Web Hosting : Shared/dedicated hosting has come to an end?

Hostgator and Bluehost are our best webhosts and godaddy.com is the best domain registrar.

This web hosting thread started by nibb on 08 October 2008

Do you think that cloud/grid hosting is going to replace shared hosting and dedicated?

I do see the advantages for hosting in some aspects.

Shared works only for small sites, once the client grows his site he needs dedi but its to complicated, people need a website running, most people dont want to handle servers configs, maintaince, etc. Cloud hosting is perfect here, you can escalate when you need it. Even if your dedi with cloud you can escalate more. I see a big advantage into this, since someone can only pay for what he uses. You can fit all models, shared or dedi with cloud since you have very low processing accounts and very intensive ones using several servers.

But then again i see its disadvantages. Software for cloud is to expensive for hosting companies, it requires the latest and biggest from virtualization software and licenses are expensive, which makes the cloud hosting expensive to end client in this business.

It seems also the market is not really ready for it. It doesn’t seem to have the best performance yet but is does has scalability.
I also see that most companies make profit of people paying for something and not using it at all, with cloud hosting that doesn’t make sense. Like most people that pay a flat rate for their cell phones but don’t use to the last minute each month. A hosting company even if it doesn’t oversell their accounts has a better profit of people paying all the same prices, this balances out for people that use to much and you cover the costs with those that don’t use anything. With cloud each one would pay exactly what he needs. Said that, you would not make to much profit, since you would have people paying allot less then just buying your minimum plans and not using all the functions.

Do you think cloud hosting will eventually be the main stream offer from hosting providers, replacing the existing shared and dedicated hosting offerings, or will it be a combination or mix of all solutions? It escalates perfectly but it comes with a cost. You think people prefer to pay every penny they use or just have a fixed cost and know they are ok if they ever need to use it, even if they will not?

I think allot of consumers would not like the idea of being nickel and dime to death instead of paying a fixed amount per month, and profit for company is not that great with this system. Thats the main disadvantage i see it. But i see a very big market for people running very intensive websites that dont have the experience or time to manage a server or cant pay the managed dedi offers that are to costly like rackspace. Shared is simple, they only have to handle their account not the server. Cloud is the same here, except you can the power of dedi without the extras that come with it. As i see it, cloud benefits intensive clients but not people that only need a simple account for hosting a site and using email once per day.

Discuss this at WHT or read more about bluehost and hostgator