Web Cons
Liquid Web Key Features
Liquid web offers a comprehensive cloud hosting service that works well for large websites. Their plans come in multiple tiers. Users can choose between the Windows operating system and the CentOS 7 Linus operating system.
All the plans come with options in case you want to increase the resources available with each plan.
Although their plans might seem expensive to some, the liquid web offers a cost-effective solution. The amount of resources they make available is enough to easily power large websites.
Furthermore, the company also offers managed hosting. Managed Hosting means the company doesn’t keep its servers onsite. Instead, the servers are controlled and maintained from a web host’s data centre.
The company also manages all the technical aspects of hosting, regardless of how large or complex it is. There is also an excellent support system that you can reach when you have issues.
Overall, Liquid Web is not in the market for compromises. They offer robust hosting solutions along with excellent features but at a high-end price.
Liquid Web Pricing
Standard: from £193 per month
Professional: from £365 per month
Premier: from £540 per month
All plans come with a free premium migrations, automatic back-ups, free CDN and a 30 day money back guarantee.
#7. Nexcess – Best Cloud Hosting for eCommerce
Nexcess Pros
Nexcess Cons
Nexcess Key Features
Nexcess is a web hosting company that caters to the needs of online stores. They are a perfect choice for eCommerce websites that need scalable resources.
Their plans are bespoke and tailored to specific content management systems (CMS). This means you can get one of their plans and start selling right away. They primarily offer WooCommerce, Magento and WordPress Hosting. All of these hosting offers have different plans based on your needs.
If you are looking for more options, they also have a standout cloud hosting service. Regardless of what you choose, you can rest assured that your online business is in safe hands,
This is why Nexcess is the perfect cloud hosting platform for WordPress and other eCommerce related sites.
Aside from all these, the company also offers other benefits, one of which is auto-scaling. Auto-scaling simply means that the system recognises a spike in traffic. It automatically increases the hosting resources to accommodate the spike. When traffic returns to normal, the system reduces the resources.
Other additional features include SEO tools, PCI compliance, and other fantastic development tools for total customisation and flexibility.
One more feature worth mentioning is the Cloud Accelerator – an extra layer in the front of the cloud stack. This is a feature that helps your web pages to load faster. This translates into a speedy and responsive website.
If you run into issues, you can simply reach out to the 24/7 customer support team.
Nexcess Pricing
XS plan: £35.60 /monthly
S plan: £72.10 /monthly
M plan: £130.30 /monthly
L plan: £217.80 /monthly
XL plan: £400 /monthly
XXL plan: £618.50 /monthly
#8. Hostagtor – Best Cheap Cloud Hosting
Hostgator Pros
Hostgator Cons
Hostgator Key Features
Hostgator is the most affordable and yet effective cloud hosting option on the market today. All plans come with unlimited email accounts, a free SSL certificate and free backup. Those who sign up with the business plan will get free SEO tools, dedicated IP and free domain.
Despite their low prices, Hostgator still provides quality performance. Their intuitive dashboard makes it easy for you to check your website’s performance. You have access to metrics such as speed, reach, and uptime.
You can also scale resources with a single click. The resources become available within minutes without having to reboot or migrate to a different plan.
All plans also come with unmetered storage and bandwidth. This makes it an excellent fit for websites that have a lot of multimedia content. The unmetered bandwidth also helps to deal with fluctuating traffic.
While there is no free trial, you have 45 days to decide If you like the service Hostgator provides. If you don’t, you can take advantage of the 45-day money-back guarantee.
The company also has a reliable help and support team. If you run into issues, you can reach out to the customer support team via live chat.
If you are on a budget and yet do not want to sacrifice quality, you should consider hosting your website on Hostgator.
Hostgator Pricing
Hatchling Cloud: £3.60 /month
Baby Cloud Plan: £4.80 /month
Business cloud plan: £7.25 /month
All plans come with free SSL certificate, free domain name, free email and money back guarantee.
Are there any other Cloud Service Providers?
Yes. As we said earlier, there are over one hundred cloud web hosts to choose from. The ones on this list were selected for small to medium size businesses and online brands.
There are other equally good cloud web hosts. These are:
These hosts are enterprise clouds hosting providers. This means their target customers are large companies that operate globally and require massive web hosting resources. Examples of such companies are Netflix and Zoom.
These cloud hosting providers offer incredible amounts of resources for running extensive internet services. They also provide high-level customisations.
They are perfect for:
If you are operating a small or medium-sized online business, you don’t need their mammoth infrastructure. The hosting providers we reviewed earlier will serve your needs.
What is Cloud Hosting?
“The Cloud” is a way of saying something isn’t stored on your local storage device. For instance, many people save their pictures and documents on Google Drive and other online storage facilities.
The same logic applies to cloud hosting.
When you use a cloud hosting service, your website data is stored and maintained across different virtual servers in the cloud.
The servers are maintained by large data centres that are located around the world.
These servers have specific tasks and responsibilities. If one server goes down, another one steps up to carry out the tasks.
Compared to other traditional forms of web hosting, cloud hosting is a recent innovation. Here is how it differs from the other types of web hosting.
The Difference Between Cloud and Shared Hosting
Shared Hosting means multiple sites are sharing one server. If the server goes down, all the sites are affected. Cloud hosting means multiple sites are sharing various servers located in different regions of the world. It is not restricted to a specific server or location. As such, it is less prone to outages and downtimes.
The Difference Between Cloud and VPS hosting
Virtual private server (VPS) hosting products are similar to cloud web hosting in a way. In both instances, you pay for several resources such as RAM and bandwidth. Cloud hosting differs from VPS hosting because of two reasons.
Firstly, the resources are spread across multiple servers instead of just one. Secondly, you can increase your resources with a simple setup, and it becomes available in moments.
The Difference Between Cloud and Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated Hosting requires you to acquire a physical server in its entirety. The server can be leased or bought. This is primarily done by large businesses that need immense and private hosting infrastructure.
Cloud hosting doesn’t deal with physical servers; everything is hosted on the cloud. It saves you from maintenance costs associated with managing a physical server.
Why do I need Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting used to be for medium to large businesses and companies. However, small businesses can also benefit from cloud hosting. If you operate a growing business with a fluctuating need for resources, a flexible hosting plan is ideal for you.
Other web hosting platforms have rigid pricing structures. You are severely limited to the resources within your plan. The amount of resources available within each plan is fixed.
Cloud hosting plans are flexible. You can increase the number of resources without having to change plans.
If you are still wondering if your business needs cloud hosting, check the points below. If one or more applies to you, then cloud hosting is ideal for your business.
How do I Choose the Best Cloud Hosting?
There are so many cloud hosting providers that making a choice can feel overwhelming. If you think that way, we are here to help.
While all cloud hosting providers all provide the same basic service – web hosting – the ways they offer their services differ. Plus, there are clear differences when you look at other areas.
Here are the top five factors you should consider before choosing a cloud hosting provider.
What are the Benefits of Cloud Hosting?
The difference between cloud hosting and web hosting is that a cloud-hosting provider uses several virtual servers to provide hosting service for websites. This means websites on a cloud hosting server use various servers to ensure the highest possible quality and speed.
What are the Downsides of Cloud Hosting?
Best Cloud Host UK Conclusion
Who is the Best Cloud Hosting UK Provider?
Cloud hosting is the ideal option for growing websites. While it is perfect for medium to large businesses, small businesses with growth potential can also take advantage of its benefits.
This also means that small/new websites with very little traffic might not benefit much from cloud hosting.What is the perfect cloud web hosting service provider? It depends on your needs and budget.
If you are unsure of where to start, go with A2 Hosting. It has all the features of a good hosting provider and affordable plans. Regardless of what you choose, know that you can easily migrate from one host to another.
So don’t sweat the process.
