Cloudways review 2026: managed cloud VPS at half the Kinsta price
Web Dev Blog Editors
# hosting review · cloudways
Cloudways review 2026: managed cloud VPS at half the Kinsta price.
Cloudways is managed cloud hosting sitting on top of DigitalOcean, GCP, AWS, Vultr, or Linode. You pick the underlying cloud, Cloudways manages the server, and you get a Kinsta-style dashboard for a fraction of the price. Starter plan from $11/mo (roughly £9/mo). This review covers who it suits, the trade-offs, and where the polish stops.
affiliate disclosure: this post contains affiliate links to Cloudways. If you sign up through one, we may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Verdicts are based on our own testing; see /affiliate-disclosure/.
# who this suits
Who Cloudways is the right choice for.
Solo developers and small agencies that want Kinsta-grade infrastructure (Google Cloud C2 or DigitalOcean Premium) without paying Kinsta prices. Freelancers running multiple client sites who need per-application isolation and want to tune the cache stack themselves. Anyone comfortable in a real Linux server dashboard.
Not a fit for freelancers who want white-glove managed hosting where the vendor handles everything. Cloudways is closer to “self-serve managed” than “premium managed”. If you do not know what Redis is, this is not the host to learn on.
# what it does well
What Cloudways does well.
Price. £9/mo entry on DigitalOcean 1 GB is genuinely competitive. £14/mo on the DigitalOcean 2 GB tier will comfortably host a couple of small WordPress sites with room.
Provider choice. Same dashboard, same tooling, different underlying cloud. Move a client from DigitalOcean to Vultr High Frequency in one afternoon if you need to. Useful when a client’s traffic pattern changes.
Per-application isolation on the same server, so you can run five WordPress sites on one 2 GB droplet and still have proper database separation and cache scopes.
Breeze cache plugin (Cloudways’ own) is decent and integrated with the dashboard. If you prefer LiteSpeed Cache or WP Rocket, those work too; Cloudways does not lock you in.
Cloudways Bot ( AI support chat) is not a substitute for humans but does answer standard questions in seconds. Human chat is available and generally fast.
# where it falls short
Where Cloudways falls short.
Since the DigitalOcean acquisition (2022), some polish has slipped. Ticket response times vary more than they used to. Not a dealbreaker, but no longer the “always under an hour” experience it once was.
Staging is per-application clone, not one-click. It works, but you provision a copy manually, and pushing back to live is not a single button.
No included CDN. You bring Cloudflare (usually free) or subscribe to Cloudways CDN separately.
The dashboard is functional, not beautiful. If aesthetic polish is a priority (you are demoing to a client), Kinsta wins.
DNS is not managed on Cloudways. Same as Kinsta: your DNS lives on Cloudflare, Route53, or wherever else.
Prices in USD. Different cloud providers cost different amounts (Vultr HF is a touch more, AWS EC2 significantly more). Full price list on cloudways.com/pricing.
Plan
Price (GBP est.)
Monthly visits
Sites
Storage
DigitalOcean 1 GB
$11 (~£9)/mo
unmetered
unlimited apps
25 GB
DigitalOcean 2 GB
$26 (~£21)/mo
unmetered
unlimited apps
50 GB
DigitalOcean 4 GB Premium
$50 (~£40)/mo
unmetered
unlimited apps
80 GB
Cloudways bills hourly. If you spin up a staging server for a week and tear it down, you pay for the week only. Useful for one-off client projects.
# london latency
London latency: what to expect.
Cloudways offers London data centres across most underlying providers (DigitalOcean LON1, GCP europe-west2, AWS eu-west-2, Vultr London). Pick London at server provisioning. UK-audience sites hosted on the DigitalOcean Premium tier (NVMe SSDs) have felt fast in our informal testing.
For independent latency reads, see DigitalOcean’s own speedtest from the LON1 region, Cloudflare Radar UK ISP data, and SpeedVitals for TTFB against real WordPress sites. We will publish our own attributed benchmarks with methodology before the end of the quarter.
# migration
Migration and onboarding.
Cloudways ships a first-party migration plugin (Cloudways WordPress Migrator). It handles the standard case; complex sites with WooCommerce or membership plugins need manual clean-up. First migration is free with the standard plan; more migrations are inexpensive.
SSH access is on every plan. Git deploys are supported via the dashboard (or use GitHub Actions to push via SSH). WP-CLI works out of the box. Redis and Memcached are available as one-click add-ons.
# support
Support.
Chat is 24/7 in English. Since the DigitalOcean acquisition, first-response times have been more variable (some tickets in minutes, some closer to an hour). Ticket quality is usually solid on stack-level questions and thinner on WordPress plugin ecosystem questions (they will happily point you at KB articles).
For proper WordPress-plugin-ecosystem support, Kinsta and WP Engine remain a step ahead. That said, if your team has WordPress expertise in-house and just needs the infrastructure to work, Cloudways support is generally sufficient.
# compared to
Cloudways vs Kinsta and WP Engine.
Cloudways vs Kinsta: Cloudways is about a third the price at entry, with the same underlying GCP or DigitalOcean infrastructure. You give up the polish, per-site staging, and premium support. For solo devs, the maths often works. For agencies with client-facing dashboards, Kinsta wins.
Cloudways vs WP Engine: Cloudways is about half the price and much more flexible on stack choice (non-WordPress apps welcome). WP Engine wins on WordPress-specific tooling (Genesis, Local, EverCache). Cloudways wins on cost and flexibility.
Cloudways vs raw DigitalOcean: raw DigitalOcean droplets are cheaper still ($6/mo), but you manage the server. Cloudways is the layer in between: DigitalOcean infrastructure with WordPress managed for you.
# the verdict
The verdict.
Recommended for solo devs and small agencies who want proper managed WordPress hosting without the Kinsta or WP Engine price tag. The DigitalOcean 2 GB Premium tier at ~£21/mo is a genuinely strong pick for 2-3 client sites. Skip it if you want white-glove premium support or one-click staging.
If you are on SiteGround GoGeek and shipping fine, do not migrate for the sake of it. If you are on Bluehost or GoDaddy shared hosting, Cloudways is a clear step up at a similar price point.
Try Cloudways on their site. Three-day free trial with no card. Signing up through this link supports the site; the verdict above is unchanged.
affiliate disclosure: Web Dev Blog carries affiliate links to Kinsta, WP Engine, Cloudways, DigitalOcean, and Vercel. If you sign up via a link on this site we may receive a commission at no cost to you. This does not influence editorial verdicts, which are based on real tests from a London server. Full policy on /affiliate-disclosure/.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.
