Affiliate disclosure: PrimeProfit Picks may earn a commission if you purchase through Cloudways affiliate links on this page, at no additional cost to you. This review is based on research using Cloudways’ official pricing pages, product pages, documentation, and partner information—not a claim that PrimeProfit Picks personally tested Cloudways.
Cloudways sits between traditional managed hosting and a do-it-yourself cloud server. It lets customers deploy and manage websites on cloud infrastructure through a simplified platform, with server management, caching, backups, security tools, staging, monitoring, and support included. Its flexibility is the main attraction—but pricing and resource choices require more attention than a simple shared-hosting plan.
Cloudways review summary
Best for: Growing WordPress sites, WooCommerce stores, agencies, developers, and businesses that want managed cloud infrastructure without administering a raw server.
Research basis: Official Cloudways pricing and feature pages checked August 27, 2026, plus the current promotion supplied by Cloudways’ affiliate onboarding manager. This is not represented as a hands-on speed or uptime test.
Key strength: Flexible infrastructure choices, pay-as-you-go billing on eligible plans, vertical scaling, dedicated server resources, and a broad managed toolset.
Main limitation: The number of products, providers, server sizes, add-ons, and usage charges makes the total cost less immediately obvious than a fixed shared-hosting plan.
Bottom line: Cloudways is most compelling for buyers who have outgrown entry-level shared hosting or who value infrastructure flexibility. Complete beginners with one small site may prefer a simpler all-in-one host.
Affiliate link. Verify Cloudways’ live plan price, infrastructure provider, included resources, add-ons, usage charges, and terms before purchasing.
What is Cloudways?
Cloudways is a managed cloud-hosting platform. Instead of selling only a conventional shared-hosting package, it provides a management layer over cloud infrastructure and handles many routine server tasks. Cloudways currently presents two main website-hosting approaches: Cloudways Flexible, which emphasizes server and provider choice, and Cloudways Autonomous, an autoscaling managed WordPress product built for traffic that can change quickly.
Flexible is the more configurable option. Customers choose an available cloud provider, data-center region, and server size, then deploy WordPress, WooCommerce, PHP, Laravel, or other supported applications. The platform supplies a custom control panel rather than cPanel and includes tools for deployment, backups, caching, staging, SSL, team access, monitoring, and scaling.
Autonomous is designed to reduce infrastructure decisions. Cloudways describes it as a fully managed, autoscaling WordPress platform built on Kubernetes, with features intended to handle changing concurrency and demand. The better choice depends on whether you value direct server control or hands-off autoscaling.
Who is Cloudways best for?
- Growing WordPress sites: Owners can choose more resources and scale as demand rises without moving directly to unmanaged infrastructure.
- WooCommerce stores: Dedicated resources, server-level caching, staging, backups, and monitoring can suit stores that need more control than basic shared hosting provides.
- Agencies and freelancers: One server can host multiple applications, while team and project controls help organize client work.
- Developers: SSH, SFTP, Git deployment, staging, cron management, database access, application cloning, and infrastructure choice provide more flexibility than many beginner hosts.
- Businesses seeking managed cloud hosting: Cloudways handles much of the server stack while leaving customers with more choice than a conventional managed WordPress plan.
Who should consider another host?
- Someone launching one small, low-traffic site who wants the simplest possible fixed-price package.
- A buyer who expects a free domain and bundled traditional email hosting; those services should be checked separately.
- A user who needs root access or complete control of the underlying operating system.
- A business that wants one provider to perform unlimited application-level development, debugging, or design work.
- A customer unwilling to monitor server size, bandwidth, storage, backups, premium add-ons, and other usage-dependent costs.
Cloudways pricing: Flexible, Autonomous and extra costs
Quick pricing answer: Flexible charges for your selected cloud server; Autonomous charges per application and adds usage-based autoscaling and overages. Budget for the base plan plus extra usage, paid add-ons and applicable taxes. Cloudways pricing is not one universal monthly number. The total depends on the product, infrastructure provider, server size, region, storage, bandwidth, support tier, and optional services. Cloudways’ main pricing page displayed a starting price of $11 per month when rechecked on September 3, 2026, while its WordPress-hosting page displayed Flexible WordPress pricing starting at $14 per month for DigitalOcean. Because Cloudways’ own landing pages can present different product configurations, readers should treat “starting at” pricing as a reference—not a quote for every setup.
| Pricing factor | Why it matters | What to verify |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Flexible and Autonomous use different architectures and plan structures. | Which product is selected at checkout. |
| Cloud provider | Provider prices and included resources differ. | Provider, region, RAM, processor, storage, and bandwidth. |
| Usage | Flexible plans use hourly billing up to the applicable monthly amount, while bandwidth overages vary. | Hourly rate, monthly estimate, included transfer, and overage rate. |
| Add-ons | Cloudflare Enterprise, premium support, off-site backup storage, email, and other services can add cost. | Every recurring line item shown before payment. |
Cloudways states that Flexible billing is pay as you go and that changing plans affects the invoice based on usage. Its current pricing page lists additional bandwidth at $0.02 per GB for DigitalOcean, $0.12 per GB for AWS, and approximately $0.10 to $0.17 per GB for Google Cloud depending on region. These rates can change, so high-transfer sites should verify the live pricing page and estimate real bandwidth needs.
Billing detail, checked September 3, 2026: Flexible usage is invoiced monthly for the previous month. Stopping a DigitalOcean, Linode or Vultr server does not stop its charges; stopped AWS/Google Cloud servers can still incur storage charges. Review Cloudways’ billing rules before assuming an idle server is free.
Current Cloudways promotion
Cloudways’ affiliate onboarding manager informed PrimeProfit Picks of a summer promotion offering 40% off for four months with promo code SUMMER404, stated to run through September 15, 2026, along with unlimited free migrations under the promotion’s eligibility terms. This is a temporary Cloudways promotion—not an exclusive PrimeProfit Picks discount. Confirm that the code is accepted and review the eligible products, migration scope, exclusions, and final checkout total before purchasing.
Cloudways Flexible vs Autonomous
| Feature | Cloudways Flexible | Cloudways Autonomous |
|---|---|---|
| Best fit | Developers, agencies, stores, and growing sites wanting server choice | WordPress sites wanting automatic scaling and fewer infrastructure decisions |
| Control | Choose provider, server size, region, and application setup | More standardized, managed autoscaling environment |
| Scaling | Resize or change resources through the platform, subject to provider rules | Designed to scale automatically with demand |
| Applications | Supports WordPress, WooCommerce, PHP, Laravel, Magento, and other listed applications | Focused on managed WordPress use cases |
| Billing unit | Selected server; hourly usage on a monthly invoice | Application plan billed hourly, plus autoscaling and resource overages |
| Application count | Multiple applications can share the selected server’s resources | One application per plan under the current pricing model; additional apps need additional plans |
| Cloudflare Enterprise CDN | Paid add-on | Included in the current Growth, Scale and Plus plans |
| Decision complexity | Higher | Lower |
Flexible is usually the better match when you want to choose infrastructure, host several applications, or manage resources directly. Autonomous is more attractive when unpredictable WordPress traffic makes automatic scaling more valuable than server-level choice. Do not assume one is always faster or cheaper: the result depends on the site, configuration, traffic pattern, and selected plan.
Autonomous costs and limits to check
For the current Autonomous model, autoscaling beyond the baseline costs $0.07 per container-hour on Growth, $0.10 on Scale and $0.12 on Plus. Extra disk space is $1 per GB/month, prorated hourly; extra bandwidth is $0.04 per GB. Visits are not a billing unit. An autoscaling budget limit pauses extra scaling when reached; it does not cap disk or bandwidth overages. These terms were checked September 3, 2026. Legacy accounts can follow different plans, so confirm the selected plan’s base price and allowances in your account.
Sources: Autonomous billing and overages, one-app-per-plan and budget rules, and current Autonomous plan inclusions.
Performance and caching
Cloudways’ Flexible stack includes Nginx, Apache, PHP-FPM, Varnish, Memcached, and optional Redis-related functionality depending on the configuration. Its Breeze WordPress caching plugin is available without a separate plugin fee. Cloudways also advertises Object Cache Pro on eligible plans, excluding at least the DigitalOcean base level according to its current feature page.
For Flexible, Cloudflare Enterprise is available as a paid add-on. Cloudways’ feature page currently displays it at $4.99 per month per domain and lists edge caching, smart routing, image optimization, and other functions. Buyers should verify the current add-on price and whether their selected product already includes any Cloudflare service before ordering.
These technologies can provide a strong performance foundation, but they do not guarantee a particular page-load time, Core Web Vitals score, uptime result, or revenue improvement. Theme quality, plugins, images, scripts, database health, cacheability, traffic, visitor location, and server sizing all affect actual performance. PrimeProfit Picks has not independently benchmarked Cloudways for this review.
Backups and recovery
Cloudways provides automated off-site backups and one-click restore tools. Flexible customers can configure backup frequency and retention within supported limits, while the platform may charge separately for backup storage. Buyers should verify the current backup-storage rate, minimum charge, retention settings, and whether application and server restores meet their recovery requirements.
Important businesses should still consider an independent backup stored outside the hosting account. A host-level backup is useful, but it should not be the only copy when orders, memberships, bookings, customer records, or other irreplaceable data are involved.
Security features
- Dedicated firewalls and platform-level server security controls
- Free SSL certificate management
- Two-factor authentication for account access
- Bot, brute-force, and denial-of-service protections described on Cloudways’ official pages
- Malware scanning and vulnerability-related tools, with some services or remediation potentially subject to product and add-on terms
- Automated backups and restore tools
- Application isolation and regular platform patching
No hosting platform eliminates security risk. Site owners remain responsible for strong credentials, limited administrator access, maintained themes and plugins, legitimate software, secure custom code, appropriate logging, and prompt incident response.
Staging, cloning, and developer tools
Cloudways includes one-click staging and application-cloning tools intended to make testing and deployment easier. Developers can use SSH and SFTP, Git deployment, cron controls, database-management tools, application and server monitoring, and selectable PHP versions. Teams can divide access across projects and servers rather than sharing one administrator login.
Staging is not a replacement for a backup. Pushing a staging copy over a live site can overwrite recent database changes such as orders, form entries, comments, or account updates. Dynamic sites need a deliberate deployment plan.
Website migration
Cloudways advertises free migration options, including a WordPress Migrator plugin and an expert-assisted first migration on relevant product pages. The temporary SUMMER404 promotion supplied by the affiliate manager states unlimited free migrations through September 15, 2026, subject to eligibility and campaign terms. Before relying on this offer, confirm how many sites qualify, which applications are supported, whether email or DNS work is included, and what happens after the promotional window.
A successful migration involves more than copying files. Plan for database changes during cutover, DNS, SSL, email continuity, caching, redirects, forms, ecommerce transactions, scheduled jobs, third-party services, and post-migration testing.
Customer support
Cloudways advertises 24/7/365 support through live chat and ticketing. Advanced and Premium Support are separate paid tiers that can provide faster response targets and broader access. Cloudways’ current pages advertise a discounted Advanced Support price, but support pricing and eligibility should be verified inside the platform because campaigns can change.
Managed hosting support does not equal unlimited website development. Custom code, design, plugin conflicts, SEO, business systems, and third-party integrations may fall outside standard infrastructure support and require a developer or specialist.
Cloudways pros and cons
Pros
- Managed cloud platform with infrastructure choice
- Pay-as-you-go hourly billing on eligible Flexible plans
- Dedicated server resources rather than conventional shared-hosting allocations
- Staging, backups, monitoring, caching, SSL, and team tools
- Vertical scaling and multiple data-center choices
- 24/7 chat and ticket support
- Three-day trial without a credit card on eligible plans
Cons
- More choices and billing variables than basic shared hosting
- Traditional email hosting and domain registration are not the central all-in-one bundle
- Backups, CDN, premium support, email, and other add-ons may increase cost
- Scaling down can be more restrictive than scaling up on some infrastructure
- No root access
- Beginners may need time to understand servers, applications, workers, caching, and resource sizing
Cloudways alternatives
- Kinsta: Consider it when you want a more standardized premium managed WordPress experience with visit-based plans and fewer infrastructure decisions.
- SiteGround: Consider it for a simpler shared-hosting bundle with email hosting and low first-term pricing, while accounting for its higher renewal rates.
- Raw cloud infrastructure: Consider a direct cloud provider only if you can secure, patch, monitor, back up, and troubleshoot the server yourself.
- Traditional budget hosting: Consider it for a small low-traffic site when simplicity and the lowest initial cost matter more than dedicated resources or cloud-provider choice.
If you are choosing between these two managed platforms, our Cloudways vs Kinsta comparison explains the differences in pricing, resource limits, scaling, and support.
Readers comparing premium managed WordPress hosting with a more affordable shared platform can also use our detailed Kinsta vs SiteGround comparison to understand how plan structure, limits, support, and long-term cost differ.
Frequently asked questions
Is Cloudways shared hosting?
Cloudways Flexible is not a conventional shared-hosting product. Customers select cloud-server resources managed through the Cloudways platform. Multiple applications can share a customer’s server, but the hosting model differs from buying one account on a traditional shared server.
Does Cloudways include a free domain?
Do not assume a domain is included. Plan to register and manage the domain separately unless the live offer specifically states otherwise.
Does Cloudways include email hosting?
Traditional mailbox hosting is not the central server-plan bundle. Cloudways offers email-related add-ons and integrations, but buyers should compare mailbox pricing, storage, sending limits, spam protection, and support with dedicated providers.
Can I cancel Cloudways at any time?
Cloudways promotes pay-as-you-go billing for Flexible plans, but customers should read the live cancellation, billing, refund, backup-retention, and data-deletion terms before launching a production site. Hourly billing does not make every add-on or charge refundable.
Is Cloudways good for beginners?
It is easier than managing a raw cloud server, but less straightforward than a basic shared-hosting account. A motivated beginner can use it, especially with support and documentation, while someone wanting the fewest possible decisions may prefer a simpler host.
Final verdict
Cloudways is a strong option for buyers who want managed cloud infrastructure, dedicated resources, provider choice, useful development tools, and room to scale. Flexible stands out for configurability; Autonomous is aimed at WordPress users who value automatic scaling and less infrastructure management.
Its weakness is not a lack of capability—it is purchasing complexity. Compare the exact server, bandwidth, storage, backup, CDN, support, email, and add-on costs rather than relying on one starting price. For a small first website, a simpler plan may be enough. For a growing business, store, agency, or resource-sensitive WordPress site, Cloudways deserves serious consideration.
Affiliate link. Prices, promotions, infrastructure availability, allowances, add-ons, and terms can change. Verify the live offer before ordering.