Cloudways WordPress Cloud Hosting Review

Just last week I received an email from Umair of Cloudways, asking if I could do a review of their wordpress cloud hosting service, which I gladly did, and I’m actually honored to try their hosting service and I really appreciate him reaching out to somebody like me who’s just starting from scratch (again) my journey  in this blogging world.

What is Cloudways

So what is Cloudways? It’s actually the first time I heard of Cloudways but they have been around since 2011 and they are a hosting company based in Malta and offers some decent yet cheap cloud hosting which starts at $7 per month. I also tried researching a bit about their company in google, and looked for several reviews and what I read are mostly positive reviews from actual users of their cloud hosting services

Why Cloud Hosting

I haven’t really had projects involving cloud hosting, though I have tried cloud hosting the first time around two years ago when I subscribed to Digital Ocean, but the problem that time was I really don’t know what I am doing and it was my first experience using a cloud server so I was really a bit overwhelmed, especially with some of Digital Ocean’s technical jargons like the “droplet” which I really don’t understand, plus the interface is really different compared to the usual CPanel which I am accustomed to, so lacking the patience to learn new things, I gave up on the idea of using a cloud hosting, and switched back to the old shared web hosting service and never looked again into a cloud hosting until today.

But why should I really be using a cloud hosting? One of the reasons that I can think of is scalability, because with a cloud server, you can upgrade/downgrade your server specs easily, and you will need this feature especially when you are doing some product launches where you will be expecting a sudden spike in traffic which would require additional server processing resources to accommodate the increased resource demand for your site.

Using Cloudways Cloud Server

Cloudways  provides a 14-day free trial to test their cloud hosting and it’s the one I used to test their wordpress cloud hosting server. Signing up is very easy and credit card is not even required when you want to avail the free trial. You can also try their WP cloud hosting and sign up by clicking this link

Inside Cloudways

After you have signed up, you will be asked to set up your first server and application and make sure to fill the following details:

1. Here you choose what type of application your server will use, you can choose several apps including WordPress, and since I am interested with WordPress, that is the application I selected
2. Here you need to name your Managed App, just enter a relevant name for your app for so that it’s easy to remember. In this field I entered “Cloudways Review App”
3. Here you need to name your Managed Server, and just like the Managed App, just enter a relevant name, and in my case, I named it “Cloudways Review Server”
4. Here just enter a name for the name of your project, and in my example, I entered “Cloudways Review Project”
5. Here you have the option to choose your server and Cloudways have several choices here including Digital Ocean, which is actually the one I chose
6. Here you can choose the server size that you want. For the trial, you can only select up to the 1GB RAM but for the sake of this review, I chose the minimum because I want to test the pageload speed of their cheapest plan
7. Here you can choose the location of your server. Cloudways offers several locations and here I chose San Francisco
8. Here you will see the price of the hosting plan. You can also notice here that they have a per hour basis payment, and this is useful especially if you’re going to temporarily upgrade to a higher plan in case you need additional server resource for a short period of time, so you don’t have to pay for the whole month
9. When you’re already done setting up your project, just click “Launch Now”

Once you pressed it, your project will now be created including the server and application and it will take around 10 minutes for the whole process to be completed

This is what it looks when the process is already finished. Notice the red dot is now changed to a green dot, which means that your server is now active

Once the process is complete, you can now access the dashboards for your server and application. Let’s take a look first at the server dashboard

Server Dashboard

Here you can access all the settings with regards to your server, including server monitoring, security and backups, as well as when you want to upgrade/downgrade your server (seen in Vertical Scaling)

Now let’s look at the Application Dashboard, and you can go here by sliding the switch from Server to Application

Application Dashboard

Here at the Application Dashboard you will find the settings related to your application, which is WordPress in my case. Here you can set up the domain name, install SSL certificate for your domains, as well as the migration tool which you will need when you want to transfer from other web hosting to Cloudways cloud hosting.

That’s basically the control panel of the this wordpress cloud hosting, and as you can see, it is very different from the usual CPanel that we are all accustomed to, however unlike when I tried the Digital Ocean two years ago, the interface of Cloudways is much more user friendly and I was able to set it all up without even looking at their tutorials which is a big plus for me in terms of user-friendliness

Cloudways Speed Test

Now that were done with the inside look of Cloudways hosting, let’s now proceed to the meat of my Cloudways review, and this is to test drive the server for its performance, and to do that, here are the things that I’m going to do:

For the WordPress Application:

• Install Genesis Framework Theme
• Install Digital Pro Child Theme
• Install W3 Total Cache caching plugin
• Install Jetpack (Activate Photon for image optimization and activate Site Stats)
• Add 5 test posts with featured images
• Install Facebook PixelYourSite Plugin

I will be using W3 Total Cache for my caching plugin because my license for WP Rocket is for a single site only

Now for the test, what I am going to do is like what I did with my SiteGround Review which is:

• Run speed test in Pingdom 10 times
• Use New York for the location
• Remove the maximum and minimum page load times
• Average the remaining page load times results

And for the result, you can see it below

The result registered an average page load speed of 803ms, which is actually very impressive considering that it’s their cheapest plan at only $7 per month, and the page load speed is already under 1 sec, so how much more if I upgrade to the higher plans – definitely one of the best cloud hosting for wordpress out there.

Anyway, that basically concludes my test for Cloudways wordpress cloud hosting, and basing from the result of this test, Cloudways is definitely one of the fastest yet cheap cloud hosting servers that is worth considering to try, and although I will not be transferring wpislife.com to their hosting, I would still be recommending them to anyone who’s in search for a quality and fast wordpress cloud hosting at an affordable price, and as a matter of fact, I might use their service on my future web development projects

What I like about Cloudways

Aside from the fact that Cloudways provides one of the fastest cloud hosting for wordpress, there are actually other things that I like about Cloudways, and here they are in no particular order

Ease of Use

As I have told you earlier in my post, the Cloudways interface is very intuitive and user friendly, and even though it’s not a CPanel, the dashboard is still well organized and very easy to learn that you can set up your projects in an instant, and this actually comes from a person who has tried cloud hosting before then gave up because of the complications, but with Cloudways, everything went smoothly as far as setting up the server and application are concerned.

Fast Support

Not only is their servers fast, but their technical support as well. I personally experienced contacting their support because I was having issues with the appearance of my site. What happened is that the theme and the styles are not showing even though I have already set up the theme properly. What’s nice about Cloudways is that they have an online chat, which is the one I used, and as soon as I logged in my concern, in less than 5 seconds, I was already connected to one of their supports

The support took around an hour to fix my website issues, which maybe because of all the tests he did to determine the cause of the problem, but after that, my website all good and all problems gone.

Scalability

One of the good things about Cloudways cloud hosting is its server scalability wherein you can upgrade or downgrade your server to any specs you desire without any hassle. Another thing about this is the pricing, wherein you can pay by the hour which is really important especially if you just need to upgrade your wordpress cloud hosting for a few hours or days only so you’ll not be billed for the whole month.

Affordable Price

For only $7 a month, you can already have a WordPress website with page load speed in under a second, and getting this offer is really a no-brainer, and definitely one of the best wordpress cloud hosting that you can avail today.

What I Don’t Like About Cloudways

The only thing that I can think of really is the limited bandwidth for their wp cloud hosting plans, which could actually make their hosting package feature much sweeter if they can offer an unlimited bandwidth for their cloud hosting service, but besides that, I can’t really find anything I don’t like about Cloudways

Wrapping Up

And that wraps up my Cloudways review. If you are looking for a fast cloud server at an affordable price, definitely you should give Cloudways a try, and besides, Cloudways provide a free 14-day trial to test their wordpress cloud hosting and all you need to signup to their hosting platform without any credit card needed. If you think the cloud server is right for you, just continue and pay for their service after the trial has expired, but if after that trial period you decided that the server is not for you, you can just cancel or disregard your package renewal without any obligations from your side.

Cloudways Discount!!!

Good news guys! Cloudways gave me an exclusive discount coupon code that I can share to all of you. Just use the code “WPISLIFE” to get a $10 off your wordpress cloud hosting subscription with Cloudways.

Try Cloudways 14-day Free Trial