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Cloudways Review 2024 (Is It Good For WordPress Hosting?)

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Cloudways Review 2024
Cloudways Review 2024
Note: I'm in the process of rewriting this Cloudways review. For current hosting recommendations, read my guide about the best WordPress hosting.

My Verdict

In my experience, it’s hard to go wrong with Cloudways. They provide a platform with very affordable access to the best cloud hosting servers in the world including Google and Amazon. And if you aren’t sure about something, their 24/7 online support is there to help. This Cloudways review will help you decide whether they are a good fit or not.

Cloudways Pros

  • High Performance
  • Amazing Support
  • Team Collaboration
  • Unlimited Websites
  • Automated Backups

Cloudways Cons

  • No Email Hosting
  • No cPanel
  • Better If You’re Tech Savvy
Managed Cloud Hosting Platform Simplified - Cloudways
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What is Cloudways?

Firstly, what is Cloudways?

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform, which provides arguably the best type of hosting available due to its high performance and reliability.

What is Cloud Hosting?

Just so you know, there are 4 main types of WordPress hosting including Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, VPS and Cloud Hosting. I’m not going to go into too much detail below… Just know that Cloud Hosting is often the best out of them all, with Shared Hosting often being the worst.

Simply put though, when your website runs via Cloud Hosting, your website is served via a network of servers aka a ‘cloud’ of servers. This is what ensures high performance, uptime and reliability. As opposed to shared hosting, which uses a single server that shares its resources with other website owners. This usually results in low performance, downtime and unreliability (especially if your website gets lots of traffic).

Hopefully, that makes sense!

Considerations Before Signing Up

The main consideration you should make before signing up for Cloudways is that you should be somewhat tech-savvy. This isn’t a worry if you have a developer like myself maintaining your WordPress website. But if you plan on maintaining it yourself, you should be familiar with a bunch of settings from the PHP version and memory limits to SMTP.

Migrations

Cloudways does provide a free migration but they also allow unlimited WordPress installations. So if you plan on setting up more than one website then you’ll need to know what you’re doing (or at least be keen to learn). For example, once you’ve created your website or migrated it to Cloudways, initially it will be on a temporary domain. So you’ll need to point your actual domain name to Cloudways. i.e. from your old hosting provider to your new one. This is actually very easy and quick to do (if you’ve done it before).

So if you know how to log into your domain registrar and change the DNS settings then you are probably good to go. But even if you don’t know, Cloudways will help guide you.

Pro Tip:

If you manage multiple websites with domains from different registrars then I’d recommend creating a CloudFlare account (it’s free) and running all of your domains through here (DNS only). This way you can manage the DNS of all domains from one place. Doing this will save you loads of time!

Cloudways Managed WordPress Hosting

Cloudways WordPress Hosting.

Cloudways Features & Benefits

It is a breath of fresh air to have a hosting provider that provides everything you need. Cloudways has all of the most important features to create and maintain a successful business website.

Custom Control Panel

Firstly, Cloudways doesn’t have a typical cPanel like other providers. I listed this above as a negative but it’s actually a positive. Instead of an old and boring cPanel AND having to click through from your hosting account dashboard to the cPanel, Cloudways have streamlined and connected the two.

Cloudways has created a custom control panel that merges your account dashboard with all of the typical cPanel features – a much better user experience in my opinion.

Benefits of Cloudways Custom Control Panel:
  • A much better experience
  • Saves you time
  • Modern feel

See the screenshots below.

Backups, Staging & Cloning

This is one of my favourite features. If you look hard enough, you’ll find other great hosting providers BUT they just use the same cloud hosting vendors that Cloudways gives you access to AND many of them don’t provide automated backups (or restoring) staging environments or cloning capabilities.

Cloudways provides all of this in an extremely easy-to-use fashion. I normally schedule my backups to be taken daily but you also have the option of every 12 hours, 6 hours, 3 hours and even every hour! You can also take backups on demand whenever you want.

Benefits of Cloudways Backups, Staging & Cloning:
  • Worry-free experience.
  • If something goes wrong you can easily restore your website.
  • Create a testing environment without affecting the live site.
  • Test new software without affecting the live site.
  • Make changes without affecting the live site.
Cloudways Control Panel

Cloudways Custom Control Panel.

Performance

This is the number one reason you should move to Cloudways. Or at least start using Cloud Hosting instead of the usual shared hosting that most people use (alternatives to Cloudways below).

Worldwide Server Locations

If you want your website to be fast, you absolutely need a server that is close to your location. If you are in Australia (like me!), you’ll get access to servers in Sydney from a range of server vendors (all from your Cloudways control panel).

VULTR, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services all have servers in Sydney so you can expect very quick connection times.

Benefits of Worldwide Server Locations:
  • Ability to choose a server closest to your location.
  • Faster website for your target audience.
Cloudways Server Locations

Cloudways Server Locations.

Best Cloud Hosting Providers

The Cloudways platform gives you extremely easy access to the best cloud hosting vendors in the world.

You will have access to servers from:

  • Digital Ocean
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Google Cloud

I recommend using Digital Ocean and choosing their premium droplets.

Benefits of Cloudways Cloud Hosting Providers:
  • Your website will be hosted by the best of the best.
  • The highest potential for a blazing-fast website.
Cloudways Server Vendors

Cloudways Server Vendors.

Cloudways ThunderStack & Advanced Caching

Cloudways’ performance comes down to their PHP stack. A PHP stack is essentially the server technology and caching mechanisms used to power your WordPress website.

Cloudways Thunderstack is what makes your website super fast. By default your website will have advanced caching built-in including memcached and varnish. Redis is another caching mechanism that boosts your website even further. But you’ll need to install this from your Cloudways control panel.

Benefits of Cloudways Thunderstack:
  • Blazing fast website
  • Integrated by default
  • Boost your site further with Redis object caching
Pro Tip:

If you plan on boosting your website further with Redis server-assisted client-side caching, then I recommend upgrading your server from 1GB to 2GB as it will consume more resources than normal.

Cloudways ThunderStack

Cloudways ThunderStack

Security

Cloudways gives you the option of free SSL certificates on all of your websites. Unlike shared hosting providers like GoDaddy which make you pay for these!

They also have dedicated firewalls to protect your websites from security threats, essential login security and even a built-in database security system.

Benefits of Cloudways Security:

  • Free SSL certificates
  • Protect your website from hackers
Pro Tip:

Once you’ve installed WordPress, I’d recommend installing a limits login attempts plugin to bolster your website security even further. It’s amazing how many people try to hack into websites each day, just trying to guess passwords.

Customer Support

The support at Cloudways is great. They provide 24/7 expert support so if there is ever a problem, you can count on them to help. They are so good it’s like having an expert developer work alongside you (for free!).

You can even opt for their ‘premium support’ where their support engineers work as part of your team. How good is that!

Benefits of Cloudways Support:

– Expert developers and engineers within reach.
– Get support any time of the day or night.
– Access to their knowledge base if you prefer to do it yourself.

Pro Tip:

When starting an online chat to get support, type in ‘Cloudways Support’ to get past their chatbot a little quicker.

Is Cloudways Worth It?

Pricing

I personally think Cloudways is worth it. Especially if you opt for a VULTR setup, which starts from $11/month (USD).

The AWS and Google Cloud plans are much more expensive but aren’t necessary if you’re based in Australia. Just go with the VULTR setup. You will be very happy. Trust me!

Cloudways Reviews

Cloudways Reviews

Cloudways Reviews.

Cloudways Alternatives

The best alternatives to Cloudways are:

If your target audience is in Australia, read my guide to the best WordPress hosting in Australia.

Final Thoughts

I personally think Cloudways provides the best value out of any hosting provider. They are a platform that gives you easy access to all of the best cloud hosting providers in the world.

Again, I don’t think you can go wrong with Cloudways.

Hopefully, this Cloudways review was helpful.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Managed Cloud Hosting Platform Simplified - Cloudways
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NOTE:

Recommendations are based on my experience building, optimising and maintaining WordPress websites over the last 7 years. However, I don't claim to be an expert or pretend that I know everything. The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don't know. 😅 But I hope my experience brings insight to new and experienced WordPress website owners. I'll update these articles as I continue to learn!

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Author
Max Jacobs
My name is Max Jacobs and I’m a Web Designer, SEO and Marketing Consultant based out of Geelong, Australia. Visit my about page.

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