--- title: "Cloudways vs IONOS: which is better in 2026?" url: "https://hostidea.com/compare/cloudways-vs-ionos" canonical: "https://hostidea.com/compare/cloudways-vs-ionos" author: "Jennifer T." generated: "2026-10-15" note: "Markdown twin generated at build time from the same content as the HTML page. The HTML page is canonical." --- # Cloudways vs IONOS Cloudways and IONOS compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. Cloudways scores higher overall. By [Jennifer T.](https://hostidea.com/authors/jennifer-t) ยท Updated Oct 14, 2026 We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. Rankings come from the published methodology and sourced data, not from commissions. [Disclosure](https://hostidea.com/disclosure). ## Verdict [7.8 out of 10](https://hostidea.com/methodology#scoring) [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways)Wins overall DigitalOcean's managed cloud layer: servers from $11 a month on five clouds, billed hourly, staging and caching included [7.1 out of 10](https://hostidea.com/methodology#scoring) [IONOS](https://hostidea.com/reviews/ionos) The former 1&1: unlimited sites and traffic from $8 a month at renewal, with a free domain and wildcard SSL Cloudways wins 4 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.8 vs 7.1). ## How do the scores compare? Cloudways leads on 4 sub-scores, IONOS on 1. Higher is better. | | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | [IONOS](https://hostidea.com/reviews/ionos) | | --- | --- | --- | | Performance | 8.0 | 6.5 | | Uptime | 8.5 | 7.5 | | Support | 7.5 | 6.5 | | Features | 8.0 | 7.5 | | Value | 7.0 | 7.5 | | Ease of use | 7.0 | 7.0 | ## Which one is faster and more reliable? | | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | [IONOS](https://hostidea.com/reviews/ionos) | | --- | --- | --- | | Overall score | 7.8 | 7.1 | | Uptime (published)Kripesh Adwani 365 d vs Cybernews 14 d; methods differ | 99.99% | 100.00% | | Response time (published)HostingStep vs Cybernews; methods differ | 442 ms | 1749 ms | ## Which one costs less? On renewal, Cloudways is cheaper ($14.00/mo vs $14.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term. Prices verified Oct 14, 2026 (Cloudways) and Oct 14, 2026 (IONOS). USD. | | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | [IONOS](https://hostidea.com/reviews/ionos) | | --- | --- | --- | | Cheapest plan | DigitalOcean Premium Micro | Plus | | Intro price | $14.00/mo | $1.00/mo | | Renewal price | $14.00/mo | $14.00/mo | | Required term | 1 months | 12 months | | Websites | unlimited | unlimited | | Storage | 25 GB | 350 GB | | Money back | 0 days | 30 days | ## What does each include? | | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | [IONOS](https://hostidea.com/reviews/ionos) | | --- | --- | --- | | Free domain | No | One domain free for the first year on every plan: .us, .ca, .com, .net, .org, .info, .me, .biz or .online | | Free SSL | Let's Encrypt certificates on every application | One DV wildcard certificate on Essential, Starter and Plus; unlimited wildcard certificates on Ultimate | | Backups | On-demand and scheduled server backups with one-click restore; offsite storage billed at $0.033 per GB per server | Daily backup of storage and databases with data recovery, every plan | | Free migration | Free migration of existing sites | No | | Free CDN | No | Starter, Plus and Ultimate; not on Essential | | Caching | Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro and Redis included on every plan | Server compression and HTTP/2 listed; no caching layer named on the plan page | | Staging | Advanced staging and cloning on every plan | No | | Email | No | 1, 2, 4 or 5 accounts of 2 GB by plan, with forwarding, webmail and anti-spam | | Resource limits | A whole server per customer: 1 to 8 GB RAM and 1 to 4 vCPU on the listed sizes, larger sizes and other providers available | CPU priority 1x, 3x, 5x and 10x by plan; 262,144 inodes on every plan; cron jobs 10, 25, 50 and 100 | | Data center choice | The provider's regions, chosen per server: DigitalOcean 9, Vultr 30, Linode 25, AWS 28, Google Cloud 28 | No | | Uptime guarantee | No | 99.99% in the general terms, with a credit for the month proportional to the downtime, on request and at IONOS's discretion | | Security | Built-in firewall with IP blocking, WordPress vulnerability scanner, bot protection and dedicated firewalls per the pricing page | Daily malware scanning (basic, or advanced with automatic removal on Ultimate), DDoS protection, geo-redundancy | | Free trial | 3 days without a credit card | Not stated | | Phone support | No | 24/7, with a personal consultant | | Windows hosting | No | No | | SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI and Git | Not stated | Every plan, with 200 SFTP accounts, Perl and Python | | PHP versions | Not stated | 8.4, 8.3 and 8.2, with paid extended support for 5.6 and later | | Websites and traffic | Not stated | Unlimited websites and unlimited traffic on every plan; 5,000 subdomains | ## Company facts | | [Cloudways](https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways) | [IONOS](https://hostidea.com/reviews/ionos) | | --- | --- | --- | | Control panel | Cloudways platform (its own console); no cPanel | IONOS's own control panel (no cPanel) | | Data centers | 1 | 2 | | Support channels | chat, ticket, knowledge-base | chat, phone, email, knowledge-base | | Founded | 2011 | 2018 | Visit Cloudways (affiliate link: /go/cloudways)Visit IONOS (affiliate link: /go/ionos)