Cloud hosting has rapidly gained traction among Indian businesses owing to the immense scalability, robust security, and cost competitiveness it offers over conventional web hosting services. However, appropriately sizing cloud resources and integrating the right management applications is key to harnessing the maximum benefits when signing up for cloud hosting in India.
Tips to Choose the Right Applications and Resources for Your Cloud Web Hosting
- Bandwidth Requirements
One of the foremost things to determine before you buy cloud hosting is your bandwidth needs, which depend on your website traffic, content types, and growth projections. For most small websites, an unmetered connection offering decent speed without data limits works well.
However, bandwidth-heavy sites with audio, video, and large files require unlimited high-speed plans, albeit at a higher cost. Analyze your current and future bandwidth needs before deciding.
- RAM
The RAM determines how well your website performs with increasing traffic. When choosing a cloud hosting India plan, informational websites typically require 1-2 GB RAM for decent performance.
E-commerce stores, membership portals, and other data-intensive websites require at least 4 GB RAM. Calculate your monthly visitor count, page views, simultaneous connections, etc, to gauge your RAM needs accurately.
- Storage Space
Your website content primarily decides the storage you need. Simple brochure websites with limited pages and media would need around 10-20 GB of space.
Ecommerce sites with thousands of product images and descriptions need upwards of 50 GB initially. Allow room for growth over the next 1-2 years as well while choosing storage space.
- CPU Cores
For small websites, 1-2 CPU cores are adequate for decent performance. Larger dynamic websites with DB-driven content, member logins, etc., require 4 or more cores for responsive performance, even with high traffic.
Determine current and expected visitor volumes and system resource usage before deciding the number of cores.
- cPanel for Smooth Administration
cPanel is perhaps the most universal and user-friendly web-based control panel bundled with most cloud hosting packages. It enables convenient website, server, and account administration through an intuitive graphical interface without requiring Linux command line expertise. Some key website management features provided by cPanel include:
- File manager to upload, edit, backup, and restore your website pages and assets
- Email accounts and mailing lists manager
- Database manager to store and retrieve dynamic website data
- Create and manage additional websites, domains, and subdomains
- Install applications like WordPress, Joomla, etc, with one click
- Allocate resources and scale storage, bandwidth, etc.
- SSL certificates, subdomains, and other key utilities
- SSL Certificate for Security
An SSL certificate establishes secure HTTPS connections, which are vital for transmitting sensitive data like login credentials and payment info. It encrypts communication and authenticates website identity through certificate authorities like Comodo, Symantec, etc.
SSL comes preinstalled in some cloud web hosting plans, or you can add it via cPanel, too.
- CDN for Faster Content Delivery
A content delivery network or CDN caches website files like images, CSS, Javascript, etc., on edge servers across geographies. This allows faster content delivery to visitors by serving files from the nearest CDN server.
CDNs substantially improve website speed and page loading times – vital for good user experience. Choose plans with integrated CDNs or add them later.
Conclusion
Determining website goals, user volumes, and content types is key to identifying adequate cloud server hosting resources like storage space, bandwidth, RAM, and CPU cores. Integrated applications like cPanel simplify backend administration, while CDNs and SSL speed up content delivery and step up security. Carefully evaluating current and future resource requirements ensures you choose the optimal cloud hosting plan.