--- title: "Cloudways review 2026: a managed server of your own, billed by the hour, measured by three publications" url: "https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways" canonical: "https://hostidea.com/reviews/cloudways" author: "Denis M." published: "2026-10-14" updated: "2026-10-14" 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 review 2026: a managed server of your own, billed by the hour, measured by three publications Cloudways' Flexible plans on five clouds with the monthly and hourly prices, the no-refund model and 3-day trial, the support SLA, and the HostingStep, Kripesh Adwani and Cybernews figures. By [Denis M.](https://hostidea.com/authors/denis-m) · Reviewed by [Mike H.](https://hostidea.com/authors/mike-h) · Updated Oct 14, 2026 · Published 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). [7.8 out of 10](https://hostidea.com/methodology#scoring) ## Verdict Cloudways is the step between shared hosting and running your own server: you pick a cloud and a city, Cloudways manages the stack, and you pay by the hour with no renewal markup, from $11 a month on DigitalOcean Standard or $14 on Premium. Staging, cloning, Object Cache Pro, Redis and a firewall are included; CDN, email and backup storage cost extra, and there is no refund, only a 3-day trial. Three independent monitors agree it stays up and answers in 440 to 515 ms from the US. Choose it for a site that has outgrown shared hosting; skip it if you want email, cPanel or a refund window. Best for - Owners who want a managed server of their own instead of shared hosting - Agencies hosting many sites on one server with staging and cloning - Sites that need a specific city on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud - Anyone who wants hourly billing and the same price every month Skip it if - You want email or a domain included - You want a money-back guarantee - You prefer cPanel or a host that manages the application for you Visit Cloudways (affiliate link: /go/cloudways) from $14.00/mo, renews $14.00/mo ![Cloudways homepage](/_astro/homepage-2026-10-14.D9bLXZLA_2038au.webp?dpl=dpl_wVoJ6hM4T9kp8XUyrRhE6oXRnQ5f) _Cloudways homepage, captured Oct 14, 2026._ ## How Cloudways scores Six sub-scores with their weights. Scores updated Oct 14, 2026. [How each one is computed](https://hostidea.com/methodology#scoring). - **Performance (weight 25%)**: 8.0 - **Uptime (weight 20%)**: 8.5 - **Support (weight 15%)**: 7.5 - **Features (weight 15%)**: 8.0 - **Value (weight 15%)**: 7.0 - **Ease of use (weight 10%)**: 7.0 ### What we liked - **No renewal markup.** Servers are billed hourly and invoiced monthly at the listed rate: $14, $28, $54 and $99 a month for the DigitalOcean Premium sizes, the same next year. - **Three independent uptime records.** HostingStep's five configurations held 99.996 to 99.999 percent from October 2025 to May 2026; Kripesh Adwani's Singapore server 99.99 percent over 365 days; Cybernews 100 percent over two weeks. - **Staging, caching and a firewall included.** Advanced staging and cloning, Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro, Redis, a firewall with IP blocking and a WordPress vulnerability scanner on every plan. - **Choice of cloud and city.** DigitalOcean (9 locations), Vultr (30), Linode (25), AWS (28) and Google Cloud (28), picked per server; unlimited applications on each. - **Clean load handling.** HostingStep's DigitalOcean Standard server completed every request at 100 concurrent users; Kripesh Adwani's and Cybernews's 50-user runs had no failures. ### What held it back - **No money-back guarantee.** Usage is billed in arrears, so nothing is refundable; Cloudways offers a 3-day trial without a card instead. - **Extras add up.** Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, Rackspace email, DNS Made Easy and premium support are paid add-ons, and offsite backup storage costs $0.033 per GB per server. - **Middling US first-byte time.** HostingStep measured 419 to 447 ms across five configurations and Cybernews 515 ms, with HostingStep's hardware score of 4.7 on the DigitalOcean Standard entry server. - **You manage the applications.** Cloudways manages the server; WordPress updates, plugins and the site itself are yours, and there is no cPanel. - **Phone support costs extra.** Chat and tickets are included; phone and a private Slack channel come with the paid Premium Support add-on, per the support SLA. ## What did our tests show? HostIdea has not opened its own monitoring window for Cloudways yet, so there is no HostIdea uptime or response figure on this page. The published measurements we could find are listed below, attributed to the people who ran them. This section will carry our data when a window completes. No test results published yet. ### What do published measurements show? Longest independent window: 99.99% uptime over last 365 days to August 2026 (Kripesh Adwani). Response times reported: 442 ms (HostingStep, average TTFB from US locations over the window; 419 to 447 ms across the five Cloudways configurations tested), 515 ms (Cybernews, average response during the window). Measurements published by others, as they state them. HostIdea did not run these tests; each row links to its source and shows the date we read it. | Source | Setup | Uptime | Response | Load test | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [HostScore](https://hostscore.net/review/cloudways/)Score only · updated Oct 14, 2026 · read Oct 14, 2026 | Not stated | Not published | Not published | None | Overall HostScore 82.8 percent. Says its monitoring kept Cloudways above 99.95 percent without a window, and discloses that HostScore's own site runs on Cloudways. Dates the founding to 2011 by Aaqib Gadit, Pere Hospital and Uzair Gadit. | | [Kripesh Adwani](https://kripeshadwani.com/cloudways-review/)Kripesh AdwaniIndependent test · updated Sep 2, 2026 · read Oct 14, 2026 | DigitalOcean Standard, $11 server plan · Singapore (the page also mentions Bangalore) · Better Uptime, every 30 s | 99.99% (last 365 days to August 2026)99.99% (last 30 days) | Not published | 50 users, p95 68 ms, 0% errors | Server response 1 ms from Singapore, 68 ms from Japan, 82 ms from Mumbai; page load 860 ms from India and 3.66 s from the US, which mostly measures distance from a Singapore server. Peak 47.33 requests a second in the load test. | | [HostingStep](https://hostingstep.com/hosting-reviews/cloudways/)Mohan RajIndependent test · updated Apr 4, 2026 · read Oct 14, 2026 | DigitalOcean Standard (entry server) plan | 100.00% (1 October 2025 to 31 May 2026) | 442 msaverage TTFB from US locations over the window; 419 to 447 ms across the five Cloudways configurations tested | 100 users, avg 443 ms, 0% errors (Loader.io) | Monitored since 2020 across five configurations (DigitalOcean Standard and Premium, Vultr, Vultr HF, Linode) with uptime between 99.996 and 99.999 percent in the window. Cached global TTFB 386 ms across 40 cities (SpeedVitals). WPBench hardware 4.7 on DigitalOcean Standard, 7.6 on Vultr HF. Server location not stated. | | [Cybernews](https://cybernews.com/best-web-hosting/cloudways-review/)Miglė ŠeikytėIndependent test · updated Dec 19, 2025 · read Oct 14, 2026 | Cheapest DigitalOcean server plan · United States | 100.00% (two weeks of monitoring), 0 outages | 515 msaverage response during the window | 50 users, 0% errors | LCP 461 ms. Reachability 99.93 percent. LCP 461 ms on a blank site and 598 ms with demo content, fully loaded in 0.8 s. The five-minute stress test served 7,280 requests without failures. | _Methods differ between sources (check interval, plan, location and window), so the rows are not directly comparable with each other or with our own tests. [How we use published measurements](https://hostidea.com/methodology#where-the-numbers-come-from-today)._ ## Is Cloudways a good web host? Yes, for the owner who has outgrown shared hosting and does not want to administer a server. Cloudways rents you a virtual machine from one of five clouds, installs and manages the stack, and bills by the hour at a price that does not change at renewal; staging, caching and a firewall come with it. The measurements are the strongest part: three publications monitor it, one of them across five configurations since 2020, and all find it reliable with an ordinary US first-byte time. The model has costs of its own: no refund window, no email, paid CDN and backup storage, and the application layer stays your job. Everything below is a published fact we checked on 14 October 2026 or a gap we name. ## What do you get on each plan? | Plan | Websites | Storage | CPU and RAM | Backups | Mailboxes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | DigitalOcean Premium Micro | Unlimited | 25 GB | 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, NVMe storage | On-demand and scheduled backups, charged at $0.033 per GB per server for offsite storage | None; email is a paid Rackspace add-on | | DigitalOcean Premium Small | Unlimited | 50 GB | 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, NVMe storage | On-demand and scheduled backups, charged at $0.033 per GB per server for offsite storage | None; email is a paid Rackspace add-on | | DigitalOcean Premium Medium | Unlimited | 80 GB | 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, NVMe storage | On-demand and scheduled backups, charged at $0.033 per GB per server for offsite storage | None; email is a paid Rackspace add-on | | DigitalOcean Premium Large | Unlimited | 160 GB | 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, NVMe storage | On-demand and scheduled backups, charged at $0.033 per GB per server for offsite storage | None; email is a paid Rackspace add-on | DigitalOcean Premium Micro - **Websites**: Unlimited - **Storage**: 25 GB - **CPU and RAM**: 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, NVMe storage - **Backups**: On-demand and scheduled backups, charged at $0.033 per GB per server for offsite storage - **Mailboxes**: None; email is a paid Rackspace add-on DigitalOcean Premium Small - **Websites**: Unlimited - **Storage**: 50 GB - **CPU and RAM**: 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, NVMe storage - **Backups**: On-demand and scheduled backups, charged at $0.033 per GB per server for offsite storage - **Mailboxes**: None; email is a paid Rackspace add-on DigitalOcean Premium Medium - **Websites**: Unlimited - **Storage**: 80 GB - **CPU and RAM**: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, NVMe storage - **Backups**: On-demand and scheduled backups, charged at $0.033 per GB per server for offsite storage - **Mailboxes**: None; email is a paid Rackspace add-on DigitalOcean Premium Large - **Websites**: Unlimited - **Storage**: 160 GB - **CPU and RAM**: 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, NVMe storage - **Backups**: On-demand and scheduled backups, charged at $0.033 per GB per server for offsite storage - **Mailboxes**: None; email is a paid Rackspace add-on _From the official plan pages, checked Oct 14, 2026. [Source](https://www.cloudways.com/en/pricing.php)_ A Cloudways plan is a server. The pricing page defaults to DigitalOcean Premium (NVMe storage, newer processors) in four listed sizes, 1 GB with 1 vCPU and 25 GB up to 8 GB with 4 vCPU and 160 GB, each with a monthly transfer allowance from 1 to 5 TB; DigitalOcean Standard, Vultr, Vultr High Frequency, Linode, AWS and Google Cloud are the other choices, with Basic, General Purpose and CPU Optimized families on some. Every server includes unlimited applications and visits, the Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro and Redis, advanced staging and cloning, a built-in firewall with IP blocking, a WordPress vulnerability scanner, free SSL, free migration, vertical scaling and four AI Copilot credits. Backups are on demand or scheduled with one-click restore, and the offsite storage for them is billed at $0.033 per GB per server. Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, Rackspace email, DNS Made Easy and Premium Support are add-ons. Autonomous, a separate product, adds autoscaling for WordPress. ## What does it cost? | Plan | Monthly | | --- | --- | | DigitalOcean Premium Micro | $14.00/mosame at renewal | | DigitalOcean Premium Small | $28.00/mosame at renewal | | DigitalOcean Premium Medium | $54.00/mosame at renewal | | DigitalOcean Premium Large | $99.00/mosame at renewal | DigitalOcean Premium Micro - **Monthly**: $14.00/mosame at renewal DigitalOcean Premium Small - **Monthly**: $28.00/mosame at renewal DigitalOcean Premium Medium - **Monthly**: $54.00/mosame at renewal DigitalOcean Premium Large - **Monthly**: $99.00/mosame at renewal _Per month, USD, before tax; terms are paid upfront, and the renewal is shown under each price. Read from the official pricing page on Oct 14, 2026. [Source](https://www.cloudways.com/en/pricing.php)_ Billing is hourly, invoiced monthly, at the rate shown on the card: the DigitalOcean Premium sizes cost $0.0208, $0.0417, $0.0804 and $0.1473 an hour, which the page prints as $14, $28, $54 and $99 a month. The Standard tier starts at $11, and HostingStep lists Vultr and Linode entry servers at $14 and Vultr High Frequency at $16. There is no discount for prepaying and no markup at renewal; prices exclude taxes. The page offers a 3-day trial without a credit card, and HostingStep notes periodic promotional codes for new accounts. ### Three-year cost on the entry plan | Route | Years 1 to 3 | | --- | --- | | DigitalOcean Premium Micro, month to month | $14 × 36 = $504 | | DigitalOcean Standard entry server, month to month | $11 × 36 = $396 | ## How do refunds work? There is no money-back guarantee. Cloudways bills for the hours a server existed in the previous month, so cancelling stops the clock and there is nothing to refund; the 3-day trial is the way to test it. The legal page links DigitalOcean’s terms of service, updated 22 August 2026, which set recurring billing on the payment method on file and make any credits discretionary and revocable. Cloudways’ own support SLA, updated 1 January 2025, sets support availability and response goals and grants credits when those goals are missed, not for server downtime. ## What is the infrastructure? Whatever cloud you choose. The pricing page describes DigitalOcean with 9 locations and SSD or NVMe tiers, Vultr with 30 locations and High Frequency NVMe servers, Linode with 25, and AWS and Google Cloud with 28 each and configurable sizes. Cloudways adds its stack on top: NGINX in the new Lightning Stack, Redis and Object Cache Pro, a firewall and dedicated-firewall options on Vultr, DigitalOcean and Google Cloud. The pages we read carry no uptime guarantee for the servers; the SLA concerns support. Kripesh Adwani’s review states the same. ## How fast and reliable is it? HostingStep’s review by Mohan Raj, updated on 4 April 2026, has monitored five Cloudways configurations since 2020, with 12.3 million tests in all: - Uptime between 99.996 and 99.999 percent on every configuration from 1 October 2025 to 31 May 2026; 99.9985 percent on DigitalOcean Standard. - Average US TTFB of 419 to 447 ms across the five (442 ms on DigitalOcean Standard), a 28 ms spread that the page says a visitor would not notice. - A Loader.io test at 100 concurrent users: 443 ms with no errors on DigitalOcean Standard, faster but with 1.5 to 2.2 percent dropped requests on Vultr, Vultr HF and Linode. - A cached global TTFB of 386 ms across 40 cities, and WPBench hardware scores from 4.3 (Vultr) to 7.6 (Vultr HF). Kripesh Adwani’s review, updated on 2 September 2026, runs his own site on an $11 DigitalOcean Standard server in Singapore with Better Uptime checking every 30 seconds: 99.99 percent over the last 365 days and the last 30 days, a 1 ms response from Singapore and 68 to 82 ms from Japan and Mumbai, pages loading in 860 ms from India and 3.66 s from the US, and a 50-user k6 run of 10,400 requests with no failures and a 68 ms P95. Cybernews, in a review by Miglė Šeikytė updated on 19 December 2025, tested the cheapest DigitalOcean server in the US for two weeks: 100 percent uptime with 99.93 percent reachability, a 515 ms average response, an LCP of 461 ms on a blank site and 598 ms with content, 0.8 s fully loaded, and a five-minute stress test at 50 users that served 7,280 requests without failures. HostScore’s review, updated on 14 October 2026, scores Cloudways 82.8 percent, says its monitoring stays above 99.95 percent without a window, and notes that HostScore’s own site runs on Cloudways. We found no WPBeginner review of Cloudways. Read together: consistent, well-documented uptime, no failures under moderate load on DigitalOcean, and a US origin response in the 440 to 515 ms band that the Cloudflare add-on, not the plan, would improve. ## How good is the support? Chat and tickets around the clock. The support SLA sets a 15-minute cap on a standard live chat before it becomes a ticket, response-time goals by tier (Advanced 30 minutes, Premium 10 minutes, as the SLA defines them) and credits when the goals are missed; phone support and a private Slack channel come only with the Premium Support add-on. HostScore describes knowledgeable, responsive support, and Kripesh Adwani has hosted his own site there for more than five years. We have not timed tickets ourselves and will add real ones to the support table on this page. ## Who owns Cloudways, and where is it? DigitalOcean, which announced the completed $350 million acquisition of Cloudways on 8 September 2022; the site footer reads Cloudways, LLC, the logo reads Cloudways by DigitalOcean, and the legal page links DigitalOcean’s terms, which give a Broomfield, Colorado notice address. HostScore dates the founding to 2011 by Aaqib Gadit, Pere Hospital and Uzair Gadit; Cloudways’ own pages we read do not give a founding date or a head office, so we cite it as HostScore’s account. ## What is missing or unclear? - Any uptime guarantee for the servers; the pages we read have none. - The city list behind the provider location counts, which the pricing page shows in a pop-up we did not capture. - Current prices for the Vultr, Linode, AWS and Google Cloud tiers beyond the entry figures HostingStep lists. - Which city Cybernews’s US server used. - HostIdea’s own monitoring, support timing and load testing have not started. ## Who should choose Cloudways, and who should wait? Choose it if you run a site or a handful of client sites that need their own resources, you are comfortable updating WordPress yourself, and you want a city near your visitors on a cloud you trust. DigitalOcean Premium Small at $28 a month, 2 GB with 50 GB NVMe, is the sensible first server; Micro at $14 is enough for a small site. Wait if you need everything managed, including the application, or if email and a refund window matter. Kinsta manages the WordPress layer too, at $30 a month for one site; Hosting.com and SiteGround bundle email and daily backups on shared plans for less. ## How we scored this review The scores on this page are provisional. Uptime rests on three independent windows, one of them spanning five configurations. Performance weighs a 440 to 515 ms US response against clean load handling and fast delivery near the server. Features credit staging, caching, the firewall and server control, and deduct for the paid CDN, email and backup storage. Value weighs $14 for a 1 GB server with no renewal markup. Support reflects chat and tickets with phone as an add-on, and reviewer accounts, not timed tickets. Ease of use reflects a platform that manages the server but not the application. Each score will be recomputed when our own data exists, and the review history on this page will show the change. ## How much does Cloudways cost? The DigitalOcean Premium Micro plan starts at $14.00/mo on a 1-month term and renews at $14.00/mo. No full-refund window. | Plan | Intro | Renews at | Term | Sites | Storage | Highlights | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | DigitalOcean Premium Micro | $14.00/mo | $14.00/mo | 1 month | unlimited | 25 GB | $0.0208 an hour, billed for what you use, The Standard tier of the same size starts at $11 a month, Unlimited applications and visits on the server, Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro and Redis included | | DigitalOcean Premium Small | $28.00/mo | $28.00/mo | 1 month | unlimited | 50 GB | $0.0417 an hour, billed for what you use, Unlimited applications and visits on the server, Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro and Redis included, Vertical scaling to a larger size at any time | | DigitalOcean Premium Medium | $54.00/mo | $54.00/mo | 1 month | unlimited | 80 GB | $0.0804 an hour, billed for what you use, Sold as the most popular size, Unlimited applications and visits on the server, Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro and Redis included | | DigitalOcean Premium Large | $99.00/mo | $99.00/mo | 1 month | unlimited | 160 GB | $0.1473 an hour, billed for what you use, Sold for stores and resource-heavy applications, Unlimited applications and visits on the server, Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro and Redis included | _Prices verified on Oct 14, 2026[Official pricing page](https://www.cloudways.com/en/pricing.php)Intro price requires the listed term, billed upfront. USD, US region.Visit Cloudways (affiliate link: /go/cloudways)_ ## What is included? | Feature | Included | | --- | --- | | Free domain | NoCloudways does not sell domains | | Free SSL | Let's Encrypt certificates on every application | | Backups | On-demand and scheduled server backups with one-click restore; offsite storage billed at $0.033 per GB per server | | Free migration | Free migration of existing sites | | Free CDN | NoCloudflare Enterprise CDN is a paid add-on | | Caching | Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro and Redis included on every plan | | Staging | Advanced staging and cloning on every plan | | Email | NoRackspace email is a paid add-on | | 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 | | Data center choice | The provider's regions, chosen per server: DigitalOcean 9, Vultr 30, Linode 25, AWS 28, Google Cloud 28 | | Uptime guarantee | NoNo uptime guarantee on the pages we read; the support SLA covers response times only | | Security | Built-in firewall with IP blocking, WordPress vulnerability scanner, bot protection and dedicated firewalls per the pricing page | | Free trial | 3 days without a credit card | | Phone support | NoChat and tickets around the clock; phone and a private Slack channel come with the paid Premium Support add-on | | Windows hosting | No | _Features verified on Oct 14, 2026 against the [official feature page](https://www.cloudways.com/en/pricing.php)._ ## How good is Cloudways's support? Support tests are scheduled for the next quarter. ## Alternatives to Cloudways [8.7 out of 10](https://hostidea.com/methodology#scoring) ### [Flashcloud](https://hostidea.com/reviews/flashcloud)Our pick Shared and WordPress hosting with a free domain for life, 30-day backups and an anytime prorated refund Best for: Small business sites; WordPress sites that want backups and a domain included; Owners who want the first site built for them; Audiences in North America, Europe or Southeast Asia $2.79/mo intro, $9.99/mo renewal Visit Flashcloud (affiliate link: /go/flashcloud) [7.9 out of 10](https://hostidea.com/methodology#scoring) ### [Kinsta](https://hostidea.com/reviews/kinsta) Managed WordPress hosting from $30 a month with flat renewals, 30 data centers, edge caching and 14-day backups Best for: Business sites that want managed WordPress with staging, backups and a CDN in one price; Owners who want the same price at renewal as at sign-up; Sites with visitors far from the US (30 data centers on six continents); Teams that want 24/7 human support in eight languages $30.00/mo intro, $30.00/mo renewal Visit Kinsta (affiliate link: /go/kinsta) [7.7 out of 10](https://hostidea.com/methodology#scoring) ### [Hosting.com](https://hostidea.com/reviews/hosting-com) The former A2 Hosting under World Host Group: stated cores and RAM, 30-day backups, staging from Pro, phone support Best for: Sites that will grow into a managed server on the same platform; Owners who want phone support and stated resources; Developers using the OpenAPI and MCP server access; Agencies on Max with the service level agreement $1.99/mo intro, $13.99/mo renewal Visit Hosting.com (affiliate link: /go/hosting-com) ## Frequently asked questions - **### How much does Cloudways cost?**: It depends on the cloud and the server size. On DigitalOcean the Standard tier starts at $11 a month and the Premium tier at $14 for a 1 GB server, then $28, $54 and $99 for 2, 4 and 8 GB; HostingStep lists Vultr and Linode entry servers at $14 and Vultr High Frequency at $16. Billing is hourly, invoiced monthly, with the same price at renewal. - **### Does Cloudways offer a money-back guarantee?**: No. Because you pay in arrears for the hours used, there is no prepaid term to refund. Cloudways offers a 3-day free trial without a credit card instead, and its support SLA grants credits only when support response goals are missed. - **### Where can I put a Cloudways server?**: In any region of the cloud you choose: the pricing page counts 9 DigitalOcean locations, 30 for Vultr, 25 for Linode, 28 for AWS and 28 for Google Cloud. Each server lives in one region; Cybernews counts more than 65 locations in all. - **### What is included and what costs extra?**: Included: the managed server, unlimited applications, free SSL, staging and cloning, Object Cache Pro, Redis, the Lightning Stack, a firewall, a vulnerability scanner, free migration and 24/7 chat and ticket support. Extra: Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, Rackspace email, offsite backup storage at $0.033 per GB, DNS Made Easy and Premium Support with phone and Slack. - **### Who owns Cloudways?**: DigitalOcean, which completed its $350 million acquisition of Cloudways on 8 September 2022. The site footer names Cloudways, LLC, the logo reads Cloudways by DigitalOcean, and the legal page links DigitalOcean's terms of service. HostScore dates the founding to 2011 by Aaqib Gadit, Pere Hospital and Uzair Gadit. ## Review history 1. Oct 14, 2026First version built from verified sources, with the plan and home pages read in a headed browser because Cloudflare's bot check refused plain requests and headless automation during the session: the pricing page (Flexible plans on DigitalOcean Premium as the page renders them by default, with the monthly and hourly price, RAM, vCPU, storage and transfer per size, the $11 Standard entry price, backup storage pricing, the 3-day trial, included features and paid add-ons, and the provider location counts), the legal index (which links the DigitalOcean terms of service and the Cloudways support SLA updated 1 January 2025), the DigitalOcean terms (recurring billing, credits at discretion) and DigitalOcean's 8 September 2022 release on completing the Cloudways acquisition. Published measurements by HostingStep (five configurations since 2020), Kripesh Adwani (365 days on a Singapore server) and Cybernews (December 2025) are stored in thirdParty\[\]; HostScore is kept as an aggregate; no WPBeginner review of Cloudways exists. The 2011 founding date comes from HostScore's account, which the review says. No HostIdea monitoring window is open, so the scores are provisional: uptime rests on three independent windows, performance on US TTFB in the 440 to 515 ms range against clean load handling, support on chat and tickets with phone as a paid add-on, features on staging, caching and server control against paid CDN, email and backup storage, value on $14 for a 1 GB server with no renewal markup. The weekly price check needs a browser the bot filter accepts. [source](https://www.cloudways.com/en/pricing.php) ## Sources 1. [Cloudways pricing (Flexible plans, providers, add-ons, trial)](https://www.cloudways.com/en/pricing.php), accessed Oct 14, 2026 2. [Cloudways terms of service, policies and legal information (index)](https://www.cloudways.com/en/terms.php), accessed Oct 14, 2026 3. [DigitalOcean terms of service agreement (updated 22 August 2026), linked from Cloudways' legal page](https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/terms-of-service-agreement), accessed Oct 14, 2026 4. [Cloudways services support service level agreement (updated 1 January 2025)](https://www.cloudways.com/en/support-sla.php), accessed Oct 14, 2026 5. [DigitalOcean completes acquisition of Cloudways (8 September 2022)](https://investors.digitalocean.com/news/news-details/2022/DigitalOcean-Completes-Acquisition-of-Cloudways/default.aspx), accessed Oct 14, 2026 6. [HostingStep, Cloudways review by Mohan Raj (updated 4 April 2026)](https://hostingstep.com/hosting-reviews/cloudways/), accessed Oct 14, 2026 7. [Kripesh Adwani, Cloudways review (updated 2 September 2026)](https://kripeshadwani.com/cloudways-review/), accessed Oct 14, 2026 8. [Cybernews, Cloudways review by Miglė Šeikytė (updated 19 December 2025)](https://cybernews.com/best-web-hosting/cloudways-review/), accessed Oct 14, 2026 9. [HostScore, Cloudways review (updated 14 October 2026)](https://hostscore.net/review/cloudways/), accessed Oct 14, 2026 Share[](https://x.com/intent/post?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhostidea.com%2Freviews%2Fcloudways&text=Cloudways%20review%202026%3A%20a%20managed%20server%20of%20your%20own%2C%20billed%20by%20the%20hour%2C%20measured%20by%20three%20publications)[](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhostidea.com%2Freviews%2Fcloudways)[](mailto:?subject=Cloudways%20review%202026%3A%20a%20managed%20server%20of%20your%20own%2C%20billed%20by%20the%20hour%2C%20measured%20by%20three%20publications&body=https%3A%2F%2Fhostidea.com%2Freviews%2Fcloudways) Cloudways from $14.00/mo Visit Cloudways (affiliate link: /go/cloudways)