CLOUDWAYS Review [2021]-The Focused and Affordable Cloud Hosting Platform

Cloud Hosting has become a commonly discussed topic of the digital world. The Cloud Hosting platform goes through a complete revival each time a new company emerges and sets their base in the digital space.

Though certain Cloud Hosting features and benefits do sound clichéd, there are still few companies who are making great breakthroughs in the new arenas of Cloud Hosting.

One such company is Cloudways who takes immense pride in giving unmatched and affordable services in the field of Cloud Hosting

Founded by Uzair Gadit and Aaqib Gadit in the year 2009, Cloudways is headquartered in the island of Malta in Europe.  Cloudways has catered to more than 8000 users from 43 different countries to launch more than 12000 servers and 25000 plus web apps.

Before we dive into the various products and solutions of Cloudways, let’s find out more about their features that provide hassle free cloud hosting services to their customer’s businesses.

Cloudways Features

First-Class Support

Cloudways provides professional problem solving methods for everyone and also has a close association with Advanced and Premium support add-ons. 

Cloudways provides its support through the below add-ons.

24/7/365 Live Chat

The in-built support team is available round the clock to guide and help you with any queries or problems pertaining to Cloudways.

Online Ticketing

Keep a tab on the complicated queries or any kind of issues that you face while working using cloud ways, so that you can create a ticket and submit. You can also inform the Support team to create the tickets on your behalf.

Enhanced SLA

The advanced support element doubles your live chat access and prioritizes your online ticket response times to 3 hours for normal priority tickets and 30 minutes for high priority tickets.

Server Customization and Configuration

Contact the Cloudways support with the deployment of PHP or associated custom packages, help with caching configurations or customize your server configurations.

Phone Access

This add on is available with the Premium Support wherein you can directly get in touch with the Senior Support Engineer in case of any query or issue.

Application-Level Issues

Get the best support for any kind of Application related issues such as server errors, database or email issues, theme troubleshooting etc.

Proactive Application Monitoring

The Inbuilt application monitoring tools notifies you in case your server or stack is down

Close Partnership- Premium Support Add on

The Premium Support add on acts as an extension to the inbuilt support team so that you can contact them anytime to get your problems solved.

Private Slack Channel

This Premium Support Add-on connects you directly with the Senior Support Engineer through a Private Slack Channel.

Fast Ticket Response Times

This Premium Support add on assigns a very low response time for your tickets. The normal priority tickets receive the response within two hours and the high priority tickets gets solved within 10 minutes.

Elevated Performance Level

Cloudways showcases unique performance and how? Well, the below elements constitute for a the enhanced level of performance by Cloudways.

Dedicated Environment

The Cloudways servers have super committed resources and the dedicated environment element maximizes the server and the application performance.

SSD Based Hosting

The SSD element increases the server performance level three times faster and reduces the page load times to add more vibrancy to your website.

Built-in Advanced Caches

There are several ready to use caches included primarily to deliver accelerated responses.

PHP 7 Ready Servers

All the Cloudways Servers are PHP 7.x. ready and is faster than its previous version.

Cloudways CDN

The Cloudways CDN is a powerful add on service that delivers great performance and gives excellent response time.

Auto-Healing Managed Cloud Servers

The Auto-Healing technology within the server resolves all the issues that prevent your website from crashing.

Free WordPress Cache Plugin

Cloudways come with Pre-installed Breeze, a simple and user friendly WordPress cache plugin that offers world class WordPress performance than any other existing plugin in the industry.

Redis Support

Get matchless performance for your databases through Redis combined with Apache, Nginx and Varnish.

Free Magento Full Page Cache

Cloudways has an inbuilt Full Page Cache with several beneficial features. This gives you one of the best hosting stacks that elevates the performance of Magento 1.x stores.

Pre-configured PHP-FPM

This feature of Cloudways speeds up your website beyond limits and augments the loading times of your PHP environment.

HTTP/2 Supported Servers

The Cloudways servers are enabled with HTTP/2 that increases the level of communication between the servers and clients.

Well Managed Security

Cloudways follows a well managed and proactive form of security measures to maintain the safety and security of the servers. 

The Cloudways Security measures comes up with the following features

Dedicated Firewalls

The Cloudways servers come with OS level filters and highly committed firewall tools that ensures to protect your server from online threats and malicious traffic.

1-Click Free SSL Installation

The SSL feature of Cloudways Security improves the website security and authenticates with a formal certificate that fulfills all the HTTP requirements.

IP Whitelisting

Cloudways makes it easy to associate with networks or regions with unrestricted access to SSH and SFTP by creating a whitelist of IP’s.

Regular Security Patching

Cloudways conducts regular OS patches on your server that ensures a well managed and a secure cloud server and saves the server from unwanted liabilities.

Two-Factor Authentication

The Two-Factor Authentication technique of Cloudways sets double layers of security so that your servers are well protected from online intruders and cyber threats.

Bot-Protection

Cloudway has partnered with Malcare to effectively protect your Wordpress websites from traffic overload, malicious bots, and DoS (Denial of Service) attacks.

Best Choices with Cloudways

Cloudways paves way for innumerable choices for first class server management, which you can use to take your business to a heightened level.

IaaS Provider

Cloudways gives you various options of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) providers such as Google, Amazon, DigitalOcean, Linode and Vultr.

Block Storage

Cloudways gives you the option to extend the server storage space in just a few clicks without hampering the other server parameters.

Seamless Vertical Scaling

The 1-Click hosting features of Cloudways help you scale the resources without interrupting your customization

No Long-Term Contract

Cloudways does not bind you in any payment contract and you have to pay only for the service you have used.

Launch 10+ Apps through 1-Click

Cloudways allows you deploy a large number of apps in just a single click to effectively manage your WordPress and Magento sites on a single server.

All PHP Apps are supported

The Cloudways server platforms use the ease and agility of PHP PaaS (Platform as a Service) with the combine services of dedicated servers.

Multiple PHP Versions

You can switch to the latest PHP versions in just a simple click. Cloudways also supports the latest PHP versions.

MySQL and MariaDB Supported

The Cloudways also supports the latest version of MySQL and MariaDB on all their servers.

Global Availability

Cloudways has 60 plus data centers worldwide around to ensure faster loading of the web pages.

Strong Team Collaborations

Cloudways ensures to provide strong yet smooth collaborative workflows for faster and better achievement of results. The various elements of Cloudways Collaborations are:

Git Integration

With Git Integration you can deploy updated codes on live servers the moment changes occur in remote repositories.

SSH and SFTP Access

Access servers, update files and folders on your app through SSH (Secure Shell) and SFTP(Secure File Transfer Protocol) on your app.

Application and Server Cloning

Cloudways allows you to make copies of your servers or individual sites in just one click.

One Account Multiple Teams

Cloudways gives access to one team member to be a part of different teams so that they can work effectively to complete one project.

Projects

This unique feature of Cloudways allows you group up the applications and classify them under Projects.

Staging Area and URLs

Cloudways sets the right stage where you can test your applications before making it live.

Distribute your work

Allocate your work among your team members irrespective of their location and give them full or limited access to your server.

Server Transfer

This feature of Cloudways allows you to reassign the server ownership to your clients or any other party with the 1-click hosting feature.

Cloudways WP Migrator Plugin

Cloudways clears the way for hassle free migration of your WordPress site from the old hosting provider to Cloudways.

Exercise full throttle control

The simple and easy User Interface allows you to professionally control your server and applications with easy and confidence. 

The Control options of Cloudways are:

Server Settings and UI Packages

Cloudways empowers you to control several parameters on your server and allow you deploy applications and updated packages on your server.

1-Click Backup and Restore

Automated and on demand backups are created at an offsite location and can be restored with 1-Click

Cron Job Manager

Cron Jobs are used for scheduling tasks to run on the server. Cloudways allows you to easily manage the Cron Jobs with the built in Cron Job Manager.

WP-CLI Pre-installed

WP-CLI is the official command tool that is used for interacting and managing your WordPress websites. The Cloudways servers are installed with the latest version of WP-CLI commands to control your WordPress websites with efficiency and ease.

1-Click Stop App

The 1-Click feature of Cloudways lets you stop access to any application or any cron jobs for the application.

App Settings via UI

The Cloudways platform can be effectively used to modify all the application settings so that you don’t have to run complicated commands from the command line.

Advanced/Custom Varnish Settings

The Cloudways platform allows you to effectively control the Varnish cache settings.

Supervised Queue Manager

Cloudways integrates with Supervisord Queue Manager to control Laravel applications that allows you to control processes.

Change Application Webroot

Cloudways helps you to change the webroot of any application with just a few clicks.

Cloudways Integrations and Add-Ons

Cloudways gives you many convenient options through several Integrations and Add-ons. They are:

CloudwayBot Channels

The CloudwaysBot notifies of different chosen events through various channels like Slack, API and HipChat.

Cloudways API

Use the Restful API to integrate and manage your applications on Cloudways.

Application Mirgration Add-on

The Cloudways migration experts helps to migrate websites perfectly with very less downtime, offers one free migration and good guidance on infrastructure and more.

SMTP Add-on

The SMTP Add-on can be used as a gateway to deliver emails from your server.

Rackspace Email Add-on

Cloudways gives you cloud-based email Add-ons through Rackspace for just $1.

Application Upgrade Add-on

The cloud engineers of Cloudways intensely checks the inner details of your apps and all tasks are performed in a test area with no downtime.

DNS Made Easy Add-on

Cloudways offers premium Domain Name System service to face DNS errors.

Cloudways Support Add-ons

The Cloudways Support Add-ons gives you great app level support, excellent server services and much more.

Intense and Efficient Monitoring

Cloudways monitors the servers round the clock so that you can work without any hassles or unwanted interruptions. The different elements of this feature are

24/7 Real-time Monitoring

Cloudways assures you 24/7 real time monitoring and you get to view over 16 different metrics from your comfort zone.

New Relic Integration

Cloudways with New Relic Integration gives you an extensive insight into your application performance so that you can identify the potential problems.

CloudwaysBot Notifications

The AI-based smart assistant of Cloudways notifies you about the real-time performance of the servers and applications effectively.

Cloudways Products and Solutions

Cloudways deals with various types of Hosting products and solutions such as:

• WordPress Hosting
• WooCommerce Hosting
• Enterprise WordPress Hosting
• Magento Hosting
• PHP Hosting
• Laravel Hosting
• Drupal Hosting
• Joomla Hosting
• Prestashop Hosting
• Ecommerce Hosting
• Managed Amazon Cloud
• Managed Google Cloud
• Managed DigitalOcean
• Managed Linode
• Managed Vultr

The above Cloudways products and hosting solutions are filled with robust features like:

• Excellent Performance with various components like SSD Hosting, Built-in Cache, Optimized Stack, PHP Versions, Cloudways CDN and Breeze Plugin.

• Well Managed Security through Dedicated Firewalls, SSL Certificates, Login Security, IP Whitelisting, Application Isolation and Database Security.

• Flexibility feature through IaaS Providers, Block Storage, Vertical Scaling, No Contract, 1-Click Actions and Unlimited WordPress websites.

• Workflow Integrations through Git Integration, SSH/SFTP Access, 1-Click Cloning, Team Collaboration, Staging URLs and User Roles.

• 24/7 Support feature with Expert Support, Active Community, Wide Knowledge Base, Ticketing System, Support Add-ons and Troubleshooting.

Cloudways Pricing Plans

Cloudways takes immense pride in offering highly flexible and transparent pricing plans. These pricing plans are billed on a monthly and hourly basis. Let’s take a look at different pricing plans of Cloudways and their associated benefits.

• The first Cloudways plan is charged at $10 per month and $0.0139/hour. With this plan you get 1 Gb RAM, 1 core Processor, 25 GB Storage and 1 TB Bandwidth.

• The Second Cloudways plan is charged at $22 per month and $0.0306 per hour. With this plan you get 2 Gb RAM, 1 Core Processor, 50 GB Storage and 2 TB Bandwidth.

• The Third Cloudways plan is charged at $42 per month and $0.0583 per hour. With this plan you get 4 GB RAM, 2 Core Processor, 80 GB Storage and 4 TB Bandwidth

• The Fourth Cloudways plan is charged at $80 per month and $0.1111 per hour. With this plan you get 8 GB RAM, 4 Core Processor, 160 GB Storage and 5 TB Bandwidth.

Cloudways Support

Cloudways delivers World Class support that assures to solve all your queries and issues related to their products and solutions. Cloudways offers three levels of customer support that works 24/7/365.

The Three levels of Cloudways Customer Support are:

Standard Support

The Standard Support of Cloudways includes 24/7/365 Live chat service and is absolutely free.

Advanced Support add-on

The Advance Support add-on of Cloudways expedites the response times and gives more your expert support for your queries, deeper analysis of your problems and quick troubleshooting services.

Premium Support add-on

The Premium Support add-on of Cloudways takes care of your most critical issues that require instant support and assistance. The Premium Support add-on includes real quick response times, committed account manager, private slack channel and a direct phone support.

Final Thoughts

The Cloudways products and solutions along with their steady and robust features is a wholesome package that promises to give you peace of mind while they work on your business hosting requirements. Cloudways demonstrates high end expertise and maintains a professional decorum.

throughout their journey so that your business journey does not face any kind of blockages or interruptions.

Use Cloudways for your business ventures and experience peace and satisfaction while you reap profits!