Overview
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform owned by DigitalOcean, which completed its US$350 million acquisition of the company on 8 September 2022.[16] W3Techs credits DigitalOcean Group with 1.4% of all websites in November 2026.[1] Rather than shared hosting, Cloudways provisions a dedicated virtual server for the customer on one of several clouds (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud) and manages the software stack, backups and security on top.[17]
Pricing is pay-as-you-go. The smallest Flexible server, Micro, costs US$14 per month with 1 GB RAM, one vCPU and 25 GB NVMe storage, and is billed hourly with monthly caps; Small costs US$28 and Medium US$54.[17] An autoscaling product, Autonomous, starts at US$99 per month. Flexible plans come with a five-day free trial with no credit card required, excluding AWS and Google Cloud.[17][18]
Because each customer gets an isolated server, performance does not depend on neighbouring accounts as it can on shared hosting, and the platform supports unlimited applications per server. The trade-offs are the absence of email hosting and domain registration in the core product, the need to understand server sizing, and higher entry prices than shared hosting.
Cloudways features
- Choice of five infrastructure providers
- Hourly billing capped at monthly price
- Varnish caching with the Breeze plugin
- Five-day free trial
- Choice of DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud
- Hourly billing with monthly cap
- Staging on every plan
- Breeze cache plugin for WordPress
Cloudways pricing
US dollars. Flexible plan on DigitalOcean from $14 per month (Micro: 1 GB RAM, 25 GB NVMe), billed hourly up to the monthly cap. AWS and Google Cloud prices: see vendor. A Black Friday discount of 80% for the first two months (up to $200 per month) was advertised at review.
Cloudways strengths and limitations
Strengths
- Choice of cloud provider and region
- Pay only for hours used
- Free trial without card
- Many sites per server
- Isolated server resources
- No long-term contract
Limitations
- Requires capacity planning
- AWS and Google Cloud prices not on the pricing page
- Less hand-holding than fully managed WordPress hosts
- No built-in email hosting
- Server sizing knowledge helpful
- Higher entry price than shared hosting
Appears in
- Best Cloud Hosting in 2026 #10
- Best Web Hosting in 2026 #8
- Best Managed WordPress Hosting in 2026 #12
- Best WordPress Cache Plugins in 2026 #11
- Best WordPress Hosting in 2026 #7
Cloudways alternatives and competitors
Alternatives to Cloudways: companies ranked in the same lists.
SiteGround- Hostinger Business Email
Kinsta- DreamHost
WP Engine
WPMU DEV
Pressable
WordPress.com- Rocket.net
Bluehost
Pantheon
OVHcloud
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