Cloudways vs SiteGround (2026): Real Costs and Which to Pick
Our verdict: pick SiteGround if you are starting one small site and want hosting, email, a free first-year domain and phone support on one cheap bill. Its StartUp plan costs $35.88 for the first year. Pick Cloudways if your site is growing, you run a store, or you manage several sites. You get your own cloud server from $14 a month, billed by the hour, with no renewal jump. Year two changes the math. SiteGround StartUp renews at $17.99 a month, more than a $14 Cloudways server.
All prices are in US dollars before tax, as of October 2026. SiteGround prices come from siteground.com. Cloudways’ website blocks automated visits, so the Cloudways figures here are the ones we verified for our Cloudways review this month. We did not buy either plan. We did install both hosts’ free caching plugins on the same test site to see how they compare, covered below.
Cloudways vs SiteGround: quick facts
| Cloudways | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting type | Managed cloud server you choose (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud) | Shared hosting on Google Cloud; Cloud plans from $100/mo |
| Cheapest plan | $11/mo (DigitalOcean Standard 1 GB); $14/mo on the default DigitalOcean Premium | StartUp: $2.99/mo prepaid for 12 months ($35.88) |
| Price after year one | Same as sign-up | $17.99/mo (StartUp), $29.99 (GrowBig), $44.99 (GoGeek) |
| Billing | Hourly, invoiced monthly | Prepaid terms, 12 months for the intro price |
| Free trial or refund | 3-day trial, no card; no money-back guarantee | No trial; 30-day refund on shared plans, 14 days on Cloud |
| Sites | Unlimited per server | 1 on StartUp, unlimited from GrowBig |
| Not included (Rackspace add-on, $1.50/mailbox/mo) | Unlimited accounts included | |
| Domain | Not sold | Free for the first year |
| Backups | Automatic daily; offsite storage $0.033/GB | Daily, kept 30 days, included |
| Staging | Free on every server | GrowBig and GoGeek |
| CDN | Cloudflare Enterprise add-on, $4.99/domain/mo | Free CDN; Premium CDN for full-page edge caching |
| Data centers | 9 to 30 per cloud provider | 11 |
| Support | 24/7 chat and tickets; plugin help is a paid add-on | 24/7 chat, tickets and phone |
| Owner | DigitalOcean (since 2022) | Private, founded 2004 |
Which one should you pick?
- Beginner on a budget: SiteGround StartUp. The first year costs $35.88 with email, a domain and a simple control panel included, and you can call support. Set a reminder before month 12, when the price goes to $17.99 a month. If you want the lowest bill over several years, our Hostinger vs SiteGround comparison shows a cheaper option.
- Growing site that needs to scale: Cloudways. You can resize the server in the panel and pay only for the hours each size ran. SiteGround’s shared plans cap CPU seconds, and its next step up, Cloud, starts at $100 a month.
- Developer: Cloudways. You choose the cloud provider, data center and server size, and get SSH, Git, staging and control over Varnish, PHP-FPM and its new Lightning Stack. SiteGround has SSH, WP-CLI and Git too (Git needs GoGeek), but less control over the server.
- Agency: Cloudways, for putting many client sites on one or two servers you control, with Site Manager for bulk updates at $2 to $3 per site. SiteGround GoGeek only wins if your clients are small and want email and white-label Site Tools logins.
- Online store: Cloudways on a 2 GB or 4 GB server. Servers with 4 GB or more include Object Cache Pro, a paid caching plugin that speeds up WooCommerce. A brand-new store with few orders will be fine on SiteGround GrowBig or GoGeek for the first year.
Pricing: year one vs year two
SiteGround: cheap first year, then standard rates
SiteGround’s WordPress hosting plans, October 2026. Each card shows the renewal price and “Prepaid for 12 months.”
SiteGround’s intro prices need a 12-month prepay and apply to the first invoice only. After that you pay its standard rates, which it says have applied since September 7, 2023.
SiteGround’s standard rates for shared hosting, last updated October 2, 2026. These are the prices after the first term.
| SiteGround plan | Intro (12-month prepay) | Renewal, 12 months | Renewal, 24 months | Sites | Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| StartUp | $2.99/mo ($35.88) | $17.99/mo | $14.99/mo | 1 | 10 GB |
| GrowBig | $4.99/mo ($59.88) | $29.99/mo | $24.99/mo | Unlimited | 50 GB |
| GoGeek | $7.99/mo ($95.88) | $44.99/mo | $39.99/mo | Unlimited | 100 GB |
SiteGround says StartUp suits about 10,000 visits a month, GrowBig about 100,000 and GoGeek about 400,000, but calls those figures a reference point, not a limit. The real limits are CPU seconds and file counts.
Cloudways: the same price every month
Cloudways has no intro price to lose. You pay for the server by the hour, with a monthly cap on DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode, and one invoice at the start of each month for the month before.
| Server (RAM / CPU) | DigitalOcean Standard | DigitalOcean Premium | Vultr High Frequency | Linode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB / 1 vCPU | $11/mo | $14/mo | $16/mo | $14/mo |
| 2 GB / 1 vCPU | $24/mo | $28/mo | $30/mo | $28/mo |
| 4 GB / 2 vCPU | $46/mo | $54/mo | $60/mo | $59/mo |
AWS starts at $20.56 a month and Google Cloud at $37.33, with much less bandwidth included. Our Cloudways review lists every provider and size. Cloudways is also running a promo of 30% off the first 3 months, which would cut the first year on a $14 server to about $155.
What two years cost
Assuming you start on the term shown and renew yearly at the listed price:
| Plan | Year 1 | Year 2 | Two-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| SiteGround StartUp | $35.88 | $215.88 | $251.76 |
| SiteGround GrowBig | $59.88 | $359.88 | $419.76 |
| SiteGround GoGeek | $95.88 | $539.88 | $635.76 |
| SiteGround Cloud Jump Start | $1,200 | $1,200 | $2,400 |
| Cloudways DigitalOcean Standard 1 GB | $132 | $132 | $264 |
| Cloudways DigitalOcean Premium 1 GB | $168 | $168 | $336 |
| Cloudways DigitalOcean Premium 2 GB | $336 | $336 | $672 |
| Cloudways DigitalOcean Premium 4 GB | $648 | $648 | $1,296 |
SiteGround wins year one by a mile. From year two, Cloudways’ default 1 GB server ($168 a year) costs less than StartUp ($215.88), and a 2 GB server ($336) costs less than GrowBig ($359.88).
The table leaves out extras, and that matters on Cloudways. SiteGround includes email and a first-year domain. On Cloudways, a small business site with two mailboxes and offsite backups for 10 GB of files comes to about $17.33 a month, or $208 a year, plus a domain from a registrar. In year two that is almost exactly what SiteGround StartUp costs, so the choice comes down to features rather than price.
What you get on each host
| Feature | Cloudways | SiteGround |
|---|---|---|
| Migrations | Unlimited free WordPress migrations done by Cloudways engineers, the vendor says | Free Migrator plugin you run yourself; a free site transfer is advertised for a limited time |
| Backups | Every 24 hours by default, kept 1 week; schedule from hourly to weekly, keep 1 to 4 weeks; storage billed | Daily, kept 30 days, stored in another location; on-demand from GrowBig |
| Staging | Free on every server, with push and pull | GrowBig and GoGeek; Git on GoGeek |
| Caching | Varnish, Redis, Breeze plugin; Object Cache Pro free on 4 GB+ servers | NGINX-based SuperCacher, Memcached, Speed Optimizer plugin |
| Security | Imunify360 firewall with bot protection; Malware Protection from $4/app/mo | Smart web application firewall; malware scanning via paid Site Scanner |
| Rackspace add-on, $1.50 per mailbox per month | Unlimited accounts and webmail | |
| Updates | Site Manager free tier; Pro at $2 to $3 per site adds scheduled updates, visual checks and rollback | Managed auto-updates for WordPress and plugins, included |
| Free SSL | Yes | Yes |
Two features have changed recently. Cloudways’ SafeUpdates add-on is being replaced by Site Manager, generally available since April 2026. And SiteGround’s “SG Optimizer” plugin is now called Speed Optimizer.
Hands-on: Breeze vs Speed Optimizer on the same test site
Each host makes a free caching plugin that anyone can install from WordPress.org. Cloudways makes Breeze, and SiteGround makes Speed Optimizer. We put both on the same test install, one after the other, to see what each does away from its own servers. The test site ran WordPress 7.1.2 with the Twenty Twenty-Five theme, PHP 8.3 and Apache in Docker, with 13 posts, 4 pages and six featured images. As of October 2026, Breeze is at version 2.6.0 (300,000+ active installs, 3.6 out of 5 from 126 ratings) and Speed Optimizer at 7.8.3 (1 million+ active installs, 4.2 out of 5 from 640 ratings).
We timed 15 requests to the homepage and one post with each setup, from the same machine, so there is no network delay in these numbers. Without a page cache, the site answered in a median of 34 to 88 ms, depending on the run. These numbers show what each plugin changes, not how fast either host is.
Breeze 2.6.0 Basic Options on our test install right after activation, October 2026. Page caching is already on.
Speed Optimizer 7.8.3 on the same test install right after activation, October 2026. Caching starts switched off.
| On our test install | Breeze 2.6.0 (Cloudways) | Speed Optimizer 7.8.3 (SiteGround) |
|---|---|---|
| Activation from the Plugins screen | Under 1 second, one notice about not running two caching plugins | About 4 seconds, no notice |
| Page cache after activation | On | Off; we switched on File-Based Caching and Automatic Purge |
| Cached response time, median | 2 ms (post) to 6 ms (homepage) | About 1 to 2 ms |
| Front-end presets | Standard preset: homepage HTML 1.9% smaller, post 3.8% smaller | CSS and HTML minify plus emoji removal: homepage 3.7% smaller, post 5.6% smaller |
| Featured images loaded before scrolling | 1 of 6 | 6 of 6 |
| Features that need the host’s servers | Varnish purge, object cache purge, Cloudflare Enterprise purge | Dynamic Caching, Memcached, WebP conversion |
| Upgrade prompts | None | A hosting deal box on the dashboard, plus an offer of 3 months of free hosting on each host-only feature |
| After deactivation | Removed its cache files and server rules; left a small settings folder | Removed its cache files; left its browser caching and compression rules in .htaccess |
What stood out:
- Breeze works on any host from the first click. Page caching, gzip and browser caching were on as soon as we activated it, with no wizard and no upsell. Its Standard preset deferred five of the six featured images until we scrolled.
- Speed Optimizer needs more setup off SiteGround. Its best cache, Dynamic Caching, would not switch on and opened an “Available on SiteGround environment” message instead. File-based caching did work once we turned it on, and gave the fastest cached response of the two. The dashboard still said “Caching Status: Disabled” afterwards.
- Speed Optimizer’s lazy loading skipped our featured images. Turning on Lazy Load Media switched off WordPress’s own lazy loading, and the plugin’s default exclusion list skips featured images. So all six loaded at once, where plain WordPress had loaded three. If your theme shows featured images in post lists, remove “thumbnails” from the excluded media types.
- Cache clearing. Speed Optimizer queues automatic purges for WordPress’s scheduled tasks (WP-Cron), which could not run on our Docker setup, so the cached homepage stayed stale after we published a post. Its “Purge SG Cache” button in the admin bar cleared it at once. In our earlier Cloudways review, Breeze cleared the cached homepage as soon as a post was published.
What Speed Optimizer showed on our test install when we tried to turn on Dynamic Caching, October 2026.
On its own host, each plugin hooks into that host’s server cache, so use the one your host ships. On SiteGround, Dynamic Caching is on by default. On Cloudways, Breeze comes preinstalled and talks to Varnish. Off its home host, Breeze is the simpler free page cache of the two.
Scaling up: Cloudways Autonomous vs SiteGround Cloud
SiteGround’s Cloud plans, billed monthly, October 2026.
SiteGround Cloud starts at $100 a month (Jump Start: 4 CPU cores, 8 GB of memory, 40 GB of SSD, 5 TB of transfer), with unlimited sites, a dedicated IP, free email and optional autoscaling. The refund window on Cloud is 14 days.
Cloudways’ closest match is Autonomous, a fully managed WordPress product that adds servers automatically during traffic spikes. It starts at $99 a month for one site on the Growth plan, with 150 GB of bandwidth and 20 GB of disk, and charges $0.07 an hour for extra server time when it scales. Cloudflare Enterprise, Object Cache Pro, staging and malware protection are included.
So for one busy site with big traffic spikes, Autonomous is the more hands-off option. For many sites that need fixed resources, plus email, SiteGround Cloud gives more for the money. Most readers do not need either: a Cloudways Flexible server sized at 2 to 4 GB costs $28 to $54 a month.
Control panel: Cloudways platform vs Site Tools
Neither host uses cPanel, and we could not log in to either without buying a plan, so this is based on each vendor’s published screens and docs.
Cloudways splits its panel into a server level (scaling, backups, cloning, Redis and Varnish) and an application level (domains, SSL, staging, cron jobs, Git and cache settings). It is clean but technical, with “PHP-FPM settings” sitting next to “SSL certificate.” There is no email or domain section because Cloudways does not sell either.
SiteGround Site Tools gives each site its own dashboard with a file manager, email, DNS, databases, backups, caching and the CDN. You can add collaborators, and GoGeek adds white-label access for clients. For a beginner, Site Tools is the easier of the two.
Support, uptime and refunds
| Cloudways | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Channels | 24/7 live chat and tickets; phone only with Premium support | AI help center first, then 24/7 chat, tickets and phone |
| Scope of free support | Server and platform issues; plugin and theme conflicts need the Advanced add-on | All channels on every plan |
| Paid or priority support | Advanced: $100/mo or 10% of the invoice (offered at $25/mo); Premium: $500/mo | GoGeek users go to the most experienced agents first |
| Vendor claims | 90-second average chat response | Over 90% of questions solved on first contact |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.9% SLA stated for Autonomous | 99.9% a month; 5% of the month’s fee as extra hosting time |
| Trial and refunds | 3-day free trial; no money-back guarantee; billed only for hours used | 30 days on shared plans, 14 days on Cloud |
SiteGround is the better choice if you want to reach a person quickly, including by phone. On Cloudways, help with plugin and theme conflicts is part of the paid Advanced add-on, so budget for it if you are not comfortable debugging WordPress yourself. Neither company’s uptime promise pays much if it is missed, so treat them as a sign of intent rather than insurance.
Ownership and recent changes
SiteGround was founded in 2004 and says it is still privately owned. It says it hosts about 3 million domains. In 2026 it launched an AI Agent for WordPress, made its AI Studio Essential tool free for customers and added Node.js hosting. Its standard renewal prices have not changed since September 2023. WordPress.org used to list SiteGround as a recommended host, but as of October 2026 its hosting page lists Bluehost, Hostinger and Pressable instead.
Cloudways was bought by DigitalOcean for $350 million in September 2022 and says it now has more than 100,000 customers. It raised prices in April 2023 for the first time since 2017 (the 1 GB DigitalOcean Premium server went from $12 to $14), released the Lightning Stack in November 2025 and repriced Autonomous at the same time.
Other hosts to compare
- Kinsta: premium managed WordPress with no renewal jump. See Kinsta vs SiteGround and our Kinsta review.
- WP Engine: another premium managed host. See WP Engine vs SiteGround.
- Hostinger: cheaper than both over several years. See Hostinger vs SiteGround and our Hostinger review.
For a wider shortlist, read our guide to the best managed WordPress hosting or browse all our WordPress hosting reviews.
FAQ
Is Cloudways better than SiteGround?
For growing sites, stores and agencies, usually yes. You get your own cloud server, free staging on every plan and a price that does not jump after year one. For a single small site, SiteGround is better: its first year costs $35.88 with email, a domain and phone support included, and Site Tools is easier to learn.
Which is cheaper, Cloudways or SiteGround?
SiteGround is much cheaper in year one ($35.88 for StartUp against $168 for a Cloudways DigitalOcean Premium 1 GB server). From year two, Cloudways is cheaper on server price alone, because StartUp renews at $215.88 a year. Once you add email and backup storage on Cloudways, the two cost about the same for a small business site.
Does Cloudways include email and a domain like SiteGround?
No. Cloudways does not host email or sell domains. Mailboxes cost $1.50 each per month through its Rackspace add-on, or you can use Google Workspace or another provider. SiteGround includes unlimited email accounts on every plan and a free domain for the first year.
Is SiteGround still recommended by WordPress.org?
No. SiteGround used to be on WordPress.org’s list of recommended hosts, but as of October 2026 that page lists Bluehost, Hostinger and Pressable. Cloudways is not on the list either.
Can I move my site from SiteGround to Cloudways for free?
Yes. Cloudways says WordPress migrations are free and handled by its engineers, with no limit on the number. You can also move the site yourself with a plugin such as All-in-One WP Migration. Moving the other way, SiteGround’s free Migrator plugin does the job.
Final verdict
SiteGround is the easier, cheaper start for one small site, and the only one of the two with email, a domain and phone support in the box. Budget for $17.99 a month or more from year two. Cloudways is the better long-term home for sites that grow, stores, developers and agencies: a real cloud server from $14 a month that you can resize at any time, with no renewal surprise. Just add the cost of email, backup storage and, if you need plugin help, paid support.