Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting provider that prioritizes performance and simplicity for cloud-based PHP hosting applications such as WordPress, Woo Commerce, Laravel, Magento, etc. It offers fully managed cloud hosting on a dedicated server, thereby reducing loading times for your eCommerce websites, portals, apps among others.
So how is this hosting platform different from traditional hosting? We’ll look into its numerous features and benefits, some of which are mentioned below.
Features & Benefits of Cloudways Hosting
Cloudways offers managed application hosting platform via different infrastructure providers. Here, Cloudways has partnered with the best cloud hosting providers; Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Linode, Vultr, and Digital Ocean. This provides customers with a range of flexibility other web hosting service providers lack. Each server configuration is designed for different application & usage requirements with the option to scale vertically. To get the most functionality, select a server based on your budget and web application.
The best part? You don’t have to share a server. Ever!
Cloudways manages your website load by using resources from multiple clustered servers. It doesn’t provide traditional shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting plans.
Cloudways hosting plans
Cloudways free trial
To get this offer, signup with your email, Google, LinkedIn, or GitHub credentials. Afterwards, choose your application, an infrastructure service provider and your preferred server configuration. Once the server is setup with your preferred content management system (CMS) you can start the migration process.
All users start with a three-day free trial period, within which you can use the service for free. TechVisePK users get 20% off for 2 months using our links.
Cloudways paid plan
Cloudways offers different monthly web hosting plans, depending on the cloud computing power of the server. These servers range from $10 to $1,035 per month.
● The $10 plan provides access to 1GB of RAM, 25GB of storage, 1TB of monthly data transfers, and a single-core processor.
● The $1,035 plan gives access to 192GB of RAM, 3840GB of storage, 12TB of monthly data transfer, and a 32-core processor.
If you prefer to pay hourly, the lowest plan costs $0.01 per hour while the most expensive one costs more than $1.43.
Obviously, each plan offers different functionalities and the difference in costs is determined by the services & capabilities of each infrastructure provider. The price includes the cloud hosting provider you choose, e.g. Digital Ocean, and the number of server resources you intend to use. As you may expect, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform are the two most expensive cloud hosting providers.
Cloudways pay-as-you-go billing
Cloudways utilizes a pay-as-you-go cloud hosting model that charges based on the time used. For instance, if you cancel a hosting plan after using it for eight days in a month, you will be charged only for the eight days and your server with its applications and backups will be deleted. So while you only pay for what you have used. You need to be sure before you cancel your server hosting with them.
Other web hosting providers, like HostGator, Bluehost and DreamHost, etc will charge you till the end of your billing period (whether its a year, or a month) even if you cancel a few days into the billing cycle.
Security
Cloudways provides multi layered security to each account. From Two factor authentication and user role management to database & OS security. Each plan provides SSH and SFTP access, Free SSL certificates, unique IPs, and dedicated firewalls.
With a partnership with Cloudflare, Cloudways boasts of enterprise grade security as an addon on all its cloud hosting plans. Given how expensive Cloudflare Enterprise is, a monthly price of $4.99/mo/domain is a no brainer for the security and performance benefits it provides.
Misc Features & Benefits
Other benefits of Cloudways platform is, free migration (for 1 website), staging sites, 24/7 chat support, unlimited application support, Git integration, application and server cloning etc.
You can add multiple servers to your account. Each server can have its own cloud provider and location. Within a server you can have multiple applications running on it.
And the best part, subscribing to plans over $25 gives you access to Object Cache Pro free of charge on all applications hosted on the server.
Get 40% off for the first 4 months when you enter code BFCM4030 at signup
Hosting Add ons
Unlike most managed hosting providers out there, Cloudways offers cost effective hosting add-ons to ensure a fast and error free experience. Among these, are priority support, SMTP relay via Gmail (free), premium DNS services, Email hosting via Rackspace, Cloudflare CDN and application migration and upgrade services. For full details, take a look at their add-ons page.
Downsides of Cloudways Hosting
Although Cloudways is an incredible managed cloud hosting provider, it has some disadvantages.
- The platform lacks domain registration: hence, you need to secure a domain from another seller.
- Its back-end has an unusual design, making it difficult to direct your purchased URL to your hosting setup. This is irksome for those who wish to add another server to their existing plan.
- User management is tricky. You cannot delete or remove a user from your application, only disable them.
- There is also no way to work on a client application and then transfer the billing to another user. This is most likely due to the pay as you go nature of their billing, however it creates a problem for agencies who wish to transfer ownership of a server to a client once the work is complete.
Conclusion
Cloudways has numerous incredible features, including fast setup times, incredible uptime, cloud web hosting plans, top-notch web-based customer support, etc. While it has a few downsides, it is one of the best-managed WordPress hosting providers in Pakistan. You can trust the service to properly manage your server and keep your websites running hitch-free.
Excellent article as always