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Cloudways is managed cloud hosting: you choose a cloud server, and Cloudways sets up, patches and monitors it for you, with a control panel on top. We don’t put every site there. Most client sites go on xCloud, which costs less per site. Cloudways is where we put the big ones: heavy traffic, large databases, and stores that need to scale without anyone rebuilding the server. Here’s how it works and when it’s the right call.
How Cloudways works
Cloudways doesn’t own data centers. It manages servers on major cloud providers and gives you one dashboard, one bill and one support team. There are two ways to use it:
- Cloudways Flexible: you pick the provider (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud), the server size and the location. You can host several sites on one server and resize it as you grow.
- Cloudways Autonomous: a fully managed, autoscaling WordPress product for sites with high or unpredictable traffic. You don’t choose a server; capacity grows with demand.
Where it earns its place
- Scaling a single big site. On Flexible you can move to a larger server in a few clicks. Autonomous scales on its own during traffic spikes.
- Performance tooling included. Server-level caching, Object Cache Pro on larger Flexible servers and on Autonomous, and an optional Cloudflare Enterprise CDN add-on (included on Autonomous).
- Less to manage. Server patching, security monitoring and backups are handled, with staging environments and one-click restores.
- Choice of provider and region. Put the server close to your customers, or on the cloud your company already uses.
Where it doesn’t fit
- Lots of small sites. Cost per site adds up. For a portfolio of small business sites, xCloud is usually the better buy.
- No email hosting. You’ll need a separate provider for email, as with most cloud hosts.
- Add-ons cost extra. The CDN, some support tiers and extra backups are add-ons on Flexible. Price the whole setup, not just the server.
Cloudways vs. shared hosting like Bluehost
Shared hosts are cheaper to start because hundreds of sites share one server. That’s fine for a hobby site. For a business site, one busy neighbor can slow you down, and you have little control over the server. Cloudways gives your sites their own server resources and better tooling, for more per month. For a large or revenue-critical site, that difference pays for itself quickly.
Getting started
- Decide between Flexible (your own server, multiple sites) and Autonomous (one site that needs to scale on its own).
- On Flexible, start with a server size that fits today. Resizing up later is easy.
- Move your site with Cloudways’ free migration plugin, or use the one free managed migration included with every account. Our step-by-step migration guide walks through it.
- Turn on backups, add a staging app for testing updates, and set up the CDN if your visitors are spread out.
Try Cloudways, or let us host it for you. On a Growth Plan or Care Plan, hosting is included and we choose the right platform for the site.