Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform established in 2011. The platform is designed to simplify the complexities of hosting applications and websites on popular cloud providers.
It was founded by Uzair Gadit and Pere Hospital and is headquartered in Malta. Since its inception, Cloudways has earned a stellar reputation for its extensive features, user-friendly interface, and exceptional customer support.
I have used many cloud platforms over the years, but there is something unique about Cloudways.
I was really impressed by its feature-rich platform and unique offerings. From my experience, the cloud service is fast, reliable, and highly secure.
With its remarkable blend of scalability, simplicity, and reliability, Cloudways has become the go-to choice for individuals and businesses looking to kickstart their online presence.
Is Cloudways the best-managed hosting provider?
In this guide, I will walk you through everything you need to know about Cloudways. I will explore its services, pricing, support system, performance, and features.
In the end, you will have everything you need to determine if it is the right fit for your needs. Without further ado, let’s get started:
Pros and Cons
Cloudways also has its fair share of ups and downs. While the platform has many benefits and advantages, it also has some downsides.
Knowing the pros and cons of the service will help you determine if it is the right platform for your needs.
Pros
Here are the various benefits of using Cloudways:
- User-Friendliness and Simplicity: One of Cloudway’s major selling points is its intuitive interface and user-friendliness. The intuitive interface makes it easy for beginners and experienced users to manage their hosting environment.
- Choice of Cloud Providers: Cloudways offers users the option to choose from a wide range of industry-leading cloud providers, including Google Cloud Platforms, Amazon Web Service (AWS), and DigitalOcean.
- Performance Optimization: Cloudways offers content delivery network integration, advanced caching mechanisms, and other performance-boosting features to ensure super-fast loading times.
- Scalability: Cloudways allows for seamless scalability, making it easy for you to handle traffic surges and increase your resources as your application or website grows.
- Excellent Customer Support: Cloudways provides 24/7 support via live chat, email, and ticketing systems, ensuring prompt assistance whenever you need it.
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee: In addition to providing excellent services, Cloudways guarantees an uptime of up to 99.9 percent. This means your website or application will always be accessible and available for your users.
- Free SSL Certificate: Cloudways offers free SSL certificates, as security is one of its top priorities. They also have other security measures to ensure your website or application is always safe and protected.
Cons
Here are some of the downsides of Cloudways:
- No Email Hosting: Cloudways does not provide dedicated email hosting services: it specializes in application and website hosting. You might need to use third-party email hosting solutions.
- Learning Curve: Despite having a user-friendly user interface, users with no prior cloud hosting experience might need some time to familiarize themselves with the platform.
- Low Storage for Basic Tier: Cloudways’ basic plans have low storage capacity. You might need to upgrade to the higher plans to enjoy more storage space.
Cloudways Services
Cloudways is very popular in the clouding hosting industry because of its numerous services. The company provides many services to cater to diverse hosting needs. The various services Cloudways offers are:
1. Managed Cloud Hosting
Managed cloud hosting is what Cloudways is mainly known for. During my findings, I discovered that many individuals, businesses, and growing enterprises are using this provider because of its exceptional managed cloud hosting service.
If you are looking for easy and hassle-free server management, I recommend you opt for Cloudways’ managed cloud hosting service.
With Cloudways, you can bid farewell to the complexities of setting up and maintaining servers, as it will handle all the challenging parts for you.
One of the unique things about the managed cloud hosting service of this company is that it allows you to choose from various cloud providers. You can choose from top cloud providers like:
- Google Cloud Platform
- Linode
- DigitalOcean
- Amazon Web Services
This flexibility allows you to choose the cloud provider that best aligns with your specific needs, be it robust scalability, cost-effectiveness, or geographical distribution.
2. WordPress Hosting
If you are looking for a reliable and affordable provider to host your WordPress website, Cloudways is one of the best options to consider.
Cloudways offers specialized hosting customized to WordPress – the world’s most popular content management system. The service offers a streamlined experience with pre-installed caching, easy-to-use management tools, and optimized servers.
Another fascinating thing about this hosting service is that it is designed to maximize performance and speed.
The service also comes with features like:
- Built-in caching mechanisms
- The latest PHP versions
- SSD-based hosting
These features will ensure your WordPress website loads efficiently and swiftly.
Additionally, Cloudways offers automatic backups, enabling you to restore your website in case of any unexpected issues easily.
The platform’s WordPress hosting also includes one-click staging, allowing you to create a replica of your website for testing purposes. This feature comes in handy when you want to experiment with new themes, plugins, or updates without affecting your live site.
3. WooCommerce Hosting
WooCommerce is WordPress’ most popular e-commerce plugin, and Cloudways offers a dedicated hosting service for it.
Cloudways optimized its WooCommerce hosting service to ensure your online store runs smoothly and efficiently. The company provides a WooCommerce hosting environment that can handle the unique demands of e-commerce websites.
Its server configurations are specifically tailored to provide optimal speed and performance for your online stores. Cloudways CDN integration and advanced caching mechanisms are embedded in this service, providing enhanced user experience and faster page loading times.
I also like the numerous features this hosting service offers, including:
- SSL certificate installation
- Automatic backups
- A staging environment
These features will secure your customer’s information, protect your store’s data, and allow you to test updates and changes before deploying them to your live site.
4. Magento Hosting
If you have an e-commerce store on Magento or you want to build one on the platform, then Cloudways has the right hosting services for you.
Cloudways has specialized hosting services tailored to enhance the stability, speed, and performance of your Magento e-commerce store. The service provides advanced features and robust infrastructure to deliver optimal performance.
The unique offerings of this service include:
- SSD-based hosting
- Dedicated servers
- The latest PHP versions
These features all contribute to providing smooth user experiences and super-fast speed.
Cloudways also backed this service up with SSL certificate installation, automatic backups, and the ability to create staging environments.
With Cloudways’ Magento hosting, you can focus on growing your online business while enjoying the benefits of a reliable and high-performing hosting environment.
5. Laravel Hosting
Laravel is a popular PHP framework known for its simplicity and elegance, and Cloudways offers specialized hosting for it.
Cloudways’ Laravel hosting provides a seamless environment for creating and deploying applications. The company optimized the hosting environment for developer productivity and performance.
The platform provides pre-configured servers with the necessary dependencies for Laravel, such as PHP, Composer, and MySQL. This eliminates the need for manual server setup, allowing developers to focus on coding and application development.
Two amazing features I love about this hosting service are Git integration and easy deployment workflows. With these features, you can connect your Git repositories to your Cloudways account, allowing you to deploy Laravel applications effortlessly.
Cloudways’ Laravel hosting ensures a seamless and efficient development experience, empowering developers to build robust and scalable Laravel applications with ease.
6. Custom PHP and Applications Hosting
Frameworks and content management systems are not the only things Cloudways provides specialized hosting for. The company also offers hosting services for PHP-based websites and custom applications.
Whether you have a custom-built PHP-based site or web application, Cloudways provides a scalable and flexible hosting environment.
The hosting service is optimized for seamless and fast website or application deployment. With Cloudways’ intuitive control panel, you can easily set up your servers, monitor your performance, and manage your resources.
Cloudways supports the latest PHP versions, ensuring optimal performance and compatibility for PHP-based applications.
This hosting service also features seamless scalability, allowing you to scale up or down your resources when necessary. It also provides advanced security to ensure your data is secure.
7. Reseller Hosting
Cloudways provides reliable reseller hosting for your agency clients.
What makes Cloudways’ reseller hosting service unique is its industry-leading flexibility, security, and simplicity.
With the company’s rock-solid reliability and flexible plans, you can resell web hosting at reasonable profit margins. Another unique selling point of this service is that each plan comes with unlimited websites and applications.
The unique offerings of this service include:
- Easy-to-use platform
- 24/7/365 expert support
- Optimized performance
- Easy collaboration
- No limits
- Extended security
It has both premium and standard packages, allowing you to choose what works best for your agency.
Those are the core services Cloudways offers. They cater to the needs of various users, including agencies that want to resell hosting services for a profit.
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Cloudways Plans and Pricing
Cloudways has various flexible plans and pricing options to cater to different budgets and hosting needs. Whether you are a startup or a growing enterprise looking for a balance between price and performance, Cloudways has got you covered.
Let me walk you through the pricing model of this cloud service provider:
1. DigitalOcean
With Cloudways’ DigitalOcean plans, you can host your various CMS, e-commerce stores, applications, websites, PHP-based sites, and more. Here are the standard prices of this plan:
- Plan 1 ($11.00/mo): This plan costs $11 per month, and it offers 25 GB of storage, 1 GB of RAM, 1 core processor, and 1 TB of bandwidth.
- Plan 2 ($24.00/mo): The offerings of this plan include 2 GB of RAM, 2 TB bandwidth, 50 GB storage, and 1 core.
- Plan 3 ($46.00/mo): This plan offers 4 GB of RAM, 4 TB of bandwidth, 80 GB of storage, and a 2-core processor.
- Plan 4 ($88.00/mo): This plan offers more resources, offering 5 TB of bandwidth, 160GB of storage, 4 cores, and 8 GB of RAM.
All DigitalOcean plans come with a Cloudflare add-on, free migration, free object cache pro, free SSL certificate, 24/7 customer support & real-time monitoring, unlimited application installation, SSH & SFTP access, HTTP/2 enabled servers, regular security patching, automated backups, staging environment, optimized with advanced caches, dedicated firewalls, and team management.
2. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
The Amazon Web Services plans offer scalability and flexibility, allowing you to choose from various AWS services. These plans are ideal for businesses with complex hosting requirements or high traffic volumes.
The pricing varies based on the selected resources, services, and usage.
- Plan 1 ($38.56/mo): The unique offerings of this plan include 2 GB of RAM, 2 vCPUs, 20 GB of storage, and 2 GB of bandwidth.
- Plan 2 ($91.84/mo): This is Cloudways’ most popular AWS plan, as it offers a perfect balance of price and performance. The plan offers 20 GB of storage, 2 GB bandwidth, 2 vCPUs, and 4 GB of RAM.
- Plan 3 ($183.22/mo): With this plan, you will get 20 GB of storage, 2 GB bandwidth, 2vCPU, and 8 GB of RAm.
- Plan 4 ($285.21/mo): This plan offers more resources. You will get 2 GB bandwidth, 20 GB storage, 4 vCPUs, and 16 GB of RAM.
Cloudways does not provide a free trial for Amazon Web Services. Users are required to upgrade their accounts to launch and access AWS servers.
3. Google Computing Engine (GCE)
Similar to AWS, the pricing of GCE plans varies based on the selected services and resource usage. Here are the various prices of this plan:
- Plan 1 ($37.45/mo): The offerings of this plan include 2 GB of bandwidth, 20 GB of storage, 1 vCPU, and 1.75 GB of RAM.
- Plan 2 ($84.12/mo): This is the most popular plan in this category. It offers 2 GB of bandwidth, 20 GB of storage, 1 vCPU, and 3.75 GB of RAM.
- Plan 3 ($152.14/mo): This plan comes with 2 GB of bandwidth, 2 vCPUs, 7.5 GB of RAM, and 20 GB of storage.
- Plan 4 ($241.62/mo): With $241.62 per month, this plan offers 2 GB bandwidth, 15 GB of RAM, 4 vCPUs, and 20 GB of storage.
This Google Compute Engine does not offer a free trial. You must upgrade your account to launch and access GCE servers.
Performance – Is Cloudways Fast?
From my experience and the various tests I conducted, I can confidently say that Cloudways has excellent performance, especially considering how affordable its plans are.
The platform passed all the tests I have put it through – speed, reliability, security, and more.
Another thing I love about this provider is its speed, stability, and ability to handle traffic spikes. I opt for various plans to test their performance.
I was also impressed with the response time and uptime of Cloudways.
The provider is almost perfect in terms of server speed and reliability. Cloudways has maintained an uptime of 99.9 percent over the past six months. I believe you will agree with me that this is a great result.
This does not mean that the plan does not have its shortcomings. Like other providers, there are times when Cloudways experiences outages.
However, I have not experienced those moments. From what I learned, they were quick to resolve the downtimes.
Some downtimes are unavoidable; they can happen to even the best and most expensive servers.
When it comes to speed, I was impressed with how fast Cloudways’ servers are. The response time is great, helping to reduce the bounce rate and attract more users.
Cloudways SSD storage and robust infrastructure considerably contribute to its super-fast speed and performance.
Cloudways’ PHP optimization, server scaling, content delivery network, and caching mechanisms all play a role in its performance and speed.
It’s important to note that the performance of a website hosted on Cloudways can also be influenced by factors like website design, content optimization, and third-party plugins or scripts.
However, Cloudways provides a solid foundation with its optimized infrastructure, caching mechanisms, CDN integration, and scalability options to help users achieve excellent website performance.
Cloudways’ Customer Support
As someone who has prior experience, I never had issues setting up or managing my accounts.
However, I reached out to customer support to know the level of support they offer.
Will Cloudways’ customer support team help me set up and manage my account?
Cloudways has a dedicated support team to help with the setting up and managing of your cloud accounts. They offer several support options, with 24/7 live chat benign the major one.
Whether you have a question or need help configuring your account, you can rely on the support team of this provider. The live chat feature allows you to connect with a support representative in real time, enabling quick resolution of your queries or issues.
You can also reach them through an online ticketing system. The ticketing system ensures that your inquiries are logged and tracked, allowing for efficient communication between you and the support team.
Besides that, Cloudways has a large knowledge base and a community forum. The knowledge base consists of tutorials, articles, and step-by-step guides covering different topics related to server management, hosting, and platform features.
You can ask questions and interact with other users in the community forum.
The forum provides an opportunity to connect with fellow users, industry professionals, and Cloudways experts. It serves as a platform for discussions, troubleshooting, and exchanging best practices.
Cloudays offer three layers of support – Standard, Advanced, and Premium.
- The standard support gives you 24/7/365 access to Live Chat, ticketing, and other support resources.
- The Advanced Support is for those who have outgrown a regular support relationship. This add-on provides speedy response times and access to various Cloudways expertise.
- Premium Support is the highest support level. It is mainly for businesses that run mission-critical websites where every second matters. It gives you access to all support levels with even quicker response times. It also comes with a dedicated Account Manager, a private Slack channel, and direct phone support.
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Cloudways’ Features
Cloudways is a feature-rich cloud hosting provider. It offers a suite of features that compares favorably to many hosting providers.
Here are the various features offered by Cloudways:
1. Server Management and Control Panel
I am impressed by the powerful server management and control panel Cloudways features. This feature makes it easy for you to create and manage your hosting environment.
With the intuitive panel, you can effortlessly manage applications, launch servers, and access essential server settings.
The user-friendly interface gives you full control over your server resources, making it easy for you to monitor performance, scale your applications, and adjust settings as necessary.
The control panel also provides features such as server monitoring, SSH and SFTP access, SSL certificate management, and application deployment. These features allow you to track resource usage, monitor server metrics, and receive real-time alerts to ensure your apps are running smoothly.
2. Website and Application Staging
Cloudways is very creative in the design of its platform. The company designed the platform with the diverse needs of its users in mind.
One feature I love so much about this platform is the website and application staging. This simplifies the process of testing and deploying changes to your websites and applications.
The built-in staging environment allows you to create a replica of your live website or application where you can safely test new features, design changes, and updates without affecting the main website.
With this, you can see how your website or app handles modifications and updates before making them live.
Cloudways’ staging environment comes with some helpful features, such as:
- Seamless deployment
- One-click staging setup
- Synchronization options
You can create a staging environment to test new changes with just a few clicks.
This feature will reduce the risk of errors, save you time, and provide a controlled environment for testing and deploying updates with confidence.
3. Automated Backups
One of the core features I always look for in any hosting or cloud service provider is automatic backups.
You never can tell when your website or application will malfunction, or an update will change its functionality. Thanks to automatic backups, you can always restore your website to a previous functional state.
Cloudways understands the importance of protecting your data and provides automated backups. The platform will back up your website or application regularly to protect your data in the event of data loss or crashes.
Interestingly, Cloudways did not stop at providing automated backups; the company also provides an easy restoration process.
You can restore your backed-up website or application with just a few clicks. Impressive, right?
This process eliminates the potential downtime and stress associated with accidental changes or data loss. You can easily restore the site from your intuitive control panel.
4. Free Website Migration
If you want to move your website or application from another hosting provider to Cloudways, there is a team dedicated to helping you with that.
Cloudways provides a hassle-free, free website migration. You can migrate your website to their platform within a few minutes.
All you have to do is talk to them and tell them about the app/website and the traffic it gets. They will access the needs of your website or app and move it in one piece.
Yes, it is that easy.
However, only the first website migration is free. You would have to pay for subsequent migrations. The benefits of the hassle-free website migration include:
- Starting is free
- Super-fast loading times
- No downtime during migration
- Post-migration support
- Preview and approve
- Easy cloud management console
Cloudways also offers a no-bug guarantee during the migration. They will ensure the code of your site or application remains in one piece and works perfectly.
5. Enterprise-Grade Performance and Security
Cloudways features a Cloudflare Enterprise add-on that offers advanced protection against threats and hackers.
The platform mitigates DDoS attacks in under three seconds via dedicated IP ranges. It also provides prioritized routing and protection to ensure maximum availability and security.
It is also equipped with a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that analyzes millions of websites and 32 million requests per second to identify and block attackers and potential threats.
Each Clouways account comes with the following:
- Login security
- Firewalls
- Database security
- Bot protection
- SSL certificates
- Application isolation
- User role management
- Operating system’s security
- GDPR Compliance
- Cloudways bug bounty program
- Two-factor authentication
- End-to-end encryption
- Suspicious device long control
All these features come in handy in enhancing the security and performance of your website and application.
Expert Review – Do We Recommend It?
As I mentioned earlier, Cloudways is a great cloud hosting provider with many amazing features and offerings. The platform offers excellent performance for money.
Cloudways does a great job of providing managed cloud hosting services that combine scalability, user-friendliness, and top-notch performance optimization.
One thing that makes this platform unique is its choice of cloud providers, dedicated support, and an extensive list of features.
While there may be a slight learning curve for beginners, Cloudways’ intuitive interface and outstanding support team ensure a smooth onboarding experience.
Who Is Cloudways Best For?
Cloudways is an excellent option if you are looking for great performance on a budget. Its most affordable DigitalOcean plans allow you to host multiple websites with impressively high traffic.
Nevertheless, Cloudways is a bit more complicated than traditional cloud hosting providers, but you will have no issues using it if you have used other cloud servers before.
Overall, Cloudways is best for small & medium-sized businesses, agencies, developers, and WordPress & e-commerce enthusiasts.
It provides many specialized servers suitable for diverse hosting needs.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Can I scale my resources as my website grows?
Absolutely! Cloudways allows users to easily scale their hosting plans based on their changing needs. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan as required.
Can beginners with limited technical knowledge use Cloudways?
Yes, Cloudways is user-friendly and designed to accommodate users with varying levels of technical expertise. However, if this is your first time using a cloud service provider, it would take some to familiarize yourself with it.
Does Cloudways provide free SSL certificates?
Yes. Cloudways take security seriously, so they provide free SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt. You can easily install and manage SSL certificates for your websites within the Cloudways control panel.
Is Cloudways secure?
Cloudways has several safety measures to protect your website and applications. They provide regular security patches and updates, server-level firewalls, automated backups, SSL certificate integration, and two-factor authentication (2FA) for enhanced account security.
Is Cloudways good for WordPress?
Yes! Cloudways provides specialized services for WordPress. Cloudways offers many WordPress-optimized features like staging sites, caching, and free plugins.
Conclusion
Cloudways offers a comprehensive hosting solution with a range of features and services to cater to the needs of users, whether they are beginners or experienced professionals. With its user-friendly interface, robust performance, reliable support, and extensive feature set, Cloudways proves to be a top choice for hosting and managing applications and websites.
