I tried Cloudways and why I switched
If you had a WordPress blog before or just planning to start a blog, one of the most important things to do is to pick the right website hosting provider.
I’ve tested and used most of them.
I had Siteground, Bluehost, A2 Hosting, WPX Hosting, WP Engine, Kinsta, etc…
You might say that I know a thing or two about website hosting providers. For one, I’m a user. My quest for finding a reliable website hosting started when my first niche site in the health niche started to get 10,000+ traffic per month.
There were days that I started to get more than 1,000 visits per day. And I immediately noticed that my site was getting slow.
So my first reaction was to go to my website hosting provider and I’ve asked them what’s going on.
“Why is my website so slow?”
They started to look into my account, I provided them the details that they need to find my account and they told me to hold for a few minutes….
When the support operator came back to me this is what he said…
“Sir, you are using a shared hosting provider, that plan has limited resources, and as such your access is being throttled”. Basically, what that means is that my website is now slow and I’m even having a hard time editing my posts and content on the backend.
Enough said for “unlimited traffic” and “unlimited bandwidth”….
So I asked them what do I need to do. They told me that I needed to upgrade to at least the cloud hosting plan or the VPS plan. I asked them how much?
“Sir, it starts at $50/month”
What? I paid for $5/month for unlimited hosting and now you want me to pay 10x?
You can just imagine the frustration that I had. Because I didn’t know better back then, I just jumped from $5 to $50/month for the website hosting provider.
Fortunately, I’d like to save you from the same frustration that I had before.
I was searching for a reliable and fast website hosting provider that won’t break the bank.
In fact, this is the exact website hosting provider that I’m using for TrafficSalad and I’m getting 10,000+ visits per month. The backend access and editing is faster than I’ve ever experienced before and I’m only paying less than $15/month.
That website hosting provider is Cloudways.
I’d like to share with you my experience with Cloudways, but if you’d like to dive right in, here’s my affiliate link for Cloudways and when you sign up via this link, you’ll also get a great deal.
Video Tutorial on How To Setup Cloudways Quickly
In this video, I’ll walk you step-by-step on how I’m able to launch my WordPress blog inside Cloudways using the High Frequency Vultr Servers.
Cloudways Review
Cloudways Pros and Advantages
Vultr High Frequency Servers
Not all servers are equal. The biggest problem with shared hosting providers is that the CPU, memory and resources they’ll allocate on your account are shared among different users.
This is what makes shared hosting providers affordable and cheap. But it obviously comes with a big downside, slow servers especially if you start attracting a lot of visitors on your website.
Fortunately, with Cloudways you can take advantage of powerful, high-frequency servers called Vultr servers that are super fast and designed for delivering performance that only expensive managed hosting providers like WP Engine or Kinsta can provide.
When choosing Cloudways, make sure that you ONLY choose Vultr servers with High Frequency settings. This plan starts at $13/month and you can scale your server account quickly and easily if you need more.
No limits on the applications you can launch per server
If you’ve tried WP Engine or Kinsta, which are the most popular high-performance managed hosting servers, you’ll notice that the plans starts with only 1 website per account.
If you want to host more domains on the same server and account, you’ll have to pay more. This can easily and quickly escalate your monthly costs especially if you have multiple websites and domains.
But with Cloudways, you won’t encounter that problem. You are not limited with the number of applications (or WordPress installations) on your servers, as long as the space and bandwidth are not limited (you can increase them anytime).
So you can have multiple domains on 1 Cloudways Vultr account without any problems.
Increase Server Researches Quickly and Easily
If anytime you encounter that you needed to increase your space storage, bandwidth allocation and even CPU resources, you can easily scale your server and adjust your limits.
You’ll have to pay more, but you’ll only pay for a small amount compared with upgrading to a cloud or VPS hosting plan with most website hosting providers.
Will Save You A lot Compared to Similar Hosting Providers
A $10 savings on your website hosting plan is roughly $120/year. That’s enough money to spend on another domain, another software or tool to grow your business. Or even keep that extra money as you don’t need to be paying more for your WordPress hosting providers.
This is just the minimum monthly savings when you start using Cloudways. In terms of productivity, I’m able to complete my website projects faster than ever before which results in me being able to monetize my domains and blogs a lot faster.
Cloudways Cons and Disadvantages
No Cpanel
Here’s the biggest downside for those who have been accustomed to use CPANEL to manage their website hosting backend.
Unfortunately, there’s no CPANEL inside Cloudways. Instead you get a membership and client backend where you can do most of the stuff needed to configure your application and server.
Fortunately, the backend of Cloudways is easy enough to understand, but it does require a little bit of technical effort. If you got stuck, you can always reach out to the technical support of Cloudways and help you get things setup properly.
More Technical to Setup
If you don’t like configuring and dealing with tech issues, then it’s best that you have Cloudways assist you with site setup and migration.
Setting up Cloudways does require more technical knowledge as you’ll most likely need to setup DNS or CNAME changes, email setup and configuration and other technical setups that are not usually required on a CPANEL-based website hosting provider.
Downgrading your servers needs additional steps
Another thing that I’ve noticed with Cloudways is that when you decide to downgrade your website, you’ll need to clone your existing site first as downgrading is not as easy as upgrading your servers.
If you need technical help with this, make sure that you contact Cloudways support.
How To Start A Blog with Cloudways
Starting a blog with Cloudways is just like any other blog setup.
You do need your own domain name . You need website hosting. But you also need to configure and connect your domain name to your website.
How To Migrate Your Site To Cloudways
There are many ways to migrate your site to Cloudways.
I personally migrated my entire website to cloudways by creating a backup
How To Start a Woocommerce Site with Cloudways
Starting a Woocommerce website in Cloudways is just like any other WordPress installation. You just need to make sure that you’ve installed the Woocommerce plugin and installed it on your website.
Follow the steps in configuring your ecommerce website.
Cloudways Comparisons
Let’s take a look at some of the website hosting providers that are up against Cloudways. Here are my takeaways and insights on these comparisons.
Cloudways vs Kinsta
Cloudways surpasses Kinsta in price, speed, technical capabilities and more. But if you’re looking for a managed hosting provider and you don’t mind paying premium price for it, then Kinsta might be a worthy choice and alternative to Cloudways.
Cloudways vs Siteground
I’ve been a siteground user and affiliate for years. But when I’ve subscribed to the highest tier shared hosting plan (GoGeek) and still experience backend editing slowdowns with my page builders (Thrive Architect and Elementor PRO), I know that I need to find another solution that won’t break the bank. The solution that I’ve found is Cloudways, Vultr servers.
Cloudways vs Bluehost
What can I say here? It’s not even close. Bluehost shared hosting can’t compare with the speed and flexibility of the Cloudways servers.
Cloudways Email Setup
Here’s where Cloudways is seriously limited. There is no Email server included in your Cloudways server. On CPANEL based wordpress hosting providers, setting up is as easy as 1, 2, 3.
But with Cloudways, you’ll need to use ElasticMail (which they integrate with and recommend), use Gsuite Business app or use a third party email host (I use my siteground hosting for emails).
This extra step does require some technical skills and knowledge. But it’s worth it because you’ll be saving a lot of time and money in the long term.
Cloudways Affiliate Program
If you would like to join the affiliate program of Cloudways and help spread the word around, you can sign up for their affiliate program here.
Cloudways FAQ
Is Cloudways worth it?
Yes, Absolutely. I’ve been using Cloudways for years and with the Vultr high-frequency servers, it has upgraded the performance of my WordPress hosted domains without the high-price tag of similar services.
Cloudways Bonuses
Stay tuned for my Cloudways Bonuses. I’ll be providing you with useful bonuses that you can use together with Cloudways to help grow your business faster than ever before.