Traditional domain and hosting services were once considered a big buzz for website performance. It means having a suitable parking space for your site that is proficient enough to handle high traffic and match your business operations without causing any delays or downtime.
However, hosting a website in the modern era is far different from how it was before. And this is where CDN (Content Delivery Network) comes into the picture. This article will discuss the fundamental differences between web hosting and CDN, so let us start without delay.
What is Web Hosting?
In simple terms, web hosting services refer to renting some space on a server that stores and manages the files and data of a website.
The hosting provider is responsible for maintaining the server’s hardware, ensuring reliable resources like RAM, storage, processing power and other necessary website infrastructure that website owners can access.
In other words, web hosting is the foundation that enables individuals, businesses and organisations to make their websites accessible online.
What are Content Delivery Networks?
Simply put, CDN delivers content to customers using a collection of caching servers worldwide. A caching server keeps a cached copy of the website and allows you to access website content from a server near you.
CDNs help improve website performance efficiently and at scale by reducing load times.
Today, a large portion of all internet content is delivered through CDNs. Website and application owners and network service providers use CDNs to offer faster web services to their users/customers.
CDN Vs Hosting – What’s the Difference?
Web Hosting | CDN |
Web hosting is used to host your website on a server and lets the users access it over the internet. | A content delivery network is related to speeding up the access of your website’s assets. |
Traditional web hosting servers deliver 100% of your content to the user. | CDNs take the majority of your static and dynamic content and spread it across the globe using multiple edge servers. |
Web Hosting refers to one server hosting a website or application. | A content delivery network refers to a global network of edge servers that distributes your content from a multi-host environment. |
Increasing traffic and hardware failure may cause functioning issues in traditional web hosting. | With the availability of CDN, the website content will be available on a continuous basis. |
As the data is collected from a single server, it increases the website’s vulnerability and makes it prone to malicious attacks like DDoS. | CDN provides higher authentication and encryption standards that reduce the risks to a greater extent. |
Conclusion
To conclude, this article provides an overview of the major differences between CDN vs hosting. Both have their pros and cons and it’s not an either or situation in most cases. Most modern online businesses need both to sustain an online presence.
You need web hosting services to host your website and CDNs to increase website performance and to make content easily accessible to your users worldwide. CDNs can also help lower your bandwidth costs since they spread requests across multiple edge servers rather than having your content requests be directed to one server location.