Cloudways
Cloudways Reviews
& Product DetailsWhat is Cloudways?
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform designed to simplify the hosting experience for digital agencies, e-commerce stores, and online businesses. It stands out for its speed, security, and ease of use, backed by 24/7 expert support.
Cloudways offers a range of features including optimized servers with advanced cache and CDN for peak performance, flexibility in choosing popular apps and top cloud hosting providers, and scalability for handling peak traffic. The platform is known for its reliability, boasting 24/7 support, world-class server security, and 99.99% uptime.
Additionally, Cloudways provides excellent cost-to-performance value, making it a financially attractive option for businesses. The platform also includes enterprise-grade security measures, easy team collaboration tools, and real-time server monitoring.
Cloudways is trusted by over 100,000 businesses and is praised for its ability to significantly improve website performance and support business growth.
Found in these Categories
Best For
- StartUps
- Freelancers
- Small Business
- Medium Business
- Large Enterprise
- Non-profit Organization
- Personal
- Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
- Mobile - Android
- Mobile - iPhone
- Mobile - iPad
- Desktop - Mac
- Desktop - Windows
- Desktop - Linux
- Desktop - Chromebook
- On-Premise - Windows
- On-Premise - Linux
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Company Name
Cloudways
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Located In
Malta
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Website
cloudways.com
Starting from:
$10 /month
Pricing Model: Pay-as-you-go
- Free Trial
- Free Version
Pricing Details:
Cloudways pricing starts at $10/month for DigitalOcean Data Centers. It is divided into hosting providers (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, and Google Cloud) and into four pricing packages.
See Cloudways CouponsDigitalOcean
Vultr
Linode
- API
- Access Controls/Permissions
- Event Logs
- Server Monitoring
- User Management
- Activity Dashboard
- Alerts/Notifications
- Application Management
- Data Storage Management
- Monitoring
- Performance Analysis
- Real-Time Monitoring
- SSL Security
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management
- Third-Party Integrations
Additional Features
- Remote Access/Control
- Real-Time Notifications
- Resource Management
- Scheduling
- CPU Monitoring
- Backup and Recovery
- Credential Management
- Automatic Backup
- Patch Management
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Slack
Team Collaboration Software
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Adobe Commerce
eCommerce Software
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WordPress.com
Content Management Systems
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GitHub
DevOps Software
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Joomag
Content Marketing Software
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Drupal
Content Management Systems
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PrestaShop
eCommerce Software
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Elastic Email
Email Marketing Software
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Ease of Use
Many users appreciate Cloudways’ user-friendly interface. The platform’s simple and intuitive dashboard makes it easy for even non-technical users to manage their hosting environment effectively.
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Performance and Speed
Cloudways is praised for its exceptional performance and speed. Users often report significant improvements in website load times, which is critical for user experience and SEO.
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Customer Support
The quality of customer support is frequently highlighted. Users commend the 24/7 support team for being knowledgeable, responsive, and helpful in resolving issues quickly.
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Scalability
Cloudways offers robust scalability options, allowing businesses to easily scale their resources up or down based on their needs. This flexibility is particularly beneficial for growing businesses.
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Choice of Cloud Providers
Cloudways supports multiple cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode. This variety allows users to choose the provider that best fits their needs and budget.
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Security Features
The platform includes strong security measures such as dedicated firewalls, regular security patching, and free SSL certificates, which give users peace of mind regarding their website’s security.
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Pricing Complexity
Some users find Cloudways’s pricing structure confusing. The pay-as-you-go model can be difficult to predict, and certain add-ons and services have additional costs.
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Limited Email Hosting
Cloudways does not include email hosting by default, which requires users to rely on third-party email hosting services. This can be inconvenient and add to the overall cost.
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Learning Curve for Advanced Features
While the basic features are easy to use, some users report a steep learning curve when it comes to more advanced functionalities and settings.
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Backup Frequency
A few users have mentioned that the default backup frequency options are not as flexible as they would like, and more frequent backups might require additional costs.
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No Domain Registration
Cloudways does not offer domain registration services, necessitating users to register their domains elsewhere and then connect them to their Cloudways account.
Disclaimer
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Table of Contents
Cloudways takes a unique approach to managed cloud hosting. With affordability at its core, you can also choose your cloud hosting provider. You can choose from DigitalOcean, AWS, GoogleCloud, Vultr, and Linode; you have complete control of your cloud provider choice. An excellent feature set allows you to scale as per your needs. Moreover, the IaaS setup provides excellent availability, performance, and security. With this tool, you can host managed WordPress and eCommerce sites with any available cloud providers. This Cloudways review will explore more about Cloudways and see what it offers.
Cloudways Hosting platform
If you want flexibility in cloud hosting for your business, check out Cloudways. Cloudways is one of the prominent and well-known managed cloud hosting platforms. They offer the choice to select a wide range of cloud providers, including DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud. As a business, you can opt to host custom applications or websites. Cloudways also supports managed WordPress hosting with your choice of cloud provider.
Are you looking to host eCommerce or do server hosting? Then, Cloudways is also well-equipped to manage your requirements. Our Cloudways review will look at its features and what makes it an excellent option for businesses primarily looking for flexibility in cloud provider choice.
About Cloudways
Cloudways is a cloud hosting company that provides managed hosting. Their managed hosting utilizes a unique approach where they give the user the ability to choose their cloud provider. Currently, they offer access to five cloud providers, including DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Google Cloud, and AWS. This makes Cloudways a platform-as-a-service provider.
Cloudways is now more than a decade old, as it was started in 2009 by Aaqib Gadit, Uzair Gadit, and Pere Hospital. Their headquarters are on Malta island; however, they have offices in different locations, including Dubai and Spain.
Cloudways pricing utilizes a pay-as-you-go model, which makes it affordable. Moreover, you also get access to plenty of features. As their service is managed, almost all of the server management is done by Cloudways. As a result, you can host as many websites or applications as you like. Moreover, Cloudways supports content management systems, including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.
With excellent security, performance, and scalability, Cloudways is also ideal for eCommerce sites that heavily rely on excellent performance. Moreover, you can also use Cloudways as server hosting, which means you can set up an off-premises physical or virtual server. If you are unsure about them, you can also try out their three-day free trial (no credit card required).
Is Cloudways good for WordPress?
Yes! Cloudways offers managed WordPress hosting. Their managed WordPress hosting is used by 250K agencies, individuals, and small to medium businesses. Cloudways managed WordPress hosting is completely managed. This means that Cloudways takes care of critical aspects of the hosting environment, including actively updating security patches and other critical technologies to make your WordPress site perform as smoothly as possible. WordPress hosting is ideal for eCommerce, individuals, agencies, or SMBs.
The key features offered by Cloudways WordPress managed to host include:
- It supports SSD hosting for excellent reliability and speed.
- The managed WordPress hosting also has a built-in cache for improved website performance.
- The stack used by WordPress is optimized. Cloudways use NGINX and Apache as web servers. For databases, they utilize MySQL/MariaDB and PHP-FPM.
- They also offer the Breeze plugin, their in-house plugin, to improve performance.
- They come with dedicated firewalls and also support SSL certificates.
- WordPress Cloudways login is supported by two-factor authentication, improving your site’s overall performance.
- Easily add additional storage with the help of block storage. Also, it supports vertical scaling.
- Supports Git integration for better code management and deployment.
- Supports team collaboration.
You can try out their WordPress-managed hosting for three days to check if it fits your requirements. If you are moving from another hosting, you can also use their automated WordPress migrations. Their engineer will take care of the whole process, and you do not have to pay anything for it. You can also use their built-in WordPress migrator to migrate yourself. But, most importantly, you can host as many WordPress sites as you need. Also, Cloudways cloud hosting provides pay-as-you-go plans, ideal for businesses with budgets.
Details of Cloudways Features
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Performance
To improve performance, Cloudways deploys multiple methods to tweak performance. Some of the best performance-based features offered by Cloudways include:
- SSD-Based hosting: Cloudways is powered by SSD, which is 3x faster than traditional storage. The faster SSD provides the necessary speed for faster loading sites.
- Built-in advanced caches: To further improve the optimization, Cloudways offers ready-to-use cache, including Varnish, Memcached, Redis, and Nginx.
- Dedicated environment: Cloudways utilize a dedicated environment to ensure that they dedicate resources for the proper server functioning without any performance degradation.
- Auto-healing: To improve uptimes, servers come with an auto-healing feature to recover easily from crashes.
- WordPress cache plugin: Cloudways offers its own in-house WordPress performance plugin, Breeze. It is free to use.
- Free Magento full-page cache
- Redis support
- HTTP/2 supported servers
- Pre-configured FPM
- PHP 7-ready servers
- HTTP/2 supported servers
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Enterprise CDN
The Cloudways Enterprise CDN, powered by Cloudflare, provides a robust solution for enhancing website performance and security. Key features include:
- Edge Page Caching: This feature caches dynamic content at Cloudflare’s edge network, improving load times and reducing server load.
- Argo Smart Routing & Tiered Caching: These technologies optimize user request paths and enhance cache efficiency, resulting in up to 30% performance improvement.
- Image & Mobile Optimization: Cloudflare Polish compresses images, and Mirage optimizes mobile image loading, enhancing overall site performance.
- Security Enhancements: The add-on includes advanced DDoS protection, a web application firewall (WAF), and comprehensive analytics for traffic and security monitoring
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Security
Cloudways provide excellent security features to ensure that all websites remain safe all the time. The key security features include:
- Dedicated firewalls: Cloudways utilize OS-level firewalls to protect their servers from third-party malicious actors and traffic.
- IP whitelisting: With IP whitelisting, you can easily block regions or networks.
- 1-Click Free SSL installation: You can install a free SSL certificate on your site with a one-click option. They currently offer free SSL via Let’s Encrypt.
- Two-factor authentication: You can enable two-factor authentication to protect your Cloudways account better.
- Bot protection: To ensure that you are protected from Denial-of-Service(DoS) attacks, Cloudways deploys bot protection. It also protects your site from brute-force attacks and malicious bots.
- Regular security patching: Cloudways carries out OS-level patches to protect the server from new vulnerabilities.
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Complete Choice
With Cloudways, you get complete choice over your server. So, even though you will not get as much flexibility as using a cloud-hosing provider, you still get many options. These choice options include the following:
- Block storage: If you want to add more storage to your server, you can do so with the help of block storage. Adding block storage only takes a few steps.
- Renowned IaaS providers: Choose from well-known IaaS providers, including DigitalOcean, Google, Amazon, Vultr, and Linode.
- No long-term contract: Cloudways does not make you enter a long-term contract. All you are pay-as-you-go, which means you only pay for what you use.
- Seamless vertical scaling: One click can add storage, CPU, and RAM resources.
- PHP apps supported: Cloudways supports all PHP-based applications.
- Global availability: You can choose from 60+ data centers, giving you complete freedom to serve your target audience.
- Multiple PHP versions: Cloudways supports different versions of PHP, including 8.x, 7.x, and 5.6.
- MariaDB and MySQL supported: Create more with the help of MariaDB and MySQL database support.
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Collaboration
To help teams collaborate, Cloudways supports a plethora of team collaboration and workflow features. Let’s list the features below.
- Git integration:
- One account, multiple teams:
- Server and application cloning:
- SFTP and SSH access:
- Staging area:
- Projects:
- Add team embers:
- WP Migrator plugin:
- Server transfer:
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Control
Want more control over your server? Well, you get it with Cloudways. Check how you can have more control over your hosting.
- Cron job manager: You can schedule jobs using the cron job manager.
- UI-powered settings: Change the server and package settings using UI-based options, making it easy for you to work with the packages or the server.
- App settings: You can change app settings with UI without using any complicated commands.
- 1-click stop app: Want to disable access to an application? You can do it with a 1-click stop app.
- WP-CLI pre-installed: You can use WP-CLI to control your WordPress website.
- 1-cYouth automated backups, you can easily do one- with automated backups, click backups and restore.
- Change application webroot: It only takes a few steps to change it.
- Advanced/custom varnish settings: The varnish rule let you easily control the cache. You can include or exclude cookies or URLs as per your requirement.
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Monitoring
To help you monitor your server in the best possible way, Cloudways offers the following features:
- New Relic integration: Cloudways now supports the New Relic integration, which helps you easily monitor your application and troubleshoot it with the available information.
- CloudwaysBot notification: The AI-powered CloudwaysBot sends you real-time notifications on performance and other vital aspects.
- 24/7 real-time monitoring: Cloudways offers 24/7/365 real-time monitoring covering more than 16 metrics.
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Integrations and Add-ons
There are a plethora of integrations and add-ons that come with Cloudways. However, not all add-ons are free of cost, and you need to pay extra to use them.
- Cloudways API
- CloudwaysBot channels
- Application migration add-on
- SMTP add-on
- Application upgrade add-on
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Excellent Support
Cloudways provides excellent support for its customers. You get access to a 24/7/365 live chat where you can connect with their experts in no time. They also support online ticketing. So, if you want support on complex support, you can connect with them by creating a ticket from the dashboard.
However, If you want phone access, you must take their premium support add-on. The add-on costs start at $500 per month. Apart from that, they also offer Advanced support at $100 per month. In addition, Cloudways offers enhanced SLAs to ensure proper support, making online ticket responses to 30 minutes for high-priority tickets and 3 hours for normal-priority support. The support also helps you fix application-level issues and server configuration and customization.
Alternatives to Cloudways
Cloudways is one of the few cloud hosting providers that give you the option of multiple cloud hosting providers. It is a platform-as-a-service solution where you can host your site or application in a managed environment. However, although Cloudways is affordable and feature-rich, it has some cons.
For example, the lack of support for third-party control panels, including Plesk and CPanel, can make a few users look for Cloudways alternatives. Another reason you want to check out alternatives is the lack of server configuration options.
As a business or an individual, you should look for the following things in a Cloudways alternative.
- Simplicity: Cloudways comes with options, which is not ideal for beginners. You may want to use the traditional hosting provider with known control panel options.
- Lower prices: Even though Cloudways pricing starts as low as $10 per month, things can get costly when you ramp up your business for scalability. In that case, you may want to try an alternative. Also, the DigitalOcean cheapest price is $5 per month, which Cloudways bundles from their side and sells at $10 per month. So, if you are confident enough to work directly with DigitalOcean, you save a lot of money.
- Technology stack: Cloudways has a good technology stack using Ngnix and Apache web servers. However, it is not the fastest option out there. So, if you are looking for a better technology stack that performs faster, you may want to check out the alternatives.
There are plenty of well-known Cloudways alternatives that you can try:
- FlyWheel
- Kinsta
- SiteGround
- RunCloud
- GridPane
- DigitalOcean
- A2Jpstomg
- Vultr
Out of these Cloudways alternatives, we will discuss two excellent options: Siteground and DigitalOcean. So let’s go through Cloudways vs. Siteground and Clouways vs. DigitalOcean below.
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Cloudways vs. Siteground
Siteground is a great alternative to Cloudways. Just like Cloudways, it also offers managed hosting. However, Siteground only offers WordPress-managed hosting. This means Siteground qualifies as an alternative if you are thinking of hosting a WordPress-powered site. Google Cloud powers Siteground’s infrastructure, and hence you get the benefits of scalability, performance, and speed.
In addition, with Siteground, you get their custom site tools for managing your site. However, do not expect the level of performance offered by Cloudways on Siteground.
Siteground is an ideal pick if you want a good package at a cheaper price. You get tons of features with Siteground, including:
- Free SSL certificate
- Free email hosting
- Automatic daily backups
Siteground plans start at $6.99 per month.
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Cloudways vs. DigitalOcean
Are you wondering about the differences between Cloudways and DigitalOcean? Well, did you know that Cloudways offers DigitalOcean as one of its cloud hosting providers? This makes the comparison even more interesting. One clear benefit of choosing DigitalOcean over Cloudways is the price. If you choose Cloudways, you would have to pay almost double the price for their plans compared to DigitalOcean.
For instance, DigitalOcean’s 5$ per month plan costs $10 at Cloudways. This is because Cloudways manages the server for you. However, if you are confident in your server management skills, it might be best to go for DigitalOcean. This is because if you go directly to DigitalOcean, you will have to set up and manage the server yourself.
In terms of performance, you get almost the same thing. With Cloudways, you can access tools that are otherwise not used directly with DigitalOcean. Overall, you should pick DigitalOcean if you know what you are doing. They offer excellent features where you can configure the server as you like. Moreover, they are secure and offer good support.
Cloudways improves DigitalOcean’s offering in every possible way and gives you an overall better package. However, you need to pay more for Cloudways.
Cloudways Review Conclusions
The plethora of options that you get with Cloudways is just great. With five cloud hosting providers, you can choose the one that fits your bill. The pricing is also just right, considering that you get an overall better package than individual cloud hosting provider packages. In addition, excellent security, capability to scale, and ability to host any website or application make it a great choice.
However, Cloudways does come with some drawbacks. The lack of server configuration options and third-party control panels makes it a deal-breaker for some. Still, they are overshadowed by other Cloudways features, as discussed in our Cloudways review. You can get started with Cloudways hosting with the three-day trial and then decide if you want to go with them. But, overall, you cannot go wrong with Cloudways.
Cloudways Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Cloudways provides managed cloud hosting services, offering an optimized stack with built-in advanced cache and CDN for high performance. They handle server management, security, and scaling to ensure smooth operations for digital agencies, e-commerce, and other online businesses.
Cloudways is best for users looking for a flexible, high-performance, managed hosting solution that supports various applications and websites, including WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento. It’s particularly valued for its ability to handle high-traffic loads with automatic scaling options.
Some users may find Cloudways’ pricing model, which is based on server size and bandwidth, a bit complex compared to traditional hosting plans. Additionally, while it offers extensive customization and control, this might be overwhelming for users who prefer a more straightforward hosting experience.
Cloudways often receives favorable comparisons to GoDaddy, especially for users requiring robust managed hosting solutions that offer greater scalability and performance. Cloudways provides a broader range of cloud providers and advanced technical features than typically available with GoDaddy’s standard hosting plans.
Cloudways is suitable for beginners who are looking for a managed hosting solution that simplifies complex server management tasks. Their platform offers an intuitive interface, 1-click installations, and robust support options, which are beneficial for users with limited technical expertise.
Yes, Cloudways continues to be highly regarded in the managed cloud hosting market, praised for its performance, scalability, and customer support. It remains a preferred choice for many businesses looking to optimize their online presence without the complexity of managing cloud infrastructure themselves.
Cloudways allows you to host an unlimited number of applications on a single server, depending on the server’s specifications and your chosen plan. This includes various types of websites and applications, providing flexibility as your needs grow.
Cloudways Hosting refers to their managed cloud hosting services, where they provide users with powerful tools and an optimized environment for hosting websites and applications on top cloud infrastructure providers like DigitalOcean, AWS, and Google Cloud.
Cloudways is used for managing web hosting across various cloud servers, supporting a wide range of platforms including WordPress, Magento, and custom PHP applications. It offers solutions that improve site performance, handle security, and provide scalability.
Cloudways works by offering a management layer that helps users deploy, manage, and monitor high-performance applications and websites on multiple cloud servers. It simplifies the process of cloud hosting by providing an easy-to-use platform with advanced features like automatic scaling, built-in caching, and security optimizations.
