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Cloudways Reviews: 4.7/5 — Highly Rated
Cloudways is a managed hosting provider that focuses on performance and simplicity. Whether you need simple server and application launches, or ongoing server maintenance, Couldways is built to simplify the whole process of server management to support business growth thanks to its powerful suite of tools and services that can help manage your eCommerce stores and business sites. It also underscores user options–from cloud providers and hosting.
| Capabilities |
API
CLI
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
Enterprise
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
Cloudways Pros and Cons
- Option to add as many website installations as you want
- Server speed is faster than competition
- Pay as you go pricing plan
- Managed app option with database backups
- No root access or server modifications
- Add ons require additional cost
- Inability to use Plesk or cPanel
Cloudways includes unlimited websites and unlimited visits on every plan, starting at $14 a month. That is the whole proposition, and it is a genuine outlier. Kinsta’s entry plan is $35 a month for one WordPress install with 20 GB of bandwidth; Cloudways’ $14 Micro server carries no install cap at all and 1 TB of transfer. You are renting a server rather than buying licensed slots, and the difference in what that gets you is substantial.
- What it is: Managed cloud hosting for WordPress, Magento, Laravel and PHP, on your choice of cloud provider.
- Best for: Agencies and developers hosting many sites who want managed infrastructure without per-site licensing.
- Pricing: From $14 a month for 1 GB RAM, rising to $99 for 8 GB. Verified July 2026.
- The honest catch: Server resources are the real limit — unlimited sites still share one server’s RAM.
What Is Cloudways?
Cloudways is a managed hosting layer that sits on top of cloud providers rather than running its own metal. You choose the provider and the server type — Basic, General Purpose or CPU Optimized; Standard or Premium — and Cloudways manages the stack, now branded Lightning Stack.
Two product lines sit side by side: Cloudways Flexible, the customisable managed hosting reviewed here, and Cloudways Autonomous, a fully managed autoscaling WordPress product for high-traffic ecommerce and LMS sites.
There is a free trial with no credit card required.
How Cloudways Works
- Server size is the meter — RAM, vCPU, storage and bandwidth.
- Websites and visits are unlimited on every plan.
- Billing is hourly, with a monthly figure shown alongside.
- Offsite backup storage costs $0.033 per GB per server.
- You choose the cloud provider and server class.
- All listed prices exclude tax.
Cloudways Pricing
Captured from Cloudways’ pricing page in July 2026 in US dollars, on DigitalOcean Standard servers.
| Plan | Monthly | Hourly | RAM | vCPU | Storage | Bandwidth | Per GB RAM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Micro | $14 | $0.0208 | 1 GB | 1 | 25 GB NVMe | 1 TB | $14.00 |
| Small | $28 | $0.0417 | 2 GB | 1 | 50 GB NVMe | 2 TB | $14.00 |
| Medium | $54 | $0.0804 | 4 GB | 2 | 80 GB NVMe | 4 TB | $13.50 |
| Large | $99 | $0.1473 | 8 GB | 4 | 160 GB NVMe | 5 TB | $12.38 |
Every plan: Lightning Stack, unlimited visits, unlimited websites.
What actually decides your cost:
- Unlimited websites is the reason to be here. Managed WordPress hosts almost universally meter installs — Kinsta allows one at $35 a month and forty at $450. Cloudways allows as many as your server can run, at $14. For an agency with twenty small client sites, that difference is the entire business case.
- The real constraint moves from licences to resources. Unlimited sites on 1 GB of RAM is unlimited in the licensing sense only. What you are actually buying is a server, and twenty WordPress sites on a Micro will perform accordingly. Size by expected load, not by site count.
- The volume discount is real but modest. Cost per GB of RAM runs $14.00, $14.00, $13.50 and $12.38 across the four sizes — about 12% better at the top than the bottom, and no improvement at all from Micro to Small. Compare that with the flat-rate hosts reviewed here, where the per-unit price never moves at any size.
- Check how the hourly rate resolves against a full month. The published hourly figures correspond to the monthly price divided by 672 hours, a 28-day month — $0.0208 × 672 is $13.98, and the same holds for all four sizes. A 30-day month is 720 hours and a 31-day month 744, so confirm with Cloudways whether the monthly figure is a cap or whether a full month bills above it.
- Backups are an add-on. Offsite backup storage is charged at $0.033 per GB per server. On a 160 GB Large server that is a small but non-zero line, and it is separate from the storage included in the plan.
- Prices exclude tax, which the page states plainly. For EU buyers that is a meaningful addition to compare against gross-quoting competitors.
Who Should Use Cloudways
- Agencies hosting client sites. The clearest case — one server, many sites, no per-install licence.
- Developers running multiple projects. Laravel, Magento and PHP alongside WordPress on the same platform.
- Businesses wanting cloud choice. Pick the provider and server class rather than accepting one stack.
- Anyone testing before committing. A free trial with no credit card.
It fits poorly for people who want one high-performance site with dedicated support, where Kinsta or WP Engine invest more per site; for teams wanting a fully hands-off product, which is what Cloudways Autonomous exists for; and for buyers who need certainty on monthly cost before understanding hourly billing.
Honest Pros and Cons
Strengths
- Unlimited websites and unlimited visits on every plan, from $14.
- 1 TB of transfer bandwidth even on the entry server.
- Choice of cloud provider and server class.
- NVMe storage across the range.
- A free trial with no credit card.
- A real, if modest, volume discount — 12% better per GB at the top.
Limitations
- Unlimited sites still share one server’s RAM.
- No per-GB improvement from Micro to Small.
- Offsite backups cost $0.033 per GB on top.
- Hourly rates imply a 28-day month — confirm whether monthly is a cap.
- Prices exclude tax.
- Support and tuning are lighter than dedicated managed-WordPress hosts.
Cloudways Alternatives and How It Compares
- Kinsta and WP Engine are the premium managed-WordPress hosts, metering installs but investing more per site.
- Flywheel targets designers and agencies with a similar philosophy to Kinsta.
- SiteGround and A2 Hosting sit in the mid-market with simpler shared plans.
- Hostinger and DreamHost compete at the budget end.
- Liquid Web offers managed VPS and dedicated infrastructure.
- DigitalOcean directly, if you are willing to manage the stack yourself.
For a broader survey, browse our cloud hosting directory.
The Verdict
Cloudways answers a question the managed-WordPress market mostly refuses to: what if you just rented a server and put as many sites on it as it could handle? Unlimited websites and unlimited visits on every plan, starting at $14 a month with 1 TB of transfer, is a fundamentally different proposition from hosts that license installs. Against Kinsta’s $35 entry plan for a single WordPress site with 20 GB of bandwidth, the contrast is stark — and for an agency carrying twenty small client sites, it is the whole argument.
The honest counterweight is that “unlimited” describes licensing, not physics. Twenty sites on a 1 GB Micro server will perform like twenty sites on a 1 GB server, and the skill Cloudways asks of you is sizing by real load rather than by site count. That is a fair trade for the price, but it does move a responsibility onto you that premium managed hosts absorb — which is also why their per-site investment, support depth and tuning tend to be greater.
Two commercial details to settle before you commit. The published hourly rates work out to the monthly price divided by 672 hours — a 28-day month — so $0.0208 × 672 gives $13.98 against the $14 headline, and the same relationship holds at every size. Real months run 720 to 744 hours, so ask Cloudways directly whether the monthly figure is a cap or whether a full month bills above it. And offsite backup storage is $0.033 per GB per server, separate from the NVMe storage in the plan, with all prices excluding tax. The volume discount, meanwhile, is modest but genuine: $14.00 per GB of RAM at Micro and Small, falling to $12.38 at Large — roughly 12%, which is more than several flat-rate competitors offer at any size.
FAQ
How much does Cloudways cost?
Captured in July 2026 in US dollars on DigitalOcean Standard servers, excluding tax: Micro $14 a month for 1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 25 GB NVMe storage and 1 TB bandwidth; Small $28 for 2 GB; Medium $54 for 4 GB; and Large $99 for 8 GB. Every plan includes unlimited websites and unlimited visits. Offsite backup storage costs an additional $0.033 per GB per server.
Does Cloudways limit how many websites I can host?
No. Unlimited websites and unlimited visits appear on every plan, including the $14 Micro server. The practical limit is server resources rather than licensing — the sites you host share the RAM, CPU and storage of the plan you buy — so size the server by expected traffic and application load rather than by how many sites you intend to run.
Is Cloudways billed hourly or monthly?
Both figures appear. Each plan shows a monthly price and an hourly rate, and the hourly rate corresponds to the monthly price divided by 672 hours — a 28-day month. Since real months run 720 to 744 hours, it is worth confirming with Cloudways whether the monthly figure acts as a cap or whether a full month of hourly billing can exceed it.
Cloudways or Kinsta?
They solve different problems. Cloudways rents you a managed server with unlimited sites from $14 a month, putting resource-sizing in your hands. Kinsta licenses WordPress installs — one at $35, forty at $450 — with more per-site tuning, support and infrastructure investment. Choose Cloudways for many small sites at low cost, and Kinsta for fewer sites where performance and support matter more than price per site.
Does Cloudways include backups?
Not offsite ones at no charge. The pricing page notes that “$0.033/GB per server will be applied for offsite backup storage”, so backup retention is a separate usage-based line on top of the plan. The NVMe storage listed against each plan — 25 GB to 160 GB — is the server’s own disk rather than backup capacity.
Compare Cloudways with other popular tools in the same category.
My favorite thing about Cloudways is that it allows you to choose your server resources from multiple providers and then configure them. It takes all the pain out of configuring it and behaves like a managed hosting service once set up.
Two things - relatively small in the larger scheme of things. Firstly, server/data corruption can happen, and I've had this happen more than once. Backups are in place, but it took me reaching out to support to get it fixed (rather than being picked up by their monitoring systems. Support is okay, but a bit disappointing compared to the big managed hosting providers (WPEngine, Kinsta). The second thing is that root/sudo access to the server isn't given - I understand why, but it's still somewhat frustrating.
Cloudways fills a space between shared hosting, managed hosting and running your own server configuration which is really good to have access to and to be able to recommend as a solution for sites of all sizes. I use a basic Cloudways server for several hobby projects; I've used Cloudways for very active WooCommerce stores and everything in between.
Quick and easy, user-friendly website. No need to dig anywhere deep t find how to make things work. Plus, there are all articles on how to make things work out. Step by step
Unfortunately, the price is too high for this service. Wish there would be more flexibility in choosing servers with great for each customer.
I haven't had any problems with cloudways so far. Hard to answer this question.
It is fairly easy to use, there are several data center options, and they manage everything so you just need to worry about the more beginner/intermediate things but not running or patching servers or services. Cost/performance seems better than other options out there--benefit of VPS and managed host all in one.
I feel like the console is a little slow and I would like the opportunity for premium support options. The billing is incremental based on use but it can be hard to estimate what it will all cost for backups or other things.
Lower cost managed service where you get VPS speed. I am happy that I do not have to do a whole lot to make stuff work and that they abstract enough away but allow me to change almost everything I'd ever want to whilst they provide reasonable defaults to get started from.
Facilidade de uso dos recursos e um bom suporte
Falta de alterar apenas CPU ou RAM individualmente
nenhuma
Cloudways is super fast hosting with an easy control panel. I don't need to worry and technical knowledge. I personally like it and its instant(mostly) support.
Its pricing is just double than original provider's price. It is suitable for small cloud servers but more expensive for big servers.
Cloudways made hosting management simplified. I don't need to manage web hosting, update panel and PHP updates, Cloudways manage it.
Ottimo servizio, buona anche l'assistenza via chat
A volte il sito è down e poi risulta un po' complicato rimetterlo online
la velocità del sito e l'apertura delle singole pagine
Cloudways help in increasing the speed of our site to a great extent and help in reducing the bounce rate upon the site. We are working with the WordPress CMS installed on the Digital Ocean server. Also, customer support is too much active and efficient in resolving any type of technical issue.
Cloudways does not provide a Control panel like a major shared hosting company provides. The user interface for a new individual is little complicated to navigate thing within this.
While using this platform we are able to successfully able to host our e-commerce site, which is opening too fast as compared to the shared hosting sites and this helps in increasing the overall sales and revenue for us.
The best I like about this platform is its customer service. Also, it offers is hosting plans from different servers and from different locations of the world at affordable prices.
The user interface provided by the cloudways is not user-friendly as compared to Cpanel provided by the other shared hosting companies. But the customer resolves this drawback by offering their best services to manage all the things in setup.
With Cloudways we hosted our e-commerce website and which is working fine and opening up with great speed, which is very essential for an eCommerce site to get more conversions.
They offer a good service, a bit expensive, but it saves you from the hassle of having to do deal directly with linode / digital ocean, etc. if you are not a technical person or you simply don't have time for that. The administration panel is intuitive and straightforward.
The only thing that annoyed me was the verification process after sign up.
I've tried to solve some problems with my current host and move my clients to them.
Very easy to set up Wordpress or php hosting on multiple different cloud providers. Easy to use interface for making advanced changes. Very easy to use compared to other WP hosting.
Api documentation leaves much to be desired. Support could also be better. I don't love how to server is disabled for a bit while things like ssl are installed.
Hosting Wordpress sites. Love the ability to spin up tiny cheap servers for testing.
A lot of powerful features and options Good value per performance Customer support replies fast
Too geeky for averages users. You just don't know what to do with all those options. Customer support is not always helpful.
I needed to upgrade my previous hosting due to increased traffic. Indeed, I have much more resources now for only a slightly higher price.
Their support is really good. They maintain experienced and attentive staff.
They only charge with US account, They dont take fees in other countries currency.
They have extra protection cover for the websites. Our website is protected from Hackers.
What I like about Cloudways is its pay-as-you-go payment structure, which is a particularly good approach for businesses on a tight budget. They have 24/7 customer support which makes sure to be available at all times by delivering quality service and very good response speeds. The panel control is user-friendly, without complicated features which allows you to work on it effectively and productively. It allows you to choose from five of the best Cloud Hosting providers on the market without the need to create accounts as Cloudways will take care of everything for you.
Their customer support did not produce the solutions I expected to my problems for a couple of thinks, first of all some answers were very technical or lacked a good explanation and follow up of the issue since at times they were in a hurry to close the ticket when i didn't have a proper solution, another thing is that tickets take a long time to resolve so if you want to fix a problem quickly, you might have to wait longer than you expected.
Because it's software designed to pay for what you consume allows companies like mine with a tight budget to keep it that same and make us more efficient in the expenses we make. Because we have websites made in WordPress this software offers a lot of features for the solution and construction of this CMS and others like Drupal and Joomla. Its integration levels are great as it allows you to install endless applications on your platform, thus scaling in functionality and productivity.
I love the ability to have different servers and different apps that are isolated from each other, even on the same server. The staging environment setup is a God-send and makes it easier to test changes and updates on a website without messing up the live version, saving us and our clients the downtime for incompatible updates and rollbacks.
Support is from overseas, so they don't always get the issues I'm trying to solve on the first time. So you have to explain carefully to make sure they understand your problem sometimes. Also when trying to restore a backup, sometimes it just didn't work no matter what I tried, so I had to contact support to do it for me. We did have enough disk space at the time, so it wasn't that. Not the best of workflows for us.
It has saved us lots of time on backup, maintenance, security, updates and setup tasks for our clients' websites compared to the CPanel like solution we use to work with. It also made our sites perform way better under higher loads.
I like feeling free of cpanel. I loathe cpanel. Cloudways has its own control panel and once I got used to the way it's set up and its minimalism, I felt very comfortable. It's very easy to quickly and inexpensively vertically scale servers. For the power and speed, it's quite inexpensive and I've had zero downtime. Support is pretty good now that it's being offered 24/7. All plans include a very fast and super-cheap CDN plus Varnish. Cloudways also offers its own caching plugin for WordPress which is simple and efficient. So far, staging has worked like a charm. I can set up a testing server very quickly, tinker with it, and then delete it without paying for a whole month. Nice. Pay as you go, in other words.
I had some trouble logging into my servers via sftp but support helped me figure it out. I keep getting annoying notices from the CDN and have to contact support to sort it out. Still don't know what that's about. There's no way to manually change the email address associated with the account without contacting support. There's no option to add team members as Flywheel allows. I don't like having to give out my own login credentials. Security risk.
I wanted to get away from cpanel and all the upsells on Siteground and I wanted to do it cheaply. All my personal projects are hosted on Cloudways and my portfolio site. I can spin up servers to test and demo for my clients and then delete them once I'm finished.
Cloudways is a good option to manage in a simplified way your websites in the biggest cloud hosting companies out there, like Amazon, Google, Vultr and Digital Ocean. If you want to host your sites in one of these companies for money or performance purposes, Cloudways can simplify setup and management for the fee they charge.
I had problems with performance in Digital Ocean servers and the support was not effective enough. Some options in the management of the servers lack a more complete documentation.
All my Wordpress sites (personal, companies and clients) are hosted in Digital Ocean and Vultr through Cloudways. It simplifies cloud hosting a lot.
Email and chat based help is responsive, service runs well, easy setup and easy management via web tools.
payments can be a bit tricky with some credit cards since charges show as international from Malta. Paypal is by far the easiest way to pay on your account.
Managed cloud servers that are optimized for the most common scripts like Wordpress.
all proble solve and i am happy with cloudways they listan my issue and solve
everything is right and cloudways solve my all issue
thanks cloudways team solving my issue and fix major problem
Fast hosting service. Easily I can integrate it with other cloud providers and it does not effect our work. User interface is easy, so I don't need technical experties for managing my CMS websites in the cloud.
Using cloudways speed of our websites is increased. My CMS website works fine even in the occasional high traffic. But it lacks some of advance feature.
Content delivery through our CMS website become very smooth after shifting it into cloudways. Hosting service of cloudways is very good. Their customer service is good. I can easily manage my server becuse of it.
Managed Services: Cloudways provides a convenient managed hosting solution where they take care of server maintenance, security, and updates. This allows me to concentrate on my clients applications. Performance Optimization: Cloudways algo provide automatic performance optimization features like caching, CDN integration, and server-level optimizations. These enhancements can significantly boost the speed and performance of my clients website, and applications application.
Dependency on Cloudways: Chossing Cloudways as primary hosting platform sometime leads to difficulties in transitioning to another provider because of its proprietary nature. Resource Restrictions: There could be certain resource limitations, such as maximum RAM, storage, or bandwidth. These restrictions might not be suitable for high-traffic websites or resource-intensive applications.
Cloudways simplified cloud management by providing an easy-to-use platform. It removed the need for complex server setups, saving us time and making cloud hosting accessible to more people. With Cloudways' managed services, we no longer worry about routine server maintenance and updates. It automatically takes care of these tasks, keeping our servers up-to-date and secure. This saved us valuable time, which we can now focus on other tasks. Cloudways optimized our website and application performance with features like caching, CDN integration, and server-level tweaks. This resulted in faster loading times and improved user experiences, solving our performance issues. Cloudways' managed security measures protected our data and applications. With regular security updates, firewall protection, and intrusion detection systems, we felt more secure and confident in our online operations. It helped us avoid security breaches and potential disasters.
Like the ease of setting up a wordpress website and I like the backups and
Pricing is strong compared to other solutions.
easy wordpress setup, no hassle just deploy
I really liked their Dashboard, which is too easy to use. managing a cloud can never be so simple. And there recent integration with cloudflare enterprise is also really nice.
Recently, cloudways increased their pricing making their plan a bit costlier. Their old tier were really good. and one thing which I felt missing is the Open LiteSpeed integration
We wanted to have a cloud hosting for our blog, but managing a cloud is extremely difficult, especially when we don't know about managing cloud. Cloudways make it super easy even for the noobs to manage a cloud like a pro. their easy to use Dashboard is really good.
Easily scalable and fast platform. The UI is also great
I do not like that there are many restrictions, restrictions are fine but I want to define them myself.
Cloudways delivers us a quick setup to start developping
Their support, and the flexibility of the cloud portal
it is more expensive than going direct, but they do provide a more friendly interface
Provides integrated cloud solutions to managing production and staging environments
The dashboard is straight forward, and it is simple to manage staging and certificates. I appreciate the quick setup for additional servers - such as for WordPress that have the latest updates already installed and a handful of useful plugins. Also, that bloatware is avoided.
I initially found some of the permissions setup confusing, but the documentation contained all I needed to know to configure our staging site access. I would also like more information about relevant new technologies as they are released.
Cloudways helps us by providing web hosting for our sites. It takes care of WordPress hosting, caching, PHP versions, and SQL database. Having them all setup and managed together is really convenient. I also trust that they are running securely.
It's awesome and scaling servers is easy. I love the cost, despite the recent rise.
1. Not having any ability to control the URL structure of new sites 2. Not having ANY way to control settings for new sites... NO ONE WANTS THE VARNISH CACHE ON BY DEFAULT!!! 3. No way to preload themes and plugins for wordpress installs 4. The new crappy domain manager, it takes a lot of extra clicks 5. Server SMTP settings are broken and never worked. Support coudln't get it to work, and it doesn't give all the needed settings 6. Digital Oceon buying Cloudways, now they are going to pritize their own servers with extra features
It's easy to scale a server and actually choose the resources the server has. Transparency is amazing.
Ease of use. A lot of otherwise complicated tasks are very simplified. Like changing php version ie.
When you have a (hobby) site wit low traffic but more than 25GB of data the starting price (for DO) is a bit to steep.
An easy way to set up WP sites for low or non paying clients.
VPS discounts. Eu ui fazer inscrição em uma VPS e vi lá a chance de ganhar um desconto.
Anything. I just don't know much. Precio conhecer mais!
What problems is Cloudways solving and how is that benefiting you?
The host speed is overall good. Bot protection and other necessary features for a host. The UI for server and app control is good. I always had near instant live chat when I needed it.
I continue to have unexplained issues. I didn't always receive meaningful support. There have been a few times when my site had some issues with reverting to the previous page and setting revisions, always seemingly front-end issues, always with the provided Breeze caching enabled (but other plugins as well). No mailbox is included for email.
I needed a reliable and well-affordable host that could give an e-commerce level at a reasonable cost. As someone re-building an old legacy age website, I am thankful I got a seemingly modernized host.
Cloudways' web interface is straightforward to use and understand. You can create a site in just a few clicks, and creating staging applications is a breeze.
Cloudways seems to be in an awkward position between cheap shared hosting services and more expensive PaaS hosts. For example, you have to estimate which server size your website needs, which can be tricky to get right. If it's too small, your application will slow down and crash. If it's too large, you are paying for more than you need. The web interface, while pretty robust, is missing some features.
I was able to move a very low traffic Drupal site to Cloudways without much difficulty. This is saving me hundreds of dollars a year on hosting costs.