Best Cloud Hosting Services of 2024 Compared

AWS is the cloud hosting provider suitable for both small businesses and enterprise users because of cost efficiency, global locations, and robust performance.

Its product line caters to diverse use cases, such as virtual private servers, data storage, CDNs, generative AI applications, databases, AI modelling, data security, identity and access management, APIs, cloud search, and more.

A standout feature of AWS is you pay for what you use. It also offers a free tier for some of its popular services, such as EC2 (virtual servers), S3 (object storage), and RDS (managed relational database service).

Additionally, startups can benefit from AWS Activate, where they can apply for $100,000 worth of free AWS credits. In particular, GenAI startups building foundational models can be eligible for up to $300K in credits to try AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia. These complimentary packages also include expert help in learning, building, and deploying the cloud products.

Digital Ocean is a popular choice among developers. Its cloud portfolio includes Droplets (virtual machines), managed Kubernetes, NVIDIA H100 GPUs, managed databases, object and block storage, and more.

The platform includes managed database services like MongoDB, MySQL, Redis, and PostgreSQL, which are extremely helpful for non-tech-savvy users.

DigitalOcean also offers managed hosting for applications such as WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, PHP, and many more. It has decent global coverage, with 15 locations covering North America, Europe, South Asia, and Oceania.

Every new user gets $200 worth of free credits for a risk-free trial.

Kamatera brings close to 3 decades of cloud hosting experience, providing services such as cloud servers, virtual desktops, firewalls, load balancers, and storage.

Even though the company has been operational since 1995, Kamatera is the new booming player in the global markets. Its sudden increase in popularity is mainly due to its unique added values—fairly priced VMs (starting from $4/month), excellent scalability, flexible server configuration, multiple payment options, and, most importantly, customized cloud services with 24/7 support.

Kamatera services are built using top-of-the-shelf hardware, such as Intel Ice Lake Processors and NVMe SSDs, and offer a decent 99.95% server uptime guarantee.

Azure was launched in 2010 as Windows Azure and later renamed Microsoft Azure in 2014. It has many product offerings, including its own software, such as IIS, MS SQL, Exchange Server, etc.

With a portfolio encompassing AI, IoT, computing, security, analytics, containers, databases, and networking, there is little chance that Azure lacks any type of cloud service. Though Azure is home to countless enterprise and government projects, startups can also join their BizSpark program to get up to $150,000 in free Azure credits.

Azure features pay-as-you-go pricing and offers $200 credits for newcomers to experience the cloud platform without any risks. You can also create a free Azure account to use limited quotas of certain services, such as AI search, speech recognition, and app services, for free.

Microsoft Azure has an expansive geographical coverage and is also one of the few outsiders to have servers in Mainland China.

Vultr simplifies cloud hosting at highly economical costs, with plans starting at as low as $2.5/month. It provides most of the features teams expect, such as auto-scaling, resizing, choice of OS, and high-speed SSD storage.

It’s ideal for startups or anyone looking for a simpler alternative to cloud service behemoths, including GCP, AWS, and Azure. Teams use Vultr not only for its low cost but also for its ease of setup, customer support, and quick provisioning.

Vultr offers cloud servers, GPUs, stores, bare metal servers, managed databases, private networks, load balancers, content delivery networks, storage, and managed Kubernetes.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is the first choice of teams that are serious about minimizing latency to build performance-oriented applications. It’s available across 200+ countries and has 187 network edge locations as of this writing.

GCP has a Forever Free tier with usage limitations for 15 of its cloud products, such as compute engine, BigQuery, and storage. Additionally, it offers $300 in free credits to new customers.

Google Cloud has over 150 cloud products covering AI/ML, app development, generative AI, web hosting, app security, network management, cloud storage, databases, and more.

Though GCP is perceived as a made-for-enterprise cloud platform, it has lucrative incentives for startups. For instance, teams can get up to $2,000 in credits if they are not backed by startup funding equity. This goes up to $200,000 worth of credits for projects supported by startup funding equity. Besides, AI and web3 startups can claim up to $350,000 in credits against select GCP offerings.

A well-known Digital Ocean alternative, Linode (now acquired by Akamai), is perfect for hosting web applications, from personal blogs to eCommerce. It takes care of everything, starting from cloud migration to DNS configuration, load balancing, and auto-scaling, all the while providing predictable and affordable pricing.

Linode offers an extensive range of cloud services, including virtual servers, GPUs, Kubernetes, managed load balancing, cloud firewall, managed databases, object and block storage, and more.

It also provides a wealth of security, networking, monitoring, and maintenance services with every cloud instance without charging extra. These free services include DDoS protection, firewalls, DNS management, IPv6 support, flexible deployment (via web interface, API, or CLI), and performance and resource monitoring.

New users can benefit from 100 trial credits. Teams can also fill out a short form to see if their business qualifies for an additional 5000 cloud credits.

Brightbox is a perfect choice for the European market, with 100% UK-based infrastructure. This cloud platform provides highly advanced security and enterprise-scale features like PXE bootable hardware, fully private networking, and the ability to use practically any operating system.

Teams can opt for cloud servers, databases, cloud storage, and load balancers with Brightbox.

Though this cloud provider is limited in scope and geographical presence, it’s highly competitive and provides human support with all plans. New users can claim $50 free credits to test the platform without paying.

OVHCloud can serve a wide spectrum of personal and business use cases with its public and private cloud services. It offers dedicated servers, cloud storage, backup, network security, VPS and email, containers, databases, and load balancers, among others.

The best aspect of OVHcloud is the diversity of the cloud services available. Teams can also choose from the latest hardware, including AMD and Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs. Professionals can use Eco servers to have dedicated servers for as low as $5.6/month.

Though OVHcloud seems a better fit for individuals, it still has offerings that suit complex business use cases, including AI and machine learning, quantum computing, and identity and access management.

OVHcloud has data centres across 4 continents, including Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific region. However, the majority of coverage targets Europe, with 20 data centres spread across France, Germany, Poland, and the UK.

IONOS is a traditional web host that also doubles as a cloud service provider. Its extensive range encompasses compute, storage, load balancing, DNS management, managed Kubernetes, databases, etc. Teams can also benefit from easy access to the best open-source generative AI model families, such as Llama, Mistral, Code Llama, and Stable Diffusion.

The standout IONOS feature is its 24/7 multi-channel support, which is included in every plan. This works via chat, email, and on-call (during business hours).

Although IONOS is competitively priced, it still offers newcomers $100 (approx. £77.06) for 30 days to try out the platform without risking funds.

Scala Hosting is a web host that is slowly making inroads in the cloud hosting industry. Previously, it had only 3 data centres in the United States and Europe. Now, it has partnered with AWS to let its users choose from an additional 13 locations across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

This hosting provider is highly revered among its users for exceptional tech support. It’s rated 4.9/5 on G2 and Trustpilot for its excellent services. However, the cost is higher than that of a few other cloud hosts, such as DigitalOcean and Vultr.

Every ScalaHosting subscription comes with a complimentary SPanel and SShield. SPanel is Scala’s in-house cloud control panel which also retails separately. However, it comes free with every Scala plan, making server management effortless. SShield, on the other hand, is a 100% automated cybersecurity system that stays online 24/7 and instantly informs webmasters of any anomaly.

Overall, ScalaHosting is a decent choice for a business or individual looking for a reliable hands-off web hosting experience. However, it does not offer services for advanced use cases, such as building genAI agents, load balancers, and cloud firewalls.

Alibaba Cloud is your gateway to the Chinese audience. Thanks to its extensive Cloud portfolio, teams can host almost everything inside China to provide the best possible experience to their customers.

Businesses can opt for bare metal servers, virtual desktops, cloud storage, private and public networking, load balancers, global content delivery, firewalls, databases, and container orchestration.

Some of these services (WordPress hosting, container registry, etc.,) have always free tiers, whereas a few others (including compute, CDN, and object storage) have limited time, credit-based trials. Teams can also apply for Alibaba’s Startup Catalyst Program for getting up to $120K in cloud credits.

DreamHost offers traditional web hosting, VPS, dedicated servers, email hosting, and domains, with cloud computing and object storage being the latest additions.

The biggest draw of DreamHost is ease of use and customer support, making it best for individuals and small-scale projects. DreamHost cloud provides root access to resources and complete freedom to run the stack of one’s choice.

On the downside, teams have no option but to host everything at DreamHost’s Ashburn, Virginia (US) datacentre as of this writing. Likewise, DreamCompute only features 3 plans to start with. However, one can scale resources as needed.

Though there is no free trial for DreamComptute, teams can try DreamObjects free for 60 days.

Hostinger allows hosting websites and applications across 4 continents with 24/7 customer support and 99.9% uptime guarantee. It’s backed by AMD EPYC processors and NVMe storage to deliver industry-leading performance.

Unlike some cloud providers, Hostinger users get free goodies, such as free automatic backups, real-time snapshots, and free SSL. Besides, every cloud subscription comes with a free CDN integration for high redundancy. On the downside, it lacks resource customization, and one is bound to choose from the templated offerings.

SiteGround is a Google Cloud-based premiere web host better known for its fully managed WordPress hosting. However, it also has plans for regular web hosting, powered by the same underlying infrastructure.

Its data centres are part of carbon-neutral Google Cloud infrastructure. This means all the carbon emissions are offset with green energy that’s sent back to the grid.

SiteGround’s subscriptions start at $100/month and can go up to $2090/month for the maxed-out customized plan. While these plans look expensive, users have still rated SiteGround high on public forums, citing superior customer support and service reliability. This can be useful for non-tech-savvy users who want to get things done without diving too deep into the technical aspects of hosting.

Liquid Web is a pioneer in the web hosting industry, operating since 1997. It offers products such as virtual private servers, dedicated servers, cloud hosting, WordPress hosting, and Magento hosting. Besides, it has PCI and HIPAA-compliant hosting for taking care of sensitive data and regulatory obligations.

Like most of its services, Cloud VPS comes as self, core, and fully managed subscriptions. One can choose from the pre-built configurations or go custom.

Though Liquid Web specializes in regular web hosting, it also has plans to host load balancers, CDN, SQL servers, firewalls, and more.

Bluehost is a WordPress-recommended web host best for small to mid-level projects. It has plans for shared hosting, VPS, cloud servers, managed WordPress, and WooCommerce hosting.

This hosting platform offers a decent list of built-in security and performance-enhancing features, such as firewalls and content delivery networks. However, Bluehost’s USP is its fully managed WordPress cloud, which offers 24/7 standby support from experts specially trained in WordPress.

On the downside, cloud plans don’t let users choose resources and instead provide pre-built configurations. Besides, one cannot choose to host at the data centres of one’s choice.

In fact, Bluehost has decided not to reveal server locations on its website. Considering these aspects, Bluehost is best suited for personal projects, especially for non-tech-savvy individuals looking for a hands-off WordPress hosting experience.

Hostwinds offers fully managed cloud servers, load balancers, object and block storage, virtual private servers, and more at competitive price points. It also offers regular shared hosting and business hosting for individuals and small businesses, respectively.

The platform has scored an almost perfect 4.9/5 from 430+ G2 reviews. Users appreciate their customer support and reliable performance.

However, one apparent downside is the limited geographical presence. Hostwinds has data centres in just 3 locations, 2 in the USA and 1 in Europe.

Cloudways (by DigitalOcean) is a fully managed solution with servers available across multiple cloud providers, including AWS, GCP, Vultr, etc.

In addition to 24/7 live chat and ticket support, Cloudways makes server management easy with its control panel. It allows users to manage the hosting necessities right away, including SSL installation, staging, server cloning, cache, traffic monitoring, and more.

Cloudways has given special attention to WordPress users with its Autonomous subscriptions. These fully managed, auto-scalable WordPress plans are made for high-traffic websites. Moreover, Cloudways Autonomous benefits from Cloudflare Enterprise integration for content delivery and network security.