Cloud hosting refers to the delivery of applications and websites that are hosted on computing resources that are maintained by a third-party provider. The user does not need to concern themselves with how this is done, hence they are ‘in the cloud‘ and can simply be relied on to function.
This is in contrast to traditional hosting solutions where it is implemented on a physical server located at the user’s premises. Cloud computing providers maintain a large network of connected physical servers that they then virtualize and provide to external users on a subscription basis where they only pay for the resources they use. This provides flexibility, scalability and economies of scale for the provider and means that the user only pays a fraction of the cost for hosting than they would if they had to buy and implement their own server.