Cloudways Review 2026: The Best Managed Hosting for Agencies?

Cloudways is the managed WordPress host I recommend to most agencies managing 5+ client sites. Not because it's the fastest — Rocket.net's edge caching beats it for cached TTFB. Not because it has the best support — Kinsta's engineers are stronger. But because Cloudways gives you more control over your infrastructure than any other managed host, at a price point that makes per-site economics work at scale.

This review is based on direct experience running client sites on Cloudways for over three years, across multiple server options and regions.

What Cloudways actually is

Cloudways is a managed hosting platform layered on top of major cloud providers. You choose the infrastructure; Cloudways manages the server setup, security patching, and software stack. Current infrastructure options:

• DigitalOcean — the most popular option, good price/performance
• Linode (Akamai) — solid alternative to DigitalOcean
• Vultr — includes Vultr High Frequency (NVMe SSD), the performance option
• AWS — for clients who need AWS infrastructure
• Google Cloud Platform — for clients who need GCP

This infrastructure choice is Cloudways' biggest differentiator from Kinsta, Rocket.net, and WP Engine. You can pick DigitalOcean for budget client sites, Vultr HF for performance-sensitive sites, and AWS for enterprise clients — all from the same dashboard.

The managed stack on every server:

• Nginx web server
• Varnish Cache (full-page caching)
• Redis object cache (€14/month add-on, not included)
• PHP-FPM (multiple versions, switchable per app)
• MariaDB
• Let's Encrypt SSL, auto-renewed
• Automated daily backups

One important clarification: Redis is not included in Cloudways' standard pricing. It is a €14/month add-on. This is a meaningful cost difference from Hetzner + CloudPanel (where Redis is included free) and should factor into your total cost calculation for WooCommerce stores with heavy session usage.

Performance benchmarks

Results from the WordPress Hosting Speed Test 2026:

Cloudways Vultr High Frequency 2GB (NVMe):

Cloudways DigitalOcean Premium (NVMe):

The Varnish Cache on Cloudways produces strong cached TTFB — 32ms on Vultr HF is competitive with most managed hosts. Uncached performance at 165ms is solid. Rocket.net's edge caching beats it on cached TTFB (18ms), but Cloudways beats Rocket.net on uncached performance for WooCommerce stores.

Pricing

Cloudways pricing is based on server size and provider — you pay for the underlying cloud server, plus Cloudways' management fee. Multiple WordPress sites can run on a single server (no per-site cost within a server tier).

DigitalOcean servers:

Vultr High Frequency (recommended for performance):

For agency use — practical server recommendations:

• 1–3 low-traffic sites: Vultr HF 1GB (€13/mo)
• 5–10 mixed sites: Vultr HF 2GB (€25/mo) — this is my standard recommendation
• 10–20 sites with some WooCommerce: Vultr HF 4GB (€49/mo)
• High-traffic WooCommerce or busy client portfolios: Vultr HF 8GB (€96/mo)

Add Redis for WooCommerce stores (€14/mo per server). This applies to the whole server, not per site — so if you have 5 sites on one server and need Redis for one WooCommerce store, that's €14/mo total, not €14 per site.

Features

Multi-cloud infrastructure is Cloudways' strongest feature for agencies. You can have:

• Budget client sites on DigitalOcean 1GB
• A performance-focused e-commerce client on Vultr HF 4GB
• An enterprise client who specifically requires AWS All managed through the same Cloudways dashboard.

Team access and permissions. Cloudways has team member access controls with role-based permissions. Add developers to specific applications without giving them server-level access. Essential for agencies delegating work.

Per-application staging. Every application (WordPress site) gets a staging environment at one click. Clone production to staging, test, push changes. Staging uses the same infrastructure as production — no surprises.

Application-level settings. PHP version, PHP memory limits, file size limits, and caching settings are configurable per application from the UI — not via SSH. Useful for managing mixed environments where one plugin requires PHP 8.1 and another needs 8.3.

Cloudways Bot — automated vulnerability detection that flags outdated plugins with known CVEs across your server. Useful for agencies doing maintenance retainers.

Cloudways CDN — available as an add-on (Cloudflare-powered), not as included Cloudflare Enterprise like Rocket.net. Fine for static assets; does not provide edge HTML caching.

Getting started: what setup actually looks like

Most reviews skip the part you'll actually spend your first afternoon on, so here it is in order.

You launch a server first, then applications on top of it — that two-layer model is the thing that confuses people arriving from cPanel hosting, where a "site" is the only unit. Choosing a provider (DigitalOcean, Vultr HF, Linode, AWS, GCP), a size, and a region takes about five minutes, and the server is provisioned in roughly ten. Adding a WordPress application to that server takes another two.

The practical consequences of that model matter for agencies:

• You size the server, not the site. Ten small brochure sites on one €25/month Vultr HF 2GB is the normal arrangement, and it's where the cost advantage comes from.
• Vertical scaling is one click, but it restarts the server. Scale during a maintenance window, not during a client's campaign launch.
• Applications share server resources. A runaway process on one site can affect its neighbours — the trade-off you accept for the price. Put a client's high-traffic store on its own server rather than beside nine other sites.

You get SSH and SFTP access, WP-CLI, and Git deployment. If you're used to a fully locked-down managed host, that access is the main day-to-day difference: when something breaks at 11pm, you can actually get in and look, and our WP-CLI and functions.php snippets are usable here in a way they aren't on more restrictive platforms.

Backups and restore

This is the section that should decide the purchase for anyone hosting client sites, and it's the one most Cloudways reviews omit entirely.

Automated backups are configurable per application, with frequency options from hourly through weekly, plus retention settings. You can also take an on-demand backup before a risky deployment — which should be reflexive before any plugin update on a client site.

Restore is per-application, not all-or-nothing at the server level. That matters: restoring one client's site shouldn't roll back the nine others sharing that server.

Two caveats worth knowing before you commit:

• Backup storage is billed separately from the server, per GB. It's inexpensive, but on a server holding a dozen media-heavy sites with hourly backups it's a real line item rather than a rounding error. Check the frequency you've set against what you're paying.
• Local backups still live on the same infrastructure. For client work under contract, keep an off-site copy as well. Our backup plugin roundup covers the options for pushing a second copy somewhere independent, which is what you want when the failure mode is "the provider had a bad day", not "I broke the site."

Security

Cloudways handles the server layer competently, and it's worth being precise about where its responsibility stops.

Included: dedicated firewalls on every server, free Let's Encrypt SSL with auto-renewal, two-factor authentication on the platform account, IP whitelisting for SSH and SFTP, and OS-level patching handled by Cloudways rather than you. Cloudways Bot flags outdated plugins with known CVEs across the server, which is genuinely useful on a maintenance retainer where you're tracking dozens of sites.

Not included: anything above the server. WordPress-layer hardening is yours — admin credentials, plugin hygiene, file permissions, login protection. Our security hardening checklist is the companion piece here, and there's no hack-fix guarantee of the kind Kinsta includes, so budget for cleanup yourself using our hacked site process if it ever comes to that.

The honest framing: Cloudways secures the server so you don't have to, and leaves WordPress to you. That's the correct division for an agency that knows what it's doing, and a gap for one that assumed "managed" meant "someone else worries about the plugins."

Migrating to Cloudways

Cloudways provides a free migration plugin that handles the standard case — install it on the source site, enter the destination details, and it moves files and database across. For a normal blog or brochure site this genuinely works without drama.

Where it needs help: multisite networks, sites with unusual server-level configuration, and very large media libraries where a plugin-based transfer times out. Cloudways also offers migration assistance from their team, and it's worth asking rather than fighting the plugin on a complicated site.

The sequencing advice from our WordPress migration guide applies here as it does anywhere: drop DNS TTL to 300 seconds a day ahead of the cutover, verify on the staging URL before switching, and use maintenance mode to hold writes during the window so you don't lose form submissions against the old server.

One Cloudways-specific step people miss: after migration, configure Varnish exclusions before you send traffic, not after. The default cache rules will happily cache pages they shouldn't on a WooCommerce site, and the symptom — customers seeing each other's carts — is the kind of bug you want to find on staging.

Billing, trial, and support in practice

The trial is genuinely free. Three days, no credit card required, which is enough to launch a server, migrate a real site to it, and run your own benchmarks rather than trusting anyone else's. If you're evaluating hosts, do exactly that — our hosting speed test methodology is reproducible on a trial server.

Billing is pay-as-you-go and hourly, not annual contracts. You're billed for what the server runs. The agency-relevant consequence is that spinning a server up for a client project and destroying it when the project ends costs you only the hours used — a genuinely different economic model from prepaid annual plans, and one that suits project work well.

Support is chat and ticket, with no phone option. Base support is included; faster response tiers are paid add-ons. In practice, response times of 5–15 minutes are normal for straightforward server questions, and the agents are competent on infrastructure. They are not WordPress engineers in the way Kinsta's are — a question about a plugin conflict or a WordPress-specific performance problem will get you a polite boundary rather than a diagnosis. Know which kind of problem you're buying support for.

What Cloudways doesn't do well

Redis is an add-on, not included. €14/month on top of server cost. For WooCommerce stores, Redis object cache is important for session management and performance under load. You should budget for it.

Varnish Cache requires WooCommerce exclusion configuration. Out of the box, Varnish will cache WooCommerce pages it shouldn't (cart, checkout, logged-in users). Cloudways provides exclusion settings but you need to configure them correctly. Misconfiguration causes cart/checkout bugs. For a full breakdown of caching options and WooCommerce edge cases, see best WordPress caching plugins.

No phone support. Support is chat and ticket-based. Chat response is typically 5–15 minutes. For agencies managing client sites on SLA, this matters — Kinsta's support is more responsive for complex WordPress issues.

Pricing isn't always cheaper. At the high end of the server range, Cloudways can approach or exceed Kinsta pricing per site, without Kinsta's isolation guarantees (Cloudways puts multiple apps on one server). The economics are best in the €25–€50/month server range for 5–15 sites.

Cloudways vs Kinsta

The most common comparison for agencies:

Pick Cloudways if: you want infrastructure control, manage a mix of site types, or are cost-sensitive at scale. Pick Kinsta if: you need site isolation guarantees, GCP infrastructure, or the best WordPress-expert support.

See Cloudways vs Kinsta for the full comparison.

Who Cloudways is right for

Agencies managing 5–20 client sites. This is the core case and the one the pricing model is built for. Ten sites on a €25/month Vultr HF 2GB server is an economic structure no per-site managed host can match, and the per-application staging and team permissions are what make it workable across a team rather than just cheap.

Developers who want access. SSH, WP-CLI, Git deployment, and per-app PHP version control mean you can work the way you'd work on your own VPS, without running the VPS. If you've ever been blocked by a managed host's restrictions at an inconvenient moment, this is the feature you're buying.

Project work with a defined end. Hourly pay-as-you-go billing makes spinning up a server for a three-month build and destroying it afterwards genuinely cheap.

Mixed portfolios. Budget sites on DigitalOcean, a performance client on Vultr HF, an enterprise client who insists on AWS — one dashboard, one invoice.

Who should look elsewhere

Anyone who needs guaranteed isolation. Applications share a server. If a client's contract requires that their site's performance cannot be affected by anything else, Kinsta's container isolation is the honest answer, and the wider alternatives field covers the rest.

Content sites with a global audience. Varnish serves from your one server's region. Rocket.net's Cloudflare Enterprise edge caching at 18ms is a fundamentally different architecture for globally distributed readers.

Agencies that want WordPress-level support. Cloudways support is competent on infrastructure and stops at the WordPress boundary. If you want to escalate a plugin conflict to someone else, you want Kinsta.

Single-site owners who want it handled. The server/application model and the Varnish configuration are overhead that only pays off across a portfolio. One site, no technical appetite — this isn't the product.

Verdict

Cloudways is the best value managed WordPress host for agencies in 2026. The Vultr HF 2GB server at €25/month handles 8–12 WordPress sites with Nginx + Varnish caching, and the per-app staging and team access controls are better than most premium hosts.

The €14/month Redis add-on is the main cost surprise — budget for it on any server hosting WooCommerce stores. And note that cached TTFB (32ms) is good but not Rocket.net-level (18ms) for global audiences.

For agencies where server economics matter, Cloudways runs 10 sites at roughly a quarter the cost of Kinsta, with comparable performance in most real-world scenarios.

Rating: 4.4/5

Related reading

• Best Managed WordPress Hosting 2026
• Cloudways vs Kinsta
• Rocket.net Review 2026
• WordPress Hosting Speed Test 2026