The most significant distinction between cloud and shared hosting is in the number of servers and how resources are allocated. You get a single server on shared hosting, but all sites hosted on it share its resources, so any one of them may use all of the machine's CPU and RAM for its own benefit, putting the rest at a disadvantage. You get hosted on a pool of servers in the cloud, which improves the service's redundancy and provides virtually partitioned shared resources, ensuring that your site receives a specific amount that no one else can use.