Cloudways managed WordPress hosting explained

Who Cloudways is

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting company. Its website footer names Cloudways, LLC, and its pricing FAQ describes Cloudways as part of DigitalOcean LLC. It hosts WordPress, WooCommerce and other PHP applications, and lists Node.js hosting and managed AI agents among its newer products.

For WordPress, Cloudways offers two products:

Cloudways sums up its WordPress hosting as "managed cloud hosting for WordPress on the provider you choose", with "staging, backups and caching ready on day one". The model is different from the other hosts on this site: rather than buying a plan sized by sites and visits, on Flexible you pick a server and run as many sites on it as it can handle. Our guide to WordPress cloud hosting explains the approach in more depth.

Hosting type and platform: choose a cloud provider and server

On Cloudways Flexible, you make three choices when you launch a server:

1. The cloud provider: DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud
2. The server type and size: from small servers suited, in Cloudways' words, to personal sites and simple blogs, up to larger servers for ecommerce stores and resource-intensive applications
3. The location: from the data centres that provider offers, including London

Cloudways then sets the server up for WordPress and manages it. It calls its server stack the Lightning Stack, NGINX with PHP-FPM, and lists PHP 7.4 to 8.4 and MariaDB 10.11 or 11.4. Each server on your account is separate, so you can run one on DigitalOcean and another on AWS, each on its own plan.

Cloudways says you can launch as many applications as your server can support, group sites into projects, invite teammates and clone or transfer servers, with "one login, one bill". When a site grows, you resize the server's RAM, CPU and storage with a slider; Cloudways Autonomous does the scaling automatically. If you later want a different location, Cloudways says you can clone your server to another provider in the location you want.

This gives you more control than a platform sized by visits, and it also means server sizing is your decision. Cloudways' pricing FAQ suggests moving up a plan if your server's CPU or RAM use sits above 80% consistently. For background, see dedicated WordPress hosting and shared vs VPS WordPress hosting.

Cloudways data centres, including London and Manchester

Cloudways' pricing page lists the data centres for each cloud provider. For the UK:

You choose the location per server, and every site on that server runs there. Vultr's Manchester location gives you a second UK city. For European audiences, Cloudways lists locations such as Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris and Madrid on several providers.

Location can affect cost on some providers: Cloudways' pricing FAQ says AWS and Google Cloud charge different rates by region, while DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode charge the same wherever the server is. See UK-based WordPress hosting for how London options compare across all three hosts.

Cloudways caching, CDN and performance tools

Cloudways lists several layers of caching on its WordPress servers:

• Varnish, Memcached and Redis, built into the server
• Object Cache Pro, included on servers with 4GB of RAM or more
• Breeze, Cloudways' own cache plugin, pre-installed on every WordPress site
• Cloudflare Enterprise, an add-on on Flexible that serves pages from Cloudflare's edge and adds a WAF, rate limiting, tiered caching and smart routing
• Autonomous plans list Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, Redis caching and Object Cache Pro with Relay as standard

Cloudways also lists CloudwaysBot, which watches servers and apps for problems, and Copilot, which adds AI diagnostics. Because the server is yours, server size is part of performance too: a busy WooCommerce store needs more RAM and CPU than a brochure site. Our guide to fast WordPress hosting explains how caching layers fit together.

Cloudways security features

Cloudways describes its WordPress security in layers:

• Imunify360 firewall on every server, with WAF rules plus DoS, brute force and bot protection
• Let's Encrypt SSL certificates, installed in one click
• Two-factor authentication on your Cloudways account, with alerts for logins from unrecognised devices
• IP whitelisting for SSH and SFTP access
• Malware scanning and alerts, with a Malware Protection add-on, powered by Imunify360, that cleans infected files automatically
• A WordPress vulnerability scanner, powered by Patchstack, that flags vulnerable plugins and themes
• Cloudflare WAF and DDoS protection, built into Autonomous plans

Cloudways also lists server and app monitoring. As with any host, keeping plugins and themes updated is still your job; Cloudways' Site Manager add-on can test updates first. See secure WordPress hosting for a checklist.

Cloudways backups and staging

Backups. Cloudways offers automated backups on a schedule you set, plus on-demand backups, and restores in one click. Its pricing page says a per-GB charge applies for offsite backup storage on Flexible, so frequency and retention affect your bill; the rate is on Cloudways' site.

Staging. Cloudways says every plan includes staging: you copy a live site to a staging area, test changes and push them live in one click. You can also clone a WordPress application or a whole server in one click, which Cloudways points out is useful for agencies duplicating client environments.

Safer updates. The Site Manager Pro add-on, formerly SafeUpdates, tests updates on a staging clone and rolls back if the tests fail. Cloudways also lists SSH and SFTP access, SFTP credentials for team members and user roles that give each person full or limited access to an application or server. See WordPress hosting with staging for how to use a staging site well.

Cloudways migration help

Cloudways offers two ways to move an existing WordPress site:

• A migration handled by Cloudways: its pricing page says its engineers will migrate your first website to Cloudways from any web host, and Autonomous plans list managed migration
• The Cloudways WordPress Migrator plugin: install it on your current host, enter the credentials Cloudways gives you and start the migration

Cloudways says its migration does not break the site at your old host, so you can check the copy on Cloudways before you point your domain at it. If you are moving several sites, plan which ones Cloudways moves and which you move with the plugin. Our guide to moving a WordPress site to a new host covers testing and the DNS switch.

Cloudways support

Cloudways' pricing FAQ says a support engineer is available through live chat or ticketing, on every plan, at every hour. Its WordPress page also lists a knowledge base and community.

For more hands-on help, Cloudways sells support add-ons:

Check the scope of standard support before you rely on it for plugin or theme problems, since Cloudways positions that level of help as part of the Advanced add-on.

Cloudways plans and billing

Cloudways bills differently from the other hosts on this site. Its pricing page and FAQ say:

• Usage is tracked hourly and you are invoiced on the 1st of each month for the month just ended
• There is no contract: you can change server size whenever you need to, and the new rate shows on your invoice
• You can prepay by adding funds to a Cloudways wallet, enough for roughly 12 months of estimated costs, and invoices are deducted from it
• Prices depend on the provider and server size, and on region for AWS and Google Cloud
• Payment is by credit or debit card or PayPal
• Add-ons such as Cloudflare Enterprise, Site Manager, Malware Protection, email and support upgrades are billed on top
• A trial of Flexible needs no credit card and runs on DigitalOcean, Vultr or Linode; when it ends the server is deleted unless you upgrade

Cloudways shows its prices in US dollars, excluding tax, on its pricing page (opens in a new tab). Our guide to WordPress hosting costs explains how usage-based billing compares with fixed plans.

Who Cloudways says it is built for

Cloudways' product descriptions and solution pages point to these groups:

• Businesses that want control over their cloud and server, on Flexible
• Busy ecommerce and learning sites that need automatic scaling, on Autonomous
• Agencies, with projects, team access, one-click cloning, server transfer and client billing tools
• Developers, with SSH, SFTP, multiple PHP versions and staging
• Small and medium businesses and bloggers, on smaller servers

If you would rather buy a plan sized by sites and visits and leave server sizing to the host, the platform-style hosts on this site may be the closer fit. For agencies, see WordPress agency hosting; for stores, WooCommerce hosting.

Compare Cloudways with the other hosts

Cloudways is one of the hosts covered on this site. The others differ in hosting type, data centres, support and billing:

• Krystal WordPress hosting: a UK company with its own UK infrastructure and a UK-based support team
• WP Engine WordPress hosting: development, staging and production environments, with Google Cloud London

Where these facts come from

The facts on this page were read on Cloudways' own website on 2 November 2026: its pricing page (opens in a new tab) for plans, cloud providers, data centre locations, add-ons and billing, and its WordPress hosting page (opens in a new tab) for caching, security, staging, migration and support. Each fact is credited to Cloudways in the copy, and nothing here is a score, a ranking or a test result.

Cloudways updates its plans and offers from time to time, so check its own site for current details and prices before you buy. See all three side by side, and how we compare them, on our WordPress hosting comparison: provider-stated facts, listed A to Z, with no scores or prices.