Cloudways is a hosting company located in Malta. They are bridging the gap between the big cloud platforms that are still technical and the needs of small businesses. Cloudways is helping SMBs take advantage of what cloud hosting has to offer. For example, it tackles the complexity of configuring and setting up platforms like AWS and Google Cloud.
They want to make it so you don’t need to have a systems administrator on hand to take advantage of what these bigger platforms have to offer.
Cloudways for Small Businesses
Small Business Trends contacted Pere Hospital, the founder for more information. He started out explaining more about what the product does.
“Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that emphasizes simplicity, choice, and freedom,” he writes. “The Platform is built to facilitate businesses in deploying and scaling their online assets without worrying about the underlying hosting solution.”
One of the things that will attract small businesses are the options.
“There’s a choice of five industry-leading IaaS providers and it’s easy to deploy almost all PHP powered applications. Cloudways provides choices so that the Platform remains a great fit for a very broad set of businesses.”
Meeting Challenges
Here’s why small businesses need a hand setting up and configuring the cloud hosting on platforms like Google Cloud and AWS for small businesses.
First off, they need to understand AWS and Google Cloud are industry leaders that offer a very broad lineup of very powerful tools and services.
“All this power comes at a cost,” Hospital says adding it takes time and effort to harness it into profitable business operations.
Keeping Pace
He says these mid-level players such as SMBs and digital agencies need AWS or Google Cloud to keep pace. Many don’t have the skilled team members to manage and maintain a server positioned on these cloud providers.
“In my opinion, when it comes to IaaS platforms such as AWS and Google Cloud, small businesses face two significant challenges,” Hospital says. “These all come down to the problem of missing/way-out-of-the-budget resources.”
Setting Up the Server
Simply setting up a server is the first hurdle. Cloud servers are different from web servers. Getting these business-ready requires several steps.
“Small businesses need to install the right OS, set up the stack and then deploy the core business-level applications.”
This usually makes setting up a cloud server the domain of a tech expert that many small businesses can’t afford.
Hospital explains the other big obstacle.
“The challenge continues as keeping the cloud server operational (and secure) again demands a skillset (and budget) that is often outside the budget of many small businesses.”
Bringing Cloudways Into Play
That’s where Cloudways comes into play. This product takes over server management and allows small businesses to get the most from AWS and Google Cloud.
Here’s how.
Looking at the Big Features
One of the big advantages here is the flexibility Cloudways offers ecommerce SMBs in how their websites are hosted. There’s a lot to choose from. You can find what’s right for your own unique enterprise. Cloudways makes both server management and application hosting simple with 50 features .
“These features cover all the important aspects of server optimization and security.”
For example, small businesses can migrate their own SSL certificate or get one installed through the Platform. They can start a free trail by clicking a tab.
Studying Cloud Infrastructure
The company’s partnerships with cloud infrastructure providers is another advantage. This allows for choice. Flexibility is another bonus.
“We have web agencies that use our cheapest provider with their most price-sensitive customers but use Amazon or Google for customers that ask for it.”
Clients can change from one provider to another.
Planning for Migration
Got some websites that you’d like to change over to this cloud hosting product? There are a few other benefits from Cloudways you should know about.
There’s an introductory “Welcome Onboard” perk where the first migration is free. And they are fast and responsive too.
“Our cloud engineers complete migration requests within 24 hours and the customer’s website(s) are up and running with no noticeable downtime,” Hospital says.
Why Cloud Hosting Should Matter to Your Small Business
Shared Hosting is one of the models that small businesses favor because it is cheap. Here’s why cloud hosting is better.
Scalability
Scaling the server to meet demand. In the cloud, scaling resources is about adding virtual servers. There are no physical aspects so you can deal with traffic spikes quickly.
Cloudways has a set of sliders to scale up or down.
Examining Performance
Cloud hosting is a fact because there’s no physical architecture. Troubleshooting is simpler and there are automated custom-built solutions available.
Considering Sustainability
Cloud hosting has better sustainability for small businesses. In the end, it all comes down to one word. Uptime.
“In general, cloud hosting lives up to the popular hosting industry’s claim of “99.99% Uptime,” Hospital says.
Although hosting is their main business, the company has other products that should interest SMBs. They’ve also released Breeze, a free WordPress cache plugin designed to boost performance for WordPress websites.
Image: Cloudways