Introduction
Web hosting is one of the most important aspects of running a website. Without it, your site will not be accessible to visitors. There are many different web hosting providers out there, out of which we have already reviewed Kinsta, Liquid Web and WP Engine.
So how do you know which one to choose?
In this Cloudways web hosting review, we’ll take an in-depth look at this popular webhosting provider to see what they have to offer.
We’ll cover topics like pricing, features, customer support, and more. By the end of this review, you should have a good idea of whether or not Cloudways is the right web hosting provider for you.
i know that a lot of people might be on the fence whether or not to switch to cloudways,
We wanted something that was faster yet affordable, and we stumbled upon this hosting.
Cloudways is one of the leading web hosting providers in the world. They offer a wide range of services, including shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, and more.
They also have a wide variety of features, including a free SSL certificate, unlimited bandwidth, and more.
Cloudways is a great option for those who are looking for a reliable and affordable web hosting provider. They have a wide variety of plans to choose from.
What is Cloudways?
Cloudways is a cloud hosting platform that provides users with a simple, yet powerful, way to deploy and manage their websites. With Cloudways, you can launch your site in minutes, with no need for server administration or complex configurations.
Simply select your desired application, choose a cloud provider, and let Cloudways handle the rest.
Cloudways is a little bit different they’re a managed cloud hosting platform so they’ve created this sort of custom platform that can connect you to some of the major cloud hosting infrastructures for example digitalocean, aws which is amazon’s cloud service, vulture, google cloud and lynode.
So basically, if you are not technical then Cloudways help you in managing unmanaged hosting provider,
which is different from a traditional shared hosting
Cloudways offers a number of features that make it an attractive option for those looking for an easy-to-use cloud hosting platform.
First, it provides a user-friendly dashboard that makes it easy to deploy and manage your site.
Second, it offers a wide range of applications that can be deployed with just a few clicks. Finally, it provides a high level of security and uptime, so you can rest assured that your site will always be accessible.
Difference between cloudways and other shared hosting platform
with other hosting companies such as like Kinsta, Liquid Web and WP Engine, you sort of have to pay upfront so you select from one of three different plans and you purchase your domain and your hosting together normally in like a 24 month or maybe like a 12 month commitment and then you get access to the platform where you install wordpress.
So the first difference is that the platform is different, with cloudways you don’t pay upfront, you get access to the platform in a three-day free trial and then you add the server so basically you have the option to choose which company to go with, as discussed above.
You can select wordpress or woocommerce or any other php application, you can choose the
infrastructure and then you can also choose the server size that you need as well as the server location
the second difference is that cloudways focuses in just on cloud hosting, regular shared hosting companies mainly focus on shared hosting they do have dedicated hosting and vps hosting
But they don’t offer the same sort of platform like cloud ways where you actually get to choose the infrastructure.
so the difference between cloud hosting and shared hosting is that shared hosting is generally like one server one physical server that’s shared among multiple users and multiple users will
have multiple websites so generally that’s a little bit less performance.
your website’s gonna load not as fast as cloud hosting because cloud hosting you get dedicated resources, so cloud hosting is like several feasible servers interconnected and then it is generating this virtual private server which is dedicated just for your websites only
so a good analogy is that shared hosting is sort of like a bus you know you’re sharing with other people cloud hosting is sort of like your own car you’re just carrying you and your own passengers or which is like your websites
Right so both of them can do the same thing, they get you to the same destination,
one of them is just a little bit more higher performance which is cloud hosting and also cloud hosting is going to be more scalable and generally more reliable as well.
Cloudways Features
Cloudways is a leading cloud hosting provider that offers a wide range of features to its users. Some of the key features of Cloudways include:
– One-click deploy: Cloudways offers one-click deploy for popular applications such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. This makes it extremely easy for users to get started with their websites without having to go through the hassle of manual installation.
– SSD storage: All websites hosted on Cloudways are stored on high-performance SSD storage drives. This ensures fast loading times and optimal performance for your website.
– Free SSL certificate: Cloudways provides a free SSL certificate with all plans. This helps to encrypt your website traffic and ensure security for your visitors.
– 24/7 support: Cloudways offers 24/7 customer support via live chat and email. This means that you can always get help when you need it, no matter what time of day it is.
– Automatic backups: Cloudways automatically backs up your website data on a daily basis. This helps to ensure that you can always restore your website in case of any problems.
– in terms of the speed you’re going to find that they are going to be the fastest in terms of load times because i tested the speed against i think seven different locations, it loads most of the servers around 1.2 to 1.3 seconds on average right so these are really really fast servers
– you can click on staging management ,what the staging management does is that you can create a exact copy of your live website and then that’s going to create a duplicate of it and then what you can do is if you want to make changes to your website make changes on the duplicate website and once everything is working fine nothing is breaking then you can push those changes to your live server
– you do not require service maintenance as it is done by Cloudways itself,
– So if you’re building like a website sometimes you may update a plugin or a theme andsometimes it’s gonna break the website, it may go offline so the staging management is a really useful feature of cloudways
– Talking about speeds, It was under 1s and under 864ms , the speeds were quite good and it is very difficult to share such speeds in shared hosting
– Talking about the Data centres, there are 25+ locations and all the types of servers for Vultr, Linode, AWS are available here
You can select any one of them as per your preference
-There is also the function of “Lost Server”
This is when, by chance, if the server is deleted by you, then you can recover this within 15 days
- Talking about Staging, you will have its requirement when you do certain changes to the website andWe do not want such changes to reflect live on the websiteHere we make a copy and perform changes, and after that, it is pushed to Live Website,Here we get the option for Staging.
- There are a lot of good options for staging and in a single click you can push-pull the changes and there are really good options for testing, you’ll be able to create different accounts for different team members and you can actually limit their access to different aspects of the server, with 2 factor authentication.
- Fantastic smart hosting assistant called cloudways bot and it’s going to keep you up to date on the health of your website and cloud server and you can also integrate that bot into things like slack email or an api and basically it will just deliver notifications to you based on your website needs
- Thunderstack, basically that combines several features from several server technologies which gives you fully optimized wordpress hosting and better speed.
Cloudways Pricing
Cloudways offers a wide range of pricing options to suit different budgets and needs. There are four main plans:
Basic: The most affordable option, ideal for small websites or those just starting out. Starts at $10/month.
Business: A step up from the Basic plan, with more features and resources for growing businesses. Starts at $22/month.
Enterprise: The most comprehensive plan, designed for large businesses with high traffic requirements. Starts at $80/month.
Custom: A tailor-made solution for businesses with specific needs that don’t fit into any of the other plans. Pricing depends on individual requirements.
There is also a free three-day trial available, so you can try the service before committing to a paid plan.
In fact, the days on which the server is active, the amount for it would be calculated
Suppose I created a new server, and it was active for 4 days and then I deleted it,
So I need to pay only for 4 days,
This is better compared to other companies where the renewal charges are high and monthly options are not feasible,
So why this premium is charged by them
This is due to the security, ease of use, support and maintenance which is provided by them, but what you’re paying for is the cloudways control panel security and support assistance which honestly is worth the money.
Cloudways Customer Support
Cloudways offers 24/7 customer support via live chat, email, and phone. The company’s customer support team is knowledgeable and quick to respond to questions. In addition, Cloudways offers a comprehensive knowledge base and video tutorials to help customers troubleshoot issues. Overall, Cloudways provides an excellent level of customer support.
Cloudways Pros and Cons
If you’re considering Cloudways for your web hosting needs, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons before making a decision. Here are some of the key points to consider:
PROS:
– Cloudways offers a pay-as-you-go model that can be very cost-effective for small businesses or those just getting started with web hosting.
– The platform is easy to use and makes it simple to get your website up and running quickly.
– Cloudways offers great customer support and a wide range of features.
– they’ve also got an ssl certificate so it’s really easy to actually install the ssl certificate
– they also do a external backup of your server and your website so it does cost a little extra so it’s like 0.033 dollars per gigabyte, you get offsite backups and it is very easy to manage backups
– they’ve also created a plugin easy to migrate your website
– I have received an average uptime of 99.99%, The downtime is checked every 30s
CONS:
– The pay-as-you-go model can become expensive for larger businesses or those with high traffic levels.
– Cloudways doesn’t offer a lot of storage space on the basic plan.
– You do not get Email hosting here
You need to pay extra for it
-managed security automated backups monitoring
– While the pay-as-you-go model can be cost-effective, it can also become expensive if your website grows and you need to upgrade your plan.
– The platform may be too simple for some users who are looking for more advanced features.
– Some customers have reported issues with uptime and customer support.
– that they don’t include domain registration so with a lot of other hosting companies you can get your domain name for example yourname.com together with your hosting plan and you don’t have to connect everything because it’s already pre-connected, however with cloudways it’s not preconnected you have to purchase your omain name from a domain registrar, and then you have to add your domain over here and then you’ll need to basically change the dns settings.
It’s not too hard to do it literally takes like one minute to connect but it is an extra step so if you’re a beginner then that may not be the best option
Overall, Cloudways is a great option for small businesses or those just getting started with web hosting. The platform is easy to use and offers a wide range of features. However, it can become expensive if your website grows and you need to upgrade your plan.
- you don’t get a free cdn (225 GB per $1)
- They don’t have Cpanel but you can access the files um using the ftp like such as filezilla
- They don’t provide uh emails (but can forward your emails to Gmail or others)
For whow the Cloudways is for?
if you’re creating your first website for example you’re creating like a simple business type of website uh like a portfolio type of website where you have your services maybe your portfolio a little blog and your contact form and things like that and you’re not quite sure about you know how much traffic you’re going to be getting then i don’t think cloudways probably is a great option for you because it’s going to cost you know around 12 or so per month, opt for cheap hosting.
you sort of are expecting you’re getting a ton of traffic perhaps you built a huge social media following and you know you’re creating an e-commerce website to sell your merchandise then i think um cloudways might be a good option as well um if you’re ready to you know do a little bit of work in terms of connecting your domain and setting up your emails then i think it might be a good option.
cloud ways is just on another level in terms of performance from what i’ve actually tested and i think cloudways is the perfect option for if you are a web agency because you can create multiple servers for your clients
Conclusion
All in all, Cloudways is a great web hosting provider with plenty of features to offer its users. It’s easy to use, has excellent customer support, and is reasonably priced. If you’re looking for a new web host, we recommend giving Cloudways a try.
if you’re creating your first website um but you know if you are wanting to switch to a faster web host and you want like to upgrade from your shared hosting provider right now then i think cloudways is something that you should definitely take a look at.
You get a balance, for the money you give and for the performance that you are getting
Speed, Load Testing, Uptime and Scalability.
All the cloud infrastructure that you see here is very good for the money that you are paying here
Start for a free 3 day trial here.