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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.
I like that it separates server solutions from application solutions.
It will be nice to have an easier email solution
Creating WordPress instances with ease
I like the ease of use and flexibility. The fact that they have staging in place and that I can migrate to another server from another cloud provider should the need arise give me peace of mind.
Certain settings may require a bit of digging and can take a bit of getting used to. That said the same can be said for other web hosts.
Hosting several websites and keeping everything backed up and up to date is a breeze, especially for wordpress users. Also, my websites load faster than ever before which is critical in this day and age.
Cloudways lets you host whatever you want on your resources. You can buy whatever resources you want and they will happily assist you in setting up how many ever applications you want on it. Compared to other managed hosting providers, they let you pick your resources and they give you a lot of free bandwidth and a lot of hosting providers to choose from.
The only downside to Cloudways is that when you are paying monthly for a server or virtual machine, you don't get root access. If there could be an option to get root access for maybe a few cents to a dollar more every month, then it would be just great. It would allow people like me to install software like Plesk to manage my hosting.
Cloudways is helping me with WordPress hosting. On my old hosting provider, there was very limited cPanel, but here there is a custom dashboard that has pretty much everything I need. Like I mentioned before, they don't limit the amount of websites or applications you can install on one server, which is a really great feature.
It is really easy to do websites backups (wonderfull) - No no wordpress plugin requerid. To learn how to use it strongly recommend the course "Wordpress Rapido y Furioso" from Mario Carvajal https://www.mariocarvajal.com/wordpress-rapido-y-furioso/
I'm not sure yet. But i'll be using it :)
I'm creating websites and it easy greatfull way to have hosting services in an easy way. I don't have to call an agent to do many things
Been with cloudways since Oct 21 and moved away from Go Daddy. what a great move this turned out to be. My only regret is I didn't do it before. didnt know about cloudways before. Apart from the systems being easy to use, for someone who is not that technical, their support is brilliant. Instead of trying to upsell like go daddy support does cloudways actually help you solve the problem
I can't think of anything. I am sure there must be some things but...
Hosting without resource issues. Hosting without being hacked EVERY DAY
The best I like with Cloudways is that we can choose any server within this platform as per our requirements and budget, we are using a 2GB digital ocean server for our e-commerce site and it gives a great speed to our site.
With the Cloudways platform, the only dislike is that its user panel is not user-friendly, and managing it at the beginning is not easy, but we can take the help of the support team to resolve the issue.
With the use of this platform, we observed that the speed of our site increased to a great extent and this leads to a lower bounce rate and a high rate of conversion. This helps in increasing the revenue for our business.
The support is incredbible and the ease to spin up new servers is so easy.
a little learning curve , as you get familiar with the products
web hosting for multiple sites. easy to pay for one server and dial up the specs for what you need for the sites
The best about Cloudways is that it offers high-performing speed servers at low prices, also the customer support team of Cloudway is great to resolve your all technical issues.
With Cloudways there is nothing to dislike with this right now, we are satisfied with its services
We notice huge increased performance in our website speed and now our site is opening within 3 sec. Now the bounce rate has decreased to a great extent and conversions increased.
Ease of use and flexibility to create and clone environments.
Each server can only have one PHP version, that is, the PHP version is shared by all applications on the server.
My developers no longer depend on a team of sysadmins.
- Wonderful support, never let me down. - Variety of cloud providers, no bias! - Creating an app takes minutes and multiple apps work seamlessly - Setting up staging, clones in a few clicks - Breeze, Varnish Cache, Performance tweaks out of the box - Your servers, easy access via SSH
- the dashboard can be better - autoscaling options are not available - option to deploy scaled Wordpress with load balancer is not available or not obviously available
- deploying performant woocommerce web applications
The best about Cloudways is that it offers lots of high-speed server option to host your site as per your requirement along with various locations of the servers. The customer support is well trained and capable of resolving your issues in few minutes.
The only dislike about cloudways is that it does not provide a control panel and its user interface is a little complicated to the new users, but its customer support team assist in all the issues while making live your site.
With Cloudways we have hosted our e-commerce site, which is opening too fast as compared to shared hosting, now with the help of this hosting our site is opening in 3 seconds and finally, it prevent bounce rate upon our site which usually occurs due to time delay in hosting.
I can deploy a new website or application in two minutes, without having to do much thinking. I mainly work with Wordpress which is well supported, but deploying a simple PHP app is just as easy. If something isn't easy, tech support have you covered every time, and within a minute or two. They have often done their best to help with issues that are technically out of scope, so I've learned a lot from them.
The only downside I have found to date is the partial support of Python, but I'm still investigating to find out how good or not the support really is.
Migrating all my sites over was super-easy with their Wordpress migrator - it took me an afternoon to migrate and test 14 sites. The main benefit is speed, partly due to having proper cloud infrastructure and a choice of data centers, partly down to Varnish. Speed has had a knock-on effect on SEO and rankings for all my clients. I have also been able to stop managing all my own backups and leave it to Cloudways to handle it.
The best about the Cloudways platform is that it offers you a lot of server options with various locations to host your website, we can choose the server and size as per our requirement. Also, the speed of the server within cloudways is too good as compared to shared web hosting.
The thing I didn't like with Cloudways is the user interface, it is complicated for a beginner, but later on, they may get the familiar overall interface of the Cloudways and can easily maintain the server.
With the Cloudways platform, we have selected the Digital Ocean Bangalore server to host our E-commerce site, and this server helps us to increase the speed of our site and helps us in increasing the conversions on our site.
I like they make WordPress hosting quite simple and also blazing speedy when compared with shared web hosting. I additionally really like their email add-on by using Rackspace. I've been utilizing their services for several WordPress websites
The pricing plans are higher priced as compared to standard shared web hosting but you undoubtedly find more overall performance and great customer support any time of the day.
Cloudways provides trustworthy as well as speedy web hosting services eventually. Their particular help support is additionally great when you have any kind of technical troubles. This platform helps us to make our website live within a few moments, transferring via their migrate plugin.
I have been using some premium hosting services for years but when i tried cloudways I really felt overwhelmed and the reason is the superfast speed
I think if cloudways offer cpanel, would be great
I had too many problems with speed which is the soul of any website and i have to install several plugins to boost speed but after migrating to cloudways i do not require anything now
Server Management GUI and Prompt customer support
In my experience I have not found something negative about Cloudways
Performance on my websites, good prices and easy server management
The best thing about the cloudways is that is offers Ultra super speedy fast web hosting service. After utilizing the services from cloudways the open rate of our site increased a lot and helps us in visitors loss.
The user interface of cloudways is not friendly for a new user, but after working with this platform a few times anyone can be friendly with this hosting service.
With the use of cloudways web hosting service, it helps in increasing the speed of our website to a big extent, and it preservice us a loss of online visitors and helps in increasing more conversion via our website.
I love that they make WordPress hosting really simple and blazing fast compared to shared hosting. I also really enjoy their email add-on with Rackspace. I have been using their platform for multiple WordPress sites (Vultr high frequency) since the end of 2020 and it is really worth it.
Their plans can be more expensive than traditional shared hosting but you definitely get more performance and you're not stuck with yearly or monthly contracts.
Cloudways brings reliable and fast hosting over time. Their support is also good if you have any technical issues. Finally, they have a referral program where you get a 20$ credit when you invite someone so that's a nice plus.
The managed fast cloud servers are the prime reasons for me switching from traditional shared hosting to Cloudways. The ease of deployment of a new server and et your site online is a breeze. The best part is that Cloudways allows free unlimited migration of your existing WordPress site to Cloudways server very quickly and easily.
The Pricing is almost double that of the source cloud providers. It could have been a bit discounted for people from developing countries to get onboard easily at an affordable rate. But the existing price for the service it offers is also very good.
Cloudways has solved the problem of slow loading WordPress sites since their offerings are cloud servers only. The speed optimizations are good and you will see a visible faster loading time of websites when compared with traditional shared hosting.
I love how they have made it easier to host your own software and sites than ever before. Their service is also surprisingly quick and helpful. For a service that's potentially quite technical they've tried hard to make it easier on the user.
So far I haven't encountered anything that I would change. Perhaps they could try to make installing other software (besides WordPress) even easier than it is right now, it still requires technical knowledge.
I moved from Siteground, not because Siteground is bad, but I felt I wanted to have more control over the way my website was being hosted, including making it faster and having the ability to scale up when the visitors start to increase. Also I don't like the idea of sharing my hosting with many others on the same server. Cloudways makes, what used to be something for the most technically skilled possible to do for the common man. At a price point that beats any ordinary webhost.
The ease with which you can migrate Wordpress websites to the new setup server thanks to the Cloudways migrate plugin. Ease of use even for less technical users. Ability to add team members. Competitive pricing. Price estimator.
Not that much to dislike. After a couple of months of use, everything was worked rather smoothly.
Cloudways is a perfect option for hosting because it can scale up whenever your website or app needs it.
The best thing with cloudways is that, It made it possible for us to set up cloud hosting web servers quickly. It offered a number of platforms like Digital Ocean and Vultr. Creating applications was a single click and incredibly quick.
No control panel basically. But I have come to observe that the cloud services can be utilized without having Cpanel in case added it would be a great
Cloud ways provide a smooth way to transfer our site especially word press by making use of their migration WordPress plugin and of course the speed is really great. The hosting service helps us increase the speed of our WordPress site to a good level, which is normally not possible with shared hosting.
Speed and Support system of the hosting
prices are a little bit high and for business email and cdn you have to pay more ( as competitors are providing it for free) but as far as quality is concerned cloudways has no match
ok so after trying multiple hostings such as Namecheap, go daddy, hostinger and siteground i finally decided to move on to cloudways by multiple suggestions in my fellow SEOs groups and pretty much everyone recommended me to go for vultr high frequency on cloud ways. i joined cloudways back in November 2020 now its august 2021 and I am very happy with my decision because the biggest issue I faced is the support system on other hostings and the secondly is speed. speed on cloudways is mind-blowing if your developer properly optimizes your site.
Vultr 4GB high performance has an outstanding upload & download speed.
Cloudways web hosting had performed great so far.
No.
Migration tools are simple. Response times are lightning quick.
When timing out of the admin panel, users (at least on Safari) aren't logged out. The website simply becomes non-responsive. It's a simple as clicking "sign out" (or logout) and logging back in. This is a minor gripe simply to add SOMETHING that I dislike.
One of our old hosting solutions was over priced and EXTREMELY SLOW. Cloudways has helped us migrate those clients to a far superior service at less than 1/3rd of the cost.
The best thing I like about cloudways is its customer support and its platform, which provides a lot of options to host your site at superfast speed. They provide all the steps to do any task if we don't want to take the help of customer support. Usually, their support team assists within 1 min.
They dont have a control panel like other Webhosting; it is somewhat complicated for a new person within cloudways.
We can host a few of our websites with the digital ocean available within cloudways platform; all of our websites are operating with superfast speed without any complications. We have also taken the email services of Rackspace and Elastic mails at very reasonable prices.
It can provide a high flexibility to choose between different servers. I can find one to meet my budget and necessity.
The user interface would be more user friendly. The main function could locate in a more accessible place.
It provided a reliable server so that I would not need to have a IT specialist to handle the server. It also provide 7/24 support.I could get help even after normal working hours.
The cloudways platform features are easy to set up, scale and migrate to from a traditional web hosting environment. I'm saving $100's a month on hosting fees and couldn't be happier.
Too many clicks and logins to get to support tickets (if needed). Should just auto log me in, no? I also found that the CDN app is a bit lacking. It should offer the ability to have a custom URL for your CDN that you can set up as a CNAME record on your domain name. Instead, you get a long ugly URL for your CDN assets, and getting a customized address requires cloudways support intervention.
I had been hosting with a traditional hosting company for the past 20 years (no joke) and paying out the wahazoo for dedicated servers. As my business needs have shrunk somewhat over the years l was able to migrate to a much more compact and scalable solution with cloudways and save myself $100's every month. I couldn't be happier.
Reliability, always on, its so simple to used, well documented
Price, it could be cheaper, we want put more servers but its expensive.
Ecommerce hosting
I love how easy it is to set up a server and set up installs on Cloudways. It is very easy to manage and the websites load really quickly with no issues. I also love the ability to set up a test website without needing to attach a domain to it, and it can be added later when you go live, without much hassle. It really helps with production and launch of a website or app. I use WordPress mostly, and they make it so easy to setup a fresh WordPress install on the server that it take not time at all. Much faster than cPanel set up for WordPress. I have used many different hosting platforms in my 20 years of doing web design and customzation and Cloudways is by far my favorite one.
The odd time I get a little lost while looking for information. I felt a little intimidated the first time I set up an application, but the process was much easier than I thought it would be. There is no email attached to the server like cPanel accounts do.
I am using this platform for production of website projects, and launch for those that stay under my umbrella. It has made my production time a lot faster. I also love how easy it is to set up an SSL on the sites for no additional cost. A great benefit too is the billing for usage. If I begin a new project on a new server mid-month, I'm not billed for the entire month, only the amount of time it has been active and used during that month.