CloudWays Hosting Review – The Good, The Bad & Whether They’re Right For You

We love Cloudways and have migrated 100s if not 1000s of sites there through our WordPress Site Speed Optimization Service at WPSpeedFix.com

We’ve broken down some of the detail on Cloudways below. Right now they’re one of the fastest hosts online due to their speed optimized server stack as well as more advanced optimization features like Redis caching.

From a tech perspective, there’s very other hosts that compare especially when you consider the price. If you’re relatively tech savvy then it’s definitely worth giving them a try.

The drawbacks are that their interface can be a little more technical especially if you’re used to something more like a cPanel interface and support can be a bit hit and miss at times due to their explosive growth.

There’s more detail below, if you want to give them a try head to Cloudways.com and use the coupon code FASTHOSTING for $25 credit which on the base plans at $10/month, will give you roughly 2.5 months of hosting for free!

The servers we’re using and recommending right now at Cloudways are their Vultr High Frequency servers – they have high speed CPUs AND high speed NVMe hard disks which makes them even faster than most other hosts, especially for CPU heavy sites like WooCommerce.

That being said, if you’re interested in hearing about some more specific features it offers, including why it’s considered one of the better hosting services currently on the market, read on.

Contents

General Info

ClowdWays' landing page

CloudWays is based in Europe, more specifically the island of Malta, and it was founded all the way back in 2009. While that doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, when it comes to hosting services, it might as well be centuries.

CloudWays has managed to stay relevant in a very competitive market for over a decade and it scarcely could have done that without picking up some good business practices and learning exactly what their customer base is looking to get out of their service.

The company states that they don’t have any specific focus but are rather trying to be a jack-of-all-trades that can provide their customers with a functional and fast service that comes at affordable prices.

In our CloudWays review, we’re going to go over all 3 points we just mentioned, and more, so let’s get started.

Pricing

CloudWays provides 4 different plans (5 if you include the free trial), and while a lot of them offer different speeds and disk space depending on the price bracket, most of the available features are included in each package.

These features include a free migration option, free SSL certificate, and the ability to host an unlimited number of applications. Additionally, you’ll also gain access to 24/7/365 support, as well as the pay-as-you-go billing feature, which allows you to pay only for the resources you consume.

We’d also like to note that CloudWays hasn’t named their plans which is why we’re simply going to number them based on their prices. Cloudways has also priced their plans depending on the data centers you’ll use, so we’re going to list all of the prices in order from the lowest to the highest.

Free Trial

If you aren’t sure you want to commit straight out of the gate, CloudWays has you covered. You can choose to get the 3-day free trial that will allow you to try out the first plan before having to spend a cent.

This is a great way for you to try out the service and find out if it can provide you with the sort of reliability and speed that you’re expecting. Keep in mind that sites for large companies aren’t likely to do well on any free service or even on the cheaper options. Meaning that you’re going to have to splurge for one of the more advanced plans that are more appropriate for a site with a lot more monthly visitors.

The First Plan

This plan will set you back $10 on DigitalOcean, $11 on VULTR, $12 on Linode, $33.63 on Google Cloud, and $36.51 on Amazon. These are all monthly payments. There are also hourly payment rates, but since we won’t be covering them, you’re free to check them out by clicking on this link.

The plan provides you with 1 GB of RAM, 25 GB of storage, and 1 TB of bandwidth on DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultur. On Amazon and Google Cloud, the storage goes down to 20 GB and the bandwidth goes down to 2 GB, while the RAM goes up to 1.70 GB on Google Cloud and 1.75 GB on Amazon.

This package also gives you a CDN add-on and unlimited application installation, access to automated backups and HTTP/2 enabled servers, regular security patching, SSH and SFTP access, and much more.

The Second Plan

This plan will cost you a single monthly payment of $22 on DigitalOcean, $23 on VULTR, $24 on Linode, $75.29 on Google Cloud, and $86.77 on Amazon.

The plan provides you with 2 GB of RAM, 50 GB of storage(55 for VULTR), and 2 TB of bandwidth on DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultur. On Amazon and Google Cloud, the storage goes down to 20 GB and the bandwidth goes down to 2 GB, while the RAM goes up to 3.75 GB.

This package comes with all of the options that the previous one had, including a few that we didn’t mention. These include the auto-healing function, the team management options, the staging environments, the 24/7 real-time monitoring, the dedicated firewalls, and the advanced caching optimization.

The Third Plan

The third plan that CloudWays provides will cost you $42 on DIgitalOcean, $44 on VULTR, $50 on Linode, $142.48 on Google Cloud, and $176.26 on Amazon.

The plan provides you with 4 GB of RAM, 80 GB of storage, and 4 TB(3 on VULTR) of bandwidth on DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultur. On Amazon and Google Cloud, the storage goes down to 20 GB and the bandwidth goes down to 2 GB, while the RAM goes up to 7.5 GB on Google Cloud and 8 GB on Amazon.

This package comes with all of the features that we mentioned before.

The Forth Plan

The final plan will require a monthly payment of $80 on DigitalOcean, $90 on Linode, $100 on VULTR, $232.80 on Google Cloud, and $274.33 on Amazon.

The plan provides you with 8 GB of RAM, 160 GB of storage, and 5 TB(4 on VULTR) of bandwidth on DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultur. On Amazon and Google Cloud, the storage goes down to 20 GB and the bandwidth goes down to 2 GB, while the RAM goes up to 15 GB on Google Cloud and 16 GB on Amazon.

This plan also provides all of the same features that come with the other packages.

Is it a Good Deal?

As you could tell by the packages we listed, CloudWays is incredibly generous when it comes to the features it offers. A lot of hosting services will either hide most of their more useful features behind paywalls or simply charge extra even for very necessary features.

The service is known for having better CPU and rendering speeds than a lot of other services that charge quite a lot more, like SiteGround. The CPU and data center will vary depending on your location and the package that you chose, but ultimately they all provide some incredible speeds.

Due to the various data centers and payment plans, CloudWays provides a reliable service to companies of varying sizes. Regardless of the number of site visitors you get in a month, the service provides upgrades that can accommodate your growing business.

In our opinion, you’re getting more than a good deal with any of the plans you pick.

Convenience

In the beginning of our CloudWays hosting review, we mentioned that one of the 3 biggest draws this service has is the convenience it provides for the users. We’re going to go over a few simple things that CloudWays does that really make a difference to their customer base.

1-Click Functionality

Most of the apps and additional features the service offers can all be used with a few clicks. This can really save you a lot of time when you’re trying to run a website as efficiently as possible.

This might not sound like much, but trust us when we say that a lot of mistakes have been made due to people not making proper backups because the procedure was too much of a pain. CloudWays allows you to backup and even clone your site by simply going into the staging or backup menus and clicking a single button.

The 1-click functionality is also incredibly useful when it comes to setting up new sites and all of the applications that you mean to use on them. It can really make the process as quick and painless as possible even for less experienced site creators who don’t really know what they’re doing yet.

Managed Hosting

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, managed hosting, in essence, is when you transfer most of the administrative duties to your service provider. This means that they will do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to maintenance and updates, while you’ll be consulted for any big change and warned ahead of time about any updates to the server.

You need to wear a lot of hats when you run a website. You need to know how to design it, how to maintain it, how to solve any problems that pop-up, and so on. What managed hosting does is it takes some of those burdens off of your shoulders so that you can focus all of your energy on other more important ventures.

While you may not feel too sure about this at first, the chance of having your site and server in the hands of real professionals is something you shouldn’t miss. In all honesty, while you may be apprehensive about the whole situation, the truth is that this particular service that CloudWays provides ensurese that your site is always up and running with as few interruptions or issues as possible.

Flexible

The combination of the multi-core CPUs, the CloudWays CDN, and the globally distributed data centers make this particular service a great choice for pretty much any type of site. As long as you get a plan that fits your site size, then you can create and host as many sites as you might like and see little to no performance depreciation.

When it comes to small and medium-sized companies, pretty much any plan that you choose can provide you and your site visitors with the best loading times imaginable.

Larger companies will have to splurge a bit more when picking out a plan. This is mostly due to the high CPU usage that comes from having too many people on your site at once.

eCommerce focused sites can take full advantage of the shopping focused features that the service is compatible with, as well as the upscaling options that are available as soon as you start to pick up steam and need a larger item library for your site and more CPU power for your visitors.

Individuals can take full advantage of the cheapest plans available. As we mentioned before, all of the plans come with the same features, and since freelancer sites don’t usually have high requirements, that means that you’ll be getting all of the speed and functionality that CloudWays has to offer at a bargain.

Speed

Not only does CloudWays have access to over 25 data centers all around the world, but it has recently also added a “High Frequency” option to their VULTR data center plans, which increase the server speeds, CPU, RAM, and bandwidth for a moderate increase in price.

We mentioned the importance of your location and the plan that you pick, and while we did go over all of the prices, we didn’t mention the relevance of the data center you pick for your hosting. Let’s change that.

DigitalOcean

This provider is undeniably the most affordable choice that you can currently use with the CloudWays service. The cheap bandwidth is really useful if you have a lot of applications that require a lot of it. However, while the infrastructure is reliable, the other providers generally have faster and more reliable upload times.

Linode

Is very cost-effective when you consider the quick speeds and reliable upload times. A great choice for small and mid-sized companies alike. While the scaling-up process is slower than some other providers on this list, it makes up for it with the cheap bandwidth.

VULTR

While this provider is relatively new, it can still provide quick and reliable speeds, a decent number of locations throughout the world, and cheap bandwidth. The backup process is slower than some of the other providers, but all-in-all, both the standard and the high-frequency packages are great all-rounders.

Amazon

This provider is known for having the highest number of locations on a global basis, as well as an extremely reliable infrastructure. This makes it a great choice for stable connections, reliable uploads, and quick speeds. Unfortunately, these are also the reasons why it’s the most expensive option.

Google Cloud

In terms of the number of locations and the average speeds, Cloud is only second to Amazon. However, this is still a great deal for load times that are ridiculously fast. Just keep in mind that it has the most expensive bandwidth, meaning that you need to make sure that you aren’t using apps that drain it too quickly.

Conclusion

Maybe the most important feature that we saved for last is the lack of any year-long binding contract. This allows you to only pay for the service for as long as you need it and simply switch or cancel it at your earliest convenience, which is an option that criminally few web-hosting services provide.

At the end of our CloudWays hosting review, we’d just like to remind you again that there is a free trial available, and if all of the positive traits we listed so far have done nothing to convince you that this is a great hosting service, then feel free to try it out and make up your mind afterwards.

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