Think about your own buying habits for a while.
What is Cloudways?
Cloudways is
managed WordPress hosting like you’ve (probably) never seen before. Companies such as WP Engine,
Flywheel, and Pressable (along with many others) provide optimized server environments for WordPress,
complete security packages, and often specialty dashboards to make the WordPress experience as seamless
and efficient as possible.
Cloudways LTD is also a managed hosting company (not just managed WordPress
hosting) with modular hosting options so that users can choose the exact kind of managed environment and
features they need. This is a huge step away from the walled gardens of many managed hosts. We know that
sounds appealing to a lot of people, so let’s dig into our detailed Cloudways review so you can see if
it’s the right fit for you.
In this cloudways hosting review, we're going to take a look at the Cloudways hosting platform. Cloudways is based
on the same cloud services as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), providing the
speed, reliability and scalability that you would expect from a major public cloud provider. They offer
a wide range of applications for your website/business, including Magento 2 ecommerce hosting, Laravel,
PHP,Cloud hosting, WordPress and WooCommerce hosting.
Key Features of Cloudways Hosting
Cloudways has its headquarters in Malta but serves customers in over 40 countries,
including the US. Its 60+ data centers provide easily scalable server resources to serve large and small
websites. Even if you receive millions of unique visitors, there’s a Cloudways hosting plan that’s
perfect for your needs.
The most basic hosting plan offers 25 GB of storage, 10 GB RAM, 1 core processor, and 1 TB bandwidth.
That’s more than enough for the smooth operation of a website that receives at least a thousand visitors
daily.
Other unique features of Cloudways hosting that set it apart in terms of user-friendliness, speed, and
security are:
- Site migration to Cloudways is free, and the host takes care of the entire process
- One-click installation for apps and website set-up
- It uses a content delivery network (CDN) to boost website loading speeds by reducing latency and time-to-first-byte.
- It has an auto-healing feature that fixes most site issues automatically and significantly reduces the frequency of site crashes.
- Cloudways offers all the major cloud providers – Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, Google Compute Engine, Vultr, and Linode.
- There’s a dedicated firewall, two-factor authentication, and built-in Let’s Encrypt SSL for solid website security.
- 24/7 expert customer support
If you are dissatisfied with your current hosting company, you can use the Cloudways migration tool to move to Cloudways cloud hosting with just a few clicks. Cloudways offers a free trial period for testing its plans and finding one that’s perfect for your needs.
Which services Cloudways provide ?
First off, Cloudways is not just for WordPress. While what we’re discussing in this review is the Cloudways WordPress hosting, you can also host Drupal, Joomla, or other CMS frameworks if you want. But we feel that Cloudways truly shines with WordPress hosting.
- Cloudflare Enterprise CDN
- SSD-Based Hosting
- Built-in Advanced Caches
- PHP 7 Ready Servers
- Cloud Hosting
- Dedicated Environment
- Auto-Healing Managed Cloud Servers
- Free WordPress Cache Plugin
- Redis Support
- Free Magento Full Page Cache
- Pre-configured PHP-FPM
- HTTP/2 Supported Servers
- Image and Mobile Optimization
- HTTP/3 Support with Cloudflare
Pros and Cons of Hostinger
Pros
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3-day free trial
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Powerful performance
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Vertical scaling
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Managed app with database backups and restore function
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Pay-as-you-go system
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Swift and simple setup
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High level of flexibility
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Free SSL certificates for everyone
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A choice between five cloud services
Cons
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No domain name registration
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Not novice-friendl
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No email
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No root access, no server modifications (because they are managed)
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If you delete your server in a free trial, it will automatically end. Even if you are within the free trial period
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You are basically combining Cloudways service with another cloud provider and relying on two companies to keep your site up
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You cannot use Plesk or cPanel. Cloudways provide their own platform to help you manage applications hosted on cloud servers
Advanced Features
Maximum Uptime
Cloudways offers a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee. These reliabilities are based on the
cloud provider you choose from Cloudways. Server locations also depend on the cloud provider. Some have
as many as 12 locations, while others are limited to just a few locations. Servers can be found across
the world.
They do offer a service level agreement at Cloudways, which is always a good sign. When service is not
met, Cloudways will issue compensation or credits to customers. They also specify which situations will
not warrant credits.
Effective Security
Security plays a vital role while hosting WordPress websites through a good Cloud
Hosting Platform. Cloudways offer customers platform level firewalls for their WordPress sites to keep
their data secure and safe.
The technical support team at Cloudways is focused on applying innovative security hardening techniques
to create a more robust platform. Cloudways offers you a unique feature of adding a list of whitelist IP
Addresses applying limitations to allowing entry to the server.
Their dedicated cloud servers and one-click SSL management as well as automatic patching will ensure
your site remains secure while on the Cloudways servers.
All cloud servers on Cloudways PaaS get automatic firmware and OS patches so you don’t have to worry
about the security of your server.
Servers and applications are protected behind secure firewalls to prevent unauthorized access or hacking
attempts. To summarize, you don’t have to worry about your cloud server at all. Cloudways has everything
covered.
Professional Support
There are a few options for support with Cloudways. You can start a conversation online with Cloudways technical team as they are online 24/7. You can also submit a ticket or request more information online. There are answers to some questions in their knowledge base as well as FAQs and tutorials.
Price and Plans
There are two plans. One is Standard and another is Premium Plan
Standard Plan
Cloudways offers cloud hosting services from several companies for which you can pay
monthly or by the hour. With an hourly pay-as-you-go system, you’ll be charged for what you’re actually
using, which means you can upscale/downscale a plan or add/remove features from your account and be
charged only for the time you were using them.
With a monthly billing system, DigitalOcean’s plans start at $10.00 per month, while with Linode it’s
$12.00 per month, with Vultr $11.00 per month, with Google Compute Engine $34.17 per month, and with AWS
$36.04 per month.
Since Cloudways offers all the same features on all its plans, whether you went with DigitalOcean’s
lowest-priced plan or highest-priced from AWS, you can expect to get the following features: 24/7/365
customer support, 24/7 real-time monitoring, a free SSL certificate, one free managed migration,
unlimited application installs, automated backups, staging environment, advanced optimizations of cache,
auto-healing, regular security patching, HTTP/2 enabled servers, and SSH and SFTP access.
Although Cloudways doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee, there’s a 3-day free trial, and you won’t have
to enter your credit card details to make use of it.
As for payment methods, Cloudways accepts credit/debit cards (Visa, MasterCard, and American Express),
and PayPal (which is only available to customers that have upgraded their account from trial to full).
Premium Plan
Ease of use
Before getting started with Cloudways, we should report one major drawback. If you want
to register a new domain or use your email address on your domain, you’ll have to find an outside
solution since Cloudways doesn’t bother with any of that. To be fair, it does provide certain email
solutions as add-ons and a free Gmail SMTP add-on you can use to configure an external SMTP service to
send up to 99 emails in a day through automated SMTP delivery, and that’s about it.
Anyway, before purchasing any of Cloudways’ cloud services you’ll probably want to take advantage of the
3-day free trial, which you can do without entering any credit card details. What you need to provide is
your full name, your email address, a sturdy password, and to describe your professional self by picking
out two “ready-made” answers. Once your email is verified, you’ll proceed to Cloudways’ account user
interface where you can set up your server by choosing the cloud provider you want to try out, server
location, server size, and apps you want to use.
