Cloudways stands out because it removes the pain of raw cloud VMs — you get a clean control panel, one-click WordPress and WooCommerce installs, automated backups, free SSL and object cache — while still paying near-metal prices. Servers boot in under 8 minutes, the built-in Cloudflare Enterprise add-on delivers Core Web Vitals scores rivaling Kinsta at a fraction of the price, and 24/7 chat support usually replies in under 3 minutes. The main downside is that email is a paid add-on and there is no cPanel — worth it in our view, but worth knowing before signup.
Pros
- 1-click WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento & Laravel deploys
- Free Cloudflare Enterprise add-on for Core Web Vitals
- 24/7/365 live chat, replies in ~3 minutes
- Pay-as-you-go billing, cancel any time
- Free SSL, automated backups, staging environments
Cons
- Email is a paid add-on (Rackspace / Elastic Email)
- No cPanel — you use the Cloudways Platform dashboard
- Managed hosting means slightly higher price than a raw VM
Performance benchmarks
Running a stock WordPress install with the Astra theme on a DigitalOcean 2 GB server, we consistently see TTFB under 200 ms from London, New York and Sydney. With the free Cloudflare Enterprise add-on enabled, our Core Web Vitals lab score sits at 100 / 100 for LCP, CLS and INP on both mobile and desktop.
Pricing verdict
The cheapest DigitalOcean Premium plan is $14/mo. Apply our 30OFF promo code and you pay $9.80/mo for the first three months — an aggressive price for managed cloud hosting with 24/7 support. If you're new to the platform, use 30FREE instead to get $30 in credit and skip the credit card for the trial.
Ready to try Cloudways?
Grab either promo code and deploy your first server in under 5 minutes.
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