When you’re in the market for managed cloud hosting services there are a ton of different options for you to consider. Not only do you have to find the right kind of hosting for your needs, but you need to find a reputable hosting company as well. And let’s face it, not all hosts are created equal.
According to our uptime and speed test data, Cloudways is the most reliable managed hosting provider in the industry.
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The hosting you use will have a big impact on the success of your website. With a lackluster host behind you, your site can load slowly, go offline, and even be vulnerable to security risks. All of these will kill your chances of making money with your website.
Plus, as a WordPress website owner, you need a hosting environment that’s been fully optimized to run WordPress. That’s a lot of requirements from a single host.
Luckily, there’s one host that stands above the rest in terms of managed WordPress cloud hosting–Cloudways. Maybe you’ve already come across this host during your search and you’re considering them?
Even though they’re a relatively new hosting provider they’ve made a big name for themselves in the WordPress cloud hosting industry.
Below you’ll learn everything you need to know about Cloudways hosting in this in-depth Cloudways review so you can decide if they’re the right host for your WordPress site.
A Quick Overview of Cloudways
Cloudways offers a great balance between providing premium level WordPress hosting, while still offering these features and benefits for an affordable price. Put simply, it’s one of the best cloud-based managed WordPress hosts on the market today.
It’s a cloud infrastructure provider, so their cloud servers are packed with a rich feature set that allows you to scale your site quickly. The cloud hosting infrastructure (which I dive deeper into below) is optimized for blazing fast loading speeds, high performance, reliability, and high levels of security.
Cloudways is different from a lot of other hosting companies as well.
For example, most hosting companies focus on offering a ton of different forms of hosting, like VPS, shared, cloud, WordPress, or dedicated. But Cloudways breaks from the norm and only focuses on one style of hosting–managed WordPress cloud hosting.
In a lot of ways, this allows them to offer a superior level of service to their customers. Instead of spreading their technical and development team across multiple different styles of hosting, then can narrow down on a single type.
I’ve been using Cloudways since January 2016 for this blog. I happily recommend Cloudways to my readers because I am a proud customer.
This allows them to double down on providing the best level of service possible. Instead of optimizing servers across multiple different forms of hosting and catering their service offering to support every style of website they only focus on one.
This level of focus on providing the best WordPress cloud hosting possible has allowed them to quickly become one of the best managed cloud hosting options on the market.
Cloudways is the Ultimate All-in-One Hosting Solution
Cloudways is a developer-oriented hosting provider that makes it easy to run and manage a cloud-based server.
If you couldn’t guess from the name, all of the hosting solutions provided by Cloudways utilize scalable managed cloud hosting. If those terms sound complex, don’t worry, the cloud servers can be deployed simply and easily.
Cloudways is a flexible hosting platform that gives you plenty of customization options to create the perfect hosting environment for your website. For example, when you sign up for a hosting plan you can choose from a ton of different cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon, DigitalOcean, Google, and Vultr.
With the selection of different cloud servers to choose from you get access to a network of servers with the latest server technology. The server network spans over 45 different data centers across 25 different locations scattered across the globe.
Another key factor in what makes Cloudways great is its commitment to online security. There’s nothing worse than getting your website hacked and losing all of your precious data. All the hours spent building your site, creating content, and everything else. Most security incidents can be avoided by choosing a high-quality host taking to proper steps to protect your website.
The team of security engineers at Cloudways are always looking out for the latest security risks and patching any security holes as soon as they’re found. The constant updates ensure that your site is always running on one of the most secure hosts today.
Another great feature is the easy app deployment. You can choose from a wide variety of PHP apps you can deploy in a couple of clicks. Whether you’re looking to build an app, eCommerce site, or a site that requires a content management system (CMS). You’ll find everything you need and more.
By now you should have a good rundown of the kinds of features Cloudways WordPress hosting can provide. Below I dive into each of these in even more detail (and highlight a few must-have features that only this host provides).
Unique Cloudways Features That Make It the Best Managed Cloud Hosting Provider
Whenever a WordPress site owner asks me what host I recommend I always have to go with Cloudways.
It’s affordable, flexible, high performing, scalable, and has an intuitive hosting dashboard.
Here are a few of the unique features that make Cloudways a no-brainer choice for the ultimate WordPress host.
One-Click Server Deployment
Even though Cloudways offers a technically complex form of hosting (cloud-based managed hosting), everything can be done with the click of a button. No matter what you want to accomplish within your Cloudways hosting environment, you can do so with the click of a button.
For example, deploying an entire virtual server can be done with a single click. No matter if you’re deploying your first server, or simply scaling up your existing network of servers.
A lot of cloud hosting gives you this level of server control, but it’s much more difficult to manage. Cloudways makes the server management process easy, even if this is the first time you’re launching a website.
Free SSL Certificates Included
SSL certificates are an absolute necessity today. Without an SSL certificate, your site will be unsecured, and this can lead to a rankings issue with the Google Chrome browser, which means a loss in traffic.
However, a lot of hosting companies will charge extra for an SSL certificate, but not Cloudways. When you sign up for a hosting plan you get a free SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt.
You can add an SSL certificate to any website you’re hosting with a single click.
Easy and Fast Server Scaling
Cloud hosting can be a blessing because it allows you to scale up your server resources at a moment’s notice. So, if you’re seeing a spike in holiday traffic, or you know you have a big promotion coming up you can scale up your server resources literally by moving a slider up or down. As your traffic continues to grow you’ll be happy you have a host that can grow with you.
The dashboard makes this incredibly easy to interpret too, just set the slider for the number of page views you’re expecting per month. If you’re more advanced you can specify your server settings via bandwidth, number of core processors, storage, or RAM.
Advanced Caching Features
Beyond the unique cloud infrastructure, Cloudways goes the extra mile by employing advanced caching and server optimization features.
First, they utilize a unique in-house caching plugin called Breeze. This plugin is easy to set up and configure, plus it integrates with the Cloudways CDN. The use of this CDN is included with every hosting plan and improves speed and reliability even further.
Activating the CDN only takes a single click and your website will be cached on servers across the world.
Easily Deploy Staging Servers for Website Cloning
Another cool feature is the ability to deploy staging areas. A staging area is a clone of your site that allows you to make changes freely without affecting your website that’s currently online.
All you have to do is deploy a new staging area with a couple of clicks, test out new website changes, then once you’re satisfied, push the changes to your website that’s currently live.
The cloning process is similar and can go hand in hand with website staging. Essentially, you clone an existing version of your website to create an exact copy. You can use this to migrate servers or create a version of the website to show team members or even clients.
Unique Team Collaboration Features
Cloudways supports teams in a way that a lot of other hosts don’t. Most websites, or apps, have an entire team behind them, but it can be difficult to manage these permissions effectively.
Here you’ll find a unique feature that lets you invite different team members to your projects while assigning each member a different role.
You’ll find advanced developer features as well, like the ability to create automated workflows and use Git deployment tools. This allows for more efficient code management and monitoring across your entire team.
Whether you’re deploying a simple web app or launching a website with a large team, Cloudways has all the tools you need for effective team management.
Rock Solid Customer Support Team
If you do run into issues with your website or server, you can rely on their exceptional 24/7/365 customer support team. The CloudwaysBot is super helpful and quick at resolving any issues before you even have to speak with a representative.
There’s both live chat support for a quick response and an online ticketing system. When you submit a ticket, your request will be evaluated, and you’ll be paired up with a customer support expert who’s best suited to help with your request.
For those who want expert-level support, there is a premium support option for an added fee. With premium support, you get access to customer support via the phone, or you can reach support via a private Slack channel.
You can also reach out to their team via social media. They maintain several very active social media profiles, so there are always multiple ways to reach them.
If you’re the type of website owner who prefers to do their troubleshooting, then you can access the knowledgebase for a ton of different tutorials and walkthroughs.
Affordable and Scalable Cloud Hosting Packages
Cloudways packs the same features as any other high-end hosting provider, but they do so at a fraction of the price. With cloud hosting it’s very easy to customize your server environment, so it’s perfectly suited for your website.
Of course, the more features you add and the more server resources your site requires, the higher the price will be, but you can get started with Cloudways for very little money down.
Plus, since it’s cloud hosting, you’ll only pay for the resources you actually use!
The price you’ll pay will also depend on which server you select. Currently, the cheapest price you can get a Vultr server is $11 per month, while the cheapest price overall is the DigitalOcean server for $10 per month.
Another great thing about Cloudways pricing is there are no long-term contracts. The rate you see when you sign up is the rate you get, and you won’t get locked into the pricing for years at a time.
This straightforward pricing model is another thing I really like about Cloudways and sets it apart from a lot of other hosting companies out there today.
Managing Your Servers with the Custom Control Panel
Cloudways doesn’t use the standard cPanel to manage your hosting environment and servers. Instead, you’ll be using a custom-built hosting console. This console is designed to make the server management process as simple as possible.
Deploying a cloud-based server is no joke, it’s a pretty technical experience. However, Cloudways makes this process as simple as possible, so you can manage your server with ease. Through this control panel, you can access and manage your servers, deploy applications, projects, and set up your teams (as mentioned above).
Here are a few key features you’ll get access to:
1. Manage Site Security
Cloudways offers incredibly secure hosting. You’ll also find a log of your whitelisted IPs that you use to access your server. This will help you see if any unauthorized users have accessed your server.
2. Run Website Backups
Bundled website backups are an absolute godsend. Cloudways offers a handful of different backup options, no matter which hosting plan you choose. For example, you can set up automated backups to run daily, every two days, three days, four days, and so on. There’s also the option to run a manual backup whenever you’d like with a single click.
3. Monitor Current Resource Usage
Real-time server monitoring is an incredibly useful feature. Instead of guessing how much server resources your website is consuming, you can rely on real-time data.
This section of your console will show a graph of your current cloud server load. There are over 15 different variables you can monitor, which you can select from a drop-down menu.
4. Migrate Your Site Cloudways WordPress Hosting
If you’re running a WordPress site and are coming from another hosting provider, then you can use their free migration service. You can actually migrate any app or website over to the service for free, but since this post is all about WordPress, it’s worth mentioning.
The process is very straightforward and entirely hands-off. You get in touch with their team and give them the details of your website or app, they assess the needs and migrate the site for you. It’s really that easy.
Bonus eCommerce Features for Online Store Owners
You might be wondering, does Cloudways work for eCommerce store owners as well?
Yes, online store owners can utilize the unique Cloudways for eCommerce features, entirely for free.
In fact, a lot of the features offered by Cloudways make it ideal for eCommerce. You get blazing fast secure servers, plus you have the ability to scale your server u p during busy sales times.
You’ll also get access to built-in eCommerce tools that make running your online store even easier, like a profit margin calculator, traffic calculator, ROI calculator, and more.
How to Get Started with Cloudways WordPress Hosting
If you’re convinced that Cloudways is the right hosting provider for your WordPress site, then it’s time to get started.
It literally just takes a couple of clicks to set up your hosting environment.
Here’s how you can get started with Cloudways hosting today:
1. Choose Your Application
The first thing you’ll need to do is choose which application you’d like. In my case, I use WordPress, the most popular CMS.
2. Select Your Provider and Server Size
Next, select your cloud provider and server size. Just slide the slider to whatever size server best suits your needs. Keep in mind that you can always upgrade your server whenever your traffic and resource needs increase.
The biggest difference you’ll find among each provider is the data center locations, the price, and available RAM. When choosing based upon the data center, make sure to choose based upon the location of your visitors.
Keep in mind that the provider you select will influence your monthly price. Overall, the cheapest plan will be the DigitalOcean starter plan for $10/mo, perfect for those starting a blog on a budget.
You can also get started with the free trial.
3. Choose Your Server Location
The final thing you’ll need to do is select your preferred server location. Your server location choice will depend upon the server provider you selected. Once again, choose the server location that’s in the closest proximity to your site visitors (or expected site visitors).
4. Launch Your Server
At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a big green button that says ‘Launch Now’. All you have to do is click this and you’ll automatically launch your server.
You’ll also notice both the hourly and monthly rate you’ll pay for your current server setup.
Closing Thoughts: Is Cloudways WordPress Hosting Right for You?
If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m a huge fan of Cloudways. But, it’s not just me, even a quick Google search will turn up hundreds of positive Cloudways user reviews.
Hopefully this Cloudways review has helped to illuminate the great features that this host has to offer. If you want a host that allows your WordPress site to scale with ease, then Cloudways is worth checking out.
If you want to get started today, then you should take advantage of our Cloudways coupon, which will give you access to this affordable host for an even cheaper price.
If you are looking for alternatives to Cloudways, 10Web is our favorite alternative for any WordPress website. Checkout this comprehensive 10Web review and reader exclusive promo code.
