Cloudways

Cloudways simplifies the managed cloud hosting experience by providing an intuitive management layer on top of infrastructure from five major cloud providers: DigitalOcean, Linode (Akamai), Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud Platform. This unique approach gives users the performance of enterprise cloud infrastructure without requiring the systems administration expertise typically needed to manage cloud servers directly.

The platform's key innovation is its server management dashboard, which abstracts away the complexity of configuring, securing, and optimizing cloud servers. Tasks that would normally require SSH access and Linux command-line expertise — SSL certificate installation, server caching configuration, PHP version management, firewall rules, and automated backups — are handled through a clean web interface with a few clicks.

Cloudways supports multiple applications per server, making it cost-effective for agencies and developers managing several websites. Each application gets its own isolated environment with independent SSL, domain management, and staging capabilities. One-click cloning allows you to duplicate an entire site for testing before pushing changes to production.

Performance is optimized through a pre-configured stack including Nginx, Apache, Memcached, Varnish, and Redis. The built-in Cloudways CDN powered by Cloudflare accelerates content delivery globally. For WordPress sites specifically, Cloudways offers the Breeze caching plugin and Object Cache Pro integration, delivering page load times that compete with managed WordPress hosts at a fraction of the cost.

Server scaling is straightforward — you can vertically scale your server resources without downtime as your traffic grows. The pay-as-you-go pricing model with hourly billing means you only pay for the resources you use, with plans starting at 14 USD per month on DigitalOcean and scaling up for AWS and GCP infrastructure.

Cloudways was acquired by DigitalOcean in 2024, which has strengthened its infrastructure partnerships while maintaining the platform's provider-agnostic approach. For developers and agencies who want cloud-level performance with managed-hosting simplicity, Cloudways occupies a unique sweet spot in the hosting market.