The verdict
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that lets customers deploy on top of DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, Linode or Vultr without touching server infrastructure. Pay-as-you-go pricing and a clean dashboard make cloud power accessible to non-sysadmins.
The full picture
Cloudways solved a specific problem: cloud servers from DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, Linode and Vultr are cheap and fast, and configuring and maintaining one is a job. Cloudways sits between you and those providers, provisions the server, installs a tuned stack of NGINX, Apache, PHP-FPM, MySQL, Redis and Varnish, and gives you a dashboard to manage applications, backups, staging, SSL and team access without ever touching a terminal.
You pay a management fee on top of the underlying compute. A two-gigabyte DigitalOcean droplet that costs twelve dollars direct is around twenty-six through Cloudways, and for most people the difference buys back several hours a month. Because billing is hourly and servers are resizable, you can scale up for a launch and back down after, which no shared host allows.
DigitalOcean acquired Cloudways in 2022, which raised reasonable questions about the future of the multi-cloud promise. So far the other providers remain available. The main limitations are structural: no email hosting, no domain registration, and support that is good on platform issues and thinner on application-level debugging.
What you get
- Choice of 5 cloud providers
- Pay-as-you-go billing
- Built-in caching stack
- Free migrations
- 24/7 real-time support
Every hosting type it sells
| Product | From | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Managed DigitalOcean | $11/mo | The cheapest entry point, premium droplets with NVMe available. |
| Managed Vultr | $13/mo | High-frequency compute options in 30+ locations. |
| Managed Linode | $12/mo | Akamai-backed compute with predictable pricing. |
| Managed AWS | $36.51/mo | EC2 instances with the full AWS region footprint. |
| Managed Google Cloud | $33.30/mo | GCP compute with premium-tier networking. |
| Autonomous WordPress | $35/mo | Kubernetes-backed autoscaling WordPress, hands-off. |
Plans & pricing
- 1 GB RAM
- 25 GB Storage
- 4 GB RAM
- 80 GB Storage
What the price actually costs you
- You pay a management premium over buying the cloud server directly — roughly double at small sizes.
- Billing is hourly with no contract, so scaling up temporarily is genuinely cheap.
- There is no money-back guarantee, but a free trial lets you test before paying.
- The CDN, bot protection and premium support tiers are all separate line items.
Technical specification
| Control panel | Cloudways Platform dashboard (custom) |
|---|---|
| Web stack | NGINX in front of Apache, PHP-FPM, MySQL or MariaDB |
| Caching | Varnish, Redis, Memcached and the Breeze plugin, all preconfigured |
| PHP versions | PHP 7.x through 8.3, switchable per application |
| Backups | Automated on-demand and scheduled backups, off-server storage |
| Staging | One-click staging with selective push to live |
| Developer tools | SSH and SFTP, WP-CLI, Git deployment, Composer, cron manager |
| Scaling | Vertical server resize in minutes with no migration |
| CDN | CloudwaysCDN billed per site, Cloudflare Enterprise add-on available |
| Team access | Role-based team members with per-server and per-app scoping |
| Billing | Hourly, pay-as-you-go, no contract |
Performance in practice
Because you choose the underlying provider and region, Cloudways performance is really the performance of the cloud you pick, tuned properly. A Vultr high-frequency instance with Varnish and Redis in front of WordPress will beat nearly every shared host and most managed WordPress plans on uncached requests, because you get dedicated vCPU and memory rather than a slice. The Cloudflare Enterprise add-on brings edge caching into the same range as Kinsta or Rocket.net. The one thing you cannot do is scale horizontally without moving to the Autonomous product.
Infrastructure & support
Support channels
- 24/7 live chat
- 24/7 ticket system
- Phone support (premium)
Data centers
- 60+ locations via DigitalOcean, AWS, GCP, Linode, Vultr
Security & compliance
- Dedicated firewalls per server with IP whitelisting for SSH and database access
- Free Let's Encrypt SSL with automatic renewal, wildcard supported
- Automated patching of the operating system and stack by the platform
- Two-factor authentication and scoped team roles
- Off-server automated backups with one-click restore
- Bot protection add-on and optional Cloudflare Enterprise web application firewall
Moving a site in
A free WordPress migration plugin moves sites automatically, and Cloudways includes one free migration per account handled by its team. Because staging exists on every server, the standard practice is to migrate into a staging application, validate, then promote and switch DNS.
The trade-off
In its favour
- Flexible multi-cloud choice
- Transparent usage-based pricing
- Strong performance stack
Worth knowing
- No domain registration
- Billing can be confusing for beginners
Who should look elsewhere
- Anyone who needs email hosting or domain registration in the same place
- Absolute beginners who want a one-click site and no server concept at all
- Buyers who want the cheapest possible cloud, since going direct is cheaper
- Applications needing horizontal autoscaling outside the Autonomous product
The company behind it
| Ownership | Acquired by DigitalOcean in 2022 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Malta, with teams across Europe and Asia |
| Founded | 2011 |
| Scale | Tens of thousands of businesses, hundreds of thousands of applications |
| Model | Managed layer over DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, Linode and Vultr |
How it got here
- 2011 Founded in Malta as a managed cloud platform.
- 2016 Adds AWS and Google Cloud alongside DigitalOcean and Vultr.
- 2019 Ships Breeze caching plugin and the CloudwaysCDN.
- 2022 Acquired by DigitalOcean.
- 2023 Launches Autonomous, an autoscaling managed WordPress product.
Common questions
Do I need to manage the server myself?
No, Cloudways fully manages the server layer while you keep app-level control.
The bottom line
The best middle ground between a shared host and running your own server: real cloud performance, no sysadmin work, hourly billing and easy vertical scaling. Start on a Vultr high-frequency or DigitalOcean premium instance, add Cloudflare Enterprise if the audience is global, and plan for email hosting elsewhere.