Cloudways Review A Comprehensive Overview
Cloudways, a leading cloud hosting provider, has gained significant popularity among businesses and developers alike. With its user-friendly interface, impressive scalability, and high performance, Cloudways offers compelling features.
However, it's important to consider its drawbacks, such as its relatively higher cost and limited customer support options. In this review, we will delve into the strengths and weaknesses of Cloudways to help you make an informed decision about whether it's the right choice for your hosting needs.
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| Cloudways Review | Strong Cloud Hosting With 5 Key Drawbacks |
Cloudways empowers users to easily manage multiple cloud servers from a single platform, making it an attractive option for both small and large organizations. Its intuitive interface simplifies complex hosting tasks, enabling even novice users to quickly set up and manage their websites. Additionally, Cloudways provides access to a wide range of cloud providers, allowing users to choose the infrastructure that best suits their specific requirements.
Cloudways A Comprehensive Review of Its Managed Cloud Hosting Services
Looking for a high-performing, managed cloud hosting service at competitive prices? Read this Cloudways hosting review to determine if Cloudways hosting provides a suitable solution for your site, what are the strengths and weaknesses of their services, and what are the expected costs.
What is Cloudways?
Cloudways is among the rare cloud hosting providers balancing performance and cost effectively. Their services are popular with WordPress website owners and administrators, as well as other CMS and PHP applications in general. In fact, it is considered one of the top WordPress web hosts.
Key Features and Services
Cloudways offers managed hosting services in a way that sets it apart from the competition, allowing its customers to choose the infrastructure provider that fits their project best, instead of renting out their own servers or relying on third-party server rentals to power their services.
Cloudways has its own proprietary managed cloud platform, which allows their customers to provision their servers and install their applications in minutes using their custom-developed control panel, and unlike most other managed cloud hosting providers, you get 24/7 support in case you run into any issues.
Cloudways is also able to offer high-performance, scalable hosting without the usual hefty price tag associated with managed hosting services that provide expert supervision and support.
Cloud Hosting vs. Traditional Hosting
Compared to traditional hosting, cloud hosting offers better performance-to-cost ratios and the ability to scale your resources in an instant. For example, while several companies offer high-performing WordPress hosting, only a few offer the advanced scalability to support your site as it grows.
In this review, we will explore what Cloudways' cloud platform and managed services have to offer, we will go over the benefits of their hosting, and we will analyze the performance of their servers to provide a clear view for HostingTribunal visitors who are looking for a managed hosting service that offers high performance, easy scalability, and affordability.
Benefits of Cloudways Hosting
1. Wide Choice of Cloud Providers
Unlike most other managed cloud hosting companies, Cloudways allows its users to choose their cloud provider. This means that you can choose the provider that offers the best performance and pricing for your specific needs. Some of the available cloud providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr.
2. Optimized for WordPress and Other Applications
Cloudways is optimized for WordPress, but it also supports other CMSs and PHP applications. This makes it a versatile choice for website owners and developers of all types.
3. Easy to Use Control Panel
Cloudways has a custom-developed control panel that makes it easy to manage your server and applications. Even beginners can quickly get started with Cloudways.
4. 24/7 Expert Support
Cloudways offers 24/7 expert support to all of its customers. This means that you can get help with any issue, at any time.
5. Affordable Pricing
Cloudways offers affordable pricing plans that start at $10 per month. This makes it a great option for website owners and developers on a budget.
Is Cloudways Right for You?
Cloudways is a great choice for website owners and developers who are looking for a high-performing, scalable, and affordable managed hosting service. It is particularly well-suited for WordPress websites, but it also supports other CMSs and PHP applications.
If you are looking for a managed hosting service that offers the best of both worlds—performance and affordability—then Cloudways is a great option for you.
Cloudways is a leading provider of managed cloud hosting services. Their platform is optimized for performance and scalability, and their pricing is affordable. If you are looking for a managed hosting service that can help you take your website to the next level, then Cloudways is a great option.
Cloudways A Comprehensive Review
Cloudways is a renowned managed cloud hosting provider that has gained prominence in the industry since its inception in 2011. Headquartered in Mosta, Malta, Cloudways has carved a niche for itself by offering a plethora of features tailored to meet the diverse needs of website owners and developers.
Key Features
Free Website Migration Cloudways seamlessly handles website migrations, ensuring a hassle-free and efficient transfer process.
Cost-effective Backups External backups are available at an affordable rate of $0.033 per gigabyte, providing businesses with peace of mind and data security.
Unlimited Websites Cloudways allows users to host an unlimited number of websites on a single account, catering to the demands of growing businesses and website enthusiasts alike.
Free SSL Certificate Cloudways provides a free SSL certificate, enhancing website security and establishing trust with visitors.
Managed Infrastructure Cloudways takes the burden of server management off your shoulders by offering fully managed cloud hosting services.
Infrastructure Providers
Cloudways partners with leading cloud infrastructure providers, including
- Google Cloud
- Amazon AWS
- DigitalOcean
- Linode
- Vultr
This collaboration ensures that Cloudways customers have access to reliable and scalable cloud hosting services backed by industry-leading platforms.
Pricing and Support
Cloudways offers flexible pricing plans tailored to meet the specific requirements of different businesses. It employs a pay-as-you-go model, eliminating the need for long-term commitments. Cloudways also provides 24/7 customer support through multiple channels, ensuring prompt assistance when needed.
Cloudways stands out as a leading managed cloud hosting provider, offering a comprehensive suite of features, exceptional support, and a cost-effective pricing model. Its focus on providing a seamless and scalable hosting experience empowers businesses to thrive in the digital realm.
Cloudways' commitment to providing exceptional hosting services has established its reputation as a leading managed cloud hosting provider. As we delve deeper into the intricacies of their platform, we will explore the specific benefits and capabilities that make Cloudways an unparalleled choice for businesses seeking a reliable and efficient hosting solution.
Cloudways Managed Cloud Hosting for Simplicity and Performance
What is Cloudways?
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform distinguished by its focus on simplicity and performance. Their platform is designed to provide comprehensive management services, from app and website launch to server management and ongoing maintenance, allowing their clients to focus on growing their businesses.
Founded in 2011 in Malta, Cloudways' platform leverages five cloud computing giants as its hosting infrastructure Amazon Web Services (AWS), DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, and Google Cloud Platform. While you'll be utilizing servers from one of these platforms, you won't need to create accounts with them—Cloudways handles that for you. As a fully managed provider, you can expect assistance in launching your app or website within minutes. Cloudways is particularly renowned for its WordPress hosting, but their support extends beyond WordPress to all popular CMS, PHP applications, open-source software, and frameworks.
In essence, Cloudways is a platform that provisions, manages, and scales cloud hosting accounts and servers, providing an easy-to-use, hassle-free control panel and dedicated support team to monitor and resolve any hosting issues.
With its user-centric simplicity and focus on performance, Cloudways stands out as a game-changer in managed cloud hosting. In the following section, we will delve into the optimized features that make Cloudways Hosting particularly suitable for WordPress websites. Stay tuned to discover how Cloudways empowers WordPress users with unparalleled uptime, dedicated hosting, and blazing-fast speeds.
Cloudways Hosting Optimized Features for WordPress Websites
WordPress users constitute the largest customer base for Cloudways. As such, you can expect everything your WordPress site needs to run seamlessly, such as SSL certificate installation, automatic HTTPS redirection, backups, and other tasks that typically require technical or coding knowledge.
Unparalleled Uptime
Cloud hosting inherently delivers enhanced server stability compared to other types of hosting. By using Cloudways cloud hosting, your website is hosted across multiple servers, enabling load balancing and automatic failover in case one server goes down.
This system optimizes resource availability, resulting in improved speed, performance, and security. Cloud hosting allows for server resource upgrades to accommodate sudden traffic spikes. As such, you can expect a near-perfect 100% uptime record throughout your Cloudways hosting experience.
While Cloudways does not offer uptime guarantees, given it relies on third-party infrastructure, the impressive uptime test results speak for themselves. Our test site has not experienced any downtime in the past year.
Dedicated Hosting
A key differentiator for Cloudways is that it's not a web hosting provider in the traditional sense. It operates as a service for managing hosting servers.
The primary benefit of this approach is that your server is exclusively yours, without other websites or users sharing the same physical server. This translates to enhanced security, privacy, and performance.
Additionally, since the underlying servers come directly from non-Cloudways hosting providers, it eliminates resource throttling or overselling, a common practice among some less reputable hosting companies.
Blazing-Fast Cloudways Hosting
Cloudways has consistently ranked highly for speed in industry tests, regardless of the server provider you choose or the amount of traffic your site receives. This exceptional performance can be attributed to several factors
Dedicated Computing Resources Cloudways servers employ virtualization technologies to allocate dedicated computing resources to your account. You don't have to worry about your site being affected by resource-intensive activities on other sites sharing the same physical server.
SSD Storage Cloudways exclusively uses solid-state drives (SSDs) across all its plans. The faster response times of SSDs significantly boost your site's speed in comparison to traditional hard drives.
Advanced Caching Technologies Cloudways has designed its own performance optimization stack, Breeze, which is included free for all users. In addition to this plugin, all plans come preconfigured with Memcached, Varnish, and Nginx, which you can manage and customize from the dashboard.
Redis Support You can enable Redis from within your Cloudways dashboard to enhance database query performance and speed. It works in tandem with Apache, Nginx, and Varnish to push your site's performance even further.
Content Delivery Network While Cloudways does not offer free CDN support like popular services such as FastComet Hosting, it has its own service that costs just $1 per 25 GB of bandwidth. For this price, you get fast access to a network of high-speed servers that outperform CloudFlare and other free options.
Self-Healing Technology Cloudways automatically initiates recovery measures if your server goes down due to software bugs or errors. It attempts to restart the server automatically within a short period, resolving the issue without the need for human intervention.
Exceptional Performance and Unwavering Support from Cloudways
With its optimized features and unparalleled support system, Cloudways sets the bar high for WordPress hosting. Discover how its performance and support measures up in our upcoming exploration, where we delve into its impressive stress test results, seamless website migrations, and the exceptional customer assistance it provides.
Cloudways Hosting Performance and Support
Performance That Impresses
Beyond lightning-fast loading speeds, Cloudways' hosting has proven its mettle under pressure in our stress tests. It maintained an average response time of 94 milliseconds under extreme server load, handling over 116,000 requests without a hiccup. This translates to about 200 requests per second from 50 concurrent visitors with no discernible impact on response times. That's a testament to the sheer power under the hood.
As witnessed in our speed tests, server performance and website loading times will seldom be a concern for those using Cloudways. This earns you extra SEO brownie points, boosting your website's search rankings and drawing more traffic your way.
Exceptional Cloudways Support
Cloudways goes the extra mile with its 24/7 customer support, ensuring clients' peace of mind. You can connect with live chat agents, shoot an email, or request a callback.
In our experience, live chat offers the quickest response, with an average wait time of 30-60 seconds.
Support tickets, on the other hand, are only available to users with active accounts, excluding those on trial. Regardless, our own interactions with support staff proved amiable and professional, offering clear guidance and assistance with common issues.
It's worth noting that some reviewers have expressed concerns about overly technical responses in the past. While we haven't encountered that ourselves, as with any support experience, mileage may vary.
Complimentary Website Migration with Cloudways
Although cloud hosting may not be aimed at beginners, Cloudways is making strides to make its platform more accessible to non-tech-savvy site owners.
For novice webmasters, moving a website and its data is one of the most daunting hurdles when switching hosting providers. Cloudways offers paid website migrations at $25 per site, which is still lower than industry giants like Bluehost and its sister company HostMonster.
Wait, there's more! Cloudways provides free website migrations for new customers upon their first request, with no downtime during the process. They've even designed a WordPress plugin to streamline the migration process for those who prefer a DIY approach.
With all these options, it's easy to see why Cloudways outpaces many of its competitors here, offering free or low-cost solutions to one of the more frustrating customer pain points.
Cloudways has taken proactive steps to enhance its security measures and ease the burden of website migrations, all while offering a wide range of data center locations for optimal website performance. Its extensive array of features positions it as a compelling choice in the web hosting market, especially for those looking to streamline their site management and maintenance.
One noteworthy aspect of Cloudways' security measures is the provision of free SSL certificates, significantly enhancing website security without the associated costs. Additionally, its extensive data center presence enables users to choose the optimal location for hosting their website, ensuring fast loading speeds and improved user experience for global audiences.
Enhanced Security Measures and Free SSL Certificates
Cloudways' robust security measures, embedded within all of its hosting plans, ensure the safety of your site's data. These security measures include
- OS-level firewall protection across all servers
- Regular software updates and security patches
- Free SSL certificate installation at the click of a button
- Two-factor authentication for enhanced account security
- Whitelisting options to restrict access to your server from specific IP addresses
- Automated and free backups of your site's data and server configurations, with one-click restore functionality
In addition to these built-in security features, Cloudways supports both free and paid SSL certificate installation. If you opt for a free SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt, Cloudways simplifies the installation process with a single click. Alternatively, if you have a paid certificate from a different provider, you can easily upload and install it via the dashboard. Simply specify the KEY and CRT files during the upload process.
Cloudways' Extensive Data Center Presence
Cloudways boasts an impressive number of data center locations from which to host your website. With 65 data center locations spanning the Americas, Australia, Asia, and Europe, you have unparalleled freedom to choose the location that best serves your target audience. This choice directly impacts the loading speed and overall user experience of your site.
These locations, of course, include the data centers of the five infrastructure providers Cloudways relies on. As a result, some locations may offer access to a specific server provider while others do not. For more information on the data center locations available to you, please refer to this page.
Cloudways' commitment to data security extends beyond its comprehensive backup options. In the next section, we'll delve into the advantages of its flexible pricing model, designed to cater to the evolving needs of your website.
Cloudways' Flexible Backup and Pricing Options
Cloudways goes above and beyond in terms of security measures, offering free website backups to all users. These backups can be scheduled daily or weekly through the user-friendly control panel, ensuring that your site is always protected. Restoring your site to a previous state is as easy as clicking a button.
While the backup and restore services are free, Cloudways charges for storing backups off-site on Amazon AWS, which provides an extra layer of security in case of a catastrophic server failure. Storing backups on separate storage is a requirement of the service, and Cloudways passes the costs on to the customer. However, these costs are modest, amounting to $0.033 per gigabyte of storage.
Cloudways' Unique Pricing Model
Cloudways employs a distinct approach to pricing compared to other cloud hosting and VPS providers. It charges for its services on an hourly basis, according to the resources consumed.
Initially, this hourly billing model may cause concern about unexpectedly high monthly costs. However, Cloudways has implemented safeguards to prevent this. A dedicated tab in the control panel tracks your monthly costs in real-time, providing an accurate estimate of your upcoming hosting expenses.
The hourly billing structure makes it convenient to upgrade your cloud server and add resources on the go as needed. However, it's important to note that while billing is hourly, invoices are still issued monthly at the end of the billing cycle.
Payment Flexibility
Cloudways accepts all major credit cards and PayPal for payment. They previously supported Bitcoin as a payment method, but this option is currently unavailable.
Cloudways' Flexible Backup and Pricing Options offer a comprehensive solution for website security and cost management. However, before making a commitment, it's equally important to consider the limitations it presents. In the next section, we will delve into the drawbacks of Cloudways hosting to provide a balanced perspective on its suitability for different users and scenarios.
Drawbacks of Cloudways Hosting
1. Cloudways Uses a Proprietary Control Panel
While Cloudways' custom control panel is not inherently flawed, most site managers are accustomed to more popular options like cPanel or Plesk. Transitioning to Cloudways requires learning a new interface, which some users may find inconvenient, especially if they are familiar with cPanel's functionalities.
For those seeking a cPanel-based platform, Hostinger provides a range of hosting options that offer cPanel free of charge.
2. Cloudways Does Not Offer Email Hosting
New customers may find the lack of email accounts in Cloudways' hosting packages a disappointment. Unlike competitors such as iPage and GreenGeeks, Cloudways does not include email services.
Instead, Cloudways offers a third-party email solution called Rackspace. While this is an additional expense, Cloudways allows its customers to purchase it at a discounted rate of $1 per email address (as opposed to the $2 charged by Rackspace directly).
3. Cloudways Does Not Provide Domain Registration
Cloudways does not offer domain registration services, either free or paid. This means users must obtain their domain from a separate provider before using Cloudways and need to perform additional configuration steps to point it to Cloudways' servers, increasing complexity for less experienced site owners.
This absence may cost Cloudways some business, as other cloud hosting and VPS providers often offer a one-stop shop for all aspects of site hosting and domain management. However, it is worth noting that separating hosting and domain registration can provide some security benefits.
4. Cloudways Does Not Offer Free Content Delivery Network
Most competing hosting services, such as DreamHost and HostGator, provide free access to a content delivery network (CDN) for their customers, typically through the widely adopted Cloudflare service.
Cloudways, on the other hand, relies on the paid StackPath CDN, promising better performance compared to free alternatives at a cost of $1 per 25GB of bandwidth.
5. Cloudways Restricts Access
While Cloudways is ideal for novice site managers who prefer a fully managed hosting experience, more experienced developers and system administrators may find the restrictions imposed somewhat limiting. Root access is not granted, and there is no built-in file manager within the control panel.
For developers specifically, Cloudways intentionally creates a server environment optimized for content management systems and PHP applications. Other programming languages may not receive as much native support or have the necessary access to configure an alternative server environment that better suits their specific needs.
Despite Cloudways' strengths, its drawbacks can be deal-breakers for some users. Understanding these limitations will help you make an informed decision about whether Cloudways is the right hosting provider for your needs.
Managing Website ""Applications""
After setting up your server, you can effortlessly add applications to it at any time. Take the WordPress content management system as an example
Upon accessing the application page, you'll be greeted with a series of tabs that allow you to configure various settings related to the application, like setting up your site's domain
Regrettably, Cloudways does not offer domain registration services, so you'll need to acquire your website's domain beforehand or use a separate service for that purpose. If you haven't obtained a domain at this point, you can utilize a temporary domain from Cloudways to initiate the setup process and tweak various preferences.
The sidebar navigation menu includes a dedicated tab for installing security-enhancing SSL certificates, a crucial aspect for your website. Cloudways allows its customers to install a free SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt, or you can use a paid SSL certificate from a third-party provider and upload it to the Cloudways dashboard.
Additionally, the sidebar menu features a tab for managing website backups and restoring data with just a click. This feature forms a cornerstone of any hosting service aiming to provide a satisfying user experience, and being a managed service, you can trust Cloudways to schedule automatic backups, hopefully rendering them unnecessary.
Server Management
Once you're done configuring your application's settings, navigate to the Server Management section to oversee your server's operations and handle routine tasks like setting up secure FTP accounts, managing login credentials, and SSH login details.
You can also monitor your server's resource usage through the Monitoring tab, a crucial aspect that directly impacts your server's performance based on your consumption of the available computing resources.
The sidebar menu includes a section dedicated to monitoring and observing the running services and processes. This page empowers you to start, stop, or restart any of the listed services.
Below the Service Management section, you'll find a tab dedicated to tweaking PHP settings, installed versions of MySQL, PHP, and other technical configurations related to your server's environment.
Following that section is a tab for security settings to safeguard your SFTP and SSH connections and also SQL databases. For instance, you can block specific IP addresses from accessing your server.
Furthermore, Cloudways employs an advanced firewall to protect your server from malware and various types of cyberattacks.
Finally, the remaining two sections cover automated backup scheduling settings, which is undoubtedly one of the most popular features for website managers. There's also a dedicated tab for setting up your website's email service.
Cloudways' robust platform offers a comprehensive array of features that cater to both website managers and development teams. Its intuitive interface, coupled with advanced server management options, makes it an ideal choice for efficiently managing applications and ensuring a smooth website experience.
Team and Project Management
The Cloudways dashboard offers dedicated sections for managing collaborative work and projects on the server individually. These sections enable project leaders to add team members and restrict permissions based on their roles. They aim to boost the efficiency of teamwork and facilitate communication among team members, especially for large-scale projects.
Developer-Friendly Features
Cloudways platform ensures high compatibility with version control systems like Git and provides developer-oriented features such as staging environment creation, linking Git repositories, automatic updates, and more. These features streamline the workflow between developers and site administrators.
Cloudways Pricing and Plans
Cloudways hosting costs vary depending on the server resources you opt for and the cloud provider you choose.
For example, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services require a higher fee but offer