Cloud hosting is no doubt the best type of web hosting one can ask for. The term ‘cloud’ was first introduced by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006. Since then, it has completely dominated the big player’s games. 

However, the cloud has become so affordable in the past few years that even beginner players have started benefiting. 

Aside from AWS, some of the business’s biggest cloud players are Digital Ocean, Vultr, Linode, and Google Cloud.

Cloud is only slightly costlier as compared to other hosting types. In some cases, it is even more affordable. Do you know how?

Because of Cloudways. 

Cloudways is owned by Digital Ocean, which owns one of the biggest cloud infrastructures across the world. How big, you ask? They have 12 data centers across the world. Yes, 12 is a huge number and the most in this business.

Fun Fact – Cloudways is owned by Digital Ocean (DO). This is why Cloudways can offer its services at such competitive rates. 

Also, don’t forget that if you wish, you can choose other infrastructures like Google Cloud, Linode, and Vultr. 

I strongly recommend Cloudwways to BIG BUSINESSES & CORPORATIONS. Let us see why.

Cloudways Review – Overview

Feel free to jump to anywhere you wish to. 

Why is Cloudways Best For Big Businesses & Corporations?

1. Reasonable pricing plans (You are getting your money’s worth):

It might be a little odd to see this one here. Being a big business or corporation owner does not mean getting the best. You can pay practically anything that is asked for. Only take what is worth. Save the rest for better security, features, etc. Cloudways also has multiple scaling options, and they can help you with practically anything you want. After all, they are the only recommended Managed Cloud Hosting Providers in business.

The charges of Cloudways are a little high, especially when you compare it to hosting providers like Hostinger, but Cloudways also offers a lot more than Hostinger. 

The market is flooded with hosting providers ideal for beginners (like Hostinger), but there are comparatively fewer options for big businesses or corporations. 

Frankly speaking, me and my research team were astonished when we checked for the results of the best hosting provider for big businesses and corporations. None of them could remotely compare to Cloudways.

Also, I have studied Cloudways so deeply for this review I can practically write a book on it. This huge data wasn’t just because we researched a lot. It was also because Cloudways has so many features and stuff to talk about, and Cloudways is extremely transparent about them. One article isn’t enough. But anyway, I will try to compile everything in as few words as possible. 

2. 24/7/365 Expert Customer Support: 

Most hosting providers are comfortable with traditional web hosting infrastructure but not with the newly minted cloud infrastructure. Almost all hosting providers today offer cloud hosting (because they have to stay in business), but most don’t know much about them. 

Cloudways certainly does. You know the reason, right? It’s because they are a product of Digital Ocean, one of the biggest cloud infrastructures Earth has ever seen. We will look at Cloudways Customer Support in detail.

3. A lot of features: 

Cloudways is flooded with features. There are so many of them that mentioning them is difficult.  I have tried to mention and explain as many as possible in this article. They have special force on speed and security. That is exactly what we expect, right?

4. Multiple Scaling Options: 

Cloudways offers a lot of add-ons as well that you can use to get the best possible results. Although some of these add-ons, like the customer support add-on, are extremely costly, they are quite great. However, I recommend going for them after using Cloudways and only if you are sure about making more purchases, as some of them can be expensive.

Cloudways has everything that a big business or a corporation might need. If you still need clarification, just fill out this form or mail us at consult@nachiketan.com about your business requirements, and we will help you choose the right plan for you (or your hosting provider). 

Cloudways Review – Best Features

Cloudways Security Features – 

1. Dedicated Firewalls:

You must already know what a firewall is. If you don’t, consider a firewall, a wall between a hacker and your website. It protects your website from malicious attacks.

Smart Assistant: CloudwaysBot can be your AI smart assistant. We have heard of AI doing everything, but hosting providers use AI at best as chatbots for their customer support. Cloudways used AI in a better way. They used it for security. 

CloudwaysBot visits every website and looks for malicious traffic (and blocks it), and sudden traffic surges, reduces server resources, and even gives you detailed traffic reports. Everything is automatic; you don’t have to do a thing. 

2. Auto Healing Servers: 

Worried about your website being crashed? Everyone is. Cloudways has auto-healing servers. This is not what you will find in many hosting providers. In case of a website crash, they will automatically restart and heal.

3. 24/7 Real-Time Monitoring:

This is one of the security features almost all premium hosting provider offers. It’s kind of become extremely important for all high-traffic websites. But Cloudways has something additional. They offer the same with more than 16 metrics. 

4. 1-Click Safe Updates for WordPress:

Cloudways is more of a WordPress hosting provider. WordPress updates can be scary. You may find your entire site compromised after a major WordPress update. This feature helps make sure something like this does not happen.

5. Dedicated Environment: 

You get a free dedicated IP and a host of resources. Rather than sharing an IP with multiple users, you get one for yourself. This also makes sure others’ problems don’t affect you. 

6. Two-Factor Authentication (TFA): 

This is an additional security layer to your website(s). Even if your password gets hacked, one password is not enough to access the website. You will need two passwords (can be in any form), making it difficult to crack. ‘Double Security’, I like to call it. 

7. Regular Security Patching:

This one is important to avoid vulnerabilities. Suppose someone tries to break the outside walls of your house with a hammer while you are asleep. Suppose he only managed to make a small hole before you woke up. What will you do in such a scenario? You will get the wall patched up. That is precisely what Cloudways does with security—patching up regularly. Because in some way or another, someone will try to break in if you have a successful website. 

8. IP Whitelisting:

In my opinion, this is one of the best security features out there, and not many hosting providers offer this one. Each of our devices has a unique IP address on the internet. Suppose you are working with a team of 3. They are using 3 devices. You can ask the 3 for their IPs and simply feed them in Cloudways IP Whitelisting. This will whitelist those particular IPs. You and only those 3 devices can access your website(s). You can add and delete according to your will. Isn’t this impressive?

9. 1-Click Free SSL Installation: 

You must already know how important an SSL is. This feature is nothing but will install SSL in one click for you. You won’t have to go through much hassle. These days, almost all providers are offering this one. 

For additional security, they also have separate Cloudflare Enterprise and DNS Made Easy add-ons. These will be discussed in this article later. 

Cloudways Performance & Speed Features – 

1. NVMe-Based Servers: 

A few hosting providers have switched to NVMe, one of which is Cloudways. NVMe SSDs are way faster and more efficient as compared to SSDs. So, without a doubt, they are going to give you the best possible performance.

Built-in Magento and WordPress Cache: Cloudways uses Breeze free WordPress plugin for this task. It is one of the most simple yet extremely powerful and user-friendly plugins in business. 

2. Optimized Stack With Advanced Cache:

Cloudways uses Redis, Varnish, and Memcached to carry out this function. This help makes sure the process is carried out as efficiently as possible, reducing load and increasing speeds.

PHP 8.1 ready servers:

The latest versions are used at Cloudways, increasing the speed and performance of the entire servers. This helps you stay updated with security features too. You can also choose to switch between PHP versions.

3. 78 datacenters worldwide: 

Don’t get too impressed. These 78 include the datacenters of Digital Ocean. Vultr, Linode, Google Cloud, and AWS. I recommend going for Digital Ocean which has 12 data centers across the globe (according to Cloudways’s official website. Some others have more, but they are costlier as well.  

I think you must be impressed already. But I have something more for you. Their actual features that drastically increase the speed and performance were not mentioned so far. Aside from all these, with their Cloudflare add-on, you can avail of Cloudflare’s Enterprise-grade features at a very minimal price. Most of these features are dedicated to increased speeds and security. We will discuss this in more detail in this article itself. 

Other Features – 

1. New Relic integration: This will help you determine issues causing bottlenecks. 

Cloudways API: Strictly for developers. Play around with Cloudways’s code and make your own solution.

2. CloudwaysBotChannel: Use HipChat, API, and Slack channels to send real-time notifications.

3. Change Application Webroot: Want your server to start sending files from new locations? You can do it with just a few clicks.

4. Supervised Qued Manager: It is available for Larvel apps to control processes. 

5. App Settings via UI: Change application settings without code. Simply do it with their UI.

6. 1-Click stop apps: Stop in one click. This also includes stopping cron jobs in a single click. 

7. Pre-installed WP-CLI: WP CLI is the command line interface of WordPress. The latest version of this is pre-installed, and you can make changes as per your will.

8. Cron Job Manager: You can automate your work with just a few clicks using these. 

9. 1-Click Backups and restore: Create and restore backups with a single click.

And a lot more. They are practically so many I can’t talk about them all here. But here is a list. 

Cloudways Pricing

Cloudways pricing varies depending on the cloud provider you use. Here are the 5 cloud providers supported by Cloudways – 

• Digital Ocean (DO)
• Vultr
• Linode
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Google Cloud

Digital Ocean owns Cloudways. This makes Digital Ocean the most affordable and best option for hosting with Cloudways. They have premium and standard plans for Digital Ocean and Vultr. 

I only recommend going for Premium as there is not much of a price difference, and Premium is way better. 

Something I love about Cloudways is that they don’t force you for a long commitment. Not even a monthly commitment; you can go for hours. 

Here is their monthly pricing. I am only mentioning Digital Ocean Pricing for now.

And here is their hourly pricing. 

I strongly recommend going for their monthly plans as they are a little more affordable. Their 3rd plan is perfect for most users.

Also, Cloudways offers a 3-day free trial without a credit card), so if you wish to try them out first, you can. This is way better than any money-back guarantee.

Although Cloudways hosting is more than enough, there are some premium features by Cloudways in the form of add-ons that you must consider. You will have to pay extra for them.  

Get Cloudways Today!

Cloudways Paid Add-Ons 

CloudFlare & Cloudflare Enterprise:  

This is probably one of the biggest reasons for choosing Cloudways over the others. Now, Cloudflare is a service that needs another article to discuss, but we can’t have it all here, so I will be short. 

Cloudflare is something almost every webmaster with high traffic needs. Usually, they have to pay extra for it and go through the hassle of integrating them and everything. Cloudways has eased this process for you.

Cloudflare CDN Free is free, but Cloudflare Business Plan costs $200 per month. You can see that in the screenshot below. 

Of course, they are not offering $200 per month value of features for a negligible price. They are offering you all the great enterprise-grade features of Cloudflare at the following rates – 

Here are the included features of Cloudflare – 

1. CDN (Content Delivery Network):

Source: Cloudflare CDN

As most of you know, CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. Cloudflare has servers in 275 countries spread across more than 100 countries, including countries like China. Cloudflare CDN kind of has become a necessity for increasing the speed of your website.

These servers help you decrease page load time drastically. This also helps improve your security. Tiered caching is also included, which will, in turn, help increase website load speeds. You get 100 GB enterprise CDN. 

2. DDoS Protection:

Who isn’t afraid of DDoS attacks? According to Leaseweb, DDoS attacks are expected to reach 15.4 million in 2023. This figure is double that of 2018. Cloudflare will protect you from DDoS attack layers 3, 4 & 7. They will protect you with routing and prioritized IP ranges. 

To give you a quick overview, DDoS stands for Distributed Denial-of-Service. 

• Layer 3 DDoS attack attempts to use a huge amount of data to overwhelm a target.
• Layer 4 DDoS attacks, also known as SYN flood attacks, use many connections available, so much that the server cannot accept and bring down a network connection. 
• Layer 7 DDoS attacks attempt to send HTTP/S traffic to a user and affect the ability of a website to deliver some content or adversely affect the website’s owner. 

3. WAF (Firewall):

Cloudflare’s WAF analyses 32 million requests per second. That is an incredibly huge number and the best in business. Web Application Firewall (WAF) also analyses millions of websites regularly. This WAF smartly identifies and blocks potential attacks and threats. ‘Prevention is better than cure’, Right? This also includes abuse, brute force attacks, account takeovers, and more with custom rulesets.

4. Lossless Image Optimization with Polish:

With the increasing megapixels in our cameras, the size of the images has also drastically increased. Not just camera images, infographics, and everything on the internet has more weight than they used to. This may slow down your site.

But by using Cloudflare Polish, this can be avoided. They simply decrease the image size without any observable effects on it. This immediately reduces the weight of your page, making it load significantly faster. 

5. Accelerated Mobile Pages with Mirage:

Source: Cloudflare

Suppose a mobile user has a slow internet connection. In that case, that user may see the webpage as on the left. Here, the images’ part is left blank, and only the content is seen. This makes users think the website is slow to load and may leave. 

On the other hand, Mirage shows such a user placeholder image. This perceived that the images would appear shortly, so the chances of the user waiting drastically increased. 

6. PCI DSS Compliance:

Do you own an eCommerce store? Does your website include people paying or donating you money through cards? In that case, you will need this one. PCI DSS stands for Permanent Card Industry Data Security Standard. 

I think the full form is enough to understand what it means. You should also know that card brands mandate this. So, make sure you have it. It also supports HTTP/3. 

7. Brotli Compression: 

Heard of Gzip? Brotli is a successor of Gzip. Brotli is way better than Gzip. Brotli will compress the HTML content, which will, in turn, reduce your page size and reduce the speed of your webpage. 

8. Wildcard SSL:

Do you use subdomains? If yes, this one is for you. A Wildcard SSL will secure all your subdomains altogether. That is why it is named wildcard. 

Customer Customer Support & Add-ons 

We already talked about this a little, but let’s dive into some details. Being one of the few reputed cloud infrastructures in business Digital Ocean (Owner of Cloudways) is the best for customer support of cloud hosting. 

However, there are certain things you should know. As the saying goes, ‘A picture speaks louder than words’, let’s see.

This is something I do not like. However, every hosting provider does this in one way or the other. Some hosting providers like GoDaddy choose to do so with features of extreme importance like security. In contrast, others like Cloudways have chosen to do so with a not-very-big feature of customer support.

Customer support is important, but they offer it. Most of the queries can be solved just by referring you to articles on the web. Since they offer expert customer support, you wouldn’t have to worry about technical issues. Also, even if you have some big issue, it will be solved in about 12 hours.

I strongly do not recommend choosing these plans in the very beginning because of their ridiculously high costs. Buy their hosting, use that, and see if their Standard support works for you. In most cases, it will. If not, then only go for their Advanced or Premium customer support. 

Here are some more add-ons by Cloudways, but you will not need all of them. If you do, you can just contact them. Most of them are quite affordable too. 

• DNS Made Easy Add-on (Starting at $2.95 for 5 domains)
• Application Upgrade Add-on (Starting at $50 per month)
• Rackspace Email Add-on (Starting at $1 per month)
• SMTP Add-on (Free)
• Application Migration Add-on ($25 per migration)

Most of these are reasonably priced except for the Application Upgrade add-on. 

Cloudways Uptime Guarantee & Server Locations

Cloudways offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee.  Almost all other hosting providers only provide a 99.90% uptime guarantee (which is okay too). Cloudways is aiming towards an uptime guarantee of 99.999% this year, and, looking at the data, it will achieve it.

Mostly, you will only see Cloudways at 100% uptime. That’s pretty cool for a hosting provider hosting so many websites. 

As we talked about earlier, Cloudways has 78 server locations across the globe (as per Cloudways’s official website). That is true but kind of misleading. Let me tell you how. 

Cloudways works with 5 cloud providers, including Digital Ocean (DO), Vultr, Linode, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud. Figure 78 shows the number of locations combined for all 5 cloud providers. Here is the distribution – 

• Digital Ocean (DO) – 9
• Vultr – 19
• Linode – 11
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) – 20
• Google Cloud – 18

All of these are the top 5 cloud providers across the world. You must already have heard how amazon is highly investing in the cloud. It has the most number of datacenters, even surpassing Google. 

There are two things to note here. 

These cloud providers are continuously growing, so these figures will increase over time. Also, these figures are for datacenter locations, not datacenters. 

There may be more than one datacenter in a location. For example, Digital Ocean serves in 9 locations but has 12 datacenters in total across the world.

Here is a map showing the datacenter locations of Digital Ocean – 

Digital Ocean has somewhat of a limited reach in Africa, South America, China, Japan, and Russia. 

Here is a map showing the datacenter locations of Vultr – 

Vultr has somewhat of a limited reach in Africa, South America, China, and Russia. 

Linode Datacenter Locations – 

Linode has somewhat of a limited reach in Africa, South America, China, Japan, and Russia. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Datacenter Locations – 

AWS, or Amazon Web Services, has reach in all the major countries.  

Gogole Cloud Datacenter Locations – 

Google Cloud has a limited reach in Africa and Russia.

As you can see, Digital Ocean (DO) has fewer server locations than other cloud hosts. Although it does reach all countries with the most users, it still needs a few. But Digital Ocean is way more affordable as compared to others as well. 

That is why I recommend going for Digital Ocean with Cloudflare Enterprise Add-on offered by Cloudways. It’s affordable and does the job. What else do we need? 

Cloudways As Compared To Its Competitors

Cloudways is a premium managed hosting provider, so its competitors are quite lesser as compared to non-premium hosting providers. Here is a list of Cloudways’s competitors – 

• Kinsta

• WPEngine

• Hostinger 

• Bluehost

• Siteground

• Flywheel

• DreamHost

• Pantheon

• cPanel

• Pressable

• Plesk

• Nexcess

• uPress

I would have compared these individually, but there is little point in doing so because Cloudways is the best. Also, Cloudways has already compared all these in detail and in a much more visually appealing manner that I won’t be able to. So, if you want to look at it, just go to Cloudways’s official website, scroll down to the footer, and choose which comparison you want. 

However, you should know that  – 

Hostinger is better than Cloudways when it comes to beginners. Here is why – 

• Cloudways have a lot of advanced features making it slightly difficult to use in the beginning. 
• Cloudways’s customer support (without addons) is not recommended for beginners. 
• Cloudways are extremely costly for beginners. 

Also, 

GreenGeeks, if you are looking for something more developer-friendly and slightly more affordable, then GreenGeeks is recommended over Cloudways.

• GreenGeeks has more developer-friendly features as compared to Cloudways.
• GreenGeeks has everything that you may need at affordable prices.

Also, as a bonus, GreenGeeks is the best green hosting provider in the business. 

Conclusion – Is Cloudways The Best Hosting?

YES, CLOUDWAYS IS THE BEST HOSTING PROVIDER you can ask for. It is completely managed and cloud-based. Cloudways is a product of Digital Ocean, which owns one of the biggest cloud infrastructures across the world. 

Cloudways offers the best security you can ask for. It has multiple add-ons that make it even better. Cloudways’s Cloudflare Enterprise add-on is recommended. 

Here are some of our other articles that can help you make a decision –

Hostinger Review – Most Affordable & Beginner-Friendly, Best For Beginners With Low Traffic Websites

GreenGeeks Review- Most Developer & Eco-Friendly, Best For Developers & High Traffic Websites

Best Shared Web Hosting Providers – #1 Cloudways, #2 GreenGeeks, #3 Hostinger

If you still need clarification, fill out this form or mail us at consult@nachiketan.com about your business requirements, and we will help you choose the right plan for you (or your hosting provider). 

Get Cloudways Today!

Cloudways Review – FAQs

What is Cloudways?

Cloudways is an all-rounder managed cloud hosting provider. Cloudways is owned by Digital Ocean (DO), which has one of the finest cloud infrastructures in the world. This is the reason why Cloudways provides cloud hosting at such an affordable price. Cloudways also supports Vultr, Linode, AWS, and Google Cloud but are a little costly. 

Why use Cloudways?

The biggest reason to use Cloudways is that it is a managed cloud hosting provider which offers its services at comparable prices with web hosting providers. They offer many advanced features and are the perfect solution for anyone looking for a cloud hosting provider. 

How fast is Cloudways?

Cloudways is considered one of the fastest hosting providers in the business. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has as many as 20 server locations globally, the highest in business. Even Digital Ocean (DO) has 12 datacenters across the globe, which is high compared to hosting providers. Cloudways also offers Cloudflare CDN Enterprise at a minimal rate, making your website the fastest possible.

Where is Cloudways server based?

In total, as of today, Cloudways’s all 5 cloud providers have in total around 78 server locations, which is a pretty impressive number. Digital Ocean has 12 datacenters in 9 server locations. 

Where is Cloudways located?

Cloudways is headquartered in Sliema, Malta, an island in the Mediterranean sea. On the other hand, Digital Ocean (DO) is headquartered in New York City, New York. 

What is Cloudways used for?

Cloudways is used as a managed cloud hosting provider. It is one of the best hosting providers in the business. Cloudways is highly used for WordPress, Magento, Laravel, and PHP hosting. 

Who owns Cloudways?

Aaqib Gadit owns Cloudways. He is also the CEO of Cloudways. Aaqib Gadit is also a director and co-founder of PureVPN, Gaditek, and a founding partner of Disrupt.com. 

Does Cloudways use AWS?

Yes, you can use AWS on Cloudways. Cloudways, although owned by Digital Ocean, does allow AWS plans. You can simply choose one of their plans from AWS. 

Does Cloudways provide a free domain?

No Cloudways does not provide a free domain like most other hosting providers. This is one of the cons of hosting providers.

Is Cloudways for beginners?

Cloudways is NOT for beginners. Hostinger is something I recommend for beginners. Cloudways has a lot of features that make it confusing for beginners. also for beginners, Cloudways is pretty costly.

Is Cloudways the best hosting?

YES, WITHOUT A DOUBT, Cloudways is the best hosting. It has everything that a big business or a corporation may need. It is the fastest hosting provider and is worth your money. 

What are the best Cloudways alternatives?

There is no alternative to the best. Cloudways has some competitors, but frankly, Cloudways has only a few better alternatives. Some hosting providers competing well with Cloudways include Kinsta, WPEngine, Siteground, and Bluehost. 

What are the different types of hosting offered by Cloudways?

There are 4 types of hosting offered by Cloudways, including WordPress, Laravel, Magento, and PHP. Aside from these, they also have WordPress Multisite Hosting, WooCommerce Hosting, eCommerce Hosting, and Reseller Hosting.