Cloud Hosting + CDN worth it?

[Kotkov]

Hi,

Never used cloud hosting before. Found a service for $60-70 a month, just want to give it a try on a new website.

They also have an additional CDN feature for additional $40 a month. It promises great results as well as google's love.

Does cloud hosting+cdn worth it's money?

Website will have around 500 visitors a day, but all will be ppc, so there is no need for a server. but reliability is a great issue

Thanks, Serge

[WilliamBay]

For 500 visitors a day, I think Cloud and CDN are a bit overkill. Most cheap shared servers have a 99% uptime.

I think it really depends on how critical you have 100% uptime. (and even then most say 99.99%).

CDN would be beneficial if you have lots of images and you are international.

There are cheaper solutions for CDN as well. Amazon Web Services is based only on what you use.

There's a plugin in WordPress called W3 Total Cache which caches your whole site (rendering it pretty under heavy traffic), plus it will tie into AWS. The plugin is free, and then you're only using what you are using from Amazon.

Again, I just think it depends on how big you are, and 500 unique visitors isn't really a lot to handle for most hosting accounts.

[Kotkov]

Thanks William for a response,

yes, site is on wordpress and w3 cache is already installed. I have it on all wordpress sites.

godady, 1and1, bluehost etc.. had problems with all of them.

The thing is that site speed is very important for us. Site will have 30% of traffic through mobile phones. Also, the site will be in a very competitive niche with high cpc. As you know, site speed also influence your Quality Score.

I should have asked a little different. obviously there is no need for a server. what combination would be the best for this money range? Will there be an advantage in using CDN as a plus to Cloud hosting?

[NoahsDad]

I'd be interested in this also. My site has a lot of images (but even worse, a lot of videos). I'm trying to speed up my site, and I was also looking at the CDN. I have been using Site5 shared hosting and I have been very happy with it. (I get a lot more traffic that 500 a day, and it works great.) They also have a VPS that is priced very fair, but to be honest the shared hosting has been incredible. Not to mention their customer service has been outstanding.

I am interested to hear peoples opinion on CDN's though.

[WilliamBay]

I understand your concern for speed. 
For you, caching would suffice. Serving up cached html files on a shared server is quite fast. So i really don't think you need cloud hosting.

CDNs really help when you have a lot of images. What it does is split the server load from one server to two, and you split the number of http requests over a couple servers speeding things along. I would really only consider it if you have lots of photos.

[WilliamBay]

Site 5 is great. I do reseller hosting though them. I was just chatting with Dawn today actually. She always saves my ass.

If you are experiencing lags in loading, a CDN will help.
But if you are using something like Youtube and embedding your video (which you really want to cause their servers are faster and geared for video), you don't need a CDN.

[kwoolf]

Careful adding embedded video. Your site won't get the link juice of that video URL if it's linked to Youtube, Vimeo, or other video hosting site unless you can customize the domain (most likely subdomain) to the site you are hosting it on. Remember, Youtube is a search engine!

CDNs like AWS have edge servers in many countries (Cloudfront) and allow for custom domains. Video hosting sites aren't necessarily fast; your video needs to create a certain amount of traffic to stay in the cache. Stale video is likely to get pulled from a storage system and then loaded into cache, which is the way most CDNs work.

Anyway, try a service called loadimpact.com and test your sites performance. Make sure to sign up and configure the test to use Simulated Browser Users (SBUs).

[blswn]

With 500 visitors - forget CDNs.

unshit.com is your best friend.

[Igal_Zeifman]

60-70$ a month is way too much. Today you can get free Cloud CDN + Proxy acceleration from a number of providers.