- Beginning
- Cloud Hosting Plans
- Some omissions
- Website creation
- E-Commerce and Security
- Great run time
- Customer service
- Great, focused web hosting
Cloud web hosting services are now very common, but Cloudways does some interesting things with its cloud hosting that set it apart in a growing area. It allows you to choose one of five platforms, including Amazon Web Services and the Google Cloud Platform, offers wallet-friendly pay-as-you-go plans, and even allows you to sign up for a trial run without a credit card. Shine is dulled a little by unreliable phone support and lack of amenities such as domain registration and email enabled. However, this great cloud hosting service is worth your while.
Beginning
Unlike most other web hosting services, Cloudways allows you to create a website without spending a dime. You can sign up for a 14-day trial account by creating a username and password, or by logging in using your Github, Google or LinkdedIn credentials, which is nice. After logging in, you will be asked to select a content management system (CMS) from several popular and respected sources, including Drupal, Joomla, Koken, Magento, Media Wiki, Moodle, PHP Stack, Prestashop, SugarCRM and of course, WordPress. It demonstrates great flexibility.
This flexibility extends to the choice of server, as you can create a site based on one of several infrastructure-as-a-service solutions, including Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud Platform, Linode, Stackpath and Vultr. You also choose one of several server locations scattered across the country.
Cloud Hosting Plans
Cloudways uses the resources of several clustered servers to balance the load on your site; in traditional plans with shared access, VPS and dedicated hosting this does not affect. Instead, the company offers several hourly hosting packages with pay-as-you-go payments that charge only for the time you use. For example, if you cancel your plan within 10 days of the month, you will be charged only for 10 days of hosting. Hosts such as DreamHost and HostGator, the award-winning Editors’ Choice Awards, will bill you for the entire month, even if you cancel only one week of the cycle. Cloudways also offers traditional monthly bills.
Monthly web hosting plans start at $ 10 (for 25 GB of memory, 1 TB of monthly data transfer, 1 GB of RAM and a single core processor) and increase to $ 1035 (for 3840 GB of memory, 12 TB of data transfer per month, 192 GB RAM and 32-core processor.) High-quality offer exceeds the most powerful dedicated server plans for many web hosts. In fact, Cloudways’ top-level specifications have more in common with the friendly SMB Liquid Web, which allows you to equip a server with 512 GB of RAM. If you prefer hourly pay, the above plans start at just over $ 01.01 and increase to just over $ 43.43.
Some omissions
Unfortunately, Cloudways does not offer domain registration, so you need to protect the domain from NameCheap or any other seller. Another drawback related to URLs: the unusually designed Cloudways backend makes routine indicating purchased URLs on your hosting settings. I had no particular problems connecting these points when studying online documentation, but this process can be confusing for beginners. Also, if they are not installed on Cloudways, I definitely see that users will simply never return if they have to go to another place to get started.
The email service offer is another issue worth considering, as Cloudways plans include zero email accounts. Instead, Cloudways – with RackSpace – expects you to pay $ 1 per email account per month for your email. This can be costly, depending on your needs. Most other web hosts provide at least some level of service as part of even the most basic plan.
Website creation
Cloudways may not have some typical elements of a web hosting service, but building a website is pretty straightforward. WordPress was my preferred CMS for testing, and the service created the server in just seven minutes. I logged in using my Cloudways credentials, selected a theme, changed the appearance of pages and posts, and added images. It was a hassle-free experience.
This particular version of WordPress is a manageable variation, so your installation receives white-glove processing by automatically updating the CMS, performing automatic daily backups, and real-time monitoring of the site and security for WordPress. Cloudways also has useful one-click cloning (so you can quickly duplicate your applications and servers) and intermediate areas (so you can test site elements without having them live on your site).
E-Commerce and Security
The Cloudways application library has many e-commerce tools, including the popular Magento and Prestashop platforms. I used Magento to create an attractive store in just a few minutes by dragging and dropping website elements.
From a security perspective, as a managed cloud hosting platform, Cloudways engineers protect your installation from attacks by releasing regular updates to the operating system and firmware. Cloudways also offers free Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates, which should be considered important data protection if you plan to sell the product. In addition, the recommended Rackspace email comes with Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) authentication technology for added security.
Great run time
Site uptime is one of the most important aspects of hosting. While your site is down, customers or customers cannot find you or access your products or services — and they may not return. That’s why I’m happy to announce that Cloudways offers great uptime.
For this testing, I used a website monitoring tool to track the uptime of my site hosted on Cloudways. Every 15 minutes, the tool checks the connection with my site and sends me an email if it cannot reach the site for more than one minute. I look at the data for the last 30 days for each site review. In my recent tests, Cloudways proved to be very stable. In fact, this has never happened.
For more information about our testing procedure, please read How we test web hosting.
Customer service
Cloudways offers 24-hour customer service so you can reach someone around the clock. However, there is a catch if you want to talk with a person. You must fill out a form to request a phone or call via Skype. I tried to schedule a phone call, but the form did not accept my request. This emphasized the need for a direct number that people can call.
Fortunately, you also have the opportunity to speak with a support representative via web chat. This way you can get answers immediately. I never waited more than a few seconds before a Cloudways representative answered one of my chat questions. The team is also quite knowledgeable. The participants provided me with accurate information about the differences between cloud hosting and traditional hosting and the company’s payment structure.
Cloudways Return Policy is not the typical 30-, 60-, or 90-day money back guarantee you will find with most other web hosts. In fact, the structure is so detailed that the Cloudways customer service team just sent me this link. This is a lot to digest.
Great, focused web hosting
Cloudways has something to enjoy. The service has flexible cloud hosting plans, fast installation times, first-class web customer support and excellent uptime. This is a company you can count on to make your website work and work with the services that these products offer. In addition, some people will not like the weird way of getting a customer service representative over the phone. However, if these warnings are not intruders, give Cloudways a chance. You can find that it offers exactly what you need and save your website on the Internet.
