Cloudways Review 2026: Real Costs, Pros and Who It Suits
Our verdict: Cloudways is a good pick for growing WordPress sites, WooCommerce stores, and agencies that want a real cloud server without running it themselves. You pick a provider and a server size, and Cloudways handles setup, security patches, caching, and backups. Prices start at $14 a month on a DigitalOcean Premium server, billed by the hour with no contract and no renewal jump. It is not the cheapest way to host a small blog. Email, domains, and offsite backup storage cost extra, and the standard support plan does not cover plugin problems. Beginners with one small site will pay less on shared hosting.
This review is based on Cloudways’ own pricing, feature, add-on, and knowledge-base pages as of October 2026. We did not open a Cloudways account or start the free trial. We did install Cloudways’ free Breeze caching plugin on a test site to see what it does away from Cloudways’ servers, and we ran Lighthouse against cloudways.com. Both are covered below.
Cloudways quick facts
| Cloudways (as of October 2026) | |
|---|---|
| What it is | Managed hosting on servers you rent through Cloudways from DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode (Akamai), AWS, or Google Cloud |
| Owner | DigitalOcean (bought Cloudways for $350 million in 2022) |
| Starting price | $11/mo (DigitalOcean Standard 1 GB) or $14/mo (DigitalOcean Premium 1 GB) |
| Billing | Hourly, invoiced monthly in arrears. Monthly cap on DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode; no cap on AWS and Google Cloud |
| Contract or renewal jump | None. Current promo: 30% off for the first 3 months |
| Free trial | 3 days, no credit card |
| Money-back guarantee | None listed. You pay only for hours used |
| Sites per server | Unlimited (limited by server resources) |
| Included | Free migration for WordPress, staging, SSL, Imunify360 firewall, Redis, Object Cache Pro, Breeze, daily offsite backups |
| Not included | Email hosting, domain names, offsite backup storage ($0.033/GB), Cloudflare Enterprise ($4.99/domain/mo for 1 to 5 domains) |
| Support | 24/7 live chat and tickets. Paid Advanced ($100/mo, $25/mo promo) and Premium ($500/mo) add-ons |
| Best for | Busy sites, WooCommerce, agencies with many sites, people who want monthly billing |
How Cloudways works
Cloudways sits between you and a big cloud company:
- You choose a cloud provider: DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode (now part of Akamai), AWS, or Google Cloud.
- You choose a server size (RAM, CPU, storage) and a data center. Cloudways lists 9 DigitalOcean locations, 30 for Vultr, 25 for Linode, and 28 each for AWS and Google Cloud.
- Cloudways builds the server, installs its web stack, and manages it: updates, firewall, monitoring, backups, and support.
One Cloudways bill covers the server and the management. The server is a private virtual server for your account, not a slice of a shared hosting box, and you can run as many WordPress sites on it as it can handle.
Cloudways now sells two products:
- Flexible is the classic product described above, and what most readers want.
- Autonomous is a fully managed WordPress plan on Kubernetes (a system that spreads a site across many servers) that adds servers automatically during traffic spikes. You do not choose a provider or a size.
Cloudways pricing in 2026
All prices below come from the Cloudways pricing page in October 2026, in US dollars, before tax. Each plan shows a monthly price and the hourly rate it is built from.
Flexible prices by cloud provider
| Server (RAM / CPU) | DigitalOcean Standard | DigitalOcean Premium | Vultr Standard | Vultr High Frequency | Linode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB / 1 vCPU | $11 | $14 | $14 | $16 | $14 |
| 2 GB / 1 vCPU | $24 | $28 | $28 | $30 | $28 |
| 4 GB / 2 vCPU | $46 | $54 | $54 | $60 | $59 |
| 8 GB / 4 vCPU | $88 | $99 | $99 | $118 (3 vCPU) | $105 |
| Storage on the 1 GB plan | 25 GB SSD | 25 GB NVMe | 25 GB SSD | 32 GB NVMe | 25 GB SSD |
DigitalOcean Premium uses newer Intel CPUs and faster NVMe storage than Standard, which is why it costs $3 more at the bottom. It is the plan Cloudways shows by default. All DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode plans include at least 1 TB of bandwidth.
AWS and Google Cloud cost much more for the same RAM:
| Server | AWS | Google Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Smallest | $20.56 (1 GB, 2 vCPU) | $37.33 (1.7 GB, shared CPU) |
| Next | $38.56 (2 GB, 2 vCPU) | $84 (3.75 GB, 1 vCPU) |
| Mid | $91.84 (4 GB, 2 vCPU) | $152.02 (7.5 GB, 2 vCPU) |
| Large | $183.22 (8 GB, 2 vCPU) | $241.50 (15 GB, 4 vCPU) |
The AWS and Google Cloud cards list only 20 GB of storage and a small amount of bandwidth (2 GB on AWS, 1 GB on Google Cloud). Extra storage and bandwidth are billed on top. Pick them only if you need that provider.
Bigger servers exist too: DigitalOcean General Purpose starts at $106 a month (8 GB, 2 dedicated vCPUs) and CPU Optimized at $164.
How hourly billing works
Cloudways bills by the hour and sends one invoice on the 1st of each month for the month before. According to its billing guide:
- DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode have a monthly cap. The $14 server costs $0.0208 an hour, and you never pay more than $14 for a full month.
- AWS and Google Cloud have no cap. You pay every hour the server runs.
- If you scale a server mid-month, each size is charged for the hours it ran.
- Add-ons are different. They are charged for the full month as soon as you turn them on, even if you remove them a day later.
So there is no prepay and no renewal shock, and you can delete a server any time. The trade-off is that your bill moves with usage.
Cloudways Autonomous pricing
Autonomous still exists, and it was repriced for sign-ups from November 11, 2025. Cloudways dropped visit limits and now charges for actual resource use.
| Growth | Scale | Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $99/mo | $199/mo | $399/mo |
| Websites | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Baseline servers | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Bandwidth | 150 GB | 250 GB | 1,000 GB |
| Disk | 20 GB | 50 GB | 100 GB |
| Extra server time when it scales | $0.07/hr | $0.10/hr | $0.12/hr |
Extra disk costs $1/GB and extra bandwidth $0.04/GB on every plan. Cloudflare Enterprise, Object Cache Pro with Relay, malware protection, staging and unlimited offsite backups are included. There is a separate 3-day free trial, and Cloudways says Autonomous has a 99.9% uptime SLA.
What is included, and what costs extra
Every Flexible server includes free WordPress migrations, one-click staging, free Let’s Encrypt SSL, the Imunify360 server firewall with bot and brute-force protection, Redis, the Breeze caching plugin, server monitoring, SSH and SFTP, Git deployment, and unlimited apps.
Object Cache Pro, a paid Redis plugin that speeds up database-heavy sites like WooCommerce, comes free. The pricing page says this applies on servers with 4 GB of RAM or more.
Backups run automatically every 24 hours and are kept for a week by default. You can change the schedule to anything from every hour to every 7 days, and keep them for 1 to 4 weeks. The backup itself is free, but offsite storage is billed at $0.033 per GB per server.
Here is what costs extra, as of October 2026:
| Add-on | Price |
|---|---|
| Email mailboxes (Rackspace) | $1.50 per mailbox per month on the pricing page |
| Transactional email | Elastic Email add-on, or the free SMTP and Gmail SMTP add-ons with your own provider |
| Domain name | Not sold. Cloudways says it does not sell domains, so buy one from a registrar |
| Cloudflare Enterprise CDN | $4.99/domain/mo for 1 to 5 domains, $2.99 for 10 to 24, $1.99 for 25+. 100 GB bandwidth per domain, then $0.02/GB. 30-day free trial |
| Site Manager Pro (replaced SafeUpdates) | $3/site/mo for up to 5 sites, $2/site for 6 or more. A free tier exists |
| Malware Protection | From $4/app/mo, less at higher volume |
| DNS Made Easy | $0.50/domain/mo |
| Advanced Support | $100/mo or 10% of your invoice, whichever is higher. Currently offered at $25/mo flat “for life” |
| Premium Support | $500/mo or 10% of your invoice |
| Non-WordPress migration | $99 per migration |
What a small business site really costs
Here is an example for one business site on the default plan:
- DigitalOcean Premium 1 GB server: $14.00
- Two Rackspace mailboxes: $3.00
- Offsite backups for a 10 GB site: about $0.33
- Cloudflare Enterprise for one domain (optional): $4.99
That is about $22 a month, plus a domain from a registrar. Compare that with Hostinger’s renewal price of $10.99 a month on its Premium plan. Cloudways costs more, but you get your own cloud server and no long prepay.
WordPress tools
Staging. You can create a password-protected staging copy of a site, then push changes to live or pull live content back. Every push and pull is logged. Cloudways says staging is free on both Flexible and Autonomous. If your current host lacks this, our guide to WordPress staging plugins covers plugin options.
Site Manager (formerly SafeUpdates). SafeUpdates tested plugin and theme updates on a temporary copy before applying them. Site Manager, generally available since April 2026, is replacing it entirely. Site Manager adds scheduled updates, visual regression testing (it compares screenshots before and after an update), automatic rollback, and one-click login to each site’s admin. The Pro tier costs the same $3 or $2 per site as SafeUpdates did.
Lightning Stack. By default, Cloudways runs sites on its Hybrid stack (NGINX in front of Apache, with Varnish caching). In November 2025 it released the Lightning Stack, built on NGINX and PHP-FPM only. Cloudways says it is up to 65% faster for dynamic sites like stores and membership sites. You can switch per app. Sites that rely on .htaccess rules should stay on Hybrid.
Free migration. The add-ons page lists WordPress and WooCommerce migrations as free, and the migration page promises unlimited free WordPress migrations handled by Cloudways engineers. If you would rather move a site yourself, a plugin like All-in-One WP Migration works on Cloudways too; see our guide to transferring a WordPress site to another host.
Copilot. Cloudways Copilot is an AI assistant that watches your servers and suggests fixes. Each server includes 4 free Copilot credits; bigger credit plans are paid.
The Cloudways control panel
Cloudways does not use cPanel. Its own panel has two levels. At the server level you scale, back up, clone, and manage services like Redis and Varnish. At the application level you handle domains, SSL, staging, cron jobs, Git, and caching settings, as in the knowledge-base image above.
It is cleaner than cPanel but more technical: “Varnish settings” and “PHP-FPM settings” sit right next to “SSL certificate”. Expect a short learning curve if you come from shared hosting.
Hands-on: the Breeze caching plugin
Breeze is Cloudways’ free caching plugin. It comes preinstalled on Cloudways WordPress apps, but anyone can install it from WordPress.org. As of October 2026 it is at version 2.6.0, has more than 300,000 active installs, and averages 3.6 out of 5 stars from 126 ratings.
We installed it on a fresh WordPress 7.1.2 test site (Twenty Twenty-Five theme, PHP 8.3, Apache, 13 posts and 4 pages, six of the posts with featured images). This is a normal server, not Cloudways, so it shows what Breeze does on its own.
Breeze 2.6.0 Basic Options on our test install, October 2026. These are the default settings right after activation.
Setup. Installing from Plugins > Add New took about 4 seconds and activating about 1 second. Breeze showed one notice, warning against running two caching plugins. There is no wizard, no account, and no upgrade prompt, because there is no paid version.
Defaults. Page caching was on for desktop and mobile right away, with the cache cleared every 1,440 minutes (one day). Gzip and browser caching were on. Minification and lazy loading were off. The Varnish option was on and pointed at 127.0.0.1, which is the Cloudways setup.
Page caching. We timed 15 requests to each page from the same machine, so there is no network delay in these numbers. With Breeze’s defaults, the median time to first byte dropped from 37 ms to 5 ms on the homepage and from 33 ms to 2 ms on a post. Real servers with real traffic will differ, but the cache clearly worked.
Cache clearing. When we published a new post in the block editor, Breeze cleared the cached homepage and the new post showed up on the next visit. The admin bar also gets a “Purge All Cache” menu.
Breeze’s one-click presets on our test install, version 2.6.0, October 2026.
One-click presets. Breeze 2.6 has three presets: Standard, Advanced, and Expert. We applied Standard, which turns on HTML and CSS minification, image lazy loading, and removes the emoji script. The homepage HTML shrank by about 2% (120,890 to 118,183 bytes) and a post by about 5%. Lazy loading did its job: the homepage made 8 requests on load and 14 after we scrolled, because the six featured images waited until they were needed. The theme looked the same and the console showed no errors.
The Breeze Varnish tab on our non-Cloudways test install, October 2026.
What needs Cloudways. The Varnish tab showed a red warning that Varnish was disabled, since our server does not run it. Varnish purging, the “Purge Object Cache” button (which needs Redis and Object Cache Pro), and the Cloudflare Enterprise cache purge only do something on Cloudways or a similar setup. Gzip made no difference on our server because Apache already compressed pages. The browser cache option did work: it added rules that tell browsers to keep images for a year.
One glitch. Activating Breeze from the command line with WP-CLI stopped with a PHP fatal error (the site kept working). Activating from the Plugins screen worked cleanly.
Verdict on Breeze. A simple, free page cache with sensible defaults and no upsells. On Cloudways it is the natural choice. On other hosts, a plugin built for that host’s stack (such as LiteSpeed Cache on LiteSpeed servers) usually makes more sense.
Performance
We did not test a Cloudways server, since that needs an account. We did run Lighthouse (mobile settings, three runs each, median shown) against Cloudways’ own website from one test location on the US West Coast in October 2026:
| Page | Performance score | Server response | Largest Contentful Paint | Page weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| cloudways.com home | 61 | 66 ms | 15.0 s | About 2.9 MB |
| cloudways.com pricing | 60 | 134 ms | 14.5 s | About 3.9 MB |
The server answered fast, but the pages are heavy, so they load slowly on a simulated phone connection. That says more about Cloudways’ marketing site than about its hosting. Cloudflare in front of the site blocked plain curl requests with a bot check, so we have no curl timings, and Cloudways does not publish a demo WordPress site to test.
What decides your speed on Cloudways is the server you pick and how your site is built. A 1 GB server is fine for a small brochure site. A WooCommerce store wants 2 to 4 GB, and the free Object Cache Pro only kicks in at 4 GB.
Support
Standard support is free and runs 24/7 through live chat and tickets. Cloudways’ published service levels say chats that are not solved within 15 minutes become tickets, and tickets get a first reply within 12 hours (3 hours for high priority). Cloudways claims a 90-second average chat response time.
The catch is scope. Standard support covers the server and platform: launching servers, backups, SSL, domains, migrations, and setting up Breeze. Help with plugin and theme conflicts, slow database queries, and server error investigation is part of the paid Advanced add-on. Advanced lists $100 a month or 10% of your invoice, whichever is higher, with first ticket replies within 6 hours (30 minutes for high priority). As of October 2026 Cloudways is offering it at $25 a month flat for life. Premium support, at $500 a month or 10% of your invoice, adds a private Slack channel and phone support.
Free trial and refunds
Cloudways offers a 3-day free trial with no credit card. To keep going, you add a card. Cloudways places a $1 hold that it reverses, or takes $5 through PayPal as credit toward your first invoice.
We found no money-back guarantee on Cloudways’ pages. Because you are billed in arrears for hours used, there is less to refund, but once a server has run, those hours are charged. To stop billing, you delete your servers and add-ons, then cancel the account in the panel. Cloudways says cancellation is permanent, deletes all data, and that a final invoice may arrive the following month.
Ownership and recent changes
DigitalOcean announced it would buy Cloudways in August 2022 and completed the $350 million deal on September 8, 2022. The two had been partners since 2014, and DigitalOcean said about half of Cloudways customers already ran on its servers. Cloudways says it now has more than 100,000 customers.
The changes since then that matter most:
- April 2023: the first price rise since 2017. The DigitalOcean 1 GB Standard server went from $10 to $11 and Premium from $12 to $14. Local taxes were added in some countries.
- November 2025: the Lightning Stack became generally available, and Autonomous moved to usage-based pricing with no visit limits.
- April 2026: Site Manager became generally available and started replacing SafeUpdates.
- Recently: Cloudways has added the Copilot AI assistant and products beyond PHP sites, such as Velocity for Node.js apps and managed AI agents.
Some long-time users say support and upsells changed after the acquisition. We could not verify that, so treat it as a reason to use the free trial.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Your own cloud server from $14 a month, with no prepay and no renewal jump
- Hourly billing; scale up or down and pay only for the hours used
- Choice of five cloud providers and dozens of data centers
- Unlimited sites per server, which suits agencies
- Free staging, migrations, Redis, Object Cache Pro (4 GB+), and Breeze
- 24/7 chat support
Cons
- No email hosting and no domain sales
- Offsite backup storage and Cloudflare Enterprise cost extra
- Standard support does not cover plugin or theme problems
- AWS and Google Cloud plans are expensive for what you get
- No money-back guarantee
- The panel is more technical than cPanel or hPanel
Who should use Cloudways, and who should not
Cloudways is a good fit if:
- Your site has outgrown shared hosting and you want your own server.
- You run a WooCommerce store or membership site and care about speed at busy times.
- You manage several client sites and want them on one or two servers you control.
- You want monthly billing and hate long prepaid terms.
Pick shared hosting instead if:
- You have one small blog or brochure site with modest traffic.
- You want email, a domain, and hosting on one cheap bill.
- You want the simplest possible control panel.
For those readers, Hostinger and FastComet are cheaper and simpler. If you would rather pay more for a premium managed WordPress host, read our Kinsta review and our Kinsta vs WP Engine comparison.
Cloudways vs other hosts
| Cloudways | Hostinger | SiteGround | Kinsta | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Managed cloud server | Shared and cloud | Shared and cloud | Managed WordPress |
| Billing | Hourly, monthly invoice | Prepaid terms up to 48 months | Prepaid terms | Monthly or yearly |
| Renewal jump | No | Yes, large | Yes, large | No |
| Email included | No | Yes, first year | Yes | No |
If you are torn between Cloudways and SiteGround specifically, our Cloudways vs SiteGround comparison goes into more detail. For a wider view, see our guide to managed WordPress hosting or browse all our WordPress hosting reviews.
FAQ
Is Cloudways good for WordPress?
Yes, for sites that need more than shared hosting. You get your own cloud server with caching (Breeze, Varnish, Redis, Object Cache Pro), free staging, daily backups, and free migrations. For a single small blog it is more than you need, and shared hosting costs less.
How much does Cloudways cost per month?
As of October 2026, Flexible starts at $11 a month on a DigitalOcean Standard 1 GB server or $14 on DigitalOcean Premium. Vultr and Linode also start at $14, AWS at $20.56, and Google Cloud at $37.33. Autonomous starts at $99 a month for one site. Email, offsite backup storage, and Cloudflare Enterprise are extra.
Does Cloudways have a free trial or money-back guarantee?
It has a 3-day free trial with no credit card. We found no money-back guarantee. After the trial you are billed by the hour, in arrears, for what you use.
Does Cloudways include email and a domain?
No. Cloudways does not host email or sell domains. Mailboxes cost $1.50 each per month through the Rackspace add-on, or you can use Google Workspace or another provider. Buy your domain from any registrar.
Is Cloudways owned by DigitalOcean?
Yes. DigitalOcean completed its $350 million purchase of Cloudways on September 8, 2022. You can still choose Vultr, Linode, AWS, or Google Cloud servers, not only DigitalOcean.
Is Cloudways good for beginners?
It is usable for beginners, but not the easiest choice. The panel uses server terms, there is no email, and standard support does not fix plugin issues. A beginner with one site will have an easier and cheaper time on a host like Hostinger.
Final verdict
Cloudways is one of the best ways to get a fast cloud server for WordPress without becoming a server admin. The pricing is honest: what you see is what you pay each month, with no renewal surprise. Budget for the extras, though. Email, offsite backup storage, and paid support for plugin issues can add $5 to $30 a month or more.
Start with a DigitalOcean Premium server sized for your site and use the 3-day trial to test the panel and a migration. If your site is small and you want everything in one cheap bundle, pick shared hosting instead.