Cloud has become a broad term used to describe various products and services, which is supposed to be utilizing the distributed computing model. Strictly speaking “Cloud Server” is just a virtualized computer instance, a Virtual Private Server. However the term “Cloud” should mean that a “Cloud Server” is a computing instance created on top of an IT infrastructure in which the processing power (processing nodes) – CPU and RAM for example – reside on different physical machines than the data storage (SAN or storage nodes).

Some companies define “Cloud Server” for example as “on-demand virtual machine, created to deliver customizable performance and reliability”, although this is pretty much marketeer’s language. Please also be advised that billing a any virtual server hosting service (whatever it is labeled) on per minutes, per hour or per day basis doesn’t make it “Cloud”. What makes it a “Cloud Server” is the ability to scale up the allocated computing resources on demand.

To understand term “Cloud Hosting”, please read article “What does a Cloud Hosting Mean?“

“Managed Hosting” is a popular term in the web hosting industry. It describes a It hosting service provided from a isolated instance – a physical dedicated server or virtual server (VPS). “Managed Hosting” means that the provider is responsible for technical administration of the server, including but not limited to installation, OS installation and maintenance, network administration, security policy, updates, backups, maintenance and trouble shooting of any server-side programs and applications.

Term “Managed Web Hosting” is a broad term, that might or might not refer to “Manage Hosting”. It might would be used to describe in general that a certain type of IT hosting service is managed by the web hosting provider. It could be either physical server (Managed Dedicated Hosting or Managed Dedicated Server), Virtual Server (Managed Virtual Private Server, VPS, Managed VDS) or any custom-buit or clustered system.

For managed service term that applies to Share Hosting, review “What does Managed Shared Web Hosting mean?”.