Over 90% of Small- to Medium-Sized Businesses Currently Use Cloud Hosting or Say They Plan To

Grazed from Clutch.

Cloud hosting is an overwhelmingly popular option among small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as shown by a new survey from Clutch, one of the leading B2B ratings and reviews sites. Nearly 95% of SMBs say they either already use a cloud hosting service or plan to transition to it.

According to industry analysts, the Clutch survey findings are indicative of a necessary trend, who suggest the transition to cloud hosting services is a good strategic move for SMBs.

"I don’t think you can truly move forward within a company without using cloud in some way, whether that’s by buying software as a service from somebody or creating your own cloud infrastructure for your business," said Rachel Bair, Director of Hosting and Client Services at Unleashed Technologies, a web development and hosting service. "To stay competitive in your own vertical, cloud hosting will be the way to go."

The move to cloud hosting falls in line with a general trend of data migration within the web hosting sphere. About 72% of SMBs say they changed web hosting providers at some point within the past 5 years. The largest percentage of those SMBs switched providers because they found a better value elsewhere.

"Data migration is mostly because of the commoditization of hosting," said Bair. "Every year there are more and more providers for hosting, which creates more options. And as these competitors come into the marketplace, the offers and pricing tables are more robust."

SMBs may be increasingly attracted to cloud hosting providers because of the difficulties they associate with web hosting. Eighty-six percent (86%) of SMBs surveyed had experienced an issue with their web hosting provider in the past year alone.

Industry experts emphasized that web hosting is a highly technical field and can be a challenge for those who don’t have the requisite background knowledge. Without skilled tech personnel making decisions, a business can easily run into issues.

"[Web hosting] has a very large selection of technical offerings… so customization and setup is not a simple process if you have no idea what you’re expecting from those services," said Osman Seyrek, CEO at Renovatio Cloud Solutions, a cloud technology and custom software development firm. "I’m assuming that the 14% [who didn’t experience an issue] are the ones who had technical capabilities to estimate their needs and make the right choices from the beginning."

The Clutch survey included 300 SMBs with 2-1,000 employees. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the companies surveyed have 200 employees or less.

For more information and to view the complete survey results, please visit: https://clutch.co/cloud/hosting#survey