Do wish to consider an option to host your WordPress site, then you have reached the right point. Cloudways is one such option worth a try. Cloudways is known as a managed cloud hosting platform that provides simplicity, choice, and flexibility. Cloudways offers a distinctive approach to WordPress hosting that lets you harness the power of cloud computing, without any prerequisite technical knowledge
Cloudways is a web hosting company based in Malta, which has been in the market since 2011. The company’s prime focus is to provide quality web hosting services to agencies, developers, and individuals under the core value of shared hosting making it the most simple, fast and convenient web hosting provider.
Cloudways is a cloud-based hosting solutions that spotlights managed cloud hosting, managed WordPress hosting, and PHP app hosting (Drupal, Magento, Laravel, Prestashop, etc).It does not provide shared web hosting.
A major point of Cloudways, beside a promising cloud hosting environment, is certainly its price starting from $10/month. This makes it cheaper than most Cloudways alternatives like A2 Hosting or WP Engine.
In this Cloudways hosting review, we will try to elaborate its features and pricing to help you decide if it is the right choice for your WordPress site, based on your own managed hosting needs.
Getting Started
Before getting into the in-depth details, it is important to understand the setup process. There are two basic terms that needs to be understood with Cloudways,
- Server – There is a specific allotment of space on any cloud hosting service. For instance, you might get 1 GB of ram, 25 GB of storage, and if you don’t get a lot of traffic, your server gets loaded quickly.
- Application – This is a WordPress site. One WordPress site equals one application.
You can run a number of applications on a server, but only as long as your server has enough power to handle them. This again depends on the exact resources each WordPress install consumes as there is no arbitrary limit.
Cloudways offers a free trial to test a site/application. For that, you only need your name and a valid email and once your email is verified, you can create your server.
The process is instinctive and simple. While creating a new server, you can choose to automatically install an app such as WordPress, Joomla or Magento.
You can choose a price plan for your specific configuration. Clicking on the Launch button creates a server. It takes less than 5 minutes for the server to be ready. Next, you are set to working on a WordPress site. That looks pretty easy, right?
Cloudways Features
Ease of Use
Using Cloudways is easy to use even for a non tech-savvy customer. Creating your own dedicated server is simple and takes less time. You only need to choose the amount of resources needed and your server location. If you require a specific application installed on your web hosting plan, you will be able to do it with just a few clicks from your user panel.
Cloudways provides 21/7/365 help and guidance. A growing team of highly trained experts are always available. The support team is available to track complex issues via an online ticket system either generated by the team or the user. Advanced Support doubles your Live Chat access and cuts online ticket response times considerably.
There is a user specific server customization and configuration available as per the required setup. Plug-in or the theme troubleshooting helps with database or email add-on and performance optimization. Proactive Application Monitor investigates whether your server or stack is down
The Premium Support lets you and your team to call and speak directly with a Senior Support Engineer in person, any time.Sometimes, it even lifts you out of the web-based online chat and redirects you to a private Slack channel with Senior Support Engineers. With this, online tickets receive an early if it’s a high priority, then it becomes much quicker.
Performance
Cloudways is a cloud based web hosting provider where the uptime is 99.99% and loading speeds are around 400–600 milliseconds. This is mainly because company partners with Digital Ocean, Google Cloud, Vultr, Linode and AWS, which are among the best cloud providers.
Cloudways’ vertical scaling allows you scale your server according to your website or application needs. In some cases, if your application is experiencing a spike of traffic, you can easily allocate more RAM to your server in order to handle the increase of popularity. Put together all these features, Cloudways provides an outstanding performance and site speed. Their loading times are 40% to 50% better than those offered by shared web hosting.
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of servers and data centers that are geographically positioned between the origin server of some web content, and the user requesting the data. The objective of a CDN is to deliver the content faster by reducing latency. By utilizing a dedicated CDN, your website/application becomes faster and provides a better user experience to your visitors.
Security
Cloudways security attribute definitely a strong point wherein the company offers free managed backups which allow you to restore your site as it was at an earlier date. The process is very quick and easy. Backups are the important part of website security. Whatever may be the eventuality, you will always have a fresh copy of your entire site (files and database) that can be restored in a matter of minutes.
Cloudways offers free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. A SSL certificate acts as an extra layer of security to your website or application, which will use the HTTPS protocol instead of the classic HTTP. SSL certificates are an added feature for any website. Firstly, today the use of SSL is widespread and not using SSL/HTTPS will make your site appear less credible and serious than your competitors. Secondly, it is now confirmed by Google that websites using a SSL certificate are getting a boost in their rankings.To improve account security, Cloudways has added Two Factor Authentication (TFA) as a secondary layer of protection to ensure that only you are able to log into your Cloudways account.
Free Website Migration
Cloudways offers website migration, which implies that you won’t have to go through the lengthy and sometimes painful procedure of migrating your site to your new host. Cloudways’ website migration is entirely free of charge, irrespective of the plan you choose. For WordPress users, the company has developed their own WordPress plugin which ensures a smooth and hassle-free migration.
Managed WordPress Hosting
Managed WordPress Hosting offers services in which WordPress’s technical elements are managed by the web hosting company in order to provide a hassle-free experience to the customer. The service includes WordPress updates, application speed and security, uptime, backups, etc.
Cloudways offers managed WordPress hosting services, which is useful for small to medium-sized business, high traffic blogs, and ecommerce companies.
Pricing Plans
Cloudways offers a free 3-day trial so you can review everything by yourself before buying. Starting your free trial is quick and easy which is sufficient to properly test Cloudways features, speed, and ease of use. During the trial period, you can decide to upgrade to a paid offer and get your existing site migrated to Cloudways.
One of Cloudways major attributes is their pricing, which is cheaper than its competitors. Cloudways’ starting price is $10 per month and their prices depend on the resources you need, and the company provides various plans to fit all kinds of websites, from a simple WordPress blog to a big app. Payments for various plans can be via credit card (Visa, MasterCard, and American Express) as well as PayPal.
Cloudways offers 5 different cloud server providers,
- DigitalOcean – $10/month
- Linode – $12/month
- Vultr – $11/month
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) – $34.91/month
- Google Cloud Platform – $33.30/month
As Cloudways allows vertical scaling, your server can be configured to fit your needs. Users can start with the smallest plan (DigitalOcean cloud server, 1GB RAM, 1 Core processor) and upgrade when your website or application needs it due to traffic increase.All plans offer 24/7 expert support, unlimited app installation, free SSL certificates, and free migration.
Pros
- Value for money
- Even the basic entry price provides high quality web hosting plans
- Free trial and free website migration
- No arbitrary traffic or website limits.
- User friendly dashboard
Cons
- There is no cPanel available
- There is no domain registration and you have to get your own domain from other sites.
Conclusion
Cloudways web hosting platform takes a modern approach to cloud hosting that makes it accessible to casual WordPress users. You can use the same setup that major enterprises are using through a simple dashboard that makes it super easy to manage your site, create staging sites, restore from backups, and more.
Beyond the versatile features that Cloudways offers, you get more flexibility than any other WordPress host can offer. There is no annual billing and you can start or stop your hosting as needed down to the hour. There is also no need to deal with any arbitrary limits,no traffic caps, and no website limits. As long as your server has the available resources, you can do whatever you want. And if your server does not possess the resources, you can scale things up with a single click and later scale down in future if required.There’s no risk in trying it out as you can get started with a free three-day trial to experience all of the functionality. You can simply give it a try and check if it works for you.
