Cloudways: our take
The middle rung most growing sites are actually looking for: real cloud servers with the operations handled — as long as you don't mind learning a few server words.
Sites that have outgrown shared hosting but don't want to adopt server administration as a hobby.
Affiliate disclosure: links to Cloudways on this page are affiliate links — signing up through them may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t change what we say here; the caveats stay in.
What you're actually buying
Cloudways is a managed layer over cloud infrastructure you pick — DigitalOcean, AWS or Google Cloud underneath. The platform provisions the server, hardens and patches it, preconfigures a performance stack (caching included), and gives you a panel where applications, staging copies and server resizes are buttons rather than terminal sessions. You get cloud economics and performance without adopting the VPS admin job.
The structure explains the pricing: you're paying the underlying infrastructure cost plus a management premium. Judge that premium the way we suggest for all managed hosting — against your hours or an admin's salary, not against the raw server price.
Where it genuinely fits
- The escape from shared hosting — the classic move when a WordPress site's traffic starts to matter and pooled resources stop being acceptable.
- Agencies and multi-site owners — several applications on one resizable server, each with staging, under one panel.
- Custom applications — PHP and beyond, when you want real infrastructure but not the 3 a.m. pager.
The vocabulary toll
This is the caveat we keep attached: Cloudways asks you to make choices beginner hosts hide — which cloud, what server size, when to scale. The choices come with sensible defaults and the tutorial-grade concepts are all learnable, but if 'pick a server size' already sounds like homework, the bottom rung (Bluehost) removes that question entirely. Note also that email hosting isn't the product here — plan for a separate mail service, which is increasingly the norm off the bottom rung anyway.
The DigitalOcean connection
One honest way to frame Cloudways: it manages the same infrastructure our developer pick DigitalOcean rents raw. Same machines, opposite philosophy — pay a premium and skip the admin work, or keep the money and do it yourself. Which side of that trade you belong on is essentially the whole managed-vs-unmanaged question.
Cloudways — quick answers
Cloudways vs. shared hosting — what actually changes?
Your site stops sharing a pool: it runs on a cloud server sized for you, with dedicated resources, server-level caching and staging environments. What also changes: a slightly more technical panel, and email hosting no longer bundled. It's the difference between renting a room and renting an apartment with a property manager.
Which underlying cloud should I pick?
For most sites the honest answer is DigitalOcean — the entry point of the range with performance that satisfies typical workloads. The hyperscaler options matter when you have a specific reason (existing infrastructure, regions, compliance). Starting small and resizing later is the platform's whole point.
Do I need to know Linux to use Cloudways?
No — the managed layer exists precisely so you don't SSH anywhere. You'll meet server concepts (sizes, scaling, caching) at the vocabulary level, but the operations behind them are the platform's job, not yours.
Not convinced?
The other rungs of our ladder, one click away:
- Bluehost — Your first WordPress site or a small business site that needs to exist, not scale.
- Liquid Web — Business-critical sites and WooCommerce stores where downtime costs real money and support must answer.
- DigitalOcean — Developers and the developer-curious: custom stacks, side projects, and learning how servers actually work.
- Shopify — Selling online without assembling hosting, software, payments and security yourself.
The concepts behind this pick
Managed Hosting
Managed hosting is any plan where the provider runs the server on your behalf, covering updates, hardening, monitoring, backups and tuning, so the thing being sold is administration time with a machine attached rather than the machine itself.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is the model in which servers, storage and databases are created on demand through an API from a provider's pooled hardware and billed for the time they exist, rather than rented as a fixed box by the month.