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Cloudways Review 2023: The Fastest Managed WordPress Hosting

$8.8 $11 START FREE TRIAL

RIAN20

June 6, 2023

Hands Down! After Rocket.net, Cloudways is the only host that has blown me away with its speed. Yes, if you leave Rocket.net aside, Cloudways is the fastest host that I have tested in recent times.

As a blogger, focusing intensely on website speed optimization, I always look for web hosts that offer excellent speed. I was with Rocket.net for the last couple of years and was looking for an alternative. Cloudways was right on the spot.

No, Rocket.net was not bad. It is still the best and fastest web host, but I was looking for some cheaper alternatives.

After moving to Cloudways, RiansTech passed all web core vitals and traffic also increased. We have TTFB now in the range of 100-130ms. Thanks to Cloudways+ Perfmatters+ Super Page Cache For the Cloudflare plugin. We don’t use any cache plugin but still, we get an excellent speed.

I was so amazed by the speed that I moved all my blogs to Cloudways. If you try their service once, you will also have the same impression. Guaranteed!

Yeah, there is a bit of a learning curve as the Cloudwways interface is new. However, it’s just a matter of time to get used to it.

So, here you go! The most detailed and unbiased Cloudways Review that will cover almost every aspect of Cloudways.

Don’t worry, I won’t spare Cloudways for things that could have been better.

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Cloudways is a managed WordPress hosting company, we all know that. But what the heck is this Managed WordPress hosting? Let’s learn about that first.

What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Many of us, including me, do not know much about how a web hosting process works. We don’t know how to get the best out of a web hosting service. The result is ” We start blaming our web host“

That’s not fair at all. To overcome these kinds of issues, most web host nowadays offers a service called Managed Hosting.

What does that mean is that some experts from the web host company itself will maintain each and everything of your web hosting service?

They will decide how the server should be optimized, and they will decide the key variables and the best settings that your hosting environment should have.

In a nutshell, they will give you the best possible setup for optimum performance.

Now when we talk about Managed WordPress Hosting, your web host goes one step extra and optimizes your hosting environment to suit the requirement of WordPress and as a result, you get the best speed and experience from your WordPress blog.

Cloudways Hosting Overview

Cloudways was founded back in 2012 by Aaqib Gadit and Pere Hospital. It has its headquarters in Malta.

As of 2023, Cloudways powers 570K+ websites across 20 countries and has close to 300+ employees. They have offices in Malta and Karachi.

Cloudways is a managed hosting company. You can choose servers from different providers like Digital Ocean, Google Cloud, and AWS.

You can choose the amount of RAM you need, the number of CPU cores you need, and the bandwidth.

The best thing about Cloudways is that they charge you monthly. No commitment at all, unlike other hosts who charge you per year.

You can upgrade resources anytime if you feel that the current setup cannot handle the traffic. You don’t have to jump to other hosts just because you got some spike in traffic.

Cloudways is tied up with Cloudflare, Object Cache Pro, and Malcare ( Apart from three cloud server vendors) to offer customized services. All these services will take your website speed to the next level.

The below image shows the key components of a typical stack in Cloudways.

Cloudways Features [Key Features]

Here are some of the key features of Cloudways Hosting that make it one of the best and fastest hosting available in the market today.

Renowned IaaS Providers

With Cloudways, you will have access to host your website with renowned IaaS ( Infrastructure As A Service) providers like Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, and AWS.

They all are very popular for cloud hosting. If you want to host your website directly with those IaaS providers, it’s a little difficult. But with Cloudways, you are just a click away from hosting with them.

Dedicated Environment

Unlike shared hosting, Cloudways offers a dedicated environment for all accounts. This means, your resources will be only yours and won’t be shared with other accounts.

Dedicated accounts drastically improve the website loading speed. From a safety point of view, a dedicated environment is the best.

Although there is a limitation on the CPU seconds per hour, it is not as bad as Siteground. The INODE limit is also massive.

Cloudflare Enterprise CDN [ Paid Add-On]

This is the real trump card of Cloudways Hosting. With Cloudways Enterprise CDN, you can enable Full Page Caching which will drastically reduce the TTFB ( Time To First Byte).

Apart from caching, Cloudflare Enterprise CDN also offers prioritized DDoS protection, advanced firewall, Brotli compression, PCI DSS compliance, and many other features.

In case, you don’t want to use Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, you can use “Super Page Cache For Cloudflare” which is a free plugin to activate ” Full Page Caching”. You will get the speed, but you will miss the safety features.

Below is the snippet of features that Cloudflare Enterprise CDN offers tailored to suit the Cloudways environment.

Point to be noted that Cloudways does not offer the full fledge version of Cloudflare Enterprise CDN. Instead, it’s a trimmed version with limited features. But think about the pricing. Cloudways only charge $4.99 whereas the full fledge version cost $200 per month.

Here are the top three hosting companies that offer Cloudflare Enterprise CDN. The below tables show the feature comparisons.

Redis Cache Support

Cloudways supports Redis as well as Memcached for object caching. Object caching can drastically improve the website loading speed by caching database queries. Object cache can also improve the speed of the WordPress admin area.

Typically, Redis is far more advanced and faster than Memcached. Please read this article to know about the difference between Redis Vs Memcached

With all 2 GB plans and higher, Cloudways offers the Redis Object Cache pro plugin for free which typically costs $95 if you want to buy it directly.

If you have the 1 GB plan, then also you can use Redis cache, but for that, you need to install Redis on the server and then use Redis Object Cache free plugin to activate Redis in WordPress.

To enable Redis Cache on the server, please go to Server->Settings And Packages-> Install Redis

After you install Redis on the server, you can stop or start the Redis server by going to Server-> Manage Services

Install the Redis Object Cache plugin and activate it on WordPress. If you are with a 2GB plan or higher, the Object Cache Pro plugin will be installed automatically when you activate the service at the server level.

Caching Comparison Chart

Free WordPress Cache Plugin [ Breeze ]

Breeze is a free WordPress cache plugin offered for free to all Cloudways customers. It has all the features that other mainstream cache plugins like WP Rocket has.

On top of that, it has direct integration with the Varnish cache which is the server-level cache offered by Cloudways.

If you use Breeze with Cloudways, you will be saving the amount that you would have to spend on other cache plugins.

However, Breeze has a lot of room for improvement. In certain setups, it may not work properly. We will discuss more of that later in this article.

SafeUpdate For WordPress

When you are hosted with Cloudways, all your servers come with an Auto Healing feature. In case of a server crash, most issues are resolved with Auto Healing server restart.

Cloudways has a feature called SafeUpdate that automatically detects, tests, deploys, and rollback WordPress updates. Visual regression testing ensures plugin updates don’t break your site.

Using SafeUpdates you can literally convert hours of work into minutes. Just schedule updates and move on with your day.

Vertical Scaling

What would you do when there is a spike in traffic?

Change the host for better resources?

Well, with Cloudways, it’s not the case. You can always upgrade your server resources anytime you want without affecting any customization that you might have done with your server.

You can buy more RAM, more CPU cores, and more bandwidth, and even you can upgrade or change your server.

But how about a downgrade? Is it possible?

If you are with Digital Ocean, the downgrade is not possible. For AWS and Google, you can upgrade and downgrade anytime you want.

One more thing you need to note is that, in case you are with Digital Ocean, you can upgrade only the package and not the individual resources.

For example, if you are with a 1 GB plan of DO and you want to upgrade to 2 CPU cores, you need to upgrade to a 4 GB plan only as the 2 GB plan still offers 1 CPU core.

However, with Google Cloud and AWS, you can scale resources individually.

If you were with shared hosting, you might know that they trap you for at least a year ( sometimes 3-4 years). In between, if you want to upgrade, you need to buy a higher plan. With Cloudways, it’s a different story.

Enterprise Grade Security

One of the reasons I moved out of Siteground is that my site was hacked about two times in a span of three years.

With Cloudways, to date, all my sites are safe.

The reason is very simple. Cloudways offers a dedicated environment and has a bunch of security measures installed at the server level.

Recently, Cloudways has collaborated with Malware Security. Now all Cloudways customers will get Malcare security plugin for free ( Known as Bot Protection)

Apart from that, Cloudways offers the following security features.

Application And Server Cloning

Things can go wrong anytime for any reason with your server or application. This could be due to a wrong setting, a bad plugin, or it could be the wrong theme. There are thousands of reasons why your server or application may crash.

But with Cloudways, you don’t have to worry!

You can do one-click server cloning or application cloning. You can perform all your testing with the cloned server and when you are ready, deploy the same to the production server.

Unlimited Applications

With Cloudways, you can install unlimited applications as long as you have the storage available. You can create unlimited databases as well.

But my suggestion would be to watch out for CPU and RAM usage and based on that, decide how many applications you should install.

The more application you install, the more load on the CPU, and the slower will be your applications.

Just because Cloudways allows unlimited applications, don’t install too many applications. It will slow down all your sites.

No Long Term Contract

Cloudways pricing is on an hourly basis or a monthly basis. No commitment at all, not even for a month. You can leave Cloudways anytime you want. No need to pay upfront for the whole year.

If you feel you need more resources due to a sudden spike in traffic, you can always upscale your resources. I have never come across any web host that is so flexible.

Excellent Support

Cloudways support used to be bad. But I have never come across this issue. Whenever I contacted Cloudways support, I got a prompt response.

Many times they have solved problems that may not come under their support converge. But they have done that on goodwill.

The only issue I noticed was that the Cloudways support team sits in Karachi. So if you try to chat with them from a different time zone, it may take some time to connect. But it won’t be more than 2-3 minutes.

Here are the Cloudways support features in a nutshell.

The basic support is free ( More than enough) and available 24X7. But if you are running a big company and you need premium support, then Cloudways has that option too.

I found Clouways support to be very good. The team is very knowledgeable and they are eager to support their customers.

The best mode of support is the live chat which is available 24X7.

Easy Migration

Cloudways has a partnership with BlogVault and as a team, they have developed a plugin called CloudWays Migrator that can automatically transfer your website from other hosts to Cloudways.

The migrator tool is very solid. It never failed to transfer. The UI is very smooth and all options are well laid out.

In case, you don’t want to use Migrator tools, you can use the WPVivid plugin that can transfer your website very easily.

We will talk about the migration process later in this article.

Customized Control

Cloudways is a Cloud hosting. So you can control everything you want on your server. You can change the PHP configuration, install modules you want ( If that supports it), or do anything that can be done on a web server.

You can also change the application web root, access files using SFTP, can do an automated backup, or create server-level cron jobs.

If you are comfortable with server customization, the Cloudways support team is always there to help you out.

Excellent Pricing

I see many people have concerns with Cloudways Pricing. But trust me, Cloudways plans are not that costly.

Cloudways is Cloud Hosting Provider and not typical shared hosting. So the pricing comparison should be done between Apple to Apple. Right?

Cloudway’s basic pricing starts from $11. Can you find a better Managed WordPress hosting for $11? Maybe not. I would any day pay a little extra money for hosting to get better speed and security.

Cloudways can go costly only when you choose Google Cloud or AWS. Other than that the pricing of other servers are good enough to host with.

Cloudways Promo Code

Cloudways is offering up to 20% Off For The First Invoice for RiansTech audiences. All you need to do is to click on the below link and use the promo code RIAN20.

[Please note that if you don’t use the promo code and do not click on the above link, you won’t get the 20% Off.]

Here is the summary of Cloudways Promo Codes

Cloudways Pricing And Cloudways Hosting Plans

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Cloudways charge on an hourly basis or monthly basis. No long-term commitment, and no hidden fees. You pay what you see while buying the plan.

For example, if you use their hosting for 10 days, you need to pay for 10 days only and not for the whole month. There is nothing called a renewal fee in Cloudways.

You may think, why can’t we host directly with Cloud service providers like Digital Ocean or Vultr?

Of course, you can do that. In fact, the pricing is almost 50% less than what you pay to Cloudways for a similar set of resources.

But there is a catch.

If you directly host with Cloud server providers, you will miss the benefit of Managed hosting. You need to manage each and everything by yourselves which is not easy. The below image shows what you will miss if you directly host with the Cloud service provider.

Cloudways has three IaaS providers, Google Cloud, AWS, and Digital Ocean. Here are the different Cloudways plans based on different cloud servers.

We have shown the pricing for Digital Ocean servers as it is the most popular IaaS provider among all three providers listed above.

Cloudways Digital Ocean Server Plans

Digital Ocean has standard and premium servers. The pricing varies based on the type of server you choose.

Digital Ocean Standard Server Plans

Digital Ocean Premium Server Plans

Cloudways Data Centers

Cloudways data center location depends on the cloud server you choose. If you are targeting the USA and Europe region, almost all cloud service providers have a data center.

However, if your targeted audience is in India, you may choose Digital Ocean. The below image shows the list of data centers across different regions.

Cloudways Performance And Test Results

We never review any hosting provider without using it and running some rigorous speed testing. We test actual sites, unlike other bloggers who never show the URL that is used for testing.

We proudly show the URL that is used for testing because we believe in transparency and unbiased review.

For Cloudways, we have taken our live site ( RiansTech), and below are the results. We did not use any cache plugin for this test as cache plugins always manipulate the actual speed of the server.

We have only used Perfmatters and Cloudflare CDN.

Here is how our site performs across different regions. Did you notice that we are getting almost the same speed across different locations? That is the power of Cloudways and Cloudflare.

Speed Test Report

The below images show the speed test reports of RiansTech that we have tested on different tools.

GT Metrix Speed Test

GTMetrix shows a perfect 100 score with a fully loaded time of 0.2 seconds which is simply great. Just look at the total blocking time and CLS which is 0. It’s all because of Perfmatters.

Web Core Vitals Test Report

Yes, We passed the web core vitals. It was possible only due to Cloudways. We scored an almost perfect 100 score in both the mobile and desktop version

Speed Vitals Test Report

Here also we have scored a perfect 100. Just look at the TTFB. It’s only 36 ms. Can you believe that?

TTFB Test ( Time To First Byte)

Here is the TTFB report of RiansTech across different regions. We are getting almost the same TTFB across all regions.

Please note that TTFB is the main thing for your website speed. TTFB is the time that the server takes to render the first byte.

How To Host With Cloudways

You might have heard that Hosting a website on Cloudways is tough, especially if you are moving from the C panel.

Yeah, the Cloudways interface may be confusing for many, but once you get around it, you will find every option well laid out.

We are here to help you host your first website on Cloudways. If you follow all the below steps mentioned, you will be done in flat 10 minutes.

Sounds interesting? Let’s go!

First thing first. And the first thing is that you need to buy a hosting plan. For that, you can consider clicking this link which will take you to the Cloudways home page.

There, click on the “Pricing” option on the menu bar. That will show you the Cloudways plans and pricing.

Choose a plan based on your requirements. Once done, click on ” START FREE” which will take you to the signup page.

There you can enter the promo code ” RIAN20” to get 20% off for the first month.

The next this is to do is choose a server. Enter the application information, server name, project name, etc. And then choose the server and the RAM size.

Choose the data center close to your targeted audience. That will affect your server TTFB. The data center location varies based on the server you choose.

At the end click “Launch Now“

It may take a couple of minutes (5-10 minutes) to deploy a server. Please don’t refresh or close the page during the server deployment.

To add Applications, go to ” Applications“, and click on “Add Applications“. Select the server for your application.

Select the server and click on ” Add Application“

Then, select the type of application ( For example, WordPress), the name of your application, and finally click on “Add Application“

It may take some time (2-3 minutes) for the application to get installed.

Once you have installed the application and clicked on the installed application, you will get the following window.

Here you can see the temporary URL, temporary admin URL, Admin user name/ password, and the database details.

If you want to access the hosting files, you need to create application credentials (4) as shown on the right side.

To install the SSL certificate, please click on the “SSL Certificate” option on the left side.

Enter your email ID and domain name on which you want to install the SSL certificate. Please check the ” Apply Wildcard ” option as it will install the SSL certificate for all subdomains ( If added to Cloudways) too.

In the end, please add the CNAME records to your DNS registrar. After some time click on ” Varify DNS” to make sure that the CNAME records are added.

Record Type: CNAME
Host Name:_acme-challenge
Value/Alias: wordpress-851545-3099472.cloudwaysapps.com [ This will vary based on your application]

After that, please click on “ Install Certificate “

Cloudways has a nice video to explain the whole process. The below video shows the process of installing an SSL certificate on a single domain [No Wildcard]

The below video shows the process of installing an SSL certificate on multiple domains ( Subdomains). You need to use the ” Apply Wildcard ” option.

The final thing that you have to do is to connect your domain. When you installed the application, you got a temporary URL. Once you connect your domain, the temporary domain will be replaced by the actual domain.

To connect your domain, click on the ” Domain Management ” option.

Enter your domain name and save the changes. If you want, you can add additional domains too as shown on the right side.

Finally, you need to add the A Record and the CNAME record (4) to your domain registrar.

First Record

Record Type: A
Host Name:@ [ If you use Cloudflare enter @, otherwise follow your domain registrar]
Value/Alias: Your Cloudways IP [ You will get that IP on your application details page]

Second Record

Record Type: CNAME
Host Name: WWW
Value/Alias: Your Cloudways IP [ You will get that IP on your application details page]

Once these DNS entries are live, you can access your website with the actual domain address.

That’s it. You are now hosted on Cloudways.

Here is a video to explain the whole process of domain management.

In case, you are moving away from another hosting to Cloudways, you can request free migration.

Please note that only the first website migration is free. Additional migrations will be charged as per the below rate.

To raise a migration request, please go to ” Add Ons ” and submit a migration request.

Do you know that Cloudways also has a plugin for migration? You can transfer your website with that tool very easily without any support.

You can download the migration plugin by following the below instructions.

Getting Used To Cloudways Control Panel

The Cloudways interface is a little different compared to the traditional C panel interface. So let us explore the interface and know what we can do to manage our hosting.

Cloudways Backup

Cloudways has three backup options. Please note that Cloudways backup is not free. they charge $.50 for each GB of data backup

Scheduled Server Backup

Cloudways does a server backup automatically with a frequency of one day. However, you are free to change the frequency. The scheduled backup option is available for the whole server.

On-Demand Server Backup

If you want, you can also do the on-demand backup of your server that can be downloaded to your local drive.

For the on-demand backup, you need to turn on the local backup option.

Application Backup

Similar to On-Demand Server Backup, you can also take on-demand application backup and restore it very easily when you need it.

Cloudways Cron Job Management

You should disable WordPress cron if you want to improve your website loading time. But many functions like WordPress backup depends on corn jobs. If you disable the cron job, the backup won’t work.

In that case, you can use the server-side cron job that won’t affect your website speed. To create a corn job by yourself, please refer to this guide or raise a support ticket.

To see the list of server-side cron jobs, you can see the corn job management tab.

Cloudways Bot Protection

Cloudways Bot Protection is an excellent security tool that blocks unwanted traffic to your website. The Bot Protection tool is basically the Malcare security plugin tailored to suit the Cloudways environment.

Once you enable the Bot Protection in the Cloudways dashboard, the plugin will be automatically installed in your WordPress application.

Application Monitoring

Cloudways has a very detailed application monitoring system that gives you various data as shown below. This data is very useful to find the root cause of any issues that your application might be facing.

Cloudways Vs Competitors

The best thing about Cloudways is that they have plans from $11 per month to $285 per month. No matter, if you are a beginner or you have a high-traffic blog, Cloudways has a plan for you.

Due to this wide price range, Cloudways competes with many web hosts. But out of all these, only Rocket. Net, Kinsta, and WP Engine come close to ( Or better) Cloudways in terms of speed and features.

Cloudways Vs Competitors ( Number Of Visitors)

The following graph shows the number of visitors allowed per month in the basic plan. Cloudways does not impose a cap on the number of visitors. So Cloudways is the winner here.

Winner: Cloudways

Cloudways Vs Competitors ( Bandwidth)

This chart shows the head-on comparison of the four hosts when we considered the bandwidth that is offered on the basic plan.

Clearly, Cloudways is the winner here as Cloudways offers 1 TB bandwidth even in the base plan.

Winner: Cloudways

Cloudways Vs Competitors ( Storage)

The basic Cloudways plan comes with 25GB SSD storage whereas the other three offers 10 GB SSD space only. Again the winner is Cloudways here.

Winner: Cloudways

Cloudways Vs Competitors ( No. Of Applications)

All plans of Cloudways allow unlimited applications as long as you have the storage space available. The other three allow only one application in the basic plan.

Winner: Cloudways

Cloudways Vs Competitors ( Price)

The basic plan of Cloudways starts at $11 which is almost 50% less than the lowest plan that WP Engine offers. So, in terms of pricing also Cloudways is the winner.

Winner: Cloudways

Cloudways Vs Competitors ( Feature Comparison)

Cloudways Positives And Negatives

Things That Could Have Been Better

No hosting is perfect. Cloudways also has its own share of flaws in its service. Although the positives of Cloudways are outperforming the negatives, it is our duty to let you know about the drawbacks of Cloudways so that you can make an informed purchase decision.

Breeze Plugin Needs A Lot Of Improvement

You might be tempted to use Breeze which is a free cache plugin offered by Cloudways. But trust me, this plugin has a bunch of issues.

The support team has no knowledge of how to fix these issues and the developer has no intention to make it better.

When I used Breeze with CloudFlare CDN, I had my site broken multiple times, although the support team was proactive to restore it back.

I would suggest you use WP Rocket or FlyingPress along with Perfmatters to get the caching job done for your websites.

Use Apache And Not LiteSpeed Server

The competition has moved away from Apache, but Cloudways still use Apache. The response time of the Lite speed server is 2-3 times better than Apache.

Although the NGNIX reverse proxy has reduced the effect of using Apache, still Cloudways has a lot to do with their selection of web servers.

CPU Outage Issue In 1 GB Plans

I faced this issue a couple of times. However, the support team was prompt enough to suggest a solution.

CPU outage in 1 GB plans occurs due to the use of Apache Web server and low CPU seconds per hour limit. Better to go with the 2 GB plan or higher.

You can resolve the CPU outage issue by changing the following settings.

No Email Hosting

For me, it’s not a negative but for many, it could be. Cloudways does not offer any email hosting. But you can buy Rackspace addon for $1/ Month/ Mailbox. Rackspace can be integrated into the Cloudways dashboard. A detailed guide is available here.

In case, you don’t like RackSpace, you can use Google Workspace or Zoho ( A cheaper option). Personally, I use Zoho and I am very happy about it.

No File Manager

Unfortunately, Cloudways does not offer any file manager. You need to depend on tools like Filezilla to access hosting files.

Should You Use Cloudways

Yes! Cloudways offers the most value-for-money hosting plans. Cloudways speed complements the pricing. You won’t get a fast hosting service like Cloudways in the price range that Cloudways deals.

The only other hosting that can beat Cloudways is Rocket.Net. Our testing shows the same as Rocket.net beats Cloudways in speed and security. But Rocket.net pricing starts at $30 whereas for Cloudways it’s $11. You need to consider that as well.

So, if you are a blogger, small business owner, or own a small e-commerce store, Cloudways would be a great choice for web hosting.

Conclusion: Cloudways Hosting Review

Cloudways is definitely way better than shared hosting. The speed is excellent even without a cache plugin. In fact, the WordPress admin area runs very smoothly.

Since Coudways does not use a C panel, there is a learning curve to get used to the interface. But Cloudways has extensive knowledge base articles that will help you to learn things better.

Do you recommend Cloudways?

Yes! Of course. Even RiansTech is hosted on Cloudways.

Cloudways is undoubtedly the fastest-managed web host available in the market today right behind Rocket.net. Yeah, compare to Rocket.net, Cloudways is not that fast, but if you see the pricing of Rocket.net and Cloudways, then Cloudways is the most value-for-money host.

Once Cloudways offers full-page caching, it can easily catch Rocket.net in terms of speed. I Hope Cloudways offers this service very soon.

So I would say, If you are serious about your website speed, move to Cloudways. You will get better speed, better safety, better customer support, and overall a better hosting experience.

Guaranteed!

FAQ | Cloudways Review 2023

Cloudways Review

Cloudways is one of the fastest and secured web hosting. By using the promo code RIAN20, you can get up to 20% discount on the first month invoice. Grab the deal now!

Price: $11

Price Currency: USD

Operating System: Linux

Application Category: Web Hosting

Editor's Rating:
5

Cloudways Review 2023: The Fastest Managed WordPress Hosting

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