Earlier this month, WordPress hosting provider Bluehost launched Bluehost Cloud, bringing its customers into the world of cloud hosting. What is cloud hosting? For those unfamiliar, it’s an advanced form of web hosting that utilizes distributed servers for security, performance, and load balancing.
To explain that in practical terms, compare it to traditional or shared web hosting. In these cases, websites have a dedicated server that sits somewhere on the globe. For most of us who aren’t big corporations, that involves sharing a server with other websites. Each taps into collective resources.
This can work fine for most companies because shared server access also means lower cost. So it’s a cost-efficient and good-enough solution for most websites – including individuals, bloggers, and some SMBs. When 100% uptime and peak performance aren’t always mission-critical, this works just fine.
Risk Tolerance
But the downside of shared hosting for critical operations is greater risk. For example, when you have a data hog on a shared server – perhaps a company launching a product or having a seasonal sale – it pulls resources away from every other website that’s being hosted on the same zero-sum server.
There’s also something called managed hosting, which is provided by companies like WPEngine. Think of this sort of like shared-hosting+, in that the web hosting company manages server loads and moves them around so that everyone living on those servers gets optimized for the best performance.
Back to cloud hosting, this semi-recent development is like managed hosting but more automated. It offers websites the ability to be hosted in a more distributed fashion, with load balancing (read: performance) spread across several servers. It’s also great for geographic distribution and uptime.
For those familiar with the concept of a content delivery network (CDN) it’s sort of like that, but for hosting. In a CDN, information – such as a website loading in a user’s browser – is delivered by a distributed network. This ensures better/faster performance and consistency across regions.
Mission Critical
With that backgrounder, we return to Bluehost’s latest move. Bluehost Cloud has been launched in partnership with Automattic, which runs WordPress.com (the largest WordPress host and content management system) as well as several popular WordPress plugins like Jetpack and WooCommerce.
Bluehost Cloud will be available to its customers as an optional upgrade which will, again, appeal to those with more critical performance and uptime needs. As such, it will be a strategic addition to Bluehost’s business for retaining high-value customers, as well as attracting more to the platform.
These include everything from Fortune 500 companies to brands and creative agencies. It could also attract a fair amount of eCommerce players, as uptime and performance are mission critical. All of these players will likely appreciate not only performance and security perks but more reliable pricing.
To expand on that last point, growing companies on a more traditional or shared web hosting service will often have to pay for traffic spikes through overages as their server resources are throttled accordingly. Cloud hosting makes the pricing more consistent, predictable, and cost-efficient in the end.
“Bluehost Cloud marks an exciting expansion into the agency market, complementing our long-time commitment to serving small businesses around the globe.” Newfold Digital (Bluehost Owner) President Ed Jay told Localogy Insider. “What sets it apart is its top site speeds, 100 percent uptime, and immediate 24/7 premium support”
Highlight Reel
To close, we’ll leave you with the Highlight reel of features that BlueHost Cloud touts. Also stay tuned for Localogy’s next podcast episode that will dive into these dynamics with Bluehost itself.
- Top Site Speed: Powered by WP Cloud, the infrastructure is optimized for managed WordPress sites to deliver the fastest load time for web pages regardless of location across the globe.
- WordPress Optimization: Tailored and tuned for WordPress sites by WordPress creators, so users will never worry about their PHP configuration or other software compatibility and configuration details. Users can simply build with confidence, knowing that their site is compatible with all the latest plugins and tools.
- 100% Uptime SLA: Server and Datacenter environment designed to provide failover and 100% uptime for clients. Top-tier reliable network uptime backed by an enforceable Service Level Agreement that pays back hosting costs if any downtime occurs.
- Built for High Traffic Sites and Spikes: Unlike other competitors, no matter how many visitors the site receives, Bluehost Cloud is optimized to handle the load without additional bandwidth costs charged to the customer.
- Datacenter Location Choice: Reduce latency and serve content faster to your end customer through your choice of datacenter locations and an integrated global CDN.
Expert Premium Support: Priority technical support routing directly to a trained WordPress expert via 24/7 online chat and phone support. - Built-in Multi-Site Management Tools: Time-saving monitoring and updated client site performance and security in one place with a suite of tools designed for bulk updates, backups, traffic reporting, and more.
- Website Resource Allocation: Bluehost Cloud introduces a new level of control for users with multiple websites. Users are able to assign the amount of storage and power, vCPUs (PHP Workers), to each site directly. This allows users to allocate the resources their site needs by controlling the CPU and storage per site upon creation, directing more power to their most heavily trafficked websites.
- Integrated API Functionality: Speed boost to deploy and update websites with integrated API hooks for local systems to launch, edit, or clone additional websites through command line.
