A cloud hosting service means that every single part of your online presence will be maintained by a separate server. For instance, your files and databases will be handled by separate machines and since just a single type of processes will run on a server, every single machine will perform better and will use its system resources to the highest. Whether you'll get a true cloud service or not also depends on the control panel that you'll use to control your account. As most control panels are designed to function on a single server, they cannot work on a cloud platform whatever a given Internet hosting service provider may advertise. In the event that one service stops responding, the entire server can go offline, so your websites won't be accessible. This is the reason why you should check what service you'll actually get in case you are looking for cloud web hosting before you purchase anything.