Cloudways Review: Plans, Prices & Specs

Cloudways at a glance

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform rather than a host with its own racks. You pick one of five infrastructure providers – DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Compute Engine – and Cloudways builds and manages the server, the stack and the security on top. Its structured data gives a founding date of 2011, and its About page states that Cloudways joined the DigitalOcean family on 23 August 2022; the site’s terms, privacy policy and acceptable use policy now point to digitalocean.com.

Who it is for

• Agencies and freelancers who want cloud-grade servers without sysadmin work.
• WooCommerce and Magento stores that have outgrown shared hosting.
• Teams that need a site on a specific cloud or region, including AWS and Google Cloud.

It is a poor fit if you need Windows, cPanel, mailboxes on the server, or an all-inclusive price with a refund window.

Pricing and renewal behaviour

This works the opposite way to budget hosts. Cloudways bills hourly and invoices in arrears in the first week of the following month, with a monthly cap on every plan. There is no teaser price and no renewal jump: the 1 GB DigitalOcean server that costs $11 on day one still costs $11 in year three. Entry tiers are $11 for DigitalOcean Standard (1 vCPU, 25 GB SSD, 1 TB transfer), $14 for DigitalOcean Premium, Vultr Standard or Linode, $16 for Vultr High Frequency, $20.56 for AWS and $37.33 for the smallest Google Cloud server. Higher up, DigitalOcean Premium 2 GB is $28, Vultr High Frequency 2 GB is $30 with 64 GB NVMe, and the 8 GB / 4 vCPU DigitalOcean server is $88. AWS and Google Cloud prices vary by region, which Cloudways states openly.

A summer promotion – 40% off for four months with code SUMMER404 – expired on 15 September 2026, so treat the prices above as the normal rate.

Bandwidth, storage and overage fees

Transfer allowances are generous on DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode (1 TB at 1 GB of RAM, rising to 5 TB on the 8 GB server) and tiny on the hyperscalers, where AWS servers include 2 GB and Google Cloud servers 1 GB before pay-as-you-go rates apply. Published overage rates are $0.02 per extra GB on DigitalOcean, $0.12 per GB on AWS and $0.10 to $0.17 per GB on Google Cloud by region. Disk is 20 GB and configurable on AWS and GCE, with extra storage at $0.10 per GB on AWS and $0.17 per GB on GCE. Offsite backup storage costs $0.033 per GB per server on every provider.

What managed actually includes

Every plan includes the NGINX-based stack, unlimited applications per server, free Let’s Encrypt SSL, a server-level firewall with IP and country blocking (Imunify360), bot and brute-force protection, monitoring and auto-healing, one-click vertical scaling, staging with push and pull, automated and on-demand backups, multiple PHP versions, and free managed migration of your first site. Object Cache Pro is free on servers with 4 GB of RAM or more, which Cloudways values at $95 a month. Add-ons cost extra: Cloudflare Enterprise CDN from $4.99 per domain per month (100 GB of CDN bandwidth, then $0.02 per GB, with volume tiers down to $1.99), Site Manager $3 per app, malware protection $4 per app, Rackspace email $1.50 per mailbox, DNS Made Easy $0.50 per domain, and Advanced Support $100 a month, discounted to $25 flat in a current campaign.

Cloudways Autonomous

Autonomous is the fully managed, autoscaling WordPress product, sold by visits rather than RAM. Plans run from $35 a month (1 site, 30,000 visits, 15 GB disk, 100 GB bandwidth) and $90 (3 sites, 70,000 visits, 25 GB, 200 GB) up to $1,640 for 1.5 million visits. Overages are $1 per 1,000 extra visits, $0.40 per 10 GB of bandwidth and $2 per extra GB of disk. It runs in only four regions: South Carolina, Frankfurt, London and Singapore.

Data centers

Choice of location is a strong card. DigitalOcean offers nine sites, including New York, San Francisco, Toronto, London, Frankfurt, Singapore and Sydney; Vultr adds 32 regions, Linode 27, AWS 33 and Google Cloud 36, which is where the site’s “50+ global data centers” claim comes from.

Support and refunds

Support is 24/7/365 through live chat and tickets, with a published SLA: standard accounts get a 15-minute chat cap, a 3-hour response goal on high-priority tickets and 12 hours on normal ones. The Advanced add-on cuts that to 30 minutes and 6 hours, the Premium add-on to 10 minutes and 2 hours plus Slack and phone, and missed goals earn invoice credits of 5% per hour. Cloudways publishes no money-back guarantee and no uptime SLA for hosting itself; instead there is a 3-day free trial with no credit card, not available on AWS or Google Cloud servers. Since billing is hourly and in arrears, you stop paying when you delete the server.

Verdict

Cloudways is a sensible pick if you want managed cloud hosting with flat, usage-based pricing and the freedom to choose your cloud and region. The trade-offs are a higher entry price than an unmanaged VPS, a long list of paid add-ons, and no refund window to fall back on.