When it comes to web hosting, there are two main options: Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Both of these services provide a platform on which you can implement your website, but they differ in terms of the resources, controls, and other features they offer. IaaS services are used for a variety of purposes, from hosting websites to analyzing big data. Major IaaS providers include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Compute Engine.
These services allow customers to install and use whatever operating systems and tools they want on the infrastructure they obtain. PaaS providers offer a platform for developers to build, test, and deploy applications without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. Popular PaaS services include Heroku, Elastic Beanstalk (offered by Amazon Web Services), and Google App Engine. Bigcommerce is another SaaS platform that manages coding, hosting, and updating parts for a monthly fee.
In the early days of web hosting, companies offered a service that wasn't much more than disk space on a Linux server preconfigured with running web server software and some common programming languages. As part of this e-commerce cloud hosting model, there is no need to manage the operating system or system software. Most hosting companies offer VPS today, but there are also specialized cloud hosting providers. Website hosting platforms as a service generally provide the customer with a web-based control panel for managing their account, domain names, email addresses, files, and databases.
When it comes to choosing the right cloud hosting for your e-commerce website, it's important to understand the differences between PaaS and IaaS services. If you want your application to be reliable, scalable, and resistant to various faults, you'll need to configure monitoring, alerts, load balancers, application replication on multiple servers, deployment scripts, etc. If you need a quick, reliable and scalable host for your web application so you can write code and don't want to deal with server administration, then getting a PaaS is the answer. If you're confident about configuring servers and would rather do it than write code, then a traditional host is a better option.