Cloudways is a one-of-a-kind hosting service provider. They are one of the few hosting providers that challenge the boundaries of affordability whilst also offering great service and performance for their customers. One great feature of Cloudways is the fact they are partnered up with other hosting providers, including Linode; Vultr, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and also DigitalOcean, who use truly unique methods to manage their own packages.
One of the most exciting parts of Cloudways is the amount of different hosting packages they offer their customers using partnered packages. Altogether there are 54 hosting packages to choose from, which may prove difficult for the average person to understand and decide upon. Overall, there are 11 DigitalOcean plans; 10 Linode plans, seven Vultr plans, 14 Amazon Web Service plans and 12 Google Cloud plans.
A Brief History of Cloudways
Cloudways is a Malta-based hosting service provider that was founded in 2011. One reason why the platform has become such a successful is its collaboration with leading partners, and that the services they offer support multiple content management systems, including WordPress; Drupal, Magento, Joomla and Moodle.
The platform was revamped in 2016, driving many changes within the business – including the services and plans on offer.
Understandably, they are now seen as one of the most promising up-and-coming hosting providers this side of the Atlantic.
Hosting at Cloudways
Throughout the world, Cloudways have multiple data centers, including all the data centres owned by their partners. For instance, DigitalOcean has eight data centres, stretching from San Francisco on the US west coast to New York on the east coast. Other data centres are located throughout Europe and Asia. Other partners including Vultr, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud have data centres in Sydney, Australia. Meanwhile, AWS have the only data centre in South America used by Cloudways, located in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
What does this mean? One of the main reasons for using different data centre locations is the speed this can offer. Ultimately, speed makes or breaks the way people use the World Wide Web and if a user can’t access a website instantly due to loading times, they’re more than likely to not arrive again in future. Indeed, the age-old saying of ‘patience is a virtue’ does not exist online.
Hosting Plans at Cloudways
Overall there are 54 hosting plans offered by Cloudways, all supported by their partners.
You can also start any of the plans for free – a great incentive for those wanting a hosting service but don’t know which one would be right for them. When starting a free trail, no card details are needed – meaning you won’t be billed for a renewed subscription.
Other features that you receive when purchasing a hosting plan from Cloudways include a CDN; 24/7 customer support, backups, firewalls, one-click installation and much more – all for the cost of nothing. Many of these features are usually offered by other hosting companies at an additional cost.
Cloudways Partner with DigitalOcean
Working alongside DigitalOcean, Cloudways offer 11 plans. They are all named after the size of the RAM of the plan. For example, the name of the smallest plan is called ‘DO1GB’ as the amount of RAM it comes with is equal to 1GB. This is the same for the largest plan, ‘DO192GB’, as it has up to 192GB of RAM available. To find out details of individual plans, visit below or visit the Cloudways site directly. Below is a screenshot of all the DigitalOcean plans available.
Features of these plans include RAM, storage and bandwidth. The smallest plan has the smallest amount of all three of these features compared to the largest amount for the largest plan. All of the Cloudways DigitalOcean plans can be expensive; but at the time of writing, all the older plans have a discount applied to them to make them much more affordable. That means the smallest plan has a cost of only $10/£8.01/€9.04 compared to the $17/£13.62/€15.37 original price. It also means that the most popular plan that would normally cost $70/£56.06/€63.28 now costs $42/£33.64/€37.97 which works out at around a 40% saving.
Meet the Linode and Cloudways Hosting Partnership
Similarly to the DigitalOcean/Cloudways Hosting, Cloudways also has a partnership with Linode.
The plans that Cloudways and Linode offer is very similar to the DigitalOcean plans. There is one less plan between the two and that is the 48GB plan offered by DigitalOcean/Cloudways. Below are the Cloudways Linode Plans.
As you can see from the above image, Cloudways/Linode offer 10 individual plans that range in RAM, Processor, Storage, Bandwidth and price. When comparing the plans to those offered by Linode site itself, all are the same except one vital part: the price. With Cloudways, the price for Linode hosting is more expensive. But that comes at no surprise considering the number of additional features Cloudways offer, along with the hosting – all for the single hosting price.
The price for the different plans varies a lot with the cheapest being quite affordable. The most expensive plan is $1,205/£965.11/€1089.34 a month. To find out more about the plans above, visit the Cloudways website.
The Cloudways Vultr Partnership
Vultr is another hosting company that Cloudways has a partnership with. This partnership offers the least amount of plans with Cloudways compared to the 11 with DigitalOcean, 10 with Linode, 14 with AWS and 12 with Google Cloud, with the last two being further down in this article.
Once again, all plans offered are very similar to the previous DigitalOcean and Linode plans. See all the plans offered by Cloudways/Vultr below:
Overall there are seven plans, as you can see from the image above. All these plans offer something different, whether its the size of the RAM, bandwidth or storage, the processor or the price of the plan. Compared to the other plans such as the DigitalOcean and Linode plans, the plans offered by Vultr are cheaper. If we compare the largest plan by Vultr, the 64GB plan, every feature is the same apart from the price and bandwidth size which is half the size of the Linode plan but 1TB more than the DigitalOcean plan. The price is almost half the original price of the DigitalOcean plan although, at the moment, the DigitalOcean plan is on a deal. It is almost $100/£80.09/€90.40 cheaper than the Linode plan.
Amazon Web Services and Cloudways
Onto the biggest partnership with Cloudways, we have Amazon Web Services. This is the biggest partnership out of the five due to the size of the plans they offer and also the number of plans on offer, at a staggering 14.
The Cloudways and Amazon Web Service partnership is one of two partnerships that offer a CPU processor as opposed to the Core processors in the plans above. The other partnership is the Google Cloud below. Check out the plans offered by the Cloudways/AWS partnership in the image below.
As you can see there are a lot of AWS plans to choose from. It will probably be difficult to understand which is the perfect plan for you. Fortunately there is customer support that can assist you in making that choice. This may be especially hard as there are a number of plans that are very similar (such as the AWS XL) compared to the ones underneath it in the list.
These plans also start from an expensive amount, with the cheapest plan offered to be more than double the other partners with the exception of Google Cloud. This would be due to the processor being used as both AWS and Google Cloud offering CPU as opposed to the Core processor. Find the right plan for you above or visit the Cloudways website for more information.
Partnering with Google Cloud
Alongside the four other partners talked about above, Cloudways have also partnered with Google Cloud to offer hosting plans. These plans are very similar to the Amazon Web Service Plans due to the offering of a CPU instead of a Core processor, but offer a smaller amount of plans via Google Cloud.
Similar to the Amazon Web Services, these plans are more expensive than the DigitalOcean, Linode and Vultr plans. This is due to the processor being used. For additional help finding the right plan for you, Cloudways have their own online chat if you need to find the perfect plan for you.
Cloudways Target Market
When looking at all the plans offered by Cloudways, they all seem quite professional, meaning the average hosting customer may find it very difficult to choose the right plan for themselves. They might not even know what to call every feature they need from their hosting.
On Cloudways, DigitalOcean offer some of the easiest plans to understand, so the others would be increasingly difficult for the Average Joe.
Positives of Cloudways
Overall, Cloudways offer a lot of positives with the plans they offer. Firstly, you can choose from five well-known and established hosting services. The servers of these hosting services are modern and offer fast speeds around the world. There are servers located around the world, including North & South America; Asia, Europe and Australia which contribute to the fast speeds of Cloudways.
Additionally, the features offered by Cloudways are a major plus. Firstly, you don’t need to pay any additional fees. Secondly, they include free website migration; free SSL certificates, 24/7 support, managed backups firewalls, quick website installs, CDN and much more. This is above and beyond the call of duty of any hosting provider.
The control panel offered with the plans is also easy and friendly to use. You also have the option of choosing from many content management systems, such as WordPress and Drupal to name a few.
Cloudways also have a range of plans available for smaller and larger projects and agencies. The support is also very good although sometimes it can be a bit tricky to understand technical terms which may be a disadvantage to those not experienced in hosting.
Negatives of Cloudways
Cloudways don’t offer any email hosting or domain name registrar services. This is a major disadvantage compared to other hosting services. The services they also offer can also be hard to understand for the non-professional user. The support can be hard for non-experienced people, due to technical terms being used.
Many people will see the no CPanel as a disadvantage, as many users migrating to Cloudways will have experience with this control panel and will need to get used to a new one.
A lot of the plans offered by Cloudways are expensive – but you do get your money’s worth, however.
Cloudways Recommendation
When it comes to using Cloudways, ProfileTree believe that the positives outweigh the negatives. The price can be expensive, but you really do get what you pay for.
*ALL PRICING WITHIN THIS ARTICLE WERE ACCURATE AT TIME OF WRITING. ALL STERLING (GBP) AND EURO (EUR) WERE CONVERTED FROM DOLLARS (USD) USING GOOGLE’S OWN CONVERTER.
*ALL PLANS AND PACKAGES ON CLOUDWAYS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE BY CLOUDWAYS AND THEIR PARTNERS.
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