Cloudways sits between shared hosting and running your own server. You choose a cloud provider such as DigitalOcean, and Cloudways sets up and manages the server, security patches, backups and caching through a friendly control panel. You get dedicated resources without needing to be a system administrator.
Cloudways pricing
Cloudways bills monthly or hourly, with no long contract and no intro discount that later disappears. On its DigitalOcean page, the entry server is listed at $11 a month with 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB storage and 2 TB of transfer. Larger servers scale up from there, such as an 8 GB, 4 vCPU server listed at $88 a month.
A three-day free trial lets you launch a server and test it before adding a card. Bandwidth beyond your allowance is billed per gigabyte, at $0.02 per GB on DigitalOcean.
What we like
You can host as many sites as your server can handle, which makes Cloudways cost-effective for agencies and freelancers with several client sites. Resources can be increased in minutes when traffic grows, and monthly billing means you are never locked in. The panel makes staging, cloning and backups straightforward.
What to watch for
Email hosting is not included, so you will need a separate email provider. Cloudways is more technical than a shared plan: you choose server sizes and locations yourself. Costs climb quickly as you add bigger servers, and pricing varies by cloud provider, so compare options before you commit.
Who should choose Cloudways
Cloudways suits sites that have outgrown shared hosting, agencies managing many WordPress or WooCommerce sites, and owners who want cloud performance with predictable monthly bills. If you only run one small blog, a good shared plan is simpler and cheaper.
How it compares
Against Kinsta, Cloudways is cheaper per site when you run several, but asks you to choose and size servers yourself. Against shared hosts such as Hosting.com or SiteGround, it costs more for a single site at first, yet avoids renewal jumps entirely because the monthly price is the price. For an agency moving ten client sites off shared hosting, the maths usually favours Cloudways within the first year.
The verdict
Flexible, fair and powerful. Cloudways is one of the easiest ways to step up to cloud hosting without hiring a server administrator.
Prices are in US dollars, exclude tax and were taken from the provider’s official pricing page. Hosting promotions change often, so confirm the current price at checkout. See every host side by side in our hosting comparison table.