Hosting & SecurityCloudways review
Managed cloud hosting that's genuinely fast, without making you a sysadmin.
Is Cloudways right for you?
Cloudways sits between “cheap shared hosting that falls over” and “premium managed hosting that costs a fortune”. You pick real cloud infrastructure underneath (DigitalOcean, Vultr, AWS, Google Cloud), and Cloudways handles server management, caching, staging, and backups on top.
It’s our default because we can put the right server behind each project instead of a predefined tier, then scale it up when traffic justifies it rather than migrating. You get proper resources and a speed-tuned stack at a fraction of premium-managed pricing.
The exception, because we make that call repeatedly: when a WordPress build is robust, we lean toward WP Engine. At that level, hosting and WordPress problems stop being separate, and support that understands the platform is worth the premium.
What Cloudways doesn’t give you is hand-holding: support is competent about the server and appropriately uninterested in your theme. If a broken site is an emergency and nobody on your side knows why, think hard about that before choosing on price.
Questions about Cloudways
What people usually want to know before committing, answered the way we'd answer them on a call.
Cloudways or WP Engine?
Cloudways for most sites; WP Engine when the WordPress build is robust. Cloudways gives you real cloud infrastructure, a right-sized server, and a speed-tuned stack at a sensible price, which suits the large majority of projects. Once a WordPress site is complex enough that hosting problems become WordPress problems, premium managed hosting earns its money: support that knows the platform is worth the price difference.
Read the WP Engine reviewWhy is Cloudways cheaper than premium managed hosting?
Because you're buying different things. Cloudways manages the server (provisioning, caching, staging, backups, keeping the stack fast) on cloud infrastructure you choose, and stops there. Premium managed hosting adds support that will get into your actual site with you. If you have your own technical help or a developer on call, you'd be paying premium prices for a service you already have.
Do I need to be technical to use Cloudways?
You need someone technical available, though it needn't be you. Spinning up a server here requires no sysadmin knowledge; that's the point of the platform. But when something breaks, support is competent about the server and appropriately uninterested in your theme. If your site going down is an emergency and nobody on your side knows why, weigh that gap before choosing on price.
Can I scale it as traffic grows?
Yes, and it's one of the better reasons to start here. You pick the cloud provider and server size, then move up when traffic demands it: no migration, no platform change, no renegotiation. Putting the right server behind each site, rather than fitting the site into someone's tiers, is the flexibility that makes this our default.
Still deciding?
Not sure if Cloudways is the right call?
The tool is rarely the hard part; fitting it to what you've already got is. Five minutes with the concierge: honest fit, no pressure, and a real person follows up.
More Hosting & Security
The rest of this shelf, if you're weighing your options.
WP Engine
Cloudflare
Netlify
Sucuri
Supabase
VercelDisclosure: the link to Cloudways on this page is an affiliate link. If you buy through it, Peaceful Media may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what we recommend, and you'll notice we tell you who should skip each tool.