Cloud hosting such as for servers

Cloud hosting means running infrastructure — servers, browsers, CI runners — on someone else's computers instead of ones you own, paying for what you actually use rather than buying and maintaining hardware yourself.

Here's why that belongs on a testing page: cloud browser farms let a test suite run against real devices and dozens of real browser and operating-system combinations that nobody could reasonably install and maintain locally. And cloud CI providers (GitHub Actions, mentioned below under CI/CD, is one) give every test run a fresh, disposable machine — so a test can't quietly pass only because of state a previous run happened to leave behind, a subtle bug class that's much harder to hide once every run starts from nothing.

Learn more at AWS's introduction to cloud computing, or watch "A Beginner's Guide To Cloud Computing In Under 8 Minutes" for a video introduction.

Examples you can ask AI

What does 'the cloud' actually mean in plain terms, and why would a test suite need it instead of just running on my own laptop?
What's the practical difference between running my tests on my own machine versus a cloud browser farm, for a small team?
How do I decide whether a growing test suite is genuinely ready to move to a cloud CI provider, and what should I check before making that switch?