A solid web hosting provider is vital for your website’s success. Hosting is a topic that I’ve discussed extensively on this site. So, why not some more? 😀.
After much testing and research, I’ve prepared the Cloudways Hosting Review for you! Cloudways differs significantly from the other web hosts we’ve studied. How, you ask? Read the article to find out.
I’ve been using Cloudways for almost three years now. As a result, all of the findings and opinions presented in this post will be based on my personal experience. Also, this website is currently hosted by Cloudways. In this Cloudways Review, we’ll start by talking about how Cloudways differs from other hosting companies.
Furthermore, I will publish the results of the numerous tests I ran on Cloudways to evaluate its performance, such as Server Response Time, Speed, Uptime, Load Handling Capacity, and others.
Finally, we’ll discuss its security features, customer support, backups and migration, email hosting, pros and cons, and much more. So, is Cloudways hosting a suitable alternative for you? Let’s find out.
Cloudways Review
Uzair Gadit, Aquib Gadit, and Pere Hospital started Cloudways Hosting, a Managed Hosting company, in 2009. It’s headquartered in Malta, Europe.
The primary goal of launching Cloudways was to provide its customers with the best of both worlds by offering a perfect mix of managed and unmanaged hosting!
Cloudways was recently acquired by DigitalOcean, which may strengthen DigitalOcean’s ability to assist small business owners at various phases of their startup.
Cloudways distinguishes itself from other hosting providers, such as Hostinger and A2 Hosting, by identifying as a ‘Managed Cloud Hosting Provider’. Let’s see what that means.
Difference between Managed and Unmanaged Hosting
An unmanaged web host essentially lends you storage space on their server while providing little to no further services.
So you’re responsible for everything from software maintenance to backups, which may be problematic for non-technical users! Some popular examples of unmanaged hosting include Digital Ocean, AWS, Google Cloud, Linode, and Vultr.
A managed web host, on the other hand, not only provides server space but also handles server maintenance, software upgrades, security, backups, and so on for you. You will also see more reliable support.
However, the cost of managed cloud hosts is slightly more than that of conventional ones. Cloudways, Kinsta, WPEngine, and other companies offer managed hosting services.
Advantages of Managed Hosting
Opting for a Managed Cloud service may be a good choice for novices because it provides numerous benefits. For example:
- No technical knowledge is required
- Automated one-click backups and restoration process.
- More responsive and reliable support is available at all times.
- Saves a lot of time spent configuring the website
- Advanced security against viruses, malware, and unauthorized users.
- Cloud Server maintenance, software updates, and website monitoring are performed by their technical experts.
Cloudways Overview
Cloudways is a Managed Cloud Hosting firm built on top of three unmanaged web hosts: DigitalOcean, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services, as well as Linode and Vultr.
Cloud Hosting stores your data across numerous servers, resulting in higher uptime and easier site migrations in the event of an accident.
The following table summarizes all of Cloudways’ characteristics.
| Speed | 1.22 sec (India) 3.43 sec (US) |
| Uptime | 99.99% (last 365 days) |
| Data Centers | On 65+ locations |
| Servers | Combination of Apache and Nginx |
| Backups and Restoration | Scheduled, On Demand, and Local Backups Partial Restoration Available One-click Restoration Backup Charges: $0.033/GB |
| Migration | 1 free migration on all hosting plans WordPress Migration Plugin for WP users |
| Customer Support | Email, 24/7/365 Live Chat Support, Knowledge base, Community Forum |
| Features (DigitalOcean Starter Plan) | Unlimited Breeze Cache plugin for WordPress, Vertical Scaling, Account Sharing, Team Management, Security Patching, Unlimited Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificates, and 25 GB SSD storage and 1 TB bandwidth are all included. |
| Security | SSH and SFTP access, firewall, blocklist/whitelist IP, bot protection, free SSL, 2FA, server monitoring, self-healing servers, and firewall |
| Paid Add-ons | Superior and In-Depth Assistance Safe WordPress Updates, Rackspace Email, Elastic Email, Cloudways Enterprise CDN, DNS Made Simple, and Astra Pro (free for a year) |
| Payment Methods | With a minimum purchase of $1000, credit and debit cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express), Paypal, and bank wire transfers are accepted. |
| Refund Policy | No Refund policy. 3-day free trial offered |
| Pricing | Starting from $11/month (DigitalOcean) |
Cloudways Review Video
If you enjoy seeing videos, you can view my 2024 Cloudways Review here. (It has English subtitles over Hindi audio.) I hope you have fun viewing it!
The User Interface of Cloudways
Cloudways’ user interface has a sleek, contemporary style. Every option and tab has a clear, easy-to-access organization.
Cloudways lacks the standard cPanel seen on A2 Hosting, FastComet, and ChemiCloud. It includes a personalized panel that replaces the conventional cPanel!
This custom control panel is fascinating since it gives you access at both the server and application levels!
The New Unified Interface from Cloudways is neat, contemporary, and incredibly flexible. Your servers are divided into Autoscale applications and Flexible applications, which you can manage from the dashboard.
You may quickly and simply access all of the features and settings from the left panel with the aid of the side navigation.
Now that Cloudways has been updated, there is no longer a learning curve. Both novices and experts will find the dashboard and the entire management process to be seamless and simple.
You can check out my Cloudways Training Program if you’re a total novice! I’ve gone into great depth about each of Cloudways’ features below. Continue reading!
Cloudways Testing Parameters
I have acquired the DigitalOcean Standard Server (Singapore location) in order to do this Cloudways study. The monthly cost of this server is $12 or $14.
On my website, I have used the following features and configurations:
- Ocean WP Theme (Elementor Based)
- Gym Template (Elementor Based)
- Breeze Cache Plugin by Cloudways (with default settings)
Note: At the moment, Cloudways is also used to host this website.
In order to provide an objective and truthful assessment of this hosting, I have carried out numerous tests on my Cloudways website. They consist of the SRT test, load test, speed test, and uptime test, among others. I’ve also provided my thoughts and recommendations in addition to the data.
Aside from that, I have also carefully examined all of Cloudway’s other features, including its server centers, customer support, staging support, backups, security features, CDN, and migrations.
I’ve made an effort to cover every aspect of Cloudways hosting in my review, as thorough as I can.
Cloudways Server Response Time
With the Cloudways Digital Ocean Starter subscription, I have chosen the Singapore servers. As a result, Asian regions offer better Server Response Times.
I measured the speeds of the websites from India and found that they were only 1.22 seconds. Considering that I hadn’t given the Breeze Cache plugin any optimization, this is fantastic!
I then measured the speeds of my website from the US and found that they were 3.43 seconds.
Because of my Singapore servers, Cloudways hosting offers exceptionally fast speeds throughout Asia. For even faster speeds, check out ChemiCloud and FastComet!
Cloudways Uptime
Cloudways is great, even if it doesn’t provide an uptime guarantee! Using the Better Uptime tool, I have been tracking the uptime of my Cloudways-hosted website for the past year and a half. Every 30 seconds, this program verifies that my website is up and running.
Cloudways Uptime Status Report (Last 12 Months):
The Cloudways Digital Ocean Singapore Servers uptime report for the previous 1299 days is available here.
| January 2024 | 100% |
| December 2023 | 100% |
| November 2023 | 100% |
| October 2023 | 100% |
| September 2023 | 99.93% |
| August 2023 | 100% |
| July 2023 | 100% |
| June 2023 | 99.99% |
| May 2023 | 100% |
| April 2023 | 100% |
| March 2023 | 100% |
| February 2023 | 100% |
| January 2023 | 99.97% |
| December 2022 | 100% |
| November 2022 | 100% |
| October 2022 | 99.97% |
| September 2022 | 100% |
| August 2022 | 100% |
| July 2022 | 99.98% |
| June 2022 | 100% |
| May 2022 | 100% |
| April 2022 | 100% |
| March 2022 | 99.99% |
For the past month, my website has had an incredible 100% uptime. Furthermore, I noticed that the average uptime for the last 365 days was once again 99.99%, which is quite remarkable!
Just so you know, there hasn’t been any downtime for my website in the past month!
Note: I currently have a Cloudways $12 DO Servers plan running. The uptime will be updated each month.
I therefore cherished Cloudways’ uptime. Even DigitalOcean’s $12/month servers ran incredibly smoothly, and I had no problems at all! For 100% uptime.
Load Testing on Cloudways
I sent 100 virtual users to my website to perform the load test, and they generated 17.5k requests in total. You’ll be shocked to learn that every single request was fulfilled!
A 99 req/sec response time was reached. It was astounding that there were no significant spikes in response time overall!
Thus, we can say that Cloudways can manage large volumes of traffic. It can withstand stress without experiencing any downtime or an increase in response time. If you’re seeking for good load management capabilities, you can also look at ChemiCloud, Rocket.net, and FastComet.
Cloudways Data Centers
throughout 65 data centers are available from Cloudways Hosting, and they are spread out throughout the world. You can see the locations of every server for DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS, Google Cloud, and Vultr on their website.
Update: Cloudways no longer supports Linode and Vultr servers on their platform as of May 2023. Thus, your options are now limited to AWS, Digital Ocean, and Google Cloud. However, users who are already utilizing Vultr and Linode are unaffected.
| Cloud Server | Server Locations |
| Digital Ocean | USA, Germany, Singapore, England, Canada, Netherlands, India, and Australia |
| AWS | Germany, Singapore, Ireland, England, Brazil, Canada, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia, Bahrain, China, USA, Sweden, South Africa, and Italy |
| Google Cloud | Singapore, Germany, England, Canada, Japan, India, Australia, China, Belgium, USA, Finland, Netherlands, and Brazil |
Cloudways Domain Name
You cannot register domains with Cloudways since they are not registrars of domain names. Furthermore, no free domains are given to you.
Nevertheless, Cloudways offers you a temporary domain that you can use to see a preview of your website if you haven’t yet linked your domain to your hosting. It is also known as a preview URL and is always free to use!
These domain name generators could come in handy if you’re still having trouble coming up with a catchy name for your business or website!
The procedure of adding a domain has been made simpler by Cloudways’ latest user interface update. A single “Add Domain” button allows you to add a new domain.
Multiple domain names that you have added to your Cloudways account are presented beneath the primary domain as aliases. Any of your domains can be rapidly designated as primary, and if necessary, they can be mass deleted.
All things considered, Cloudways has now made the process of adding and managing domains easier.
Cloudways Cache Plugin
The Breeze Cache Plugin is an internal caching plugin developed by Cloudways. This plugin speeds up page loads while optimizing your WordPress website.
In addition, they feature a number of different built-in caching systems that are intended to provide quick performance and a seamless user experience, such as Varnish, Memcached, Nginx, and Redis!
Cloudways Backups and Restoration
You can make three distinct backups on Cloudways.
1. Scheduled Backups
It alludes to Cloudways Hosting’s automated backups. You can, however, alter the backup preferences to your liking.
You can designate a retention frequency, time, and frequency of backups, for instance, and all subsequent backups will be taken in accordance with that schedule.
2. On Demand Backups
A manual backup of your database and files can be made prior to making a significant alteration to your website. You can take manual backups whenever you’d like.
3. Local Backups
It creates a replica of the most recent data that you stored on your server after backing it up with the aforementioned techniques.
Speaking of Backup Restoration, you may use their Restore Service to quickly and easily restore your backups. The number of entries that are kept in the backup is determined by the previously described options.
Partial restoration solutions are also provided by Cloudways.
Thus, while choosing a backup version, you have the option of restoring all data, just web files, or only databases. All things considered, Cloudways’ backup and restoration service is excellent.
Nevertheless, Cloudways’ Backups service is not without cost. They charge ₹2.74/GB, or $0.033, for every GB of data that is backed up. The backup charges are being rounded up to the nearest $0.5, though!
Therefore, even if you simply backup 1 GB of website data, you will still need to pay a minimum of $0.5!
Choosing the backup solution is automatically required if you purchase hosting from Cloudways. To facilitate better recovery management, your backups are kept on a separate server.
Cloudways Server Recovery
Additionally, Cloudways has unveiled a service called Server Recovery that allows you to recover a deleted server in under 15 days!
This amazing security feature will assist you in getting everything back to normal in the event that you unintentionally remove a server from your account.
Cloudways Support
Cloudways offers email and 24/7 live chat help, but no phone support.
I received informative responses from their live chat support team in less than 5 minutes. They are undoubtedly knowledgeable, however the frequency of their responses fluctuated between 2 and 5 minutes.
Their Live Chat is offered in three levels. If you require advanced assistance, please see the resources listed below.
- The Standard support is free and available 24/7.
- Advanced Support add-on promises faster response times and deeper troubleshooting. It comes for $100/month!
- Premium support offers 24/7/365 days of call support, a dedicated account manager, and a private Slack channel. This add-on costs a massive $500/month!
They also have a huge knowledge library with helpful annotated articles, a community forum, and a blog where they provide stuff about startups, eCommerce, affiliates, apps, and the most recent Cloudways improvements.
Overall, I had no major issues with Cloudways customer care, and my questions were answered swiftly and effectively.
Cloudways Pricing
Cloudways provides a choice of price options for all five hosting providers. Their DigitalOcean plans start at $11/month for 1 GB RAM, 25 GB storage space, and 1 TB bandwidth.
They also use a unique ‘Pay as you go’ payment approach. This implies that if you utilize a server for two days, you will just have to pay for those two days!
Their lowest-spec server (1 GB plan of DigitalOcean that costs $11/month) costs $0.015/hour, which equates to only ₹1.24, making it extremely inexpensive!
The nicest aspect about Cloudways is that their renewal rates remain consistent across all programs. Another thing to keep in mind is that Cloudways charges you twice as much as the various hosting providers’ plans.
So, if DigitalOcean’s Starter plan costs $5 per month, Cloudways charges double that amount. Sure, you may go with separate hosting providers at a lower cost. However, you will lose the ‘Managed’ feature of web hosting.
Cloudways charges more because it provides superior security, support, and maintenance for your server and applications. Essentially, it charges for the managed hosting service.
Cloudways Best Plan
If you’re just getting started with your website, I’d recommend going with DigitalOcean’s Standard plans, which now start at $11 per month.
Cloudways Free Trial
You can obtain a 3-day free trial of their DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr hosting services without providing a credit card.
This may appear to be a small sample size, but I believe it is adequate for testing out all of Cloudways’ operations and features before deciding whether or not to purchase it.
Cloudways’ Payment Methods
It mostly accepts credit and debit card payments (Visa, MasterCard, and American Express) as well as PayPal. However, in some rare situations, you can pay using Wire Transfer, however the minimum amount must be $1000!
Cloudways Refund Policy
Unlike comparable hosting providers such as A2 Hosting or Bluehost, Cloudways does not have a refund policy. However, you can view a 3-day free trial that does not require a credit card.
This is an excellent way to get a feel for their services before deciding whether you need them.
Cloudways Migration
Cloudways offers to move your first website for free. This applies to all of their hosting options. WordPress users can even purchase their own WordPress Migration plugin, which allows them to seamlessly transfer their websites.
More migrations are charged based on the number of applications. If migrations are your top priority, ChemiCloud is the superior solution. It provides fifty cPanel migrations for free!
Cloudway Staging
Cloudways provides a staging environment for all of its plans. Staging allows you to make a clone of your complete website and test changes on it.
These modifications are implemented locally and do not appear on the live website. Once you’re satisfied with the changes, you can apply them to your live website with a single click.
So, if you wish to test a modification, you must first clone your current website.
You can accomplish this by using the ‘push’ technique. Everything you need to do is:
- Select the Staging app and press the Push button.
- Select whether you want to clone just the application files or the whole database.
It will generate a duplicate of your website. You can now alter it and test your changes.
When you’re finished, you may use the pull procedure to copy your clone site’s data to the original one with one click. Sounds simple, right?
Cloudways provides two types of choices for copying your data.
- Overwriting places the changes on top of the prior ones. So it entirely replaces your old information with the new one.
- Incrementing merely transfers the changes you make to the files, leaving the rest unchanged.
Overall, I was impressed by Cloudways’ speedy and effective staging functionality.
Cloudways Security
Security is the most critical feature of your website. Cloudways provides the following security features.
- 2FA: Two Factor Authentication allows you to protect your logins with security codes issued by Authenticator apps such as Authy or Google Authenticator.
- New Login Alert: When a new device logs into your Cloudways account, you can receive email notifications or a security code to validate the device!
- Unlimited SSL: Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates can be installed on any website for free. They also allow third-party SSL certificates.
- Bot Protection: It actively prevents hackers and bots from attacking your website.
- Server Monitoring Alerts: If the server or any of its resources are unavailable for more than 10 minutes, you will receive an email notification.
- The firewall protects your website from malware and cyber-attacks.
- IP Blocking: You can block or whitelist specific IP addresses from accessing your website.
Aside from these, Cloudways has implemented the following security tools:.
WordPress vulnerability scanner
Cloudways recently announced the WordPress Vulnerability Scanner, which is powered by Patchstack.
It continuously checks the Patchstack vulnerability database for any vulnerabilities in the plugin and theme versions installed on your WordPress site.
Furthermore, if the vulnerabilities have been fixed in newer versions of the themes or plugins, it recommends upgrading to the most recent version.
Cloudways Vertical Scaling
Cloudways hosting allows you to scale your server, CPU, and storage space in response to spikes in website traffic.
With DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr, this process is irreversible, and you cannot reduce your resources again. Whereas with Google Cloud or AWS, you can easily scale your services up or down based on your needs!
Different vendors offer different services. For example, Google Cloud and AWS allow you to scale your server, CPU, and storage separately.
However, Linode, Vultr, and DigitalOcean only allow you to scale up all of them simultaneously. This is inconvenient, especially if you don’t need to scale the other components.
In my Cloudways Training Program, I described a hack for downgrading your server. Additionally, Vertical Scaling may cause server downtime. Scaling your services during inactive hours is always suggested.
Cloudways Autonomous
Cloudways just announced the ‘Cloudways Autonomous’ option on its hosting platform. It is a fully managed WordPress solution that automatically scales up or down your servers based on incoming demand.
It offers three fantastic benefits to your hosting solution: autoscaling, load balancing, and high website availability. You also get Cloudflare’s enterprise-grade CDN and Edge cache, as well as the premium Redis Object Cache Pro plugin.
All of these features provide excellent performance and great website uptime. Cloudways Autonomous is great for anyone who uses WordPress or WooCommerce on their websites. Its cost begins at a high monthly charge of $35.
Cloudways Pros & Cons
Pros
- Exceptional Speed
- Unbeatable Uptime
- Impressive Load Handling
- Unlimited Websites
- 65 Server Locations
- Customizable Backups
- All-Round Security
- Good Customer Support Quality
- Managed Cloud Service
- Scalable
- Constant Updates
- No Extra Renewal Fee
Cons
- No Email Hosting
- No Free CDN
- Acquired by Digital Ocean
- Slight Learning Curve
- No Free Domain
- More Charges on Larger Server
Should you use Cloudways?
In my perspective, Cloudways remains one of the top web hosting for 2024. It offers improved performance in terms of speed, scalability, uptime, and load testing. Aside from that, it provides robust backup and security features.
They’ve made numerous modifications to their platform during the previous year. These include Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, Astra Pro Collaboration, Safe Updates, Partial Restoration, WordPress Vulnerability Scanner, Cloudways Autonomous, New User Interface, and others.
Thus, Cloudways provides high-quality service with regular upgrades at a reasonable price. This is why I believe it is worth every dollar you spend!
If you have a lot of visitors (over 100,000) or make money from your blog, Cloudways is an excellent solution. Small to medium-sized enterprises, professional bloggers, resellers, agencies, and seasonal websites should all look into Cloudways.
If you need a low-cost hosting solution, Hostinger, Chemicloud, or FastComet are all viable options.
Why Should You Trust Me?
I’ve been working full-time in the digital space since 2015. Over the years, I’ve utilized a variety of web hosting firms for both my work and clients.
I’ve been a paid Cloudways member for the past three years and have evaluated it every year since. In fact, Cloudways also hosts my own blog, cmphost.com.
Hostinger, FastComet, and ChemiCloud are some other notable hosting providers that I have studied. I still have active plans for more than a dozen hosting services, and I update my blog with the latest features and uptime data every month.
Constantly utilizing and testing a wide range of hosting services has given me the information, experience, and competence to compare their features and propose the best ones for your needs.
Conclusion
Cloudways offers exceptional speeds, uptime, dependable customer service, a modern interface, and top-tier security at reasonable prices. It allows you to create an endless number of websites and frequently updates with new features.
Thus, Cloudways proves to be a robust and functional hosting package in 2024. If you want to experience Cloudways, click my link to receive a 20% discount on whatever plan you choose. You will also receive a free enrollment in my Cloudways training program. So, grab this deal right away!
I manually hosted my blog on Cloudways. However, following the recent acquisition of Cloudways, I am considering migrating to a new host, such as Nexcess. This is because Cloudways would become more expensive as my traffic increased, and Nexcess would be a more appropriate and cost-effective solution at that point.
Anyway, if you find my content valuable, please subscribe to my weekly newsletter, where I give updates on my latest videos, blog entries, and the biggest discount deals on digital products!
This is Krishna Yaduvanshi, signing off. See you in the next article. Continue learning! 🙂
Also Read: Hostinger Review (May 2024): Is It Still the Best Cheap Web Hosting Provider?
FAQs
Is Cloudways good for e-commerce plans?
When do I pay for services on Cloudways?
When not to use Cloudways hosting?
So, if you’re completely new to the world of web hosting, you can start with shared hosting providers that have an easy-to-use interface. Hostinger, BlueHost, and HostArmada are other examples.