Cloudways Full Review: A Smooth Cloud Hosting
Cloudways came to the market with a dedicated team of experts, industry-leading infrastructure, and many hosting solutions that are a perfect fit for individuals, teams, and businesses. Its headquarter is based in Malta, Europe with 62 data centers, and more than 600,000 hosted websites.
If you are leading a growing business or starting from scratch, Cloudways offers what you need to grow fast and elegant. You can start your free trial and no credit cards required.
But this is just the beginning! Let's head off to the features, plans, price, and more in detail.
Pros
Cons
Quick Stats
Cloudways has been on the market for more than 11 years, and since then, it has been offering multiple managed cloud hosting services.
Its services are a great option, especially for users with few or no technical skills, thanks to the managed security, automated backups, 24/7 real-time monitoring, and customer support experts who are available around the clock.
Also, Cloudways offers cloud hosting solutions, which leaves no worries regarding loading times and website resources. Let's get started with the plans and their features in detail.
Cloudways Plans and Price
Cloudways offers WordPress plans that are suitable for individuals, businesses: (small and medium), and online stores. Many other hosting services offer plans at a lower price than Cloudways, but let's remember that all Cloudways plans are managed hosting, which is normally higher than unmanaged hosting services.
If you are not pretty sure about managed hosting, let's tell you briefly about it. It is a type of hosting that gives you peace of mind regarding your website resources, technical issues, security, performance, global data centers, and dedicated customer support. When choosing Managed hosting, you don't have to worry about any of the previously mentioned issues, allowing you to pour all your attention into growing your business.
Now, let's see what you will get with each plan and which one to choose according to your needs.
The comparison table below will help you make up your mind:
| Plan 1 | Plan 2 | Plan 3 | Plan 4 | Plan 5 | Plan 6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RAM | 1GB | 2GB | 4GB | 8GB | 16GB | 32GB |
| Core processor | 1 Core | 1 Core | 2 Core | 4 Core | 6 Core | 8 Core |
| Storage | 25GB | 50GB | 80GB | 160GB | 320GB | 640GB |
| Bandwidth | 1TB | 2TB | 4TB | 5TB | 6TB | 7TB |
| 24/7 Support | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Free SSL | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Free migration | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Auto healing | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| CDN add-on | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included |
|
Unlimited application |
Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| 24/7 Real-time monitoring |
Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Automated backups | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included | Included |
| Price per month | $10 | $22 | $42 | $80 | $135 | $230 |
Choose from the top IaaS cloud providers, including DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, Vultr, and Linode. The prices of the plans above are given for hosting on the Digital Ocean cloud service, and they vary when choosing other cloud services.
For instance, the price starts at $12/month for Linode, $11/month for Vultr, $36.51/month for AWS, and $33.18/month for Google Cloud.
The bad news is that Cloudways doesn't offer a money-back guarantee. Instead, you can try their services for 3-day due to their free trial, and you don't have to provide any credit card information. If you want to delete your account, it is pretty simple and won't take a minute, sign in and go to the "my account" sign. From the drop-down list, then choose "Cancel Account."
Payment methods
Cloudways allows paying via the following methods:
- Visa
- Mastercard
- American Express
- PayPal (Only available for customers who have upgraded the account)
Ease of Use
Cloudways supports the 1-click installation, and all can be deployed with few minutes. The control panel is divided into sections, including monitoring, settings, managing services, security, scaling, master credentials, and backups.
With Cloudways, you don't have to solve your technical issues or troubleshoot yourself, considering that all plans come with an auto-healing feature to ensure that your website is never down.
Speaking of ease-of-use, let's not forget to mention the 24/7 dedicated customer support, who are always ready to explain and solve any arising problems.
Also, the migration process won't be rocket science with Cloudways, regarding that your website is hosted on multiple servers, making it easy and fast to set up.
Customer Support
Cloudways offers support via:
- Live chat (24/7)
- Tickets
- Guides and blogs
- Phone support (you must fill out a form to request a phone call)
You can get dedicated and personal support as an add-on feature, including Advanced and Premium customer support.
Advanced and Premium customer support options provide the following:
- Priority support by senior engineers
- Plugin troubleshooting
- Performance optimization
- Server error investigation
- Proactive monitoring
- 24/7 phone support with senior engineers
- Private slack channel
- Dedicated account manager
It sounds like a great option so far, but you might change your mind if you know the price for these extra support options, which starts at $100 and goes up to $500 per month for the Premium ones.
Your plan is available at a low price!
Cloudways Security
Cloudways makes sure that your hosting experience is secured and safe by offering the following security features:
-
SSL Certificate (Secure Socket Layer)
SSL certificate ensures that all in-and-out going data traffic on your website is encrypted and secure. This feature is important, especially for eCommerce websites with sensitive data like credit card credentials and account numbers. It also raises your website's chances on Google search since Google differentiates websites with SSL certificates as secure.
-
Site backups
Cloudways provides all plans with automated backups for users which means, your website structure and data remain safely stored.
-
Dedicated firewall
Cloudways offer dedicated firewalls with all WooCommerce plans to protect your server against phishing, IP spoofing, and other data theft attempts.
A limited offer is waiting for you!
Load Times, Reliability, and Features
Cloudways offers 99.99% uptime, which ensures a fast webpage loading. Also, Cloudways hosts all websites on a cloud of servers, which means that your website will never run out of resources. With 62 data centers distributed around the globe, your website will always stay up and fast.
Features
What features will you get with all plans? Let's list them out for you:
- A free SSL certificate
- Automated backups
- Real-time monitoring
- Auto-healing servers
- 24/7 customer support
- Built-in CDN
- All PHP apps supported
- 5 cloud providers
- Unlimited applications
- Free migration
Server Location
Cloudways servers are found in the USA, France, Germany, Singapore, Ireland, England, Canada, Brazil, Netherland, Japan, Korea, Australia, India, China, Sweden, and Belgium.
If you want your website hosted somewhere else, you can check out HostGator or Hostinger.
E-commerce
The most popular WooCommerce plan offered by Cloudways is packed with 4GB RAM, 2 core processors, 80GB storage, and 4TB bandwidth; all are available for $42 per month.
Cloudways WooCommerce plans have all features included with WordPress plans plus the following:
- Team Management
- Staging environment
- Dedicated firewalls
- Security patching
- Advanced caches
Final Verdict
Cloudways offers multiple managed cloud hosting services that start at $10 per month. All plans are packed with many inviting features like a free SSL certificate, 24/7 customer support, automated backups, and auto-healing servers. You can also choose your cloud from 5 providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Linode, Digital Ocean, and Vultr).