When your site grows out of its shared hosting plan, you’re left searching for a solution that’ll handle large traffic inflows for you. Cloud hosting is a viable solution in this space that lets you use the resources of multiple servers giving you faster, more reliable websites.
However, getting started with cloud hosting can be a daunting task – especially if you’re not particularly technically inclined. You can run into all kinds of incompatibility issues and system vulnerabilities.
In this post, we’ll review Cloudways’ managed WordPress hosting plan that takes all of the heavy lifting out of getting started with cloud hosting. We’ll cover the main features on offer, discuss how you can benefit from them, and take a look at the different pricing plans.
Let’s get started!
An Introduction to Cloudways
Founded in 2011, Cloudways allows you to host your WordPress website in a fully-managed cloud environment. Not only does it offer powerful functionality but there’s also a lot of flexibility in their pricing plan.
Cloudways is a Cloud Platform (PaaS) that offers an extremely easy way to deploy, monitor, and manage high performance applications on top of major cloud infrastructure providers. – Cloudways
Cloudways’ cloud server infrastructure is optimized to deliver high performance, blazing fast speeds, and seriously secure hosting solutions. It supports some of the major cloud hosting providers including DigitalOcean and Amazon Web Services. In short, Cloudways helps you configure, deploy, and manage multiple web application instances hosted on multiple cloud servers from a single dashboard.
Cloudways Managed Cloud Hosting: Why You Should Check It Out
Cloudways makes it incredibly easy for you to set up and get started with WordPress cloud hosting while it does all of the grunt work (such as taking regular backups and securing your site from malicious attacks) behind the scenes.
In this section, we’ll take a look at some of the key features it offers and how you can benefit from them.
1. Multiple Cloud Infrastructure and Multiple Datacenters
Supporting some of the biggest names in cloud hosting, Cloudways lets you choose your own cloud infrastructure and helps you deploy them in a few clicks. You can choose from DigitalOcean (like us!), Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine, Vultr, or KYUP to host your WordPress website.
Cloudways has over 25 major datacenters across the world allowing you to rest assured that your site won’t run into any latency issues. On top of that, the entire cloud infrastructure is optimized for performance which means that your site will out-perform the rest at blazing fast speeds and guaranteed uptime.
2. SSD- Based, Managed Cloud Hosting
Cloudways’ managed cloud hosting for WordPress gives you a hassle-free hosting setup allowing you to focus on business growth. It takes care of everything from setting up your cloud server to implementing security strategies for you. And the best part is that the hosting plan you’re on is scalable and you can upgrade it as you go – instantly.
In terms of performance optimization, Cloudways offers powerful SSD storage to its customers that significantly speeds up page load times, effectively improves your site’s response time, and improves your site’s chances of getting ranked higher in search engine results pages.
3. One-Click Deployment Packages Installers
Google has already announced that it will penalize websites that don’t have an SSL certificate installed. Thankfully, your Cloudways’ managed cloud hosting for WordPress plan comes with a complimentary SSL certificate issued by Let’s Encrypt – an open-source certificate authority.
Having an SSL certificate installed on your WordPress website ensures that the connection established between your website and your visitor’s browser is encrypted and using the HTTPS protocol. It helps make sure hackers aren’t able to gain access to your site’s back-end and compromise your visitors’ personal information such as credit card numbers or addresses.
- Cloning. Cloudways’ one-click cloning functionality allows you to create a replica of your WordPress website and server.
- Scaling. If you’re looking forward to website traffic surges, say, around the holidays, then you can easily scale your servers’ RAM and storage capacity without affecting your existing customization settings.
- Domain Mapping. Domain mapping can be tricky. Cloudways’ managed cloud hosting for WordPress simplifies it with domain mapping functionality that maps users’ domain names in a single click.
Finally, you can also opt for one-click backup and restore. However, if you’d rather automate backups then Cloudways lets you do that, too.
4. Cloud-Specific Security Technologies
One of the biggest concerns that most individuals and small businesses have about hosting their site on the cloud is security. Cloudways lists a number of security features that they offer including SFTP (FTP over SSH) and FTPS (FTP over SSL) which means that your site’s files will be secure (and encrypted) even if you don’t install an SSL certificate.
At Cloudways, we make security as our top-most priority and that is the reason we keep [all] our server up-to-date with the latest security patches installed. – Cloudways
If a hacker tries to break into your website or gain access to your site’s server then you can leverage Cloudways’ IP whitelisting functionality to ban specific IP addresses that could potentially cause harm to your server’s performance. All you have to do is whitelist your own IPs from inside the platform. What’s more is that you can enable device-based two-factor authentication to add an extra layer of security to your server.
Long story short: Cloudways takes security very seriously.
5. Around-the-Clock Customer Support
As of this writing, Cloudways offers around-the-clock live chat, human support and a ticketing system. In addition to this, the company has also set up a comprehensive knowledge base that contains detailed information about frequently asked questions. So, if you ever run into an issue you can always take the DIY approach and try to troubleshoot it yourself. However, if you’re not particularly technically inclined or can’t find a suitable answer in the knowledge base then you can always opt for one-on-one human support instead.
Cloudways’ support team is incredibly friendly, profoundly helpful, and quick to respond to customer queries. With Cloudways’, you can be convinced that your website is in good hands!
Cloudways Plans and Pricing
The thing that makes Cloudways’ pricing model standout is that they only charge you for what you use. It is, essentially, a pay as you go pricing model that comes with free migration services. Additionally, you can host an unlimited number of web applications without incurring a penny.
Depending upon which cloud hosting provider you choose to go with, you can choose from a number of different pricing plans. For instance, if you choose to go with DigitalOcean, you can pick from one of nine pricing plans. Each plan is based on four key server resources including RAM, processor, storage, and bandwidth.
If you’re not sure if managed cloud hosting is right for you then you can take Cloudways’ hosting services out for a test drive.
Conclusion
When it comes to managed, cloud-based WordPress hosting, Cloudways is definitely a top contender. It bridges the gap between you and cloud hosting while it fully manages your setup for you.
Let’s quickly recap the benefits of opting for Cloudways to host your WordPress website:
- You get access to powerful functionality at affordable rates.
- SSD-based cloud hosting ensures that your site delivers blazing fast page load times.
- One-click package installers for SSL certificates, backup and restore, cloning, scaling, and domain mapping.
- Cloud-specific security measures allow you to rest assured your site will be safe from malicious hacking attempts.
- You get around-the-clock customer support through a live chat system.
What are your thoughts on managed WordPress cloud hosting? Are you thinking about opting for Cloudways for managed WordPress cloud hosting? Let us know by commenting below?
1 reply to "Cloudways: Managed Cloud Hosting Review"
Good review, The feature that made me the fan of Cloudways was their 1-click solution, as for their services, I have been convinced about them when I first saw their review on Wpblog, do check it out too.