Hosting infrastructure has become a foundational need for businesses to power their websites, applications, and operations.
However, when it comes to choosing a hosting solution – which is better, private hosting or public hosting?
The answer can directly influence your business’s performance. While both hosting solutions have their own strengths and weaknesses, your decision will ultimately determine the infrastructure on which you’ll drive your business’s success.
This is why it’s no longer about the public v private cloud debate and is more about benchmarking business performance. In this guide, we explore the real-world performance benchmarks between private and public hosting for UK businesses and how it can drive your business.
UK Cloud Market Snapshot
The cloud computing market in the UK is expected to reach $135,235.7 million by 2030, according to market statistics from Grand Review Research. Although the public cloud (IaaS, SaaS) dominates with a valuation of approximately $7.8 billion in 2023, the demand for private cloud is growing at an incremental pace at a CAGR of $618.3 billion by 2035, according to Future Market Insights.
Understanding Private Hosting vs Public Hosting
Before comparing private and public hosting, let’s understand what hosting is.
Hosting or cloud hosting means storing your website or app on multiple servers or a cloud in a data centre. Compared to an on-premises server, a cloud offers you access to data and applications anywhere and at any time.
Private hosting refers to having on-premises dedicated infrastructure or a single-tenant, dedicated cloud environment reserved solely for your business.
- You get resources dedicated only to your business
- You can have access to your site on your premises or a provider’s premises
- Gain from better security and safety measures
- You have more control and flexibility over your configurations
- Expect better performance since you have dedicated resources
- Meet stringent compliance requirements
Public hosting refers to multiple businesses sharing the same infrastructure, which is managed by a third-party service provider like Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.
- You share infrastructure with other businesses, no dedicated servers
- Your applications run across multiple servers
- Third parties may access and assist with running public clouds
- You have less power to control and configure
- You may be billed for downloads, uploads, resources, disk space, applications, or a combination
- Your business can be impacted if another business using the resources has problems
- Little to no maintenance and generally saves costs
UK Benchmark Indicators for Private vs Public Hosting
For growing businesses, the choice of hosting narrows down which model delivers more value in real-world conditions. When benchmarking business performance by comparing public hosting vs. private hosting options, the following benchmarks emerge:
Cost Efficiency
This metric tells you how much it costs to run your systems on private vs. public clouds. Public hosting may seem like a cost-effective option at first, but if your business has consistent workloads at a larger scale, private hosting brings in more savings over time.
Let’s assume your mid-size UK business needs 500 VMs and 50 TB/month bandwidth.
When comparing public vs. private cloud costs, you pay ~£8,000/month on a private cloud versus ~£29,000/month on a public cloud (due to data egress, API calls, and storage fees).
That’s a saving of over £252,000 annually with a private cloud.
If you have steady usage levels, signing up for private hosting makes more business sense, as well as benefiting from predictable costs for your business.
Reliable Performance
This benchmark indicates how fast and available your systems are.
Choosing a public hosting provider means you’re more likely to be affected by problems like slowdowns caused by other tenants. With shared resources, inconsistent speeds and latency spikes are more common when working on heavy workloads.
If you choose a private hosting provider, you receive dedicated servers with no other clients to share resources with. This allows stable performance and low latency across all workloads.
Choosing BlackBox Hosting as your private hosting provider, you gain from stable, consistent, and guaranteed 99.999% uptime. Our private cloud solutions are built for meeting your apps and websites’ peak performance.
Security and Compliance
This business performance benchmark tells how well your business data is protected and meets UK regulations like GDPR.
Public cloud hosts like AWS may look compliant, but it’s likely that your data may be residing outside the UK. A shared ecosystem can be less flexible for fine-tuning your security needs.
UK-based private hosts like BlackBox Hosting host your data in UK data centres to maintain data sovereignty and compliance. You also find it easy to implement custom firewalls, access control, and encryption.
Importantly, we are certified by leading global organisations, including ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials, and also have GDPR-ready frameworks, so you can rest assured that your business is meeting all regulatory requirements.
Which Hosting Model Supports Long‑Term Business Performance? A Head-to-Head Comparison
To answer this question, let’s compare private hosting vs. public hosting in terms of costs, performance, and stability – all factors that determine the long-term value and are integral for the future success of your UK business.
Costs
Private Hosting: You pay a fixed monthly or annual predictable fee for dedicated CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth.
Public Hosting: While it may follow a subscription billing or pay-as-you-use model, public hosting may incur surprise expenses like data egress fees and peak usage charges.
Performance
Private Hosting: Resources allocated to you are not shared with anyone else.
Public Hosting: Shared resources with other businesses can lead to slower response times. A problem faced by another business may also impact you.
Stability
Private Hosting: If you’re a business with high-volume workloads, private hosting can be significantly more affordable over time.
Public Hosting: While public hosts may be beneficial for short-term scaling or low-usage apps, they become more expensive for high-performance, data-heavy uses.
The answer is clear: private hosting can immensely benefit businesses (manufacturing, healthcare, finance, or legal services) in need of dependable and high-performance hosting, with cost benefits spread over time.
Why Choose BlackBox Hosting as Your Private Host?
Between public vs private cloud, the choice ultimately depends on what value it brings to your business.
This primarily depends on the hosting provider. Banking on a reliable private host means receiving committed resources, defined SLAs, migration support, and dedicated problem resolution.
When you choose BlackBox Hosting, you receive all this as well as:
- a lightning-fast infrastructure that’s 76% faster and
- 50% cheaper than popular public clouds in benchmarking tests
- Transparent billing that doesn’t punish you for scale
- No hidden fees or charges
- Access to a variety of backup solutions
If you’re looking for a private host that offers more control, lower total cost, and greater reliability, get ready to experience world-class, enterprise-level infrastructure with us. Experience the difference with a free 30-day trial. Call us on 02037 407840 today.
