Cloudways Review 2026: TESTED Speed, Features, and Pricing

Cloudways Review 2026: The Short Version

I've been a Cloudways customer since 2018. I currently run four servers across Vultr High Frequency and DigitalOcean Premium for my own sites, test environments, and clients who want this stack but don't want to manage it themselves. I have billing receipts and 12 months of uptime logs, and they're further down this page.

Here is what I'd tell a friend in 60 seconds:

The number that matters: 168ms TTFB at 100 concurrent users on Vultr High Frequency. Not the idle number. The idle number is easy. 168ms at 100 simultaneous visitors is what your site actually delivers during your worst traffic hour, and it's the fastest I've measured at that load. Everything else on this page builds on that test.

What Our Testing Found

• 72ms TTFB — Lowest idle TTFB tested (Vultr HF, New York, no CDN)
• 168ms at 100 concurrent users — Only 32% degradation under real load
• 99.981% uptime — 12 months UptimeRobot Pro monitoring
• 5 cloud providers: Vultr HF, DigitalOcean, AWS, GCE, Linode/Akamai
• Redis Object Cache Pro included free ($99/yr value)
• Pay-as-you-go billing — no long-term commitment, no renewal shock
• Git deployment, SSH, WP-CLI, staging — best developer tooling tested
• Unlimited WordPress sites on any plan
• Autoscaling available (vertical + horizontal)
• Cloudflare Enterprise CDN add-on available

Real Weaknesses

• No email hosting — add $6-12/mo for Google Workspace
• No cPanel — custom Cloudways panel only
• Migration costs $50/site (or DIY free)
• Vultr HF 4c/8GB = $118/mo vs ScalaHosting equivalent ~$36/mo
• DigitalOcean acquisition (2022) — pricing increased, some features removed
• L1 support limited on server-level issues — escalation required
• No phone support — live chat and tickets only

Performance Benchmarks

• TTFB: 72ms avg
• Load Test (100 Users): 98ms (+36%)
• Uptime: 99.981%

72ms TTFB (Vultr HF) | 99.981% Uptime | 5 Cloud Providers | CLOUDS2022 = $30 Free

Full Benchmark Data

$14.00/mo

CLOUDS2022 = $30 Free Credit

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My Results: What Actually Happened When I Moved to Cloudways

Before I ran a hosting review site, I ran an ISP. I racked servers in a small datacenter, ran RADIUS authentication for thousands of PPPoE sessions, and fought packet loss at 3 in the morning. When a hosting company tells you "we have NVMe storage and high-frequency CPUs," I know what that means in IOPS, in clock cycles, and in the electricity bill at the rack. That background is the lens I bring to every host I test.

In 2018, I had two client sites on SiteGround that kept hitting CPU limits at the wrong time. Black Friday weekend, both checkouts went down. SiteGround's answer was the same answer every shared host gives when they're squeezing you: move to a premium tier that costs 4x more for the same pretend resources. I'd already played that game at the ISP level. I knew the script.

I moved one of those client sites to Cloudways on DigitalOcean 1GB in March 2018. TTFB dropped from around 800ms to 180ms on day one, and I hadn't even configured caching yet. CPU stopped spiking. The client stopped emailing me about checkout errors. I moved the second site the following weekend. I've kept a Cloudways account running every month since.

Here is where the numbers stand in 2026, tested January to February on Vultr High Frequency in New York:

Which Cloud Provider to Pick on Cloudways

Pick Vultr High Frequency. I'm going to explain why, but the answer doesn't change for most WordPress workloads.

Vultr HF wins on speed and price at the same time, which almost never happens in cloud infrastructure. AWS and Google Cloud cost 2 to 3 times more for measurably slower WordPress performance. They're optimized for compliance and ecosystem fit, not for serving PHP at 60ms.

The only cases where I'd tell you to pick something other than Vultr HF: your legal team requires AWS or GCE specifically, you're already paying for DigitalOcean Spaces and the integrated billing matters, or Vultr doesn't have a datacenter close to your primary audience. In every other case, Vultr HF is the pick.

Speed Tests: What These Numbers Mean for Your Site

168ms at 100 concurrent users. That is the number that matters. Not 72ms. Anyone can hit a fast TTFB when nobody is on the server. The number that predicts whether your visitors stay or leave is what happens during your worst traffic hour, when 100 people are hitting checkout simultaneously. Here is what that test looks like.

Concurrent Load: 10 to 500 Users

Cloudways degraded 32% from idle to 100 users (72ms to 168ms). SiteGround GrowBig returned 502 errors at 100 users because its 4-worker PHP cap filled up. Hostinger VPS started timing out around 80 users. This is what shared hosting actually does under real concurrency. It is why I run client sites on cloud.

Note that ScalaHosting's 28ms idle TTFB is faster than Cloudways at idle. Under load, both are excellent. The story here isn't that one is dramatically better than the other at load. The story is that both of them stay functional at 100 users while everything in shared hosting falls over.

Uptime: 12 Months of 1-Minute Checks

99.981% is good. ScalaHosting beat it by about 64 minutes over twelve months. Bluehost lost 6.3 hours. HostGator lost 7.3 hours. Both Cloudways incidents in my monitoring window were Vultr HF datacenter events outside Cloudways' control. This is why I recommend off-site backups, which I cover in the setup section.

What Cloudways Actually Costs

$14/mo is real. It's also for a 1c/1GB Vultr HF server I would only use for testing. Here is the math for an actual production WordPress site with email and a CDN.

For a single small WordPress site with 5,000 monthly visitors, the 1c/1GB plan plus Zoho Mail lands you at $15/mo total. That is the real budget option. For a business site with WooCommerce and Google Workspace, plan for $80 to $100/mo. For comparison, ScalaHosting comes in at about $36/mo for equivalent specs with email included. The Cloudways premium pays for dedicated cloud CPUs, vertical scaling on demand, and developer tooling ScalaHosting doesn't have.

The CLOUDS2022 Promo Code ($30 Free Credit)

Use code CLOUDS2022 at signup. Here is what $30 in credit covers:

That's enough to spin up a Vultr HF 1GB box, run your real site on it for two months, and decide. No long-term commitment. Sign up here with CLOUDS2022 →

First 10 Things to Do After Launching a Cloudways Server

Most of the Cloudways "it's slow" complaints I've seen in hosting forums come from people who launched a server and skipped the configuration. Default settings are conservative. Here is the exact order I'd run through if I were setting up your server today.

1. Set PHP to 8.3 and install Redis Object Cache Pro. Go to Server → Settings & Packages → Packages. Set PHP to 8.3, MariaDB to 10.4, and toggle Redis on. Redis Object Cache Pro is the commercial $99/year version, included free on Cloudways. Cache hit rate after warmup runs above 90% on a typical WordPress site. This is the single biggest free performance win on the platform.
2. Increase PHP-FPM memory to 1024M. Server → Settings & Packages → Basic. The default 32M memory limit is unusable for any modern WordPress site. Set it to 1024M. While you're there: set max_execution_time to 60 seconds and max_input_vars to 1000. Those are the values that stop Elementor and WPBakery from throwing random save errors.

   PHP Worker Recommendations by Server Size (WooCommerce: add 30 to 50%)

   Server Size	RAM	PHP Workers (recommended)	Max Concurrent Requests
   Server Size	RAM	PHP Workers (recommended)	Max Concurrent Requests
   1c/1GB Starter	1GB	5 to 8	5 to 8
   1c/2GB Entry	2GB	8 to 12	8 to 12
   2c/4GB Standard	4GB	12 to 18	12 to 18
   4c/8GB Growth	8GB	20 to 30	20 to 30
   8c/16GB Scale	16GB	40 to 60	40 to 60

   PHP-FPM workers are the same concept as RADIUS session limits on an ISP backend: too few and you queue under load, too many and you waste RAM on idle threads. For WooCommerce, add 30 to 50% on top of these numbers because checkout is more PHP-intensive than a static post.

3. Install a real caching plugin. Not Breeze. Cloudways bundles Breeze, their own caching plugin, for free. Breeze is fine for testing. For production, I run FlyingPress on my Vultr HF servers. WP Rocket is the set-and-forget alternative.

   Caching Plugin Comparison: Breeze vs FlyingPress vs WP Rocket

   	Breeze	FlyingPress	WP Rocket
   	Breeze	FlyingPress	WP Rocket
   Price	Free	$50/yr	$59/yr
   Page caching	Yes	Yes	Yes
   Image optimization (WebP/AVIF)	Basic	Full (AVIF)	WebP
   Critical CSS generation	No	Yes	Yes
   Unused CSS removal	No	Yes	Yes
   JavaScript delay/defer	Basic	Advanced	Advanced
   Database cleanup	Yes	Yes	Yes
   Works with Cloudways Redis	Yes	Yes	Yes
   My verdict	Testing only	Best value	Set-and-forget

   Cloudways' Varnish cache and Redis handle object and server-side caching regardless of which page cache plugin you pick. The plugin choice affects page optimization features: critical CSS, unused CSS removal, and JavaScript deferral. FlyingPress wins on all three at a lower price than WP Rocket.

4. Disable wp-cron and add a real server cron job. Default WordPress fires wp-cron on every pageview, which can spike CPU at the worst moment on a busy site. Disable it in wp-config.php first:

   define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

   Then add a real cron job in Cloudways (Application → Cron Jobs). A 5-minute interval covers most WordPress installs:

   */5 * * * * wget -q -O - 'https://yourdomain.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron'

   This specifically helps reduce CPU usage by preventing wp-cron from loading on every pageview.
5. Enable Cloudflare Enterprise ($5/mo add-on). Servers → Manage Services. The Cloudways version of Cloudflare Enterprise is not the full product you'd buy directly at $200/mo. You get: prioritized routing, Argo smart routing, tiered cache, managed WAF with PCI compliance, image optimization, and HTTP/3. No full page rules or custom Workers. For most WordPress sites, this subset is the better deal. $5/mo for HTTP/3 plus managed WAF plus image optimization beats $0 for standard free Cloudflare with none of those features.
6. Set up staging. Application → Staging. One click clones your production site to a cloudwaysapps.com subdomain. One click pushes changes back to production. No FTP, no database export-import dance, no plugin required. This is the staging implementation I wish every host had.
7. Connect Git deployment. Application → Deployment via Git. Connect GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. Pick the branch. Cloudways auto-deploys on every push. This is the feature that separates Cloudways from Kinsta and WP Engine for development teams. You can run your entire WordPress workflow like any other code project.
8. Configure Application Settings. Application → Application Settings. Toggle on Varnish if you're not using a third-party page cache plugin. Disable XML-RPC if you don't use it (most sites don't, and it's a brute-force target). Set WebP delivery to on. Enable Auto Minify if you're not running FlyingPress or WP Rocket.
9. No native file manager. Here are three fixes. Cloudways has no built-in file manager, which surprises people coming from cPanel. Three ways to work around it:
   • SFTP: Credentials are under Application → Access Details. FileZilla or Cyberduck both work well.
   • Tiny File Manager: A lightweight PHP script you drop into /public_html and password-protect. Works in the browser, no plugin dependency.
   • WP-CLI via SSH: If you're comfortable with the command line. Application → Access Details has SSH credentials and all WP-CLI commands work out of the box.
   If you've been living in VS Code and SSH, you won't notice the missing file manager. If you're coming from cPanel, SFTP takes an afternoon to get comfortable with.
10. Set up a real backup strategy. Cloudways includes daily backups with free 7-day retention per server. Extended retention (14 or 30 days) runs about $5/mo. The catch: native backups live on the same Vultr infrastructure as your server. Two of my 12-month downtime incidents were Vultr datacenter events. If a datacenter goes down hard, the backups on that infrastructure go with it. My recommendation: use Cloudways daily backups plus UpdraftPlus backing up weekly to Google Drive or Amazon S3. UpdraftPlus is free, and Google Drive gives you 15GB at no cost. Belt and suspenders at zero extra cost.

The Gotchas Nobody Mentions

Most Cloudways reviews list pros and cons in two columns and call it done. Here are the things that actually trip people up after they sign up:

• No email hosting, full stop. This is the most common support question from people who just moved to Cloudways. Add Google Workspace ($6/user/mo) or Zoho Mail ($1/user/mo) immediately after signup. Cloudflare's free email forwarding works for simple one-address setups. ScalaHosting is the alternative if you want email bundled with hosting.
• No cPanel. The Cloudways panel is well-designed, but it is completely different from cPanel. If your developer or team lives in cPanel, budget a week to relearn where things are. The underlying features are all there. The navigation is not what you're used to.
• No native file manager. Use SFTP, Tiny File Manager, or WP-CLI via SSH. Covered in setup step 9 above. Not a problem once you have a workflow, but it's a surprise on day one.
• Account verification on new signups. First-time Cloudways accounts sometimes trigger an identity verification request (a government ID photo). This is standard anti-fraud procedure, not a bug. It can delay your first server by up to 24 hours. If you're in a hurry to launch, ScalaHosting and SiteGround activate immediately. Plan accordingly.
• Old reviews say Apache. Cloudways now uses Nginx. Cloudways migrated new applications to Nginx in recent years. Older tutorials and reviews (including some written in 2021 to 2022) reference Apache configuration. If you're following a guide and the Apache commands aren't working, check the date on the guide. Nginx is faster under concurrent load and better for WordPress. This is an upgrade, not a downgrade.
• Native backups are on the same infrastructure as your server. See setup step 10. Add UpdraftPlus for off-site redundancy. Free and takes 10 minutes to set up.
• Offsite backup storage costs extra. If you use Cloudways' own off-site backup option, it's $0.033 per GB per server per month. For most sites, UpdraftPlus to Google Drive is free and simpler.

When I'd Send You Somewhere Else

Three managed hosts get compared with Cloudways constantly: ScalaHosting, Kinsta, WP Engine. Here are my honest verdicts for each.

Where Scalahosting Wins

• Email hosting included — Cloudways requires +$72/yr for Google Workspace
• SPanel free — saves $180/yr vs cPanel, uses 8x less RAM
• ~$36/mo all-in vs Cloudways $118/mo for equivalent 4c/8GB config
• No CPU steal, no I/O throttle, no hidden VPS limits
• AMD EPYC 9474F (#31 PassMark) — verified via SSH lscpu
• Free migration (SPanel wizard) vs Cloudways $50/site
• Anytime money-back guarantee

Where Cloudways Wins

• 28ms idle TTFB vs Cloudways 72ms (16ms slower at idle)
• No pay-as-you-go — renewal jumps ~200% after intro term
• No cloud provider choice — single infrastructure
• No Git deployment or SSH-first developer workflow
• No autoscaling — manual plan upgrades required

Performance Benchmarks

• TTFB: 28ms (VPS cached) / 78ms (shared)
• Load Test (100 Users): 33ms (+18%)
• Uptime: 99.997%
• I/O Speed: 2,457 MB/s (PCIe 5.0)
• PHP Workers: 30+ dedicated
• WooCommerce TTFB: 98ms @ 100 users

28ms TTFB | AMD EPYC 9474F (#31 PassMark) | Email + SPanel Included

Full ScalaHosting Review

$29.95/mo

Anytime Money-Back Guarantee

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Pick Kinsta if: you have one large WordPress site that earns enough to justify $35/mo per site, you want best-in-class managed WordPress features (auto-updates, visual regression testing, expert WordPress support specifically), and you're not running more than a few sites. Kinsta's Google Cloud C2 infrastructure is competitive. The visit limit math is what hurts growing sites: 25k/mo on Starter, overages apply after that.

Pick WP Engine if: you're an enterprise client with SOC 2 Type 2 compliance requirements and your legal team specifically requires WP Engine. The 25k visit limit on the Startup plan at $25/mo becomes $175/mo at 50k monthly visitors when you add $150 in overages. For agencies and growing sites, that math doesn't work. For enterprise clients who need the compliance documentation, it might.

Pick SiteGround if: you're not technical, you have a low-traffic site under 10k pageviews/mo, and you want phone support. SiteGround's first-line support is the best in shared hosting. Their performance at scale is limited by their 4-worker PHP cap on GrowBig, which is why they returned 502 errors at 100 concurrent users in my test. For the right audience (beginner, low traffic, needs hand-holding), it's a reasonable choice. The 6x renewal markup from intro price is real, though.

Read my ScalaHosting review →  ·  Read my Kinsta review →  ·  Read my WP Engine review →

What People Say After Moving to Cloudways

The pattern I see across forums, Trustpilot, and WordPress Facebook groups is consistent: someone hits a CPU wall on shared hosting, hears about Cloudways, migrates, and is surprised by how much faster day one feels. Here are six real accounts from public sources.

FAQ + Final Answer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Cloudways worth it in 2026?

For developers, agencies, and anyone running multiple WordPress sites, yes. 72ms idle TTFB on Vultr High Frequency, 168ms at 100 concurrent users (32% degradation, which is excellent), 99.981% uptime over 12 months. Redis Object Cache Pro included free. Pay-as-you-go billing with no annual contract. The trade-offs are clear: no email hosting (use Google Workspace or Zoho), no cPanel, true production cost runs $80-100/mo with email and CDN. Use code CLOUDS2022 for $30 free credit and test it on a real site before committing.

What cloud provider should I pick on Cloudways?

Vultr High Frequency for almost any WordPress workload. 72ms TTFB at $14/mo for 1c/1GB, NVMe storage, 3GHz+ CPU clock speeds. DigitalOcean Premium is a strong second pick if you already use DO Spaces or Managed Databases. Linode is a reliable backup option. AWS and Google Cloud cost 2 to 3 times more for measurably worse WordPress performance and only make sense if your organization has compliance reasons to be on those clouds.

Does Cloudways include email hosting?

No. Email is the most frequent surprise for new Cloudways customers. You add Google Workspace ($6/user/mo) or Zoho Mail ($1/user/mo) separately. Cloudflare also added a free email forwarding service that works for simple use cases. ScalaHosting is the alternative that bundles email if you want one bill for both.

How does Cloudways compare to Kinsta?

Cloudways wins on price-per-site and developer features (Git deployment, full SSH root, unlimited sites). Kinsta wins on managed-WordPress polish (auto-updates, visual regression testing, expert WordPress support) and slightly faster idle TTFB on Google Cloud C2. For agencies running 10 sites, Cloudways costs about $50/mo total versus Kinsta's $350/mo. For one large site that earns enough to justify the premium, Kinsta is the better managed product.

What is Cloudways' uptime?

Cloudways doesn't publish a formal SLA. My 12-month UptimeRobot Pro monitoring on Vultr High Frequency recorded 99.981% uptime, roughly 101 minutes of total downtime. Two of those incidents were Vultr datacenter events that affected the underlying provider. ScalaHosting beat that at 99.993% in the same period. Both are excellent. Bluehost was 99.921% (6.3 hours), HostGator 99.908% (7.3 hours).

Can I host multiple WordPress sites on Cloudways?

Yes, unlimited WordPress sites on any Cloudways server. A single 2c/4GB Standard plan ($50/mo) comfortably handles 5 to 10 small-to-medium WordPress sites. This is the math that makes Cloudways the default for agencies: 10 sites at ~$50/mo total versus Kinsta at $350/mo or WP Engine at $250/mo.

What is the true cost of Cloudways?

Sticker price starts at $14/mo for 1c/1GB Vultr HF. Real-world cost for a single small WordPress site with email runs $15-20/mo (Vultr HF 1c/1GB plus Zoho Mail). For a real business site with WooCommerce traffic, Google Workspace email, and Cloudflare Enterprise, plan for $80-100/mo on a 4c/8GB Vultr HF setup. Pay-as-you-go billing means you can cancel any time, no contract, no renewal markup.

Is Cloudways good for WooCommerce?

Yes, with the right configuration. Pick at minimum the 2c/4GB Standard plan ($50/mo). Configure PHP-FPM workers to 15 to 20 (default 32M memory limit is comically low; bump to 1024M). Redis Object Cache Pro is free and essential for WooCommerce session and cart caching. The main constraint is no included transactional email, so you add Mailgun or SendGrid (both have free tiers) for order notifications.

What changed after DigitalOcean acquired Cloudways?

DigitalOcean acquired Cloudways in September 2022 for $350M. Three years later: some plan prices went up 10 to 15% (Vultr HF stayed steady), the 3-day free trial got replaced with a $30 promo credit, Cloudflare Enterprise launched as a $5/mo add-on (the biggest positive change), and all five cloud providers stayed active. The thing affiliates worried about, Cloudways becoming a DigitalOcean-only WordPress shell, did not happen.

How do I cancel Cloudways?

Pay-as-you-go billing means you cancel by deleting your applications and servers in the Cloudways dashboard, then closing your account under Account > Billing. You're billed for the hours you used in the current cycle and that's it. No annual contract, no early-termination fee, no negotiated escape. This is one of the genuine advantages over hosts with 36-month contracts.

The Final Answer

Cloudways is the platform I run my own work on, recommend to clients I trust will read the dashboard, and use to test new WordPress projects. After eight years and four active servers, I have no plans to leave it.

If you build WordPress for a living, run an agency, or want real cloud infrastructure with a thin management layer, this is the right answer. If you need email included and a real control panel, ScalaHosting is the right answer. If you have one large site and a budget for managed-everything, Kinsta is the right answer. Three different products, three different audiences. The marketing copy from any of them won't tell you which one you actually are. That's what this page is for.

What Our Testing Found

• 72ms TTFB — Lowest idle TTFB tested (Vultr HF, New York, no CDN)
• 168ms at 100 concurrent users — Only 32% degradation under real load
• 99.981% uptime — 12 months UptimeRobot Pro monitoring
• 5 cloud providers: Vultr HF, DigitalOcean, AWS, GCE, Linode/Akamai
• Redis Object Cache Pro included free ($99/yr value)
• Pay-as-you-go billing — no long-term commitment, no renewal shock
• Git deployment, SSH, WP-CLI, staging — best developer tooling tested
• Unlimited WordPress sites on any plan
• Autoscaling available (vertical + horizontal)
• Cloudflare Enterprise CDN add-on available

Real Weaknesses

• No email hosting — add $6-12/mo for Google Workspace
• No cPanel — custom Cloudways panel only
• Migration costs $50/site (or DIY free)
• Vultr HF 4c/8GB = $118/mo vs ScalaHosting equivalent ~$36/mo
• DigitalOcean acquisition (2022) — pricing increased, some features removed
• L1 support limited on server-level issues — escalation required
• No phone support — live chat and tickets only

Performance Benchmarks

• TTFB: 72ms avg
• Load Test (100 Users): 98ms (+36%)
• Uptime: 99.981%

72ms TTFB (Vultr HF) | 99.981% Uptime | 5 Cloud Providers | CLOUDS2022 = $30 Free

Full Benchmark Data

$14.00/mo

CLOUDS2022 = $30 Free Credit

Try Cloudways Free ➦

Try Cloudways with $30 free credit (CLOUDS2022) →

Not the right host for you? Read my ScalaHosting review for the best email-included alternative, my ChemiCloud review for the best $4/mo shared option, or the full WordPress hosting comparison.