UpCloud
Effortless global cloud infrastructure for SMBs
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Why Partner with UpCloud?
I’ve been passionate about the hosting industry since 2001. Before founding UpCloud, my first company grew to become one of Finland’s largest shared web hosting providers, serving over 30,000 customers. Along the way, I faced the same challenges many of you know well—24/7 on-call responsibilities, solving technical issues, and managing customer inquiries.
At UpCloud, we’ve designed a platform that solves these challenges, offering reliability, scalability, and unparalleled support. We understand the pressures you face because we’ve been there too. Partner with us, and let’s help you focus on growing your business while we handle the rest.
Sincerely, Joel Pihlajamaa CTO, Founder
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Posted on 27.2.2025
Which cloud provider should you choose? From Hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud; to powerful challengers such as Akami Connected Cloud, DigitalOcean, Exoscale, OVH Cloud, UpCloud, and Vultr; and beyond to bare-bones servers – the list can feel endless.
Choosing a cloud service comes down to finding the right fit for your organization’s unique needs, scalability requirements, and future aspirations, not flashy features or the lowest price tag.
You want a cloud provider that grows with your organization, provides ironclad security, and allows you to pivot at a moment’s notice.
The key is matching your needs to the best cloud hosting service that fits your long-term strategy. Let’s break down what that means.
Keep these key considerations front and center as you evaluate your options.
Speed and responsiveness affect user satisfaction and operational efficiency. Top-tier providers offer high-performance computing options, fast storage solutions (like SSD), and low-latency network connections.
Here are some important performance specs, including Geekbench scores, which measure a system’s performance, to consider:
Alongside, UpCloud’s MaxIOPS technology delivers exceptional performance, with read speeds of 100,000 IOPS and write speeds of 30,000 IOPS for 4K block sizes. This significantly outperforms standard cloud SSDs, which typically range between 3,000 to 16,000 IOPS per volume.
For businesses running I/O-intensive applications or dealing with high-concurrency scenarios, this performance edge translates to substantially reduced latency, markedly faster application response times, and improved overall system throughput.
Performance and reliability go hand-in-hand, and hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer impressive Service Level Agreements (SLAs), typically guaranteeing 99.99% uptime. However, other providers can often go one better.
For instance, UpCloud offers a 99.999% availability SLA. This commitment is backed by a compensation policy: any period of unavailability lasting longer than five minutes is eligible for compensation that amounts to 50x the cost of resources unavailable.
Most cloud services have flexible scaling options to optimize costs and manage workloads. The best cloud hosting providers offer vertical scaling (boosting the power of your existing resources) and horizontal scaling (assigning more instances as needed).
Intelligent auto-scaling capabilities and fine-tuning resources based on custom rules or real-time demand have also become popular features. This ensures optimal performance during traffic spikes without overspending during quieter periods.
Since protecting sensitive data and maintaining customer trust is essential, you’ll want to ensure your provider has the following:
Trusted providers boast a range of industry-specific certifications – including GDPR for EU data protection, and ISO 27001 for general information security.
They also offer features that aid compliance, such as robust audit logs, flexible data residency, and regular compliance reports. These are necessary measures to prevent serious legal issues and reputational damage.
AWS, UpCloud, DigitalOcean, and Akami Connected Cloud prioritize data security, offering essential features such as data encryption at rest and in transit, user authentication, firewalls, and basic monitoring tools. All provide virtual private networking options and support compliance with standards like ISO 27001.
How does UpCloud compare? Beyond the gold standard of internet security, ISO 27001, we’re also aligned with ISO 3100, NIST CSF, and the CISPE Code of Conduct. When it comes to UpCloud vs AWS, our core security features meet the needs of most small—to medium-sized businesses and projects without added complexity.
High-quality technical support means rapid issue resolution and smooth operations. Hallmarks of excellent support include:
Compared to other cloud providers, UpCloud offers better chat support and quicker responses:
Then, there are also service level agreements (SLAs) to consider, which we touched on earlier.
Let’s talk SLAs – a solid one should spell out:
When comparing cloud providers, don’t just focus on base compute and storage costs. Instead, look holistically at:
Understanding your usage patterns and requirements is the most important cloud pricing factor. It helps you pick services that you actually need and use.
The best cloud hosting providers tend to offer a combination of these pricing models:
It’s difficult to provide exact costs as they vary significantly depending on your needs. UpCloud starts at €3/mo for 1GB and goes up to €3190/mo for 512GB. Plus UpCloud offers a zero-cost internet transfer, so you’ll always be certain of your monthly cloud spend.
So, first things first: figure out precisely how much storage you need before looking at price tags.
Then find out:
Choosing the right cloud provider depends on your organization’s long-term needs. But evaluating CSPs on performance, reliability, scalability, security, support, and cost efficiency is a great place to start. And while hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud might seem the easiest choice, challengers such as UpCloud and DigitalOcean offer compelling competitive alternatives.
Ultimately, the best choice is one that aligns with your organization’s long-term needs, ensuring growth, security, and cost-effectiveness.
Of course we’re a little biassed, but we pride ourselves on helping all end users to develop, deploy, and manage their applications with ease. With 13 global data centers, and a cloud native product stack engineered for exceptional scalability, speed, and security, we’re the European force challenging what the cloud should be.
UpCloud’s stack offers:
All unscored by a 100% SLA and 24/7 support, 365 days a year, with a median response time of just 46 seconds.
Start your free week-long trial, or check out our zero-commitment demo today.
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