Cloudways Review (2023) PROS & CONS – Managed Cloud Hosting For WordPress

Cloudways

8.7

Easy to use

8.5/10

Settings

9.0/10

Price

8.3/10

Overall quality

8.9/10

Pros

  • Vertical scaling
  • You can add as many website installations as you like
  • One-click deployment
  • High-performance servers
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Varnish and Memcached pre-installed
  • Free trial

Cons

  • Not for beginners
  • No root access, no server modifications
  • Most add-ons are extra paid (including email)
  • If you delete your server in a free trial, it will automatically end
  • You cannot use Plesk or cPanel

If you ever search for WordPress hosting provider for your website, you probably stumbled upon Cloudways. In this Cloudways review I will show you what you get with this popular, and reliable managed cloud hosting provider.

Cloud hosting is in trend. However, managing cloud server without technical expertise is a tough task. A small mistake can cost you thousands when the website is your prime source of income.

What if there was a middleman who would manage the cloud hosting for you? An excellent hosting platform provides users with the opportunity to scale and monitor server size observing network traffic on their website.

Nothing more soothes you and puts your mind at ease than realizing the fact that you can sit back and relax while your website related pesters are managed through a web hosting platform.

Cloud hosting is like a virtual server located in massive servers with very powerful resources. The main advantage of cloud servers is high availability through redundancy

This means that cloud servers will rarely go downEven if they do, they are restored very quickly. In a matter of seconds. You don’t even notice it, nor is there any data loss.

 

Cloudways Review – Why Cloudways?

Cloudways is a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), a classification of cloud computing service that offers a platform to customers.

Not just any platform, a platform through which a user can develop, run and manage web applications omitting out the complications related to building and maintaining the infrastructure of the website.

It is a web hosting platform that lets a user create a particular server. In our case, a WordPress server through which you can host multiple WordPress sites on a single server..

They are a platform-as-a-service solution ideal for bloggers, designers, and developers that want to host their own websites.

 

Cloudways managed hosting review.

 

In essence, Cloudways help you deploy, configure and manage multiple apps on multiple cloud servers, from a central dashboard. 

It secures your cloud server preventing it from malicious attempts. It takes regular backups of your cloud server and configures it with advanced caching tools to boost your website’s speed.

Basically, a huge number of real-world servers work together as one system to provide stable and secure hosting for virtual servers. This means higher performance at a lower cost with even greater web hosting flexibility.

 

Advanced Features

Cloudways offers customers a large number of features compared to other WordPress hosting platforms. With an interactive and user-friendly interface for server and application management, it provides individuals with a single click solution to all hosting problems.

There are many other renowned names in the cloud hosting market, but Cloudways features are indeed one of a kind. They actually in-tune their services to what they charge users for.

Through a simple Pay-as-you-Go model, you can scale your server size and monitor traffic on your WordPress website following your budget. Features are divided into two tabs: Server Management and Application management.

In server management, Cloudways offers the ability to control your server (start, stop or restart it). You can also use monitoring items, interact with services, configure settings, back up the server, etc.

With the application management option, you can choose from apps and add-ons to make your site more functional, check URLs and credentials, manage domains, installing an SSL certificate for free, restore backups, etc.

 

Fastest Performance

Cloudways provides customers exceptional server and application performance. The ThunderStack formula is not the only thing that adds to its performance.

The Platform further offers revolutionary SSD storage that supports blazing fast read-write requests which cut your website load-time in half and help you get high SERP results.

 

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.

 

Setting Up WordPress On Cloudways

When setting up your account all you have to do is select WordPress as your application of choice, and it will be automatically installed when you launch your server. This means you will not have to do steps for a manual WordPress installation.

There are basically four different types of WordPress applications. They are namely:

  • WordPress (Optimized WordPress)
  • WordPress Multisite (Optimized especially for Multisite)
  • WordPress with WooCommerce (Optimized especially for WooCommerce)
  • Clean (Vanilla WordPress, without Cloudways optimizations)

Once you have selected the desired application, choose the cloud provider of your liking. You can choose your own provider from an array of options like Amazon, EC2, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr.

If you’re new to the cloud hosting scenario, I would suggest you choose a cloud provider that offers a data-center nearest to your targeted audience.

The available provider options currently include:

  • DigitalOcean: SSD based storage with 8 data centers plus a 3 day free trial;
  • VULTR: SSD based storage with 17 data centers worldwide and a 3 day free trial;
  • Amazon EC2: configurable disk size, and 20 data centers;
  • Google Cloud: 18 data centers in 3 continents, designed specifically for large businesses or resource intensive websites;
  • Linode: SSD based storage with 11 data centers plus a 3 day free trial.

All five providers offer similar services with the biggest difference being price and reliability. DigitalOcean, Linode, and VULTR both offer nearly unlimited bandwidth for your sites at a lower cost, making them great options for developers on a budget.

Amazon and Google provide bandwidth on a pay-as-you-go basis, meaning your monthly charges will likely be higher, but you get a peace of mind that your site will never be throttled since you’re paying for every resource you use.

 

Cloudways hosting providers.

 

Cloudways also partnered with StackPath for providing CDN services. When it comes to choosing a server size, pick the plan you estimate will meet your needs.

You can choose the smallest option if you’re not sure which to choose and add more resources to your server at a later time as needed. Cloudways makes it easy to upgrade your server at any point from your server management screen.

Once you’ve set your provider and server size the last step is to select a server location. I recommend choosing a server close to your primary audience. So if most of your traffic comes from the USA then select a server located in that country.

 

choosing server size

 

Server Management Settings

As I already mentioned, features are divided into two tabs. Server management features and application management. Once the server is launched, you will have Server Tab. By clicking it, it will lead you to the “Server Management Interface”.

Every cloud uses dedicated resources. This way you can have full control of your server and can make tweaks to your server settings whenever you’d like.

There are lots of useful options in the “Server Manager” tab within your account that you can use to optimize your server. But I strongly recommend you only mess with settings if you know what you’re doing.

By default, your screen will be open to your Master Credentials. From here you can edit your username and password for the server, manage SSH keys, and view your IP address.

 

server management settings cloudways

 

Server Monitoring – This feature allows the user to consistently monitor the load on their cloud server based on the specification of free or unoccupied percentage.

This is the summary of your server resource consumption. For the demographic chart go to the details tab that helps users to monitor network traffic on their WordPress website. If the percentage is lower  for a long time, it means that you need to upgrade your server.

 

server monitoring cloudways

 

Manage Services – After Monitoring you’ll see a Manage Services tab where you can see the various core Cloudways services that keep your server running.

This includes Apache, Memcached, MySQL, NGINX, PHP-FPM, Varnish and optional application monitoring (via New Relic) services. From here you can restart your various services as well as purge your cache.

 

Cloudways manage services options.

 

Setting & Packages – Since you’re using WordPress you may need to adjust some of your server settings. All of these server settings and more can be found in the Setting and Packages tab. Just be sure to save your changes.

 

Cloudways settings and packages tab options.

 

Security – Security is critical for any website. Cloudways maintains firewalls and implements server patches regularly to help keep your installations safe.

They also monitor suspicious activity on your server. Be noted that if you have multiple failed login attempts because you forgot your password, you could get locked out of your account. One way to prevent this is to edit the Security settings within your server manager to whitelist your own IP address.

 

Cloudways security settings.

 

Vertical Scaling – This feature helps you set server size depending on network traffic on your website. Amplifying resources for your WordPress website becomes considerably easier and efficient.

 

hosting vertical scalling

 

Different Cloud providers offer different packages to scale server size. Depending on your Cloud provider you can also set your database and application disk size in accordance with your need for your WordPress website.

Servers can be scaled up or down based on storage, bandwidth, processor and RAM. If you need less, you can scale down. If you need more, scale back up. They are extremely flexible.

NOTE: DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr do not provide downscale. They both allow only upscale. To downgrade a server, you can clone it on a low-spec server.

 

Backups – The Backup feature in Cloudways server management is one of a kind. At Cloudways, you can set the backup frequency for all your WordPress servers. Additionally, Auto Managed Backups gives you a “Server Backup Now” option for backing up data instantly.

 

Cloudways backup options.

 

SMTP: This tab makes it possible for you to use a third party SMTP email service as a gateway to deliver emails from your server. Just enable the addon, then navigate to your Server Management Add-Ons section to add and configure your email provider.

 

Application Management Settings

From the top left go to “Applications”. Choose application. You will see many options for your WordPress website such as Access details, Domain Management, Cron Job Management, SSL certificate, Restore, Git Deployment, Application Settings, Add-ons and Migrator Tool.

 

Application Management Settings

 

Access Details – To launch your WordPress based website, visit the Access Details tab. It contains information related to your WordPress username and password.

Copy URL and paste it in the address bar of your web browser. It will lead you to the WordPress login page where you can put your username and password and login to your WordPress dashboard.

This provides all of the necessary information about your installs like your temp URL, Admin login credentials for your site and MySQL information.

 

Monitoring: As the name suggests, Monitoring allows you to keep track of the statistics and logs of your WordPress website. This section is further divided into two sections: Analytics and Logs.

 

Domain Management – When you first get started with your Cloudways server, your installations will be set up as staging sites on the main cloudwaysapps site. When you’re ready to move to a live site, you’ll need to go to the Domain Management tab to add your own domain name.

 

Cloudways domain management tab.

 

SSL Management – To add this security to your Cloudways hosted website simply go to the SSL Certificate section of your Application Manager and use the built-in tool to create a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.

 

Cloudways SSL management.

 

Alternatively, you can toggle the SSL option to upload your own custom certificate. For this option, you’ll need to create and download a Certificate Signing Request, create and purchase an SSL certificate via a third party service, then install it on your application.

 

Migrator Tools This tool will help you to move your application’s data and database from your old hosting to your new cloud server at Cloudways. This WordPress Migrator plugin helps you migrate the setting from your previous WordPress site to the freshly installed WordPress site on your cloud server.

 

Other Settings – If something ever happens to your website and you want to restore it to the way it was, just go to the Restore tab. From here you can select a backup from the drop down and then click the Restore button.

 

You can easily restore Cloudways backup.

 

If you’re a developer, you might also be interested in a few more of the built-in tools. The Cron Job Manager makes it easy to add scheduled tasks to your installation.

There’s also a tab for Deployment via Git that makes it easy to generate your SSH key needed to connect to your repository and an Application Settings tab with options for switching off Varnish caching during testing/staging.

 

Cloudways + WordPress/WooCommerce

Cloudways doesn’t have hosting packages specific to WordPress. Instead, you host WordPress to your dedicated cloud server.

Cloudways claim to have the fastest WordPress hosting guaranteed based on industry averages. They use VMAN technology (Varnish, Memcached, Apache, Nginx combination) for 50 percent faster loading times.

They also offer firewall protection and dedicated servers, and you can have as many WordPress sites and domains on your server as you like. As long you don’t surpass the limitations of your server and package.

With their WordPress managed hosting, you get a user-friendly platform, server managing, staging areas, managed backups, application freedom, server cloning to replicate a WordPress site, restore and rollback options and 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

It is worthwhile to note that Cloudways is the first ever hosting provider of Varnish powered WooCommerce hosting as a standalone app. This gives a major advantage concerning speed.

 

Is Cloudways Easy To Use?

While they have their own dashboard and user panel, Cloudways is still mostly meant for advanced users. Those new to creating websites would find themselves quickly overwhelmed and I don’t recommend Cloudways for the average blogger despite what the Cloudways marketing team claims. However, they have a walk-through that would be helpful for you to better understand Cloudways platform.

 

Cloudways Review PROS & CONS?

Here are some Cloudways advantages and disadvantages in my opinion:

PROS:

  • Vertical scaling
  • Server features
  • You can add as many website installations as you like
  • One-click deployment
  • High-performance servers
  • Faster server speeds than competitors
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Magento, WordPress, WooCommerce, Drupal, Joomla and Prestashop friendly
  • Varnish and Memcached pre-installed
  • Managed app with database backups and restore function
  • Free trial
  • Pay As You Go pricing plan

 

CONS:

  • Not for beginners
  • No root access, no server modifications (because they are managed)
  • Most add-ons are extra paid (including email)
  • If you delete your server in a free trial, it will automatically end. Even if you are within the free trial period
  • You are basically combining Cloudways service with another cloud provider and relying on two companies to keep your site up
  • You cannot use Plesk or cPanel. Cloudways provide their own platform to help you manage applications hosted on cloud servers

 

Cloudways Review Verdict

Choosing the right WordPress hosting and right cloud provider is not an easy task. When you launch a website, you have many concerns going through your mind. Safety and security are one of the things. Moreover, you are worried about managing the website and its performance.

One of the best features of Cloudways is that they offer a variety of cloud hosting options to suit any site’s budget or data needs.

You can choose from cloud servers starting as low as $10 per month, contact them for a custom built plan or choose one of the other server plans in the middle. All of their plans allow you to add as many website installations as you like.

PROMO DEAL: Coupon KASAREVIEWS for $15 FREE credit. While signing up use the mentioned coupon code. When you (if you) upgrade your account, you will get $15 credit.

Overall, I think Cloudways is the best choice for managed cloud hosting. It is ideal for those creating or designing customized websites and need to be more in control of the server.

But if you think that Cloudways is not the right choice for you, then you can check other options such as HostPapaGreenGeeks, 10Web, SiteGround, WP Engine, HostArmada or InMotion.

You can always start with shared hosting optimized for WordPress from some other hosting provider and migrate/upgrade to managed like Cloudways if the need arises. There is also an option of choosing one of the free hosting providers but I would not recommend that option if you intend to have a serious business website.


DISCLOSURE: Posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, I might get a small commission, without any extra cost to you. Read more about it here.

9 thoughts on “Cloudways Review (2023) PROS & CONS – Managed Cloud Hosting For WordPress”

  1. I wanted to move more clients to their service but after I created an account, guess what? You have to send an email to activate your account… okei, I have sent it BUT no answer and the “cherry on the cake” is that they canceled my account for no reason and without saying anything. So considering this practice, no answer, no question, just closed the account, I am definitely NOT recommending their service because they can do this anytime without notice risking your data.

  2. Great review as usual, does this mean I should buy the cPanel, I used to think that Cloudways offers cPanel with its services.

    1. Hi Ahmed,

      Cloudways does not provide cPanel. No, you don’t buy cPanel. Everything will be available for you through Cloudways account. Be noted, if you prefer to have cPanel, then don’t opt for Cloudways.

  3. Cloudways offers shared hardware plans from Vultr HF, Linode, DO,etc., which are not recommended by the vendors for production websites. You don’t get a dedicated CPU – just a single thread on a CPU, potentially sharing core with other threads. The vendors are aware that
    in a busy environment, you can only expect a fraction of a single CPU thread. Study Linode , DO, Vultr websites to find more details! You may be shocked to find that with Cloudways you are being served on cloud shared hosting that is sliced, packaged and sold to you under the VPS title.

    You will allocate about 0.5 GB for your dedicated Linux installation, leaving only 0.5 GB of RAM for your website. The CPU core on VultrHF is almost two times slower at processing MySQL queries compared to a LiteSpeed web server on AMD EPYC like NameHero. So you can pay $8 per month to NameHero to get 3 CPU / 3 GB RAM, or $10 per month to get 1 vCPU/ 0.5 GB RAM (after we take into account 0.5 GB reserved for Linux). NameHero gives you six times more resources and is cheaper. Is it consistent with the conclusion that Cloudways is the most cost-effective solution?

    For more technical details, visit https://www.webwhim.co.uk/how-to-select-a-wordpress-hosting-provider/#Cloudways.

  4. please can you explain to me which hosting and package are you using now ?? I will be grateful for this.
    your website speed is really amazing.

    1. Hi,

      I am using Cloudways Digital Ocean plan. You can choose whichever plan is enough for your needs. Even $10/month plan is amazing.

      1. Thank you very much. ❤
        Now I have transferred my website to Cloudways Digital Ocean plan, Now my website’s speed is better than before.

  5. Hey, thanks for the in depth review. I’ve used Cloudways and it’s one of the best managed cloud hosting service out there.

    Hope I don’t sound like a Grammar nazi, but there are a few errors in the writing and was a little throwing off while reading. If you want, I could point them out to you.

    1. Hey Sunny,

      Glad you liked the review. For grammar and spelling checks I use Grammarly as English is not my native language.

      It could happen that Grammarly didn’t recognize all mistakes. But if any I am sure only a few tiny mistakes.

      Also after publishing, I have made few corrections so maybe you see cached version as I use WP Rocket.

      But sure, feel free to point mistakes. It doesn’t matter if there are grammar or wrong information stated. I like hearing praise as well as criticism.

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