VPS or Cloud hosting? Which one should I buy? (Hostgator, GoDaddy, SingleHop....

A dedicated server is not necessarily or automatically more powerful than a VPS. A low end dedicated server (and $60/mo is low-end) may well be less powerful than a VPS in that price range.

BTW, VPS/cloud are not synonymous (seeing a lot of "VPS/cloud"). One of the main advantages of "cloud" is the ability to automatically scale. A VPS must be manually scaled and a dedicated server does not scale well without taking it offline, e.g., to add memory. You generally have a lot of time when a dedicated server is 'wasting' resources if you have highly variable traffic.

 

Yes, I agree with you. Cloud gives the facility of "anytime server scaling". And that is the best part, as you can save resources, as well as money.

 

Hostgator/godaddy or any other host offering shared hosting will rip you off on dedicated (asking $200-300+) BECAUSE they know how much money they can make on each server selling it as 100+ shared accounts, and if you crazy enough to order it from them you will have to pay somewhat close to what those 100 shared users pay collectively.

there is a totally different market of (unmanaged) dedicated servers at non-ridiculous prices, and once you have money for one you never think of going back

 

private cloud may be
public cloud - is and easy way (for hosting company) to dynamically spreading tons of users between many servers as opposed to manually assigning many users to each server and having load problems on certain servers. Probably better then shared, but you still have dedicated nothing.

 

Well, you get me wrong. That was an example. I am and was never interested to buy dedicated server from some companies, who themselves buy from another company!
I know the difference between managed and unmanaged servers. I have been running unmanaged dedicated servers since 2008 with ThePlanet (SoftLayer now). I had helped clients to setup and manage server on arvixe, 1and1, mediatemple, choopa and several other companies (can't remember names right now). All were unmanaged dedicated server. I am not new in dedicated servers. But I was new in Cloud or VPS. As I nnever used them before. So need to get it clear, which is better. Now after using both VPS and Cloud, my opinion is "Cloud is far more better than VPS, if you have extra money to spend".
Hope I was able to make it clear to you.

 

cloud can be better than VPS, and even better than dedicated - all depending on how many customers are sitting on that cloud, how they use it, and what resources it is based on
in my layman understanding:
shared=unlimited customers on one server
VPS=fixed number of customers on one server (with some guaranteed dedicated resources)
dedicated=one customer per one server
cloud=unlimited customers on many servers

thus cloud is just a better variation of shared where you can potentially use it exclusively when everyone else is asleep, or having all the load problems when it is oversold and heavily used

 

I think a good VPS will be suitable to host your sites instead of paying a higher amount for a cloud hosting.

 

I'd rather go for VPS from Hostgator.

 

What I am using now is thousands time better than hostgator VPS.

 

Then why do you need others' opinion on it? Take it out from the list of choices you mentioned.

 

Well, this thread was opened late February this year. That time I needed these opinions. But now, I don't need them anymore, as I am happy with my current host.

 

you should a virtual hosting account first. in your case, there is not necessarily buy a VPS or higher hosting. you may see my website( http://organicseofacts.com/ ), massive data loading but speed is pretty good. i bought virtual hosting @ Arvixe.

4 USD PER MONTH. very cheap

 

That will not be able to cope up with my traffic