I bet many web hosts you have ever used require upfront hosting payments, either the month-to-month or annual hosting prices.
You pay for a 12-month or multiple-year hosting contract, which is allocated with capped hosting resources (RAM, CPU, bandwidth, and traffic limits) and other add-on charges.
Cloudways’ pricing structure is different. You don’t pay upfront, and there are no capped website or traffic limits.
RAM, processor, bandwidth, and server provider are the major differentiators of the Cloudways hosting package.
How do these help you grow your business?
This post provides the answers, as well as other benefits of Cloudways’ hosting cost and billing structure.
Cloudways Pricing Overview
Cloudways’ pricing is entirely different from what you might be used to. It uses a pay-as-you-go billing model, where website owners only pay for the server resources used each month.
Unlike traditional hosting providers, Cloudways does not have a fixed monthly or annual hosting price and does not lock you into a long-term contract. This flexibility allows you to manage and plan your hosting budget more economically.
You know how much of your budget to allocate to monthly hosting bills and what you pay for.
One advantage of Cloudways’s pricing structure is that it lets you make hosting decisions quickly if you are unsatisfied with their services. You can easily move your blog to another host without back-and-forth sessions with customer care for prorated refunds.
How Cloudways Pricing Works in Summary.
Cloudways will send you an invoice for the server resources used at the end of the month. This invoice is expected to be paid within the first week of the following month.
Failure to make payment might temporarily stop your server unitill the invoice is cleared. In a nutshell, here is how Cloudway hosting prices work.
- No Fixed Contracts: You can start, stop, upgrade, or downgrade your plan anytime.
- Hourly or Monthly Billing: Choose between hourly billing (great for short-term projects) or monthly billing (better for long-term use).
- Pay only for what you use: Since Cloudways manages cloud hosting from providers like DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, and Google Cloud, your costs are based on your chosen server and resources.
What’s Included in Cloudways Hosting Plan
Cloudways offers high-quality hosting services from five top-tier cloud providers. Despite its various cloud provider choices, every Cloudways hosting plan has essential and advanced features.
Here are some notable mentions:
- Free Object Cache Pro with every new WordPress installation.
- Built-in caching mechanism (Varnish, Memcached, Nginx, and Redis) for faster performance.
- Minimum of seven data centres.
- Daily automated backup with a one-click restore point.
- One-click staging environment to test development.
- One free site migration.
- 24/7 standard support
- Free SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt.
- Advanced security features, including dedicated firewalls, fail2ban, DDoS attack protection, Imunify360, SafeUpdates, and more.
- HTTP/2 optimized server support.
- Free WordPress cache plugin (Breeze) Learn more.
- No hassle vertical scaling (RAM, CPU, and Disk space).
- Multiple PHP Version control (Upgrade and downgrade at will).
- Malware and vulnerability scanner. And more.
Aside from these fantastic features, Cloudways offers no surprises. This means there are no hidden charges beyond what is advertised on the website.
Cloudways does not charge for traffic spikes, CPU overuse, PHP workers, or the number of websites allowed on a server. The additional costs or add-ons are clearly stated on the website and are entirely optional.
There’s no gimmick to trick you into buying any additional services. Your website is working efficiently without any add-on service.
For example, you can use the Cloudflare free plan instead of the integrated Cloudflare Enterprise add-on in your Cloudways account, which costs $4.99 monthly.
Cloudways Hosting Plans and Costs
Depending on which cloud service provider you choose, Cloudways hosting plans and costs differ. Each provider has tiered hosting prices based on server specifications like processor, RAM size, and bandwidth allocation.
The server location is also based on the provider. DigitalOcean, the most budget-friendly Cloudways hosting plan, has nine data centres as I write this line. Vultr has 30, Linode has 25, and Google Compute Engine and AWS each have 28.
This variety gives you plenty of options to host your website nearer to your audience region to reduce latency, improve time to first byte (TTFB), and overall website performance.
Below is the breakdown of Cloudways’ hosting plan prices for each provider. Note: It is impossible to run through each provider’s hosting plan; the table shows their basic or entry-level plan.
| Provider | Basic Price | RAM | Processor | Storage | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | $14/month | 1 GB | 1 Core | 25GB | 1TB |
| Vultr | $14 or $16/mon | 1GB | 1 Core | 32GB | 1TB |
| Linode | $14/mon | 1GB | 1 Core | 25GB | 1TB |
| Google Compute | $37.45/mon | 1.75GB | 1 Core | 20GB | 2GB |
| Amazon Web Services | $20.56 | 1GB | 2 Core | 20GB | 2GB |
Note:
The DigitalOcean premium server starts at $14, while the Vultr High-Frequency server starts at $16 monthly. Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services do not offer a free trial.
Before selecting which Cloudways hosting is right for you, here’s what you need to know.
DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode are more affordable than Google Compute Engine and Amazon Web Services. If you have a small business website with decent traffic volume and a moderate need for high-performance managed cloud hosting service, choose between these three.
Between them, I have used DigitalOcean and Vultr. Both are good; they offer high-performance servers with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, but you must consider your audience’s location/region before choosing a server provider and a data centre.
As mentioned above, DigitalOcean has nine data centres, while Vultr has 30. This could be a significant factor if you do business globally. From experience, server location is a major bottleneck in improving TTFB.
The closer the web server is to your primary audience, the quicker it can transfer data to the client browser.
After moving this website from the DigitalOcean premium server to Vultr high frequency with more data centers, my TTFB improved from an average of 65% to 97% in Speed Vitals and other testing tools.
While on DigitalOcean, my TTFB was very poor for the Asia Pacific (where most of my audience comes from) and Africa regions. Since moving to the Vultr high-frequency server, TTFB has significantly improved across all areas, including Europe, America, Asia Pacific, and Africa.
Whichever provider you choose, ensure you subscribe to their premium server – DigitalOcean premium or Vultr high-frequency server.
Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are suitable for enterprise businesses needing high-performance cloud hosting services. This platform offers top-tiered optimized virtual machines with state-of-the-art security features and enterprise solutions.
DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode are the right choices for most small to medium-sized businesses.
Cloudways Add-Ons and Extra Costs
While Cloudways pricing is more transparent with no hidden fees or charges, these add-ons enhance your hosting performance, security, and experience. This add-ons are not included in the base plan but can be added and managed within your account dashboard.
Here are my favorite Cloudways add-ons.
- Cloudflare Enterprise CDN – Cloudways integrates the Cloudflare Enterprise solution for $4.99 monthly. This brings features like Edge caching, image optimization with Mirage and polish, enterprise-level WAF (web application firewall), scrape shield, page caching, and Cloudflare’s global 260+ POPs edge network. The more websites you enable the add-on for, the lower the price.
- Premium support plans – Cloudways 24/7 standard support is for all user levels. If you need priority support for applications or server-level support, consider subscribing to premium or advanced support add-ons for $100 and $500 monthly.
- Additional backup storage – Offsite backup costs $0.033 per GB.
- Astra Pro – Instead of the regular annual license fee, this add-on gives you access to the Astra Pro plugin for a monthly subscription of $4. You can use it on unlimited Cloudways sites.
- Elastic Email – Cloudways does not include email hosting, but this add-on enables you to host your domain email with Cloudways for $1 monthly. You can also use other providers like Rackspace or Private Email.
- DNS Made Easy – Manage all your DNS records efficiently. With DNS propagation, you can easily add, edit, and delete records without downtime. Plans start at $0.50 per domain name.
- Application Migration – Your first migration request is free. Other requests will be charged at $25 per successful migration. Actually, you don’t need this migration application add-on. Cloudways migration plugin lets you do it yourself without hassle.
Cloudways Free Trial and Discounts
Cloudways offers a free 3-day trial for its DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr servers. This allows you to test-drive its hosting service, features, and server performance before committing to a paid plan.
The Google and AWS clouds are unavailable for the trial offer. These providers require direct billing to enable their services.
I published a detailed guide on the Cloudways free trial, which can help you understand the process better. I discussed its limitations, expectations, and how to make the best of the trial period.
Aside from the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, Cloudways frequently offer discounts. This Cloudways discount allows you to subscribe to a hosting plan at a fraction of the cost. You can also get a hosting credit for up to $50 if you subscribe via this website link.
Current Cloudways Discount Offer
- 30% off 3 months’ invoice.
- 15% off your first month invoice – use code CYBERNIA20.
Cloudways Pricing vs. Competitors
Cloudways competes with popular cloud-managed hosting service providers like WP Engine, Kinsta, Siteground, Nexcess, and Liquid Web. These web hosts also provide excellent hosting services with high-performance infrastructure; it’s hard to beat Cloudways’ competitive price for the same value.
You can check my Cloudways vs WP Engine and Kinsta vs Cloudways to see which web host offers the best value for your marketing situation and budget.
That aside, let’s compare their features, plans, and prices to determine if Cloudways is right for you.
| Features | Cloudways | WP Engine | Kinsta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Pricing | $11/month (DO) | $25/month | $30/month |
| Hosting Type | Managed Cloud | (Shared) Managed WordPress | Free 24/7 high priority for all users |
| Cloud Providers | DO, Vultr, Google, Linode, AWS | Google, Azure, and AWS. | Google Cloud Platform only |
| Performance | No email hosting (Paid add-on) | High speed hosting | High-Performance servers |
| Control Panel | Custom Control panel | Custom Control Panel | Custom cPanel |
| Scalability | Yes (Vertical scaling) | Yes | Yes (Contact Support) |
| Traffic Limits | No limits | Capped/plan | Capped/plan |
| CDN | Integrated Cloudflare Enterprise (Paid) | Free Cloudflare CDN | Free Cloudflare CDN |
| DataCenters | 65 Datacenters | 19 Data centers | 37 data centers |
| SSL Certificate | Free (Let’s Encrypt) | Managed WordPress (Containerized) | Free (Let’s Encrypt) |
| Email Hosting | No email hosting (Paid addon) | No | No |
| Disk | NVMe | SSD | SSD |
| Stagin | Yes – One click | Yes – one click | Yes – One click |
| Application Monitoring | Yes (Free) | No (Optional Add-on) | Yes (Free) |
| Customer Support | 24/7 Standard support (Upgrade for priority access) | 24/7 Expert support | Free 24/7 high priority for all users |
| Backup | Free daily automated + OffSite (paid) | Automated daily backup | Automated backup, paid offsite. ($2/mon) |
| Built-in Caching | Vernis, Redis, Memcached, and Nginx. | Yes (EverCache) | Yes |
| Money Back Guarantee | No (Pay-as-you-go plan) | 60 days | 30 days |
Is Cloudways Worth the Price?
Cloudways is worth every penny you invest in its hosting platform.
It is a powerful managed cloud hosting platform offering excellent services and performance. However, it might not be for everyone, as it is for any service.
For most beginners starting with a brand new site, Cloudways is not your ideal web host. You have better options, such as Namecheap, Hostinger, and HostGator. These web hosts are more affordable and offer essential hosting features that give more value for the price.
Who Can Benefit From Cloudways Hosting
Cloudways is ideal for bloggers and content creators who need a fast, scalable, managed cloud hosting solution. If you need semi-managed cloud hosting, easy scalability, and no traffic limits with a high-performance server, Cloudways is the go-to web host.
The pay-as-you-go plan and cloud provider flexibility are cost-effective solutions for online stores, small businesses, SaaS platforms, and agencies.
For developers and agencies who need complete control over their hosting environment and server specifications, Cloudways offers tools like GIT deployment, a Staging environment, PHP version control, and SSH access, making project management more effortless.
Cloudways suits businesses with diverse content management needs beyond WordPress. Since you can host other CMS like Magento, Joomla, PHP, and Laravel, the Cloudways platform is ideal for different project needs.
Who Might Want an Alternative to Cloudways?
- Beginners Who Prefer a CPanel-Based Host – Cloudways does not offer cPanel, so if you’re used to traditional hosting dashboards with cPanel, Cloudways’ custom dashboard may require a learning curve.
- Users Who Want Email Hosting Included – Cloudways does not provide free email hosting. You’ll need to use a separate service like Google Workspace, Private Email, Elastic Email, Rackspace, or Zoho Mail.
- Those on a Tight Budget – While Cloudways offers affordable entry pricing (starting at $11/month), shared hosting (e.g., Namecheap or Hostinger) is much cheaper for small, low-traffic sites.
If you need scalable, high-performance managed cloud hosting, Cloudways is an excellent choice. However, a traditional shared host might be better if you prefer cPanel hosting, built-in email, or ultra-low pricing.
Conclusion
Cloudways is a popular cloud hosting platform. It uses an NVMe disk, which is faster than an SSD-based disk. It stands out as a top-tier hosting company known for its easy scalability and high-performance server infrastructure.
Choosing from five cloud providers gives it an edge over direct competitors like WP Engine, Kinsta, Nexcess, and SiteGround.
Like most services, Cloudways has its target audience, so its pricing structure and billing options are tailored to this market. The pay-as-you-go plan allows its target audience to enjoy more value and experience transparent hosting prices.
If your business requires faster servers, managed cloud hosting, and easy scalability, you should consider Cloudways.
