I'm rolling up my sleeves and trying to tackle the fundamental concepts of cloud computing for the first time.  I am planning to build a highly-scalable web application, and can't ignore the potential benefits of cloud platforms. Now I think I get all the basic concepts of it, except when I try to compare it to service plans offered by traditional web hosts such as GoDaddy. GoDaddy, for instance, offers a Grid Hosting package where you can basically keep adding machines to your plan as demand grows.How are plans like this different than a true cloud service offered by someone like Amazon?
Cloud Providers vs Traditional Hosts
godaddy;amazon;cloud;grid
The real benefit of cloud hosting comes from the ability to quickly add and remove servers as needed to handle traffic. You only get charged for the amount of time that each server runs. It's easy to stand-up and terminate machines as needed, no long term commitments unless you purchase cheaper reserved instances. I don't know anything about Godaddy's grid hosting (they may just be behind the eightball on providing a cloud hosting interface). Amazon for example gives you access to a load balancer that you can use with your instances as you add and remove them.