Differences Between Cloud Apps vs Web Apps: Full Guide

 Different apps have become an easy gateway to grasp the benefits of the information society. With the growing popularity of various applications, companies can face the choice between web application vs cloud application. 

Both offer lucrative opportunities. Research shows that public cloud services market revenues skyrocketed to $126 bn in Q1 2022, a 26 percent increase compared to Q1 2021.  Revenue for web-based apps has also shown steady dynamics in the last few years.

Which one should you choose for your business needs if each option has its pros and cons? To answer this question, you need to examine these solutions properly. 

Devox Software has years of experience in web and cloud application development. Thus we’ve decided to share our extensive knowledge to help you better understand the difference between the two concepts. After reading this article, you’ll be able to choose an appropriate approach for your unique business needs. Thus, read on!

What Is a Web Application?

You might be surprised, but what if we tell you that you use web applications daily? A web app is designed for the web browsers of smartphones, laptops, or computers. A web application contains certain information and some buttons or windows since such pages are usually visited to receive a service. 

The battle between cloud application development vs web application development starts there because they emerged and developed differently. The term server-based computing has been utilized for several years. The main idea of web application development is to host data on a central computer known as a server. Therefore, clients would be able to share their resources with others by using their laptops or smartphones.

The development of high-quality web apps requires significant expertise in this domain. Thus, if you have an idea for a solution and seek a technology partner to bring it to life, feel free to contact Devox Software. While providing web development services we profoundly analyze your business needs, offer various suitable solutions, create and test MVP, develop a final product, and also offer maintenance services to meet the ever-changing needs of modern businesses.

It is essential to examine web technology’s advantages and disadvantages to make a decision regarding cloud application vs web application. Therefore, web applications are in demand among users due to the following reasons:

Advantages of Web Applications

• Availability. All might agree that using an application from various devices such as tablets and smartphones, computers, and laptops is convenient. 
• Adaptivity. Web applications are known not to require specific operating systems. As a result, they can work from any operating system and are available to all users. This is also more economical since apps don’t need to be developed, especially for each operating system or browser.
• There is no need to download or install anything. Moreover, you can easily optimize and modernize an interface anytime because all updates are activated after the page is refreshed.
• High-security level. The essential benefit is that the web application has only one entry point, which speaks of the high-security level. Therefore, it is not difficult to set everything up and provide a high-security level, so the advantage of web-based and cloud-based applications is significant.

Data security. All customers’ data is held in the cloud so that the hosting provider ensures their security. Thus, clients don’t have to be concerned about their data spreading. Moreover, web applications guarantee data loss security.

Disadvantages Of Web Apps

• Complex UX creation process. Users access web apps through different browsers. Thus you need to collect lots of data about usage patterns and performance metrics while creating a product roadmap.
• Slower performance. Web applications have lower performance and poorer responsiveness than other types of applications.

Fewer customization options. Web apps are not as interactive and intuitive as native apps that are being developed specifically for each operating system.

What is a Cloud Application?

Cloud applications require an online connection to work. Customers might also get additional access to them by using a browser. Server computing refers to technologies when a device or program, also known as a server, is designed to manage network resources. Servers accept and respond to requests made by another program, otherwise known as a client. Such apps’ data is stored, processed, and accessed through the cloud.

To learn the particularities of cloud apps and better understand why 94% of enterprises already use cloud solutions, let’s examine their main advantages and flaws.

Advantages of Cloud Applications

• Improved collaboration. When all the critical data is stored in the cloud, the users can easily work together and access information via shared storage.

• Lower maintenance costs. Cloud apps don’t require significant software and hardware maintenance investment, reducing the budget needed.
• Almost unlimited storage capacity. Cloud apps are great for organizations that need to securely store and easily access big volumes of data such as documents, audio, videos, images, etc.
• Big scaling potential. If you want your app to scale rapidly without negatively affecting performance and security, cloud apps are what you need.

Minimized possibility of downtimes. As all data is stored in the cloud, you won’t experience any downtimes or app crashes as you could have if you were relying on servers. Thus, cloud apps are great for businesses that need uninterrupted operations.

Disadvantages of Cloud Applications

• Vendor lock-ins. Businesses may face problems while changing cloud service providers.
• Need to share sensitive information with third parties. Although most cloud service providers utilize modern security techniques, you need to understand that you still share lots of sensitive information with cloud vendors.

Cloud service providers have full ownership of cloud infrastructure. Thus, you, as a cloud user, won’t have complete control over the execution of services within a cloud infrastructure.

Main Difference Between Cloud Apps and Web Apps

To understand what type of apps would work better for your specific business needs, let’s discover the main difference between the cloud and web application.

Technology

Cloud apps: JavaScript-based frameworks optimized for performance, such as Nodes, React.JS, and Angular are used for cloud app development. 

Web apps: To create web apps, you’ll need to utilize web technologies and back-end programming languages such as PHP, Python, .NET, and Ruby. You’ll also need to leverage the power of remote databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server.

Internet

Cloud apps: Cloud apps don’t necessarily need an internet connection to operate.

Web apps: Web applications can operate only in a web browser and with an internet connection.

Development cost

Cloud apps: The cost of developing a cloud app is higher, but it’s cheaper to store big volumes of data in the cloud than on the servers.

Web apps: It’s cheaper to develop web apps. However, if you want your solution to share and process lots of data, you’ll need significant investments into scaling the number of servers.

Security

Cloud apps: All cloud providers utilize numerous security techniques to encode all the data stored in the cloud. However, businesses need to remember they share lots of sensitive information with cloud providers.

Web apps: All the client’s information is verified on authentication servers of web apps, and you have full control over how all the data is stored and processed

Availability

Cloud apps: Cloud apps can be passed from any device or browser, enabling easy collaboration between users.

Web apps: Web apps can be accessed only through a web browser with an internet connection, and the collaboration options are not that extensive.

Scalability

Cloud apps: Cloud apps are great for businesses that need to have lots of scaling potential.

Web apps: Web apps have limited and costly scaling capabilities.

Solution

Cloud apps: Cloud apps are multi-tenant and can be easily customized according to the ever-changing business needs and user requirements.

Web apps: Web apps don’t offer many multi-tenancy options.

Type

Cloud apps: Examples of cloud apps include various file sharing and team collaboration solutions. Evernote, Salesforce, Dropbox, Zoho, and Yahoo are some renowned cloud apps.

Web apps: Examples of web apps include eCommerce, eBanking, social media, and WebEx solutions. eBay is a renowned example of a web app.

Web Application vs Cloud: Which Should You Choose?

Once you know the difference between cloud apps vs. web apps, it’s time to understand what would work best for your business:

• Smaller organizations that wish complete control over the performance, accessibility, and security of the data stored, usually opt for web solutions. However, by storing all the information on your internal servers, you may face the risk of downtimes if something happens with your servers. You also limit your scalability potential, as once the volume of data grows it becomes more costly to set up, manage and maintain all the servers.
• Big enterprises that are focused on rapid growth and want unlimited scaling potential usually choose cloud applications. This approach ensures that you can grow at any suitable pace, have constant access to all the data, and almost limit the possibility of app crashes. Although, while choosing this model, you store all the sensitive data with a third-party vendor, thus you need to select the cloud service provider very carefully.

Considering the fact that the choice between web based application vs cloud based application is quite hard, many organizations go for a mixed approach. You can choose web-based applications for processes requiring absolute security and cloud applications for those that would be devastated by app crashes.

Develop Web or Cloud Application with Devox Software

Being in the custom software development industry since 2017, Devox Software has lots of experience with cloud and web application development for various industries. Thus, we can easily detect what kind of application you need to develop in order to reach your long-term business goals and how to execute the development processes in the fastest and most cost-efficient manner.

Feel free to review our portfolio to find the whole list of projects we’ve worked on and understand how we approach the hardest challenges.

Summing Up

The cloud computing vs web application issue interests customers a lot since those two applications are both good in their performance. 

The difference between cloud and web applications is not that big. The distinction comes from web applications and the cloud having many functional similarities. Still, there are also significant distinctions, mainly when using cloud applications for redundancy rather than computational power. 

Cloud apps seem to be the new black in the IT world. Yet, their popularity doesn’t mean you can cover your needs 100%. Simply put, a web app would be a wise choice for simpler tasks. Cloud apps are usually designed for more complex processes. Ultimately, most companies are using a mix of them, so your decision should align with your goals.