In a Nutshell
pros
- Near-instant scalability
- Different cloud networks to choose from
- Excellent performance across the board
cons
- No budget options for beginners
- No domain registration portal
Cloudways at a Glance
Bandwidth: From 2GB
Free marketing offer: 3-day free trial
Uptime: Varies by cloud partner
Website builder: None
Money-back guarantee: None
Price per month: From $10 per month ($0.0139 per hour)
Ideal for
Cloudways is best suited to larger websites and online stores requiring reliable, fast hosting because of the excellent cloud infrastructure that its services are built on.
Hosting Types
Cloudways offers advanced cloud hosting. It works with 5 partner cloud networks—DigitalOcean, VULTR, Google Cloud, AWS, and Linode—and it offers reliable solutions across the board.
Along with its general cloud hosting, Cloudways offers a selection of more specialized packages. These include WordPress hosting, e-commerce hosting, WooCommerce hosting, Magento hosting, and various others. These plans are nearly identical to the general cloud ones, apart from their slightly more specialized features.
Uptime and Performance
Since Cloudways doesn’t manage its own cloud servers, it has little control over the uptime and performance you experience. This will depend on the cloud network that you decide to use, and many of these come with their own guarantees.
For example, both Linode and DigitalOcean offer a 99.9% service-level agreement (SLA). On top of this, Cloudways is known for its excellent performance, which is largely due to the speed and response times of the partner cloud networks.
Website Builder Features
Cloudways doesn’t offer any sort of website builder.
Cloudways doesn’t offer any email hosting or email marketing tools.
Control Panel
Cloudways uses a proprietary control panel that’s intuitive and easy to use. Even those with limited web development experience will find navigation to be a breeze, and the advanced tools on offer have to be seen to be believed.
The main dashboard features a navigation menu on the left of the screen. Some of the most noteworthy features available here include a domain management portal, bot protection, the Cloudways content delivery network (CDN), and various backup and restore tools.
Cloudways for Businesses
Cloudways hosting provides an excellent platform for businesses. You can pick from a variety of cloud hosting plans provided by Digital Ocean, Vultr, linode, AWS, or Google Cloud - spanning from premium or standard packages. All plans come with 24/7/365 support, team management and collaboration tools, cloudflare add-ons, and more.
Cloudways has considered it all when it comes to teamwork optimization. You can access Cloudways support through not only with a dedicated account manager, but also with a private slack channel. You can also assign specific roles to team members, allowing for better organization and constant access to servers. These two unique features of many give a sneak peak of how scalable Cloudways is for any business.
Pricing and Packages
Cloudways works with 5 different cloud networks to deliver advanced hosting solutions for various use cases. Its prices start at just $10 per month for a Digital Ocean plan with 1GB of RAM, 25GB of storage, and 1TB of bandwidth. Prices increase as more resources are added, and some plans can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month.
For example, there are 18 AWS subscription options, with prices ranging from $36.51 to $3,569.98 per month. All plans are available with month-to-month payments, and there are no long-term discounts available. Hourly billing is also available, enabling you to scale your servers if you’re expecting a spike in traffic or need extra resources for some reason.
There’s also a 3-day free trial available with the Linode, DigitalOcean, and VULTR plans that you can use to test them. Cloudways is certainly a more expensive option than the cheap shared hosting offered by most other providers, but it boasts excellent value for money.
DigitalOcean
From $10
From $120
Linode
From $12
From $144
VULTR
From $11
From $132
Google Cloud
From $33.18
From $398.16
AWS
From $36.51
From $438.12
Help and Support
Cloudways offers excellent customer service across the board. On the live support front, you will have access to 24/7 live chat and online ticketing. The team is very responsive, and the agents we spoke with were knowledgeable and very happy to help. Priority phone support is available as a premium add-on.
On top of this, there are loads of self-help resources available in the Cloudways Knowledge Base. These are well organized, and you can find more specific resources by using the built-in search bar. There’s also a Cloudways blog, along with video tutorials, case studies, and other informational resources available via the company website.
Bottom Line
Cloudways has a great reputation as a leading cloud hosting platform, and for good reason. An analysis of its service shows that it boasts excellent performance, a tidy user interface, competitive prices, and a huge range of advanced tools.
Its plans are delivered through 1 of 5 different cloud networks that you can choose from, and there’s a 3-day free trial. If you have any issues, you will find the customer service to be excellent. Overall, we’d suggest at least testing Cloudways if you’re looking for an advanced, highly scalable cloud hosting platform.
