Today, not many companies give you a perfect hosting server which assures you a fine balance between functionality and affordability with respect to the cloud-based managed WordPress hosting.
But, with Cloudways the entire arena of hosting servers has been revolutionized especially for the WordPress websites. It comes packed with an array of features that let you keep up with the traffic hikes as your website grows.
The infrastructure of the Cloudways is perfectly designed to assure absolute security, high speed and flawless performance. Rated in several Cloudways reviews as one of the most secure hosting servers, this one surely deserves a try.
Cloudways Review
There is a plethora of hosting providers available today. Given the variety in choice, it is obvious for the user to get confused in deciding which hosting provider to opt for. Moreover, every hosting provider does have something special or unique available but at a distinct priced plan. This makes it rather obvious for you to find it hard to make a choice. Further, the mixed reviews add further to the confusion.
In order to address this issue and help our readers make a more informed choice, we worked with the Cloudways Hosting Provider. So, now based on our experience, we have come up with an unbiased and practical review of Cloudways.
Cloudways is a cloud based managed hosting provider. It is one of those very few companies that offer the user a fine balance between superb functionality backed with great affordability.
CloudWays is equipped with a unique array of fantastic features and you can certainly scale hosting resources as and how your website expands and grows. The infrastructure of the CloudWays is optimized for security, speed and performance.
Cloudways Features
The features of the CloudWays are various. Lets take a look at some.
Performance
The CloudWays has some performance oriented features for the times when your website is experiencing a heavy traffic. With CloudWays, you get a guarantee of high speed performance and the unique performance tweak of the CloudWays assures you nothing but the best.
Let’s see, what all is included in CloudWays to ensure that the performance of the website is never compromised.
Dedicated Environment
Every server that is launched on CloudWays comes with dedicated resources. Unlike, the shared hosting servers, the dedicated environment of the CloudWays helps you to make the most of your app and server performance.
SSD-Based Hosting
We know how fast SSD devices are. They are 3X faster than the regular drivers. So, the SSD ensure that the page loan time is reduced dynamically and the performance of your website is improved.
Built-in Advanced Caches
With CloudWays, you get an optimized stack which has ready to use caches such as Redis, Varnish, Memcached and Nginx which deliver expedited responses.
PHP 7 Ready Servers
Our servers are all PHP 7.x ready. It is believed that PHP 7 is significantly faster than its predecessor.
Cloudways CDN
Cloudways CDN is an incredibly powerful yet a fairly simple service. It assures that you get superior performance backed by a top notch response time. This can be integrated with just few clicks without any technicalities.
Auto-Healing Managed Cloud Servers
With this in place, you never have to worry about your website crashing. Because, as a result of this, a lot of the issues found within the server are resolved when the auto-healing restarts.
Free WordPress Cache Plugin
In order to ensure a better WordPress performance than all the other plugins of the industry, Breeze is engineered in-house. The kind of simplicity you get with Breeze is unmatchable and that too at zero additional cost. Breeze will be pre-installed on Cloudways.
Redis Support
When you have the Redis enabled, the performance of your database is improved. In combination with Apache, Nginx, and Varnish, you get a rather more unbeatable performance.
Free Magento Full Page Cache
When you have a built-in Full Page cache, you are bound to get one of the fastest hosting stacks. This will invariably improve the performance of Magento 1.x stores.
Pre-configured PHP-FPM
To further improve the loading time of your PHP websites with a much faster processing, on Cloudways, you get PHP-FPM.
HTTP/2 Supported ServersNew
The servers of the Cloudways are HTTP/2 enabled. This tends to significantly improve the speed of communication between the clients and the web servers.
Security
Cloudways always ensures that the servers are kept protected, safe and secure. Every hosting service that you get with Cloudways, comes with a managed security. So, the proactive Cloudways, ensures that your servers are secure at all times. Let’s see, what all is included in CloudWays to ensure that the security of the website is never compromised.
Dedicated Firewalls
With Cloudways, all the servers are protected by the OS-level firewalls. These firewalls filter out any malicious traffic and ensure that no entry is given to the intruders.
1-Click Free SSL Installation
The 1 Click built-in Let’s Encrypt SSL of Cloudways helps improve the security of your website given its trusted certificate which ensures that all HTTPS requirements are met for free.
IP Whitelisting
With the IP Whitelisting, Cloudways ensures that you are able to create a whitelist of IPs. This will make it incredibly easy for you to collaborate with the regions or the networks with unrestricted access to SSH and SFTP.
Regular Security Patching
The regular security patching is ensured by the firmware upgrades and the OS patches on your server. This will ensure that the cloud server is securely managed and there is no vulnerabilities.
Two-Factor Authentication
In order to add an additional and effective layer of safety to your Cloudways account, there is a Two Factor Authentication. This keeps the intruders at bay.
Expert Support
Now, get the peace of mind that you deserve because the experts at Cloudways are ensuring that you are getting the desired technical support all day, every day. So, no more hassle of long queues, just sit back and relax while Cloudways handles your queries. Let’s see, what all is included in CloudWays to ensure that the expert support is delivered to you.
24/7 Live Chat
The customer support representatives of Cloudways are active, all days of the year. So, just type in your query and wait for the team to do the magic.
24/7 Ticketing
With Cloudways, you’ll never have to face a challenge related to your website alone. The experts at Cloudways are working at all times to ensure that your queries are resolved quickly. Further, the ticketing system ensures that a proper track can be kept by you on the issues.
Active Community
The community of Cloudways is incredibly effective and strong. Herein, the experts work well to contribute to the community by sharing their skills, knowledge and experience.
Automated Backups
You can now give your website an automatic backup at any frequency. It could range from a backup every 1 hour to once every 7 days. If needed, you can also set up a backup on demand.
Strong Knowledge Base
Cloudways is a comprehensive information hub for its customers. So, if you need any help related to this platform, you can get it with ease by going to the resource section of the website.
Managed Migrations
Cloudways never lets you worry about migrating your application. Just inform them about your application and they’ll ensure that it is moved in one piece.
- Troubleshooting – The Cloud Engineers of the Cloudways are expert bug hunters. SO, if you ever experience an issue related to the server, you can get in touch with the support team and they’ll handle it all.
- Up-To-Date Applications – The managed hosting of the Cloudways has a range of applications which support all the latest versions of Laravel, Magento, Drupal, WordPress, and a lot more.
Choice
With Cloudways you can grow your business with almost negligible restrictions and way more freedom. Cloudways claims that it lets you manage your server in the manner you want. So, given the least restrictions put in by Cloudways, you can definitely let your business grow to new heights. Let’s see, what all is included in CloudWays to ensure that you get maximum freedom of choice.
Renowned IaaS Providers
CloudWays gives you a choice to opt from a variety of world-class providers such as Google, Amazon, Vultr, DigitalOcean and Linode.
Block Storage
CloudWays gives you a freedom to increase the server storage space. So, with it, in just a few clicks, you can scale up the storage without having to change other server parameters.
Seamless Vertical Scaling
Enjoy, effortless scaling of your servers with just 1 click hosting feature. This feature will scale up the resources, (RAM, CPU and storage) without putting any impact on the customization.
No Long-Term Contract
Do you wish to enter into a contract or pay a fixed amount for a set period? Most likely, the answer is No! So, CloudWays offers you this flexibility where you pay as you go. This payment model of CloudWays, lets you pay only for the resources that are used by you.
Launch 10+ Apps Through 1-Click
CloudWays assures that it knows and understands the requirement of an agency for convenience. Using the 1-Click launch option of CloudWays, you can deploy a variety of Magento and WordPress sites on a single server.
All PHP Apps Supported
On CloudWays, all the PHP based applications are supported. This platform offers you the freedom of dedicated servers that provide you with the agility and the ease of PHP PaaS.
Multiple PHP Versions
Using CloudWays, you get the option to switch the PHP versions with just a click of the button. Further, it supports the latest versions of PHP 5.6 and 7 also.
MySQL and MariaDB Supported
On the servers of CloudWays, the latest versions of MariaDB and MySQL are supported. So, you can switch between the databases to find one that assures the best performance of your application.
Global Availability
Of course, for every business entrepreneur who wants a fine global presence or for an e-commerce portal or rather for anyone who offers products or services by the medium of the websites, the page loan time is of crucial importance. So, with CloudWays, you get the opportunity to choose from the 60+ data centers to find one that is closer to your target audience.
Collaboration
CloudWays helps you do more by simply leveraging the full potential of your team collaboration. It all times assures team collaboration for maintaining a smooth flow of work. Let’s see, what all is included in CloudWays to ensure effective team collaboration for a smooth workflow.
Git Integration
The Git auto-deployment ensures that you get the updated code deployed on the live servers as soon as there are any changes seen in the remote repositories.
SSH and SFTP Access
With CloudWays, you can securely access servers, update files and folders on your app via SSH or SFTP. In case needed, you can also generate individual SFTP credentials for your team.
Application & Server Cloning
Either make copies of your individual sites or clone your entire website, with CloudWays, all this and more is achievable with just a click of the button. CloudWays helps you make a copy of your database and files on the new staging URLs.
One Account Multiple Teams
With the Cloudways, you can have any one team member who can be a part of the different team so as to ensure that every little project of yours is split between the relevant teams.
Projects
Are you in charge of a number of websites? If yes, then you’ll want to make your work a little lighter. This can be done by grouping the apps and then classifying them by creating Projects. These can also be assigned by you to your teams.
Staging Area & URLs
Cloudways give you a dedicated Staging environment. Using this, you can test the application changes and push them in just 1-Click without hampering the live version.
Add Team Members
Cloudways offers an easy feature to help you distribute your work amongst your co-workers, irrespective of their location. Further, based on the need or trust, you can either give them a full or limited access to your app or server.
Server Transfer
With the user of the Server Transfer, you can now easily shift the ownership of the servers to your clients or to any other party at just a click of the button.
Cloudways WP Migrator Plugin
By using Cloudways, you can migrate your WordPress site from an old hosting provider to here with absolutely zero hassles.
Control over Application & Servers
With Cloudways you have absolute control over your applications and servers. The User Interface of the Cloudways is easy to use. It ensures that you are all the boss of your server at all the times and gives you a full control over your application and servers just like a pro. Let’s see, what all is included in CloudWays to ensure that you have all the control on your servers that you need.
Server Settings and Packages via UI
The Cloudways comes with a variety of power packed options. This gives you a control of the variety of server parameters and then you can deploy the applications and upgrade the packages on your server, all with a click of the button.
1-Click Backup & Restore
The automated or the on demand backup of the Cloudways is designed at an offsite location. These can be restored by you with just a click of the button. Further, you can also revert back to your original site with 1 click.
Cron Job Manager
Using the built-in Cron Job manager of the Cloudways, you can schedule your cron jobs easily. So, now you can enable cron jobs and set rules, all in a matter of few clicks.
WP-CLI Pre-installed
With the powerful commands of WP-CLI, you can now control your WordPress websites like a pro. All the servers are installed with the latest version of WP-CLI.
1-Click Stop App
At just a click of the button, you can now disable the access to an application from the web, SFTP/SSH and discontinue all or some cron jobs for the application.
App Settings via UI
Now, you no longer have to run complicated commands at the command line. With the user friendly and intuitive platform of Cloudways, you can change all the app settings with simple ease.
Advanced/Custom Varnish Settings
Using the Cloudways platform, you can now control the Varnish cache rules with ease. This helps you include or exclude the cookies or URLs as desired by you.
Supervisord Queue Manager
Using the integrated Supervisord process manager, you can control processes for your Laravel applications.
Change Application Web root
Cloudways has made changing the web root of the app very easy and effortless. So, with just a click of the button, the web server will start serving files from a new location.
Integration & Add-on
Cloudways assures convenience of the different services, all under one hood. So, now you can make use of your one account for multiple integrations and add ons. On the whole, the Cloudways brings to you an array of Cloud conveniences by way of its different web services and add ons. Let’s see, what all is included in CloudWays to ensure that you make the most of the integrations and the add ons.
CloudwaysBot Channels
Using the CloudWays Bot, you can send out real time notificatios of the different selected events via any of your chosen channel like the API, Slack and HipChat.
Cloudways API
The Cloudways API helps you build your own solutions to control the platform. So, now you can manage, integrate and develop your servers and apps on the Cloudways by using the RESTful API.
Application Migration Add-on
The migration experts of the CloudWays migrate the site perfectly by assuring that you experience minimum downtime. Further, with it you get one free migration, guidance on infrastructure and a lot more.
SMTP Add-on
With CloudWays you get an easy and a reliable way to configure the external SMTP service which can be used as a gateway to deliver the mails via your server.
Rackspace Email Add-on
In just $1, you get cloud-based email inboxes powered by Rackspace. This assures you a guaranteed uptime, in just for guaranteed uptime, around-the-clock support and supreme protection.
Application Upgrade Add-on
All the inner details are observed by the CloudWays’s cloud engineers. They ensure that all the tasks are performed in the staging area with absolutely zero downtime.
DNS Made Easy Add-on
CloudWays provides you with a premium DNS service which ensures that you do not have to face any DNS error. So, if ever your site experiences a downtime, the traffic will automatically redirected to a preconfigured secondary IP.
Cloudways Support Add-ons
You can now grow your team with CloudWays using the Advanced or Premium Add-on feature. This provides you with an extended or an app level support, priority resolution and a lot more.
Monitoring
Now, you can monitor all activities in real time using the around-the-clock server of the CloudWays. This is necessary to help you stay updated and keep a track on all your activities. Let’s see, what all is included in CloudWays to ensure that you get the peace of mind that you deserve with its 24/7 monitoring feature.
24/7 Real-time Monitoring
With CloudWays your server is being monitored in real time. So, 24X7X365 you get to see over 16 different metrics from the comfort of your console.
New Relic Integration
You can now enable the new relic to get regular insights on the app performance. This helps you troubleshoot and identify plausible issues that might be causing bottlenecks.
CloudwaysBot Notifications
The AI based smart assistant offers you real time performance insights. This is necessary to help you optimize servers and apps which integrates with Slack, emails, etc.
Data Centers
As of today, CloudWays has a network of 152 data centers globally. Just recently, around 22 locations where added in mainland Child. However, in order to access the new mainland China locations, you will need an Enterprise-level account.
Let’s take a look at the 25+ global locations for the leading data centers of CloudWays.
| North / South America | Europe | Asia / Pacific | Australia |
| USA | France | Japan | Australia |
| San Francisco | Germany | Singapore | |
| New York | Ireland | India | |
| Seattle | England | ||
| Silicon Valley | Netherland | ||
| Los Angeles | |||
| Dallas | |||
| Chicago | |||
| Newark | |||
| Atlanta | |||
| Miami | |||
| North. Virginia | |||
| Seattle | |||
| North California | |||
| Oregon | |||
| Fremont | |||
| Brazil | |||
| Canada |
You can opt for a location that is in close proximity to you for the best possible results.
Cloudways Enterprise Plan
The Enterprise WordPress Hosting Solution of CloudWays is the Best WordPress Hosting solution for rapid growth brands which require security, high availability, auto scalability and no redundancy for their critical websites. So, with it you get 24/7 priority support for best performance.
The Enterprise WordPress Hosting Solution of the CloudWays has been designed for the high demand WordPress websites. So, this will assist you in preparing for both planned as well as unplanned events such as peak times, traffic hikes in order to ensure that your website stays up and running at all times with no downtime.
Be it a large ecommerce store or a large ecommerce store or a media website, CloudWays understands how important it is for you to ensure that your website is available 24/7. In order to help you with, the WordPress Enterprise Hosting of the CloudWays comprises of the cluster of nodes powered by Google Cloud Platform to ensure proper availability and health of all the components. So, whenever a cluster node goes down, another one is spawned automatically in order to avoid downtime.
Whether you are running promotional campaigns or whether your content has already gone viral, it is not really easy to accurately predict the traffic spikes. So, using the Enterprise WordPress Hosting Solution of the CloudWays, you can scale the fluidity for the massive amount of traffic that might be coming to your website. So, with the increase in the demand, the additional resources are automatically allocated to ensure the proper functionality.
All the customers of the Enterprise WordPress Hosting Solution of the CloudWays, get an advanced support add on along with a free website migration. The team of the WordPress experts and the cloud engineers configure the website on the high-availability as well as the load balancing environment.
Cloudways for Ecommerce Solution
With the evolving ecommerce sectors, the hosting providers today have included the plans that best justify the needs of the customers. So, now there are even hosting plans which are specific to the ecommerce solution for the users.
Magento Hosting
The Magento managed hosting of Cloudways completes your experience, accelerates growth and success for your Magento ecommerce store. The magento hosting has been customized for use by developers, merchants and agencies. So, be it an amateur or a technical expert, a perfect Magento cloud hosting solution is ideal for all.
For Magento Agencies
For agencies, this is helpful since now you can focus on primarily serving your clients as well as their Magento ecommerce stores.
For Magento Merchants
Under this, you can get a scalable Magento web hosting solution for the online store irrespective of the size.
For Magento Developers
With the Production, GIT deployment and Staging environment the developers have 100% freedom.
For Magento Startups
You’ll never have to worry about the hosting cost anymore and the credit for it goes to the PAYG model.
Again with the Cloud hosting for Magento, you will pay as you go that is you’ll only be paying for the pricing plans on your online stores. Pay as you go pricing plans work for your Magento online stores. In this there are several plans available for you to choose from depending on the combination desired by you.
WooCommerce Hosting
Now, you can power your online store with a WooCommerce hosting. The WooCommerce hosting is necessary when you need to sell and scale, if needed. It performs as if there’s no tomorrow. Further, the top notch security and the ease of usage it offers, keep your site prepared to hit new revenue benchmarks.
PrestaShop Hosting
To be able to run a successful e commerce store, a PrestaShop Hosting is idea. It assures fantastic experience and delivers a great performance.
Extra Features
One phenomenal add on by CloudWays is Breeze. With the Breeze, you can get easy and hassle free WordPress Cache Plugin at no additional fee. Now, with the advent of this plugin, the complex cache plugins are only a myth. This plugin assures maximum optimization and a simple user interface. Further, since there’s no requirement of coding, it is fairly easier to use.
Let’s take a look at some aspects of Breeze.
- User friendly – The user friendly interface of this plugin has taken away all the hassle of the WordPress caching.
- Simple interface – Given the simplicity of the plugin, it is ease to perform all the operations with just few clicks.
- 24/7 Support – The availability of the 24/7 expert staff makes it easier for you to get assistance any time you need.
Now, let’s take a look at some of the power packed features of this plugin which have simplified the complexities of WordPress cache plugins.
Varnish
The servers of the CloudWays come pre-installed with the Varnish Cache. This in combination with the Breeze cache has the potential to amplify your page loading speed.
CDN
The CDN or the Content Delivery Network has the potential to improve the performance of the content on the image heavy websites.
Internal Caching
Breeze is equipped with internal and static caching features. These features work really well to improve the page load performance of WordPress sites.
Database Optimization
Breeze cleans and optimizes the database in order to reduce the response time and the size of the database.
Breeze up With the Best WordPress Cache Plugin
Here are few other things that Breeze can do to enhance your WordPress experience.
File Exclusion
With the File Exclusion you can exclude the caching on individual URLs and file types. It is also very easy to manage your caching rules even on complex WordPress setups/websites.
Minification & Grouping
You can now reduce the file size by easily combining or minification of your files. This can be used on HTML, CSS and .JS files.
Gzip Compression
Breeze makes use of the Gzip compression to compress files. This is helpful in reducing the overall
Other ADD ONS
With CloudWays you get some of the leading industry add-ons. These add on are very helpful in adding value to your managed cloud hosting. Let’s take a look at these add-ons.
Cloudways Review For Rackspace Email Hosting
Now, you can avail a fully managed business email solution without ever compromising on the security and the privacy. The pricing for the Rackspace email hosting starts at just $1 per month.
Gmail SMTP
Now, you can get emails with ease and 100% reliability using the Gmail SMTP server. It is absolutely free for usage.
DNS Made Easy
With the fastest DNS provider, you can be assured to maintain the best website performance. The pricing for this starts from $2.5 per month.
Application Upgrade
You can now get the core applications of your website updated with absolute ease by the cloud experts with this add on feature of CloudWays. The pricing for this starts from just $50/month
Application Migration
Using the cloud migration experts, you can now get your website migrated with absolutely no hassle. The migration pricing starts at $25/Migration
CloudWays Bot
CloudWays Bot is your very own smart assistance. We all know that for a better functionality, your business needs security, performance peace of mind and the empowerment to let you focus on the critical matters.
Get Real-Time Performance Insights
Cloudways Bot are incredibly useful for providing recommendations and tips which are helping in getting you optimize servers as well as applications on Cloudways with a design leveraging artificial intelligence. So, now, you can stay updated and receive notifications at just a click of a button.
Get Instant Notifications
It is now easy to get recommendations, alerts and tips for your account, server and apps.
Server Notifications
This keeps you notified about your server’s health, the status of the updates of your backups and the web stack.
Application Alerts
Now, you can always stay up to do date with the version updates of your application and know when the changes to the settings are needed.
Account Level Alerts
This offers you immediate tips, recommendation, alerts and updates to ensure that your billing and accounts are updated at all times.
Migrate Your Web App to Cloud Servers
With CloudWays, you can now enjoy hassle free website migration in no time. It is a simple three step process that requires minimum effort from your end.
Step 1
Talk to the representatives of CloudWays – You simply have to update the agents of CloudWays about your app and the traffic you are getting on your app.
Step 2
CloudWays will migrate your app – Once your need are discussed for your app, CloudWays will take over and then it will migrate your app in one piece to the CloudWays.
Step 3
Well there’s no step three, since the task is already done. Yes, it is that simple.
The best part is that with CloudWays, the first migration is absolutely free.
Pricing
With CloudWays, you get four pricing levels and each of these provides a specific level of RAM, processor, storage, and monthly bandwidth.
Mostly, the pricing is pay as you go i.e. you’ll be charged per hour that you are served. As a result of this, the customers can opt for multiple servers and even scale up to a higher level for high-volume periods or for as long as they need. There will never be any contracts and customers can simply pay on the monthly basis.
Cloudways Pros & Cons
PROS
- Ever Ready Support
- Pay As You Go
- Free Migration
- Free SSL Certificates
- No Lock-in
- Unlimited Applications
CONS
- In order to be able to host any website for cloud server, you do need a certain degree of expertise.
- You cannot use Plesk or cPanel
CloudWays Review Verdict
Cloudways is just one of those very few companies which provide you a fine balance between great functionality and affordability as far as the cloud-based managed WordPress hosting is concerned. The WordPress cloud servers of Cloudways have a variety of fantastic features and you can scale hosting resources with it as and how your website grows. Further, the one-stop Cloud Console of the Cloudways makes operations simple for customers who do not wish to deal with the multiple user interfaces or the command lines.
On the whole, the company is probably trying to encourage two distinct markets. Thus, in addition to the console based hosting, it also encourages the PHP developers with features such as Git integration and unlimited application deployment.
CloudWays Cloud Hosting is incredibly useful for the developers. Its WordPress hosting is available for bloggers. Sadly, an amateur or a newbie developer or a website owner who doesn’t have the requisite technical expertise will not be able to use this cloud server without any assistance.