Choose hosting by outage tolerance and operational capacity before comparing prices
The main distinction is what support and recourse you have when something fails. Major providers usually offer filing support, published qualifications, incident notices, contractual compensation terms, and reachable contacts. A smaller provider may cost half as much, but overselling, disappearance, or disconnection by its upstream supplier can leave you stranded. A static site with no user data may need only an inexpensive VPS.
What it takes
The source's approximate Chinese-market figures are hundreds to thousands of RMB per month for major-provider cloud servers, from tens of RMB per month for a small-provider VPS, and thousands of RMB per year for dedicated-server colocation, plus hardware purchased separately. A VPS is a small virtual server.
What you may gain
Major cloud providers typically provide a filing route, publicly available qualifications, outage notices, and compensation terms in their contracts. Small providers can be substantially cheaper, but practical recourse may be limited if they oversell, disappear, or lose upstream service. Check the provider's value-added telecommunications license before negotiating price. Dedicated-server colocation makes sense only if bandwidth or hardware costs are clearly advantageous and you have people able to operate it. For a static site without user data, an inexpensive VPS can suffice. For accounts and transactions, favor cloud infrastructure with elastic capacity and snapshot backups, and keep backups in at least two places.
Context & considerations
These are practical judgments rather than research findings. The provider's license is directly checkable. Reduce expenditure through appropriately sized resources and bandwidth, rather than by ignoring required qualifications.
Research & references
Author's experience; no direct research citation. For provider licensing and filing requirements, see entry 4. For six-month log retention and graded cybersecurity protection duties, see chapter 11, entry 16.