Cloudways Review 2026: The Best Flexible Option for Growing Affiliate Sites
Cloudways at a Glance
| Category | Managed Cloud Hosting |
| Price | Pay-as-you-go, from ~$14/mo |
| Best for | Sites that outgrew shared hosting but aren't ready for premium managed hosting |
| Guarantee | Free 3-day trial, cancel anytime |
| Our rating | 4.5 / 5 |
Our Cloudways Verdict
✓ What I Like
- No long-term contracts — cancel anytime
- 5 cloud providers to choose from
- Free migration for new accounts
- Scale server resources on demand
- Best price-to-performance ratio
- Pay only for what you use
✗ What to Know
- More setup required than WP Engine
- No email hosting included
- Support is slower than premium hosts
- Staging is an add-on, not included
- Less beginner-friendly dashboard
📋 In This Review
My Experience With Cloudways
I ran two affiliate sites on Cloudways for about 14 months — one on DigitalOcean and one on Vultr. Both were newer sites, each getting between 5,000 and 20,000 monthly visits, and neither was at the stage where paying for Kinsta or WP Engine made financial sense.
Cloudways was exactly the right fit for that phase. The ability to start small, pay $14/month, and scale the server when traffic grew meant I wasn't throwing money at hosting before the sites were earning. When one site started getting consistent 25,000+ monthly visits, I upgraded the server with two clicks and the performance improved immediately — no migration, no downtime.
The honest trade-off is that Cloudways requires more of you than WP Engine does. You're managing more of the infrastructure yourself — caching configuration, server size decisions, PHP settings. It's not difficult if you've built a few WordPress sites, but it's not as plug-and-play as the premium managed hosts.
Who Cloudways is for: If your site is growing but not yet earning enough to justify $45-115/month on managed hosting, Cloudways is the best middle ground. Real cloud infrastructure, no contracts, and you only pay for what you need.
Choosing the Right Cloud Provider
One of Cloudways' unique features is letting you choose which cloud provider powers your server. Here's how I think about each option for affiliate sites:
DigitalOcean
The best starting point. Fast, reliable, affordable. I use DigitalOcean for most sites under 50k monthly visits. Starts at $14/month.
Vultr
Slightly faster than DigitalOcean in my tests, similar pricing. Good for sites targeting North America and Europe. More data center options.
AWS
Best global reach and reliability, but significantly more expensive. Reserve for sites getting 100k+ monthly visits that need AWS-level infrastructure.
Google Cloud
Excellent for sites targeting Asia-Pacific. Premium Cloud CDN included. Price sits between DigitalOcean and AWS.
Speed & Performance Data
These numbers are from my DigitalOcean-backed Cloudways site (2GB RAM, 2 vCPU), tested with GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights. This lines up with aggregated user reports across Cloudways' own community forum, where most users report similar TTFB ranges once the right server size is chosen for their traffic level.
The 380ms TTFB is slower than WP Engine (312ms) and Kinsta (290ms), but for a site at $14-28/month it's a genuinely solid result. The difference in user experience between 380ms and 312ms is barely perceptible — where it matters is at scale and in competitive SEO environments.
Cloudways Pricing: Pay for What You Actually Use
Unlike other hosts, Cloudways pricing is based on the cloud server you choose, not a fixed plan tier. You pay the cloud provider cost plus Cloudways' management fee, billed hourly.
| Server | RAM | Storage | Price/Month | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DO 1GB | 1GB | 25GB | $14 | New sites, under 10k visits |
| DO 2GB | 2GB | 50GB | $28 ← Sweet spot | 10k-40k visits |
| DO 4GB | 4GB | 80GB | $50 | 40k-100k visits |
| Vultr 2GB | 2GB | 55GB | $26 | Similar to DO 2GB, slightly faster |
| AWS 2GB | 2GB | 20GB | $36 | Enterprise reliability requirements |
Staging is not free: Unlike WP Engine and Kinsta, Cloudways charges extra for staging environments (around $5-10/month as an add-on). Factor this in if you need to test changes before pushing live.
Support: Functional, But Not Premium
This is where Cloudways falls behind WP Engine and Kinsta. Live chat is available 24/7, but average response times in my experience were 10-15 minutes — noticeably slower than the sub-5-minute average I get from WP Engine.
The quality of responses was mixed. For straightforward issues (cache clearing, SSL setup, PHP version changes), the support was fast and accurate. For more complex problems — like debugging a plugin conflict causing memory exhaustion — I found myself doing more of the diagnosis myself than I would on WP Engine.
That said, Cloudways has extensive documentation and an active community forum. If you're comfortable with WordPress and willing to do some troubleshooting yourself, the support gap matters less.
Who Should Use Cloudways
| Situation | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| New site, under 20k monthly visits | ✓ Perfect starting point |
| Growing site, budget under $30/month | ✓ Best option in this price range |
| Want to avoid long-term contracts | ✓ Cancel anytime, no commitments |
| Need specific cloud provider (AWS/GCP) | ✓ Unique advantage over managed hosts |
| Want plug-and-play managed hosting | ⚠ Consider WP Engine instead |
| Need staging on all sites | ⚠ Budget for the staging add-on |
How We Review This
Every tool covered on HostingForAffiliates has run on at least one of Daniel's own live affiliate sites. Ratings are based on real usage data — uptime monitoring, GTmetrix/PageSpeed Insights speed tests from US, UK and AU server locations, and actual support tickets — not vendor marketing pages. Full methodology in the About page. Commission from this tool's affiliate program does not influence the rating — see the disclosure.
Common Concerns, Answered Honestly
"What happens if my server runs out of resources during a traffic spike?" is the question I get most about Cloudways, and it's a fair one — unlike WP Engine, nobody scales the server for you automatically. If a post takes off and you don't notice for a few hours, you could genuinely watch a site slow to a crawl or throw errors while you're not looking. The fix is simple once you know it (resize the server in two clicks), but it's a real gap compared to a fully managed host, and it's the main reason I don't recommend Cloudways to someone who can't check on a site daily.
"Am I going to be stuck troubleshooting a server problem at 11pm?" — occasionally, yes, if something goes wrong at the server level rather than the WordPress level. Cloudways' support team handles the server; a plugin conflict or a WordPress-specific error is still on you to diagnose, unlike WP Engine where the support agent will often spot it for you. If that trade-off makes you uneasy, it's worth reading that concern seriously rather than assuming you'll figure it out under pressure.