Cloudways Review: Is It Worth It?
Cloudways Review
In this Cloudways review, we will be examining whether or not Cloudways is worth your money.
Background And History
Cloudways is a managed cloud server service where you choose the cloud provider and Cloudways connects their platform to it making it incredibly easy to manage.
Cloudways sets high standards of performance, commits to complete freedom of choice coupled with simplicity and agility in every process. Backed by an innovative approach, the platform is built on best-of-breed technologies and industry-leading infrastructure providers that create smooth managed cloud hosting experiences. And, Cloudways does this by investing in the right talent and by organizing the perfect teams.
Customer Support
24/7/365 Live Chat
Ask the Cloudways team for help and guidance when using the Cloudways Platform, any time. The Cloudways growing team of highly trained experts is always available.
Online Ticketing
Track more complex queries or issues online as the team works on them. the Cloudways Support Team can create tickets on your behalf, or you can submit your own.
Enhanced SLAs
Advanced Support doubles your Live Chat access and cuts online ticket response times to 3 hours (normal priority) or 30 mins (high). Premium SLAsare even slicker.
Server Customization and Configuration
You can ask the Cloudways team to deploy PHP or other custom packages, help with caching configurations, or make server configuration changes.
Phone Access
With the Premium Support add-on, you and your team can call and speak directly with a Senior Support Engineer in person, any time.
Application-level Issues
Plug-in or theme troubleshooting, investigation of server errors, help with your database or email add-on, and performance optimization.
Proactive Application Monitoring
Cloudways will inform you and start investigating if your server or stack is down. Powerful application monitoring tools are built into the Platform as well.
Close Partnership
With the Premium Support add-on, Cloudways works as an extension of your in-house team. Cloudways is always on Slack, or you can call them any time.
Private Slack Channel
Premium Support lifts you out of the web-based online chat and opens up a private Slack channel with our Senior Support Engineers.
Fast Ticket Response Times
With Premium Support, online tickets receive a response as soon as possible, and always within two hours. If it’s high priority that becomes ten minutes.
Performance
Dedicated Environment
All servers launched on Cloudways have dedicated resources. Contrary to the limitations of shared hosting, the dedicated environment allows you to maximize server and app performance.
SSD-Based Hosting
SSD drives are 3x faster, facilitating breathtaking performance and reduced page load times for your dynamic websites.
Built-in Advanced Caches
Cloudways provides an optimized stack with ready-to-use caches including Memcached, Varnish, Nginx, and Redis to deliver expedited responses.
PHP 7 Ready Servers
All of Cloudways servers are PHP 7.3 ready. PHP 7 is known to be significantly faster than its predecessor.
CloudwaysCDN
CloudwaysCDN is a powerful yet simple service that delivers superior performance and top-of-the-chart global response times. It can be integrated in a few clicks without any technicalities.
Auto-Healing Managed Cloud Servers
You don’t have to worry about your website crashing. Most of the issues within the server are resolved with auto-healing restarts.
Free WordPress Cache Plugin
Breeze is engineered in-house to offer better WordPress performance than any other plugin in the industry. With simplicity at zero cost, Breeze comes pre-installed on Cloudways.
Redis Support
Enabling Redis improves the performance of databases. Combined with Apache, Nginx, and Varnish get you unbeatable performance.
Free Magento Full Page Cache
Built-in Full Page Cache gives you one of the fastest hosting stacks. It significantly improves the performance of Magento 1.x stores.
Pre-configured PHP-FPM
PHP-FPM dramatically speeds up your website and improves the loading times of your PHP environment with much faster processes.
HTTP/2 Supported Servers
Cloudways servers are HTTP/2 enabled which significantly increases the speed of communication between the web servers and clients.
Security
Dedicated Firewalls
All Cloudways hosted servers are protected by OS-level firewalls that filter out malicious traffic and keep out the intruders.
1-Click Free SSL Installation
Our built-in Let’s Encrypt SSL improves website security with a trusted certificate that fulfills all your HTTPS requirements for free.
IP Whitelisting
Allows you to create a whitelist of IPs, making it easy to collaborate with networks or regions with unrestricted access to SSH and SFTP.
Regular Security Patching
Cloudways performs regular OS patches on your server. This ensures a secure managed cloud server and avoids vulnerabilities.
Two-Factor Authentication
TFA is an easy and effective extra layer of safety for your Cloudways account, keeping your server safe from any intruder.
Bot Protection
Protect your WordPress websites from traffic congestion caused by malicious bots, brute force login attacks, and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks with the help of Cloudways' technology partner, Malcare.
Collaboration
Git Integration
Git auto-deployment allows you to get updated code deployed on live servers as soon as the changes in the remote repositories occur.
SSH and SFTP Access
Securely access servers, update files and folders on your app via SSH or SFTP. You can even generate individual SFTP credentials for your team.
Application & Server Cloning
Clone entire servers or make copies of individual sites with just 1-Click. This makes copies of files and databases on new staging URLs.
One Account Multiple Teams
Cloudways allows one team member to be a part of different teams so that every little project is split between the relevant teams.
Projects
Are you managing a lot of websites? You can group apps and classify them by creating Projects. You can even assign them to your teams.
Staging Area & URLs
Cloudways offers a dedicated Staging environment where you can test application changes and push them in just 1-Click without breaking the live version.
Add Team Members
Distribute your work with co-workers, regardless of their location, and assign them limited or full access to your server or app.
Server Transfer
Server Transfer allows you to easily transfer ownership of the servers to your clients or any other party using the 1-Click hosting feature.
Cloudways WP Migrator Plugin
Migrate your WordPress site from an old hosting provider to Cloudways without any hassle and for free.
Options
Renowned IaaS Providers
You have the option to choose from a variety of world-class providers, namely Google, Amazon, DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr.
Block Storage
You have the option to extend your server storage space. Scale the storage in just a few clicks without changing other server parameters.
Seamless Vertical Scaling
Seamless scaling of your servers with 1-Click hosting feature that scales resources (RAM, CPU, and storage) without affecting your customization.
No Long-Term Contract
Why enter into a contract or pay a fixed amount? Cloudways offers a pay-as-you-go payment model, allowing you to pay only for what you’ve used.
Launch 10+ Apps Through 1-Click
Cloudways understands an agency’s quench for convenience. With 1-Click you can deploy a number of WordPress and Magento sites on a single server.
All PHP Apps Supported
All PHP-based applications are supported. The Cloudways Platform combines the freedom of dedicated servers with the ease and agility of PHP PaaS.
Multiple PHP Versions
On Cloudways you can switch PHP versions with just a click. The latest versions of PHP 5.6, 7.x, and 8.x are supported.
MySQL and MariaDB Supported
The latest versions of MySQL and MariaDB are supported on all Cloudways servers. Switch between the databases that work best with your application.
Global Availability
Cloudways knows page load times mean the world to you. That's why you can choose from 60+ data centers, whichever is closer to your target audience.
Control
Server Settings and Packages via UI
Powerful options allow you to control a number of server parameters and deploy applications and upgrade packages on the server.
1-Click Backup & Restore
Your automated or on-demand backups are created at an offsite location and can be restored with 1-Click. You can even revert with 1-Click.
Cron Job Manager
Scheduling cron jobs is easier via the Cloudways built-in Cron Job manager. Set rules and enable cron jobs with just a few clicks.
WP-CLI Pre-installed
Control WordPress websites like a pro via the powerful commands of WP-CLI. All Cloudways servers are installed with the latest version of WP-CLI.
1-Click Stop App
With just 1-Click you can disable access to an application from over the web, SFTP/SSH, and stop any cron jobs for the application.
App Settings via UI
No need to run complicated commands at the command line. Change all app settings from the intuitive and user-friendly Cloudways Platform.
Advanced/Custom Varnish Settings
Easily control Varnish cache rules via the Cloudways Platform. Exclude or include URLs or cookies as needed.
Supervisord Queue Manager
The integrated Supervisord process manager is available for Laravel applications that allow you to control processes.
Change Application Webroot
Changing the webroot of an app on Cloudways is easy. With just a few clicks the web server will start serving files from a new location.
Integrations
CloudwaysBot Channels
CloudwaysBot sends real-time notifications of different selected events via your favorite channels such as Slack, API, and HipChat.
Cloudways API
Build your own solutions to control the Platform. Develop, integrate and manage your servers and apps on Cloudways using the RESTful API.
Application Migration Add-on
The Cloudways migration experts migrate sites perfectly with minimal downtime, offering one free migration, guidance on infrastructure, and more.
SMTP Add-on
A reliable and easy way to configure an external SMTP service to be used as a gateway to deliver emails from your server.
Rackspace Email Add-on
Get cloud-based email inboxes powered by Rackspace for just $1 for guaranteed uptime, supreme protection, and around-the-clock support.
Application Upgrade Add-on
The Cloudways cloud engineers observe the inner details of your apps and all tasks are performed in a staging area with virtually no downtime.
DNS Made Easy Add-on
A premium DNS service so you never have to face DNS errors. If your site goes down all traffic is redirected to a preconfigured secondary IP.
Cloudways Support Add-ons
Grow your team with Cloudways' Advanced or Premium add-ons. You’ll get extended app-level support, priority resolution, and much more.
Monitoring
24/7 Real-time Monitoring
Your server is being monitored in real-time 24/7/365 and you get to see over 16 different metrics from the comfort of the console.
24/7 Real-time Monitoring
Your server is being monitored in real-time 24/7/365 and you get to see over 16 different metrics from the comfort of the console.
CloudwaysBot Notifications
The AI-based smart assistant that sends real-time performance insights to help optimize servers and apps and integrates with Slack, emails, etc.
Pricing Discount
Pricing will vary depending on your monthly usage, that way, you'll never pay for unnecessary features.
By using our Cloudways Promo Code, you can get 30% OFF your first two months + you can also get a $20 Bonus for each friend you invite!
Cloudways Pros & Cons
Cloudways Pros:
- Free site migration service
- Good customer support
- Secure
- Fast servers
- Pay-as-you-go
- Many features
Cloudways Cons:
- No email hosting
- No domain registration
- No cPanel/Plesk
Cloudways Review: Verdict
Whether you're a small business or a large business, Cloudways is a great option for hosting your website.
The pay-as-you-go pricing system makes Cloudways a fantastic option, its servers are extremely fast and you'll probably notice a difference if you migrate from a different hosting provider.
Customer support is very helpful and they'll be there to help with anything you need, that being said, some customers have complained about some delays in response time.
On the downside, since it is a cloud service, you will naturally have to register a domain name and get email hosting with a separate provider.
According to some users, site migration has also taken a bit longer than desirable.
If you would like to get 30% OFF your first two months on Cloudways, follow the link below and get our Cloudways Promo code.
