Blog

Introduction

Cloudways offers cloud-hosting solutions for just about every application imaginable. Whether you’re looking to host a WordPress site, an eCommerce store, a web app or a game, Cloudways has a myriad of options for you to choose from to get you online.

They employ a “pay as you need” model, allowing you to scale your resources as required. Cloudways unique selling point is it’s ability to offer cloud servers from different providers all in one place.

Over the past decade the internet has changed in it’s architecture quite a bit, and that’s understandable as technology evolves fast. One of the ways the internet and hosting has changed is that it has become increasingly cloud based.

Traditionally websites and applications would ‘live’ on a single server machine. Cloud hosting stores your site or application on multiple different servers and bounces between these servers depending on server load, available resources, and other factors.

Plans and Pricing

Cloudways has a smorgasbord of choices when it comes to plans and price. There’s something there for just about every level of business or application.

Instead of offering the traditional yearly based discounts, they only offer monthly, or daily plans with no hidden fees or renewals. They pride themselves on their “pay-as-you need” type system. Meaning, you’ll never pay for more resources than you’re actually using.

Cloudways offers a choice between 5 different cloud service providers.

• Digital Ocean
• Linode
• VULTR
• AWS (Amazon Web Services)
• Google Cloud

Say What? These cloud providers offer and maintain the hardware(the computers) that will host your website. Essentially Cloudways allows you to choose the company/data-center you want to host your website on. Don’t like Google? Fine, go with Digital Ocean or someone else. Cloudways acts as an intermediary which helps facilitate the use and management of these cloud servers.

Each provider has slightly different pricing and amount of resources, but the featured provided by Cloudways are the same for all the plans.

The cheapest plans are offered by Digital Oceans data center and start at $10 and go up from there. AWS and Google Cloud are the two most expensive options, while Digital Oceans, Linode, and VULTR are relatively the same price.

Features and What’s Included:

• 24/7 Support
• Free SSL
• CDN add-on
• Migrate 1 site for free
• Unlimited application installs
• Team management
• Automated backups
• Staging environment
• Optimized with advanced caches
• Auto healing
  • improves reliability and prevents sites from crashing
• Regular security patching
• SSD based storage
• Smart Assistant
  • AI bot that sends real time information to help improve website performance

Pricing for AWS

The AWS and Google Cloud based plans are significantly more expensive, but also come with more resources. The base AWS plan comes with double the RAM and CPU power versus the Digital Ocean version.

Opinion and Breakdown

Getting started and setting up your WordPress, Magneto, or other common CMS is really straightforward with Cloudways. It’s essentially a 1-click install system.

Cloudways also gives you full control over your server’s specifications. You can configure how much RAM, CPU, and storage you want, or you can just use their recommended setting based upon estimated traffic.

Performance, Security, Up-time, Support

Cloudways really shines when it comes to performance, security and up-time. Their service boasts extremly fast load times, amazing security, and nearly 100% uptime.

How is this possible, you may ask? It’s all thanks to that cloud-hosting, which has better up-time and is faster than traditional style hosting. Your website is hosted on several servers, so if one has an issue your site will still remain live elsewhere. Performance is also better because of cloud hosting’s unique ability to balance load. Furthermore, your site is always provided with a dedicated amount of resources according to the plan you choose.

In-fact, WordPress sites hosted on Cloudways are up to 50% faster. This is made possible by Cloudways unique optimization methods which include things like Memcached, Nginx, and VMAN technologies.

Cloudways also makes use of a CDN network which will help load times and increase the security of your website.

-Cloudways has a unique feature that allows you to scale resources if you have traffic surge. Instead of shutting down your site, you can “pay as you go” for extra bandwidth. This can be really handy if you’re running a promotion, or simply want the peace of mind that your site can handle unexpected surges in traffic.

–Customer support is Excellent:

You can easily get in touch with chat support with virtually no wait times. If you’d prefer a different method you can reach technical or customer support through your preferred channel:

• Phone
• Email
• Chat

Cloudway’s support system has received almost universal praise from customers, many complimenting it on its speed, reliability and helpfulness.

All their packages come with “Standard” support, but for those who need a little extra you can opt for Advanced and Premium support packages:

Standard Support Includes:

• 24/7 live support (chat, email, ticketing)
• Infrastructure Support
  • Cloudways will coordinate with their infrastructure partners(digital ocean, AWS, Linode, etc) until a resolution is reached.
• Platform Support (they will handle support related to the following) :
  • Adding servers/applications
  • Cloning servers/applications
  • Server scaling
  • Domain mapping
  • Backups
  • SFTP/SSH connection issues
  • Managed migration of your site to Cloudways
  • Setting up and configuring Breeze WordPress plugin
  • Setting up and configuring Amasty Magento plugin
  • Setting up and configuring CloudwaysCDN
  • Let’s Encrypt certificates
• Partial application support
• Proactive monitoring alerts

Advanced and Premium plans include:

–Faster ticket response times for urgent issues

-Customization Support:

Advanced and Premium support offer customizations (including deployment of additional PHP packages and NGINX/Varnish specific configurations). You can ask us for these server configuration changes that will follow through platform processes including clone, restore, and transfer.

Premium Support also includes a private slack channel and phone support for direct access to their senior engineering department

Security

Cloudways places a high emphasis on security. One way they do this is by employing an advanced OS-level firewall to help keep bots and hackers at bay.

Furthermore, they have partnered with Malcare, a paid WordPress plug-in which provides enhanced security and malware protection. Their basic plan is $99/year but is included with your Cloudways hosting package.

Pros

• No hidden renewal fees
• Wide range of cloud operators to choose from
• Easy to use control panel
• Good customer support
• Above average load times
• Excellent uptime
• Loads of great features to protect your website and servers

Cons

• Business email is not included – you’ll have to pay extra.
  • A business e-mail account will set you back an extra $1/mo for 1 email address
• Not recommended for total beginners or non-tech savvy individuals.
• Expensive

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a cloud hosting solution with monthly payment options then Cloudways is an excellent choice. Offering great features like 24/7 support, SSL certificates, SSD storage, and a choice of cloud provider you’ve got a lot of flexibility and options at your fingertips.

On the critical front, Cloudways has been generally well-received, with most users praising the great support and easy-to-use control panel. Nevertheless, there are a few negative reviews, but they are by-far the minority. The sentiment on social media is generally positive as well.

We have a few reservations, though. Firstly we’d like to see them provide e-mail with their services, rather than charging for it. Secondly, it should be pointed out that Cloudways isn’t for newbies or those without expertise, as using it is a bit more complex than traditional cPanel or shared hosting.

Overall, however, if you’re in the market for cloud hosting, Cloudways is an excellent option.