I have no idea what the difference between the two is because I am not involved in mining. I directly invest in coins, but I'm curious about the differences between the two in case I decide to start mining.
Well, you haven't even indicated which coins you are investing in, it's possible that they have nothing to do with mining, and if I were you, I wouldn't rush to invest in cloud mining, usually it's not who they pretend to be, so be careful with that. The difference between cloud mining and hosting is that in the first case you just buy virtual capacities, which may not be available from the seller, in the case of hosting, you place your devices, for example, in the nearest data center and just pay rent.