Best cloud hosting services in 2024
Through independent research and testing, our team of experts offers transparent and thorough reviews of web hosting providers. We use the same testing criteria for all providers to offer a fair and unbiased assessment of each hosting service.
Our in-depth articles include feedback about our hands-on hosting experience and other crucial information for potential customers.
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Aurelija Tomkevičiūtė
Writer
Cloud hosting is the best solution for medium to large-scale projects – it provides easy scalability, speed, and uptime. If you have a quickly growing website or business, the best cloud hosting providers will offer you the generous resources and flexibility that your project requires.
To help you find the best cloud hosting solution that includes all the features and resources you need, we offer our expert insights and hands-on experience with the best cloud hosting services. We tested 50 providers and picked the best based on the pricing, tools, resources, performance, security, and more.
Best cloud hosting services 2024
- Bluehost – the best cloud hosting service provider
- Hostinger – powerful and budget-friendly cloud hosting provider
- Liquid Web – fully managed cloud VPS hosting
- SiteGround – the fastest cloud hosting service
- HostGator – affordable services for cloud web hosting
What is cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting is when the hosting provider uses a network of (usually) virtual servers to host websites instead of one physical server. The advantage of cloud hosting over traditional single-server hosting is that if any of the servers experience issues, your site will stay up and running, and its performance will not be affected. Cloud hosting distributes server resources more efficiently across all hosted websites, which results in better overall site performance. Additionally, with cloud hosting, you get your own dedicated IP address.
Cloud hosting is the best option for medium to large websites that get a lot of traffic and rely on good and stable server performance, such as eCommerce and similar sites. For smaller websites, shared hosting is usually enough.
Best cloud hosting providers – detailed list
To find the best cloud hosting, we tested and reviewed 50 providers according to what their cloud hosting plans offer, pricing, and performance. Below are brief overviews of the best cloud hosting providers, ranked from best to good. If you want to compare the hosts side by side, including RAM, CPU, storage, and other features, check out our comparison table.
1. Bluehost – the best cloud hosting solution overall
| Storage: | 10-225 GB |
| Storage: | 2-150 vCPU threads |
| Cloud pricing: | From $29.99/month |
| Best deal: | Get up to 75% OFF Bluehost! |
Bluehost is the best overall cloud hosting solution, offering a wide array of features across various subscription plans. It is optimized specifically for WordPress, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying it out.
Features: The Bluehost cloud hosting plan has multiple subscription tiers with different prices and features. Here’s what you can expect from either one:
- From 10 to 225 GB of SSD storage space to keep all your sites and necessary files.
- Up to 150 vCPU threads to ensure quick loading on any page process.
- Automatic WordPress and Plugin updates to ensure everything is always secure and up to date.
- 24/7 priority support to solve any issues immediately.
Performance: All Bluehost cloud hosting plans come with a whole range of features to ensure excellent performance for any site. For starters, there’s Premium CDN to ensure excellent page load times for recurring visitors. Secondly, all plans include unrestricted bandwidth, meaning you won’t have to worry about connectivity issues. The cheapest plan is ideal for around 200k visits per month, while the top tier will have no trouble with 23m visits per month.
We tested Bluehost to verify its functionality and performance claims. More precisely, we built a site using the service and then used tools like Pingdom and GTmetrix to measure relevant metrics. As expected, the results were excellent during our testing period. The site maintained 99.9% uptime, meaning we didn’t miss out on any potential traffic. However, the average response time was 971ms, which isn’t particularly impressive. Meanwhile, the speed tests showed that the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) was only 1.2s
| Uptime: | 99.9% |
| Average response time: | 971ms |
| Fully built site loading time: | 1.2s |
| On-site traffic: | 50VUs |
More about Bluehost cloud hosting: Bluehost’s cloud hosting feature set includes an impressive array of security tools, such as DDoS protection, Anti-Malware, Realtime Security Scan, and Realtime Backup. You also get Yoast SEO Premium to optimize your site’s performance and search engine rankings to suit your business needs. Regarding ease of use, the provider utilizes the well-known cPanel to create an intuitive interface suitable for everyone.
Pricing: Bluehost’s cloud hosting plans are pretty pricey compared to its other hosting solutions and the competition's prices. Specifically, prices start at $29.99/month for the Cloud 1 plan. Thankfully, all plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee, allowing you to test everything yourself without risk.
2. Hostinger – powerful and budget-friendly cloud hosting provider
| Storage: | 200-300 GB |
| Storage: | 2-6 cores |
| Cloud pricing: | From $6.79/month |
| Best deal: | Get up to 78% OFF Hostinger + 3 months free! |
Hostinger is an excellent cloud hosting option for users needing a great balance between price and performance. It offers servers worldwide and a great custom control panel at an affordable price, making it a versatile cloud hosting option suitable for any business or personal needs.
Features: Hostinger provides a generous set of features and dedicated resources with its cloud hosting plans:
- Up to 300 GB of storage space, which is plenty for a large, resource-intensive project.
- Up to 6 CPU cores to help achieve and maintain excellent overall performance and quick processing times.
- Up to 12GB RAM, which is an adequate amount of memory.
- Up to 300 websites – you can host hundreds of websites on a single cloud hosting plan.
Performance: All Hostinger cloud hosting plans include a dedicated IP address and Hostinger CDN, which speeds up websites by 40%. The eleven servers are spread across four continents and can manage hundreds of requests simultaneously, over 100 concurrent user requests, and hundreds of thousands of monthly visits. Hostinger’s cloud hosting is also optimized for WooCommerce by default, making it the perfect choice for online stores.
We tested Hostinger by building a large, resource-intensive site to see how it performs. To monitor uptime and average response time, we used the Pingdom tool by SolarWinds, and the fully built site loading time was measured with the GTmetrix tool. To see how well Hostinger’s cloud hosting handles sudden traffic increases, we used the k6 stress testing tool by Grafana Labs. Overall, the performance was excellent on all ends – here’s a summary table:
| Uptime: | 100% |
| Average response time: | 476ms |
| Fully built site loading time: | 0.9s |
| On-site traffic: | 50VUs |
More about Hostinger cloud hosting: Hostinger’s cloud hosting is fully managed and easy to use, with an intuitive and feature-rich control panel called hPanel. Each plan includes a free domain, daily backups, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited SSL certificates, and unlimited website migrations. The customer support team is knowledgeable and is available 24/7 via live chat. Hostinger’s top-notch quality and value for money make it our top choice for the best cloud hosting.
Pricing: For cloud hosting, Hostinger provides 3 plans with prices starting at $6.79/month to $29.99/month for the 48-month subscription period. The 30-day money-back guarantee is also great for peace of mind.
3. Liquid Web – powerful premium cloud hosting solution
| Storage: | 40 - 200 GB |
| CPU: | 2 - 12 vCPU cores |
| Cloud pricing: | From $5/month |
| Current deal: | Get up to 74% OFF Liquid Web VPS! |
While Liquid Web offers actual cloud hosting, the prices are more on the premium side. However, the provider has great offers on fully managed cloud VPS, which is just as impressive. With competitive prices and feature-rich plans, Liquid Web delivers reliable performance and efficient management.
Features: Liquid Web’s plans for VPS hosting with cloud infrastructure include:
- Up to 200GB SSD storage – a good amount of storage for any large site, and for excellent pricing with the most expensive Liquid Web plan.
- Up to 12 vCPU cores, which is twice as much as Hostinger offers. However, virtual CPU cores are known to be less efficient than physical cores. Nevertheless, your site performance shouldn’t suffer too much.
- Up to 12 GB RAM, which is a pretty good overall amount, considering the pricing.
Performance: Liquid Web is one of the few providers that give a 100% uptime guarantee. While this is hard to achieve, the provider aims to establish its trustworthiness. If you do experience any downtime, you will be compensated. In our Liquid Web testing, we saw excellent overall performance in all areas. Uptime held at the promised 100%, and the server response time was around the industry’s average (both monitored with Pingdom by SolarWinds). The fully built large site loading time was also exemplary (measured with GTmetrix), and Liquid Web’s cloud hosting servers handled all 50 users with no issues (tested with k6 by Grafana Labs). Here’s a summary of the overall Liquid Web performance metrics:
| Uptime: | 100% |
| Average response time: | 521ms |
| Fully built site loading time: | 1.2s |
| On-site traffic: | 50VUs |
More about Liquid Web cloud hosting: All Liquid Web plans come with a variety of security tools like automatic daily backups, DDoS protection, SSL certificates, server monitoring, and firewalls. The provider offers a guarantee to respond in 59 seconds if you contact customer support via phone or live chat. If you open a ticket, the host will respond within 59 minutes. With Liquid Web, you can also choose a control panel based on what you find easier to use: cPanel, InterWorx, and Plesk are all available.
Pricing: Liquid Web offers 4 VPS hosting plans with prices of $5.00, $26.00, $37.00, and $44.00 per month. These prices are somewhat in line with what Hostinger offers – a little higher, but overall offering a good value with generous resources and excellent performance. Plus, the host also includes a standard 30-day money-back guarantee.
4. SiteGround – reliable cloud web hosting solution
| Storage: | 40 - 160 GB |
| CPU: | 4 - 16 cores |
| Cloud pricing: | From $100.00/month |
| Current deal: | Get up to 83% OFF SiteGround + FREE TRANSFER! |
SiteGround is a premium hosting provider with excellent hosting plans on cloud infrastructure and generous resources. The service is fully managed, security is top-notch, and the provider ensures easy scaling for growing businesses.
Features: SiteGround is different from other providers in that it lets you choose how many resources you want, and calculates the plan price based on that. However, you can also go with the preset plans, which include:
- Up to 160 GB storage with the most expensive Super Power plan. This is less than what Hostinger offers and also costs significantly more.
- Up to 20GB RAM, which is a good amount of memory space, and significantly more than what you get with Hostinger.
- Up to 16 CPU cores, which is what allows SiteGround to show such excellent performance – the processing times are reduced to mere seconds.
Performance: SiteGround puts a lot of effort into making its hosting services as fast as possible. The host does not only keep its hardware and software up to date but also offers an Ultrafast PHP setup. This enhances the overall performance and decreases server response time. We tested SiteGround’s performance in-house, and it showed excellent results. Here’s a quick summary:
| Uptime: | 99.99% |
| Average response time: | 588ms |
| Fully built site loading time: | 1.8s |
| On-site traffic: | 50VUs |
More about SiteGround cloud hosting: While most providers include some security features in their plans, SiteGround goes the extra mile. Together with free SSL, you will get automated daily backups, a real-time monitoring system, a Custom Web Application firewall, and an AI anti-bot system. You also won’t be disappointed with SiteGround’s customer support – it offers 24/7 live chat, phone, and ticket support options. Additionally, with a simple and playful interface and a custom control panel called Site Tools, SiteGround is easy to use and navigate.
Price: As far as plans and prices go, there are 4 options with prices ranging from $100.00/month to $200.00/month. More so, you can also customize a plan yourself.You can use a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with the product.
5. HostGator – the cheapest cloud hosting solution
| Storage: | Unmetered |
| CPU: | 2-6 |
| Cloud pricing: | From $4.95/month |
| Best deal: | Get up to 62% OFF HostGator! |
HostGator has very affordable cloud hosting – it’s mostly suited for smaller sites and projects. It’s the cheapest cloud hosting service you’ll encounter if you want to scale up your project. The resources are decent, the performance is in optimal parameters, and it’s easy to use.
Features: HostGator offers a pretty good suite of resources and features. Its cloud hosting plans include:
- Unmetered storage and bandwidth, which means that as long as you comply with HostGator’s terms of service, you will not be charged for your storage and bandwidth usage.
- Up to 6 CPU cores, which allows for good and fast server performance.
- Up to 6GB RAM, which is twice less than what hostinger offers. Nevertheless, it is still a pretty good deal.
- 1 to unlimited websites, which is more than any of the hosts on this list offer – that’s a great advantage if you’re looking to build a big project.
Performance: We tested HostGator’s performance over a 2-month period with a large, fully built site. Its performance as a whole is really good, on the level of Hostinger and Liquid Web. The uptime remained higher than promised, and the response time was satisfactory. Here’s our testing results summary:
| Uptime: | 99.96% |
| Average response time: | 576ms |
| Fully built site loading time: | 1.2s |
| On-site traffic: | 50VUs |
More about HostGator cloud hosting: HostGator’s other resources in the cloud hosting packages include a free domain and SSL. HostGator also has flexible customer support options – 24/7 live chat and phone. For easy site management, HostGator uses the well-known cPanel. No matter if you’re a beginner or an advanced user, you won’t have any problems navigating the panel. Overall, the only downside of HostGator is that despite affordable pricing, it offers fewer resources – but if your project is on a smaller site, it should be sufficient.
Price: The provider offers prices as low as $4.95/month due to its reliance on its shared hosting infrastructure. If you’d like to try out the service, make sure to use a 30-day money-back guarantee.
6. ScalaHosting – scalable and budget-friendly cloud VPS solutions
| Storage: | 50 - 200 GB |
| CPU: | 2 - 12 |
| Cloud pricing: | From $14.95/month |
| Best deal: | Get up to 49% OFF ScalaHosting VPS + save an additional 15% with any ScalaHosting plan! |
While ScalaHosting is not among the most popular hosting providers, the host proves to be a worthy choice for cloud hosting. The provider offers fully managed cloud VPS, rather than just cloud. Even if you’re looking for cloud hosting, SalaHosting’s powerful and resource-rich plans, accompanied by very good performance, make it a solid choice for the job.
Features: ScalaHosting provides pretty decent resources with its VPS hosting plans:
- Up to 200GB SSD storage, which is a little less than what Hostinger offers.
- Up to 24GB of RAM, which is also more than Hostinger. However, the 18GB RAM comes with the most expensive ScalaHosting plan, which is 6 times more expensive than Hostinger’s Cloud Enterprise.
- Up to 12 CPU cores, which will ensure top-tier performance, but also come at a very high price with the most expensive plan.
Performance: Overall, during our ScalaHosting testing, the performance proved to be very good – no downtime, fast response time, and quite a few available server locations in the US and Europe to fight latency. Here’s a summary of the testing results:
| Uptime: | 100% |
| Average response time: | 443ms |
| Fully built site loading time: | 1.8s |
| On-site traffic: | 50VUs |
More about ScalaHosting cloud hosting: The provider is very well-rounded in terms of other features – all plans come with free domain, SSL, and email accounts. In terms of support, you can contact ScalaHosting’s agent via 24/7 live chat, email, tickets, and phone. It also offers a knowledge base covering a variety of web hosting management-related topics. ScalaHosting also includes a native control panel called SPanel, and it’s just as easy to use as cPanel. The only major concern is that the pricing plans are almost six times as expensive as Hostinger’s, and while ScalaHosting does offer a bit more resources, the pricing is simply very high.
Pricing: ScalaHosting has 4 VPS cloud plans with prices ranging from $12.71/month to $179.95/month. Additionally, you can use a 30-day money-back guarantee. Additionally, you can use a 30-day money-back guarantee to test the service without any risks.
7. Google Cloud Web Hosting – an advanced solution for resource-intensive projects
| Storage | Customizable |
| CPU | Customizable |
| Cloud pricing: | From $300 free credit |
| Current deal: | Check Google Cloud Web Hosting pricing |
Google Cloud Web Hosting service is one of the most well-known and widely used providers, and it can be an excellent solution if you’re looking to host very large-scale projects that need a lot of computing power and other advanced resources, such as AI and Machine learning products, and more.
Features: since Google Cloud Web Hosting is not a traditional hosting provider, its features are greatly customizable and can vary depending on what you need. However, here are some estimations of what you could get for 1 to 2 websites for ~$41.00/month:
- 50 GB of storage, which can be scaled up to whatever your site may need. The price will be adjusted accordingly.
- From 1 to multiple vCPU cores, which also depends on your project needs.
- From 2 GB RAM, which could also be scaled up to any amount depending on your requirements.
More about Google Cloud Web Hosting: As one of the most popular cloud hosting solutions, Google Cloud Web Hosting is also the most extensive in what it offers. Besides completely customizing your plans, you can also get advanced developer and management tools, several types of storage, high-tech migration and networking services, and more. While such customization can be seen as a benefit, it also could be a disadvantage if you’re looking for a preset cloud hosting solution with fixed and low pricing and easily determined resources.
Pricing: Google Cloud Web Hosting offers a free version with $300 worth of credit that you can use for 90 days to try out the service and its extensive features. After that, the pricing largely depends on what you need. Luckily, Google Cloud Web Hosting includes a calculator that can help you determine what resources your project requires and estimate the costs.
8. Microsoft Azure Web Apps – good cloud hosting solution for scalability
| Storage | Customizable |
| CPU: | Customizable |
| Cloud pricing: | From $200 free credit |
| Current deal: | Check Microsoft Azure Web Apps pricing |
Microsoft Azure Web App is another advanced cloud hosting service coming from one of the biggest tech corporations worldwide. It is a great solution if you want to build and deploy extremely complex applications that require a lot of resources, easy scalability, and extensive toolkits.
Features: Similar to Google Cloud, Azure Web Apps do not have fixed tiers with fixed amounts of resources. The storage, CPU, RAM, and number of websites depend solely on what kind of project you’re looking to host.
More about Microsoft Azure Web Apps: other Azure Web Apps features include various types of storage ranging from storage for various objects to shareable cloud files. A variety of analytics tools, such as Azure Data Explorer, and Azure Stream Analytics, and tools for experimentation are also included. It supports various databases and offers web-related features such as API management and more. Overall, this solution is highly complex and recommended for increasingly large projects that need easy scalability and a wide range of services.
Pricing: With Microsoft Azure Web Apps, you can get $200 worth of free credit to use in 30 days, and more than 55 free services to try. After that, the service charges you for resource usage that exceeds the free monthly amounts, therefore there are no fixed pricing tiers.
Compare the best cloud hosting providers
Let’s check out how all the cloud hosting providers we recommend compare to each other:
| Provider | Bluehost | Hostinger | Liquid Web | SiteGround | HostGator | ScalaHosting | Google Cloud Web Hosting | Microsoft Azure Web Apps |
| Brand |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Storage | 10-225 GB | 200-300GB | 40-200 GB | 40-160 GB | Unmetered | 50-200GB | Customizable | Customizable |
| CPU | 2-150 vCPU threads | 2-6 cores | 2-12 vCPU cores | 4-16 cores | 2-6 cores | 2-12 cores | Customizable | Customizable |
| RAM | Customizable | 3-12 GB | 2-12 GB | 8-20 GB | 2-6GB | 2-24GB | Customizable | Customizable |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | 10 TB | 5TB | Unmetered | Unmetered | Customizable | Customizable |
| Speed | 971ms | 511ms | 521ms | 217ms | 525ms | 443ms | N/A | N/A |
| Uptime | 99.99% | 100% | 100% | 99.99% | >99.99% | 100% | N/A% | N/A |
| Data center location | US only | Yes, 11 | Yes, 3 | Yes, 7 | US only | Yes, 7 | N/A | N/A |
| VPS or Cloud hosting | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Control panel | cPanel | hPanel | multiple | Site Tools | cPanel | cPanel | Custom | Custom |
| Free SSL | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Free domain | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | N/A | N/A |
| Customer support | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 |
| Price range | From $29.99/month | From $6.79/month | From $5.00/month | From $100.00/month | From $4.95/month | From $ 12.71/month | From $300 free credit | From $200 free credit |
How we tested cloud hosting
To offer you the best possible cloud hosting providers, we thoroughly tested and reviewed these products. Here’s a short overview of our cloud hosting testing and review process:
- First, we looked into hosting providers that offer cloud hosting plans or similar solutions on cloud infrastructure. We made sure that these hosts offer appropriate resources for hosting large-scale projects and businesses with multiple sites.
- Then, we built a large website that requires a lot of resources for appropriate cloud hosting testing. With this website, we tested each chosen host’s performance using tools such as Pingdom by SolarWinds for uptime and server response times, GTmetrix for fully built site loading, and k6 by Grafana Labs for stress testing.
- We also reviewed the security features that each host offers. Features such as free SSL, firewalls, DDoS protection, and automatic daily or weekly backups are simply a must when it comes to any website – cloud hosting is not an exception.
- Additional and technical features were also taken into consideration. We reviewed and evaluated the ease of use of control panel interfaces, and migration services, as well as additional tools and services such as AI assistants, analytics, developer tools, and customer service.
- Finally, we reviewed the price value and ranked the cloud hosting providers by comparing what each provider offers for what cost, as well as by taking into account their overall performance, usability, scalability options, and security.
How to choose the best cloud hosting provider?
When choosing the best cloud hosting provider for your needs, it’s important to consider several key factors. After evaluating how much traffic your project will receive, I recommend doing a simple search and looking into what your provider offers when it comes to:
- Resources such as storage, CPU for processing power, and RAM. These features are crucial to consider and evaluate to ensure that the host you choose offers the appropriate amounts of resources.
- Security features, such as SSL, DDoS protection, a firewall, a malware scanner, and more – to ensure that your project will have adequate security against malicious attacks.
- Uptime guarantee, which is a good indicator of what kind of performance you can expect from the host. However, make sure to research some more and look into real uptime, server response time, and site load time tests done by independent reviewers (like Cybernews).
- Pricing plans and scalability possibilities – look at what kind of cloud hosting subscriptions the host offers and evaluate the price value based on the offered features and your budget.
Best cloud hosting: final recommendations
Choosing the best cloud hosting provider can be tricky, but it should all be smooth sailing as long as you know what you need.
According to our research, the best cloud hosting provider is Bluehost. While not the cheapest, it offers everything you need to host a well-performing site. You can enjoy up to 225 GB of SSD storage, 150 vCPU threads, and unrestricted bandwidth to ensure zero performance issues. Whether you’re looking for ways to scale your project or are just starting, Bluehost is the best cloud hosting choice.
Best cloud hosting FAQs
How much does cloud hosting cost?
Cloud hosting can cost anywhere from just a couple to thousands of dollars per month – it all depends on how much resources such as storage, bandwidth, and RAM your project or business needs. Our top pick for cloud hosting, Bluehost, starts at just $29.99/month.
How secure is cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting providers ensure advanced security for their servers and your websites. Such security measures often include SSL certificates, two-way firewalls, access control, and management, DDoS protection, and more.
What is the best: regular web hosting or cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting is the best option in terms of performance since the network of servers ensures continuous uptime and better division of resources. However, it’s not the most cost-efficient choice for all scenarios. If your website is small and simple, shared hosting should suffice.
Which is the best free cloud hosting?
Free cloud hosting is usually very limiting in performance and security, making it unsuitable for any serious long-term use. We recommend getting a good value cloud hosting instead from our top pick Bluehost.
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