Cloudways

Managed hosting on top of DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud.

IT & Productivity ✓ Claimed by the vendor billed hourly, no annual… 🔎 Independently researched
⚠️ Written by AIBM at the vendor’s request — this description is not an independent review. Our independent findings on this product are in the panel below, and in full in the Honest Software Atlas. Reader reviews below are moderated for spam only; critical ones get published too.
Our pricing checkRead on their own pricing page, 26 Aug 2026
Cost-trap flags🧩 Add-ons extra
Independent reviewRead our full dossier →

In Cloudways’s own words

Cloudways rents you a server at DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud and manages the layer on top: the stack, caching, staging, cloning, backups and 24/7 platform support, all from one dashboard. You get the control of a VPS without running the VPS yourself.

The billing model is the part worth understanding. It is hourly and post-paid — invoiced in the first week of the following month — with no annual contract to sign and no lock-in. That makes it unusually easy to test something for a week and stop. There is a 3-day free trial that does not ask for a card.

Our independent review sets out what the managed layer does and does not cover, and where the real cost sits once you add servers.

Pricing: billed hourly, no annual contract (vendor-stated — always verify on their site)

Visit Cloudways →

Affiliate disclosure: this is a partner link. We may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you — it does not change what our research says.

What we found — independently

Researched by AIBM, not supplied by the vendor. The vendor cannot edit this part of the page.

Our pricing check · read 2026-08-26 on cloudways.com/en/pricing.php, DigitalOcean…No free tier, but a 3-day free trial with no credit card required.
What will cost you money if you skim it"Fully managed" here means the server, not your site — and that distinction is where the money is.

Cost-trap flags — each with its evidence

🧩 Add-ons extra — Key features are paid add-ons on top of the plan
“Add-ons are monthly and separate: Cloudflare Enterprise CDN from $4.99 per domain, Site Manager from $3 per app, Malware Protection from $4 per app, …”

Genuinely good for

agencies and PHP shops running many sites who want servers managed but not metered. One server holds as many sites as it can carry with no visit caps, billing is hourly and post-paid with no annual term, and Magento and Laravel are first-class alongside WordPress. It suits teams who genuinely do…

Skip it if

you are comfortable in a terminal, or you run a single small site. Going direct to the cloud provider with your own control panel keeps the server in your own account for materially less. And one low-traffic site is better served by shared hosting, or by a per-site managed host that bundles CDN and…

The honest comparisonGoing direct on DigitalOcean with your own control panel — DigitalOcean owns Cloudways and sells both sides, which makes this the honest comparison: the same 8GB machine is $48/month as a droplet and $99/month wrapped in Cloudways. Add DigitalOcean's own daily backups and a control-panel licence and a like-for-like self-managed box lands nearer $75-80, so…

Read our full Cloudways review →

Source: our own researched dossier on Cloudways, the same one behind the Honest Software Atlas and our reviews. Flags are derived from that text and each one carries the sentence it came from, so you can judge it yourself. Prices move — always check the vendor’s live pricing page before you buy.

Listed 2026-07-24 · free beta listing · outbound links are sponsored nofollow · list your own SaaS