I’ve already said this several times before, but it is worth reiterating. There is so much more to freelance writing than just the writing itself. This is true of any home-based business, ranging from the accounting duties to customer service. Chances are that you’ll want a website too, so that opens up the can of worms containing domain names and web hosting.
You could take the route of traditional hosting, whether it be shared or a dedicated server. Alternatively, you could try the cloud-based hosting of Top Hosting Center. Over the course of this review, we’ll take a look at their various services, features, and price points.
Four Ways to Get into the Cloud
You can tell that Top Hosting Center has its focus placed squarely on the business market, but I see no reason why a casual personal user couldn’t use their services as well. The key advantage to cloud-based hosting is that your data is distributed across several servers; by doing so, you’re supposed to enjoy greater uptime and better reliability. If there’s a hardware failure on one server, your site can still be live. That’s not the case with traditional hosting.
There are four main services offered, each with their respective strengths and weaknesses: cloud shared hosting, cloud sites, cloud servers, and cloud storage.
These range considerably in price and scope, of course, so you’ll need to choose accordingly. For each of these, you can click on the “learn more” link to access additional information about what each of these entail.
Sharing the Cloud with Others
If you want the most affordable web hosting, then you’ll likely be looking at the cloud shared hosting. This is equivalent to regular shared hosting, except your sites would be spread out over several servers in the cloud.
For the shared hosting, the cheapest option is $4.95 a month and it provides you with just 500MB of storage. If you’re going to host any multimedia, 500MB probably won’t cut the mustard. The small bump up to the next package, at $8.95 a month, gets you 10GB of storage instead. Much better.
What Exactly is a Cloud Site?
I understood the fundamentals of using the cloud servers and cloud storage solutions. Those made sense. However, I wasn’t entirely sure what Top Hosting Center meant by a cloud site.
Looking at the comparison page, a cloud site is similar in scope to the cloud shared hosting, except it has guaranteed high availability (HA), SSH access on all plans, the ability to upload videos, and something called storage area network (SAN) storage. This is supposed to be more reliable with faster throughput.
Not surprisingly, those features come at a premium. Along with more disk storage, you can get unlimited monthly data transfer with the larger cloud site price plan.
Just Another Cloud in the Sky
Without having the ability to take Top Hosting Center out for a proper test drive, I can’t say for sure whether it really delivers on its promises. I haven’t tried cloud-based hosting myself, but when major corporations like Amazon rely on it, that’s got to say something.
The pricing seems fair and the range of services is admirable. If you’re looking for a cloud-based solution for your website or company, Top Hosting Center seems like a viable option to consider.
I’m wondering why on March 4th you didn’t have a post about Grammar. Considering it was National Grammar Day: http://nationalgrammarday.com/ sponsored by: The Society for the promotion of good grammar, http://grammatically.blogspot.com/
I actually didn’t know about National Grammar Day until yesterday!