Cloudways Review 2021: Best Managed Cloud Hosting?

Managed cloud hosting is a more cost-effective and scalable solution compared to traditional managed hosting.

With traditional hosting solutions, your site and its data are stored on a single server with one backup. Cloudways stores your site in the cloud across multiple servers for greater protection and stronger performance.

Because your site is stored on multiple servers, you’ll have several backups, and you’ll be able to restore your site if there’s ever a problem easily. The cloud environment also means you can prompt multiple copies of your site to be replaced throughout any data centers of your liking.

Cloudways hosting also delivers better uptime and reliability because any server in its cloud network can take over if the first one stops working. This is known as having a “failover” strategy.

Additionally, because Cloudways can detect a website visitor’s location, the system can also intelligently load information from the server closest to that person, meaning your site loads faster.

With a sophisticated algorithm handling all of the data switching and a copy of your site maintained across servers, Cloudways offers much greater reliability and performance. Great if you want to keep things smooth but, don’t know how to manage all the technical bits behind the scenes.

The exact features you’ll get from Cloudways depend on the hosting plan you choose. Advanced plans give you access to more bandwidth, memory, storage, and processing power. But all Cloudways users get:

If you already have your website hosted on another site, you can easily choose Cloudways to handle the migration for you. This can save you a lot of time trying to collect all the information required from one server to move to another.

Cloudways strives to ensure your site loads as quickly as possible, with access to the latest technology from 5 of the top cloud providers in the world. The provider also relies on CDN to deliver content via a geographically distributed network of servers, which helps minimize lags in loading web page content.

Cloudways makes it easy to handle any issues your website might have with a unique automatic healing feature. The auto-healing system identifies the source of a problem when a crash is imminent and addresses it by itself. No manual intervention is needed.

For peace of mind, Cloudways offers a dedicated firewall to help protect you and your customers. Additionally, you get features like two-factor authentication to prevent intruders from gaining access to member accounts. Users can also access a free SSL certificate (via Let’s Encrypt) to protect all data moving between your site and your visitors.

Cloudways allows you to set up a website with one click. There’s also one-click app and plugin installation if you want to add new functionality to your site. The provider fully supports PHP-based applications and CMS frameworks like Magento, Drupal, Laravel, and WordPress.

6. Staging and Cloning

Staging allows you to create a dummy website where you can test any changes before they go live. This is a great way to ensure everything works properly before making a change. You can also clone sites and make copies to ensure you can easily back up your site or switch servers when required.

Cloudways offers various caching mechanisms for server optimization. Users can access a proprietary caching plugin called “Breeze,” which supports the Cloudways CDN. Other popular caching plugins like Redis and Varnish are also available.

The cloud infrastructure from Cloudways is built on the technology of five different cloud providers – all of which are ranked among the most reliable companies in the world. The cloud partners offer VPS and dedicated servers for extra-fast performance.

Cloudways hosting can adapt to suit your business. If your traffic starts to grow and you need to upgrade your server access, you can use the “Vertical Scaling” feature. This functionality allows Cloudways users to increase their hosting plans’ RAM, CPU, and storage features in a couple of clicks.

As Cloudways follows the “pay as you go” pricing model, you’re also not tied to specific contracts. You pay only for what you use, and you can change services at any time.

Cloudways makes backups of your site to ensure your data is recoverable in case anything goes wrong. The “Backup and Restore” feature is enabled by default, and you can enable a local backup option with an additional fee.

Cloudways offers one of the best customer services in the web hosting industry. The company offers 24/7 live chat support, and users can access a community forum for DIY solutions or send an email. You can even request a call from Cloudways if you prefer to speak with a human rep.

The CloudwaysBot is an AI solution offering real-time insights into your website performance and valuable notifications. You can integrate this bot with your email and Slack account to get alerts about your apps and servers.

Launching A Website on Cloudways

Cloudways makes it easy to launch and configure your server through an intuitive control panel. Here are the required steps:

You can install WordPress through the “application management” tab in Cloudways’ interface. Choose from:

• Standard WordPress 
• WordPress with WooCommerce hosting
• WordPress Multi-Site

All installations come with the W3 Total cache plug-in pre-installed and configured to enhance your website’s performance and speed.

There are many other settings in the Cloudways console. You can access them through the “Server Management” tab. Some notable ones include:

Cloudways is an impressive cloud hosting provider capable of offering astonishing speed and uptime. Access to some of the best cloud infrastructure in the world means your site will continue performing at its best in any situation, even when dealing with peaks in demand.

The Cloudways team promises around a 99% uptime when you’re hosting your website on their servers for WordPress and other top open-source site builders. Crucially, WordPress sites hosted with Cloudways boast 40-50% better loading times, thanks to the VMAN technology created by the Cloudways team. This proprietary technology deploys Memcached, Varnish, Apache, and Nginx at the same time for better site speed.

Globally Distributed Datacenters

If you leverage the Stackpath CDN (content delivery network), you’ll benefit from a global network of PoPs (points-of-presence) datacenter notes. These nodes can store copies of your website, automatically detect the geographical location of visitors, and deliver your content to them from the nearest node available.

Alternatively, you can use CloudwaysCDN. Cloudways lists step-by-step instructions on how to configure this so you can benefit from Cloudways’ vast network of 150+ servers globally.

Cloudways uses sophisticated firewalls to safeguard all of its cloud servers. The company’s technical team uses security hardening techniques to protect servers from potential hacks. And because there’s an automatic backup feature in each Cloudway plan, you can be sure that your site will be safe with Cloudways.

Cloudways also provides application-level security, an additional layer of security designed to safeguard against external threats to your site that surface from apps.

Cloudways Pricing

Cloudways’ pricing may confuse you at first, so we have some recommendations on how to navigate this aspect of the cloud hosting service.

As a managed cloud hosting platform, Cloudways balances functionality with affordability to make it easy for small businesses to take advantage of its platform.

Although you can directly host your site on one of the cloud companies it partners with, you’re unlikely to get the same experience and support as you’d get with Cloudways.

Cloudways’ cloud servers boast an excellent feature set, and you can scale your resources as your business grows.

Want to try Cloudways? Sign up for a free 3-day trial that the company offers to test its servers and features.