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Cloudways Hosting Review

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If you have been researching managed WordPress hosting providers, you must have come across Cloudways. Now you’re possibly asking, is this affordable WordPress hosting provider fast, secure, and reliable?

Well, we have compiled a detailed Cloudways review to answer all the questions you may have regarding this cloud-based hosting provider.

This review will talk about important features, reasons for, reasons against, and our verdict. Let’s get started.

Cloudways Overview

Based in Malta, Cloudways has been in the web hosting business for over a decade. The company’s primary focus is on developers, agencies, and individuals looking for managed WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, and PHP app hosting. It doesn’t provide shared web hosting.
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One selling point of this cloud-hosting solution is its price, which starts at $10/month, making it cheaper than most of its alternatives, such as WP Engine and Kinsta.
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You get a host of standard services, including content delivery network, free website migration, and staging environment with WooCommerce sync when it comes to packages. In addition, it comes with popular content management systems (CMS) such as Joomla, PrestaShop, Drupal, and WordPress.
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In terms of network, Cloudways LTD doesn’t own infrastructure. Instead, it collaborates with global cloud technology providers such as Digital Ocean, AWS, Vultr, and GC, all of which have data centers globally.
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All its providers offer different packages based on the resources available. For instance, Linode and Digital Ocean offer basic plans, while AWS and Google Cloud are better options for people whose sites are receiving heavy traffic.

Cloudways Features​

Here are the main Cloudways features:

User Interface

Cloudways provides a custom dashboard as opposed to the cPanel. The good thing is that their custom dashboard is clean and pretty easy to use as every feature is well-labeled, making navigation more effortless.

The walk-through video is lacking for first-time users, but on the upside, the help desk, where you can get assistance in case of any doubts, is a click away. In addition, there’re lengthy articles offering step-by-step guidance using screenshots on how to tackle different processes.

There’s also an application installer to help in deploying apps with ease. You can use it to install popular CMS platforms, including WordPress, Magento, WooCommerce, and Joomla. Note that Cloudways doesn’t offer domain name registration services, and thus you have to look elsewhere to get the service.

Content Delivery Network

The online audience is very impatient, with 73% of the people claiming to move to a competitor’s website if the current website takes too long to load.

With Cloudways CDN, you won’t need to worry about website speed as they rely on a network of servers existing in strategic positions across the world. The servers work together to speed up content delivery to your audience.

One way Cloudways uses to increase web page load time is through bandwidth savings. Their servers compress files by up to 70% using Varnish and internal caching, boosting load speed.

Cloudways Servers

Cloudways offers different web servers, including AWS, GC, Vultr, DigitalOcean, and Linode, all tailor-made to fulfill different purposes. The entry-level server offers 1GB RAM, 1TB of bandwidth, and a single-core CPU. Higher tiers offer resources eight times that.

In terms of storage, Cloudways web hosting servers use SSD drives, which offer 4X the write and read speeds of the traditional hard disks. The result? Your requests get executed and processed fast.

There are multiple technologies powering the servers, including Apache and Nginx, as well as performance boosters such as Memcached, FastCGI, Redis, and Varnish.

In addition, Cloudways servers are known to repair themselves automatically (auto-healing). They do this through an intelligent monitoring technology that scans the servers for misconfigurations 24/7.

E-commerce Features

If you own an e-commerce site, you will find various apps that can help in running your online shop. WooCommerce is one of the most popular of the 300+ extensions. You will find robust apps in payment, reporting, and many other categories.

For developers, you can use Magento to build stores, manage inventory, and organize your store. There are also many developer tools, including JavaScript, Marketplace API, etc., which you can turn to when you need more customizations.

Cloudways also offers PrestaShop, a free, open-source platform for building attractive stores. PrestaShop offers a wide range of customizable templates and widgets to allow you to make storefronts that offer a fantastic shopping experience.

Cloudways Uptime

Cloudways claim to offer a commendable uptime guarantee of 99.99%, which means you will get negligible downtimes. From the many Cloudways user reviews, the claims seem to be true. You will find alerts in case there are interruptions.

Cloudways Integration

 Even though Cloudways doesn’t offer email hosting services, there are tons of integration to allow you to run your online business with ease.

Here are notable integrations Cloudways offers:

 
  • Website Migration Plugin to allow for easy site migration from another hosting service to Cloudways. The good thing with this transfer is that your site will be live all the time
  • Bot Channels. The tool links to popular platforms such as Slack and HipChat to alert you when servers are down
  • Backups. Cloudways conducts routine backups of your site data to help with recovery in case a disaster strikes
  • Collaboration Tools. These allow you to work with your team remotely. You can assign roles and share files regardless of the location of your team member
  • New Relic software to monitor your servers. The software sends real-time stats for bandwidth transfer, CPU/RAM usage, storage space, etc.
  • Cloudways API to help you build custom apps

You get these integrations and many others.

Reason We Prefer Cloudways

There are many reasons to choose Cloudways:

  •  Dedicated managed hosting services. Cloudways has specialized in offering fully managed hosting services, which means they take care of your site’s backend performance to allow you to focus on growing your site
  • Quick and easy site migration. If you would like to switch to Cloudways from your current hosting service, Cloudways offers free site migrations to their service
  • Intuitive custom control panel to allow you to navigate your site
  • Fast page loading thanks to their dedicated servers and optimized site performance
  • Let’s Encrypt SSL. Cloudways has a built-in Let’s Encrypt SSL feature to allow you to add custom SSL encryption to your site. The SSL encryption secures your site visitors’ data
  • Dedicated Firewall. WordPress is constantly targeted by hackers, which means a hosting service has to have enterprise-level security features. Fortunately, Cloudways constantly monitors your site for any attacks and protect your site using a dedicated firewall
  • Two-factor authentication. In addition to SSL encryption and dedicated firewall, the Cloudways’ two-factor authentication feature adds another layer of security against hackers
  • One-click plugin and app installation. You don’t need to be tech-savvy to install plugins to your site, thanks to the one-click app installer offered by Cloudways
  • Staging and cloning. The staging feature is crucial when testing changes to your e-commerce website. You don’t want to test new themes or plugins on a “live” site, as this can cause interruptions. Cloudways makes it easier for you to do this by allowing you to clone sites and create several copies. You can use cloned sites for testing changes
  • 24/7 support. Many hosting services fail in the customer support department, but Cloudways is different. Not only will you get 24/7 live chat support but also email support. There is also a blog and knowledgebase where you can find answers to frequently asked questions. Cloudways support is also available through their official social media pages

What We Don’t Like About Cloudways

Despite this hosting looking perfect, there are a few things you may not like about it:

 
  • Limited app languages for developers. If you are a developer, you will find it limiting that you can only create custom apps in PHP
  • Lack of control. Although Cloudways appeals to people who don’t want to be involved in the back-end performance of a website, people who want a little bit of control will find this hosting limiting
  • Lacks domain name registration services as well as email hosting

Frequently Asked Questions About Cloudways

There’re many things to like about Cloudways. Not only are you getting flexible cloud-hosting plans and stellar customer support but also excellent uptime and fast loading pages. Cloudways is a hosting service you can count on.

Cloudways doesn't use cPanel but has a unique, user-friendly custom control panel for its dashboard. Even if you haven't managed a site before, you will have an easy time using Cloudways' custom control panel.

Cloudways offers cloud hosting plans while SiteGround majorly offers shared hosting, and thus it's hard to compare the two in terms of speed. Overall, cloud hosting is always faster than shared hosting, which makes Cloudways faster than SiteGround.

Yes, Cloudways offers a good balance between functionality and affordability when it comes to managed WordPress hosting. There are tons of features for WordPress users, and it allows for scaling, which means you don't have to worry about your site growing in traffic. Cloudways Review Conclusion

Do we recommend Cloudways?

Absolutely Yes. Why? Not only does it have affordable hosting plans, but it also has a streamlined control panel and stellar customer support. In addition, it is scalable and feature-rich, making it excellent for WordPress sites.