CloudWays Review (2022): How I Made My WordPress Site 458% Faster

What is the first thing that crosses your mind when I say “Cloud Hosting”? Is it:

• Technical knowledge is required to set up a server
• Costs a leg and an arm
• Not suitable for beginners

If your response were any one of the above, this post would change the way you think about cloud hosting. If you didn’t know, I started my blog with a cheap shared web hosting, which caused me many problems such as frequent downtimes and security issues. To overcome it, I migrated to InterServer (a better quality shared hosting) and enjoyed my experience.

However, in January 2018, one of my friends introduced me to Cloudways and how his site loads under 1 second.

He also went on to show me how easy it is to migrate your current site, manage it, and enjoy the power of cloud hosting without spending hundreds of dollars each month.

Evidently, after it, I decided to give Cloudways a try and migrated my site from InterServer to Cloudways. I have been using it for three months now, and can’t wait to share my Cloudways review and why it is one of the best hostings for WordPress blogs.

Disclaimer
I wasn’t paid to write this review, and all the information shared here is based on my experience with Cloudways. However, the article contains affiliate links which will earn me a small commission if you purchase after clicking on my links, at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting BlogCharge!

Should You Switch to Cloud Hosting?

You must be wondering, what’s the need of switching to a cloud host when your current shared host is doing fine?

Here are few reasons why you should prefer Cloud hosting over Shared hosting at any point in time.

1. Limited Resources Available

Shared hosting is a recommended choice for new bloggers who can’t afford to spend more and also the traffic potential is low. As the blog and traffic grow, you’ll start observing a slower site, server downtime, and other technical issues. You may also get kicked out by the shared host because you’re using too many resources.

On a flip side, Cloud hosting is robust and more powerful and lets you scale up or (sometimes) down as per your demand.

2. You Share Your Domain with Bad Sites

Additionally, in the shared hosting, you share the same IP address with tons of websites which often do not belong to your niche are of very low-quality. For instance, other sites on the same server may host illegal stuff and pornography which leads to a ban. Since these sites were hosted on the same IP address, rest of the domains will also receive a negative review.

Have a look at the domains with which my niche site is sharing server space when using shared hosting.

You can check your hosting neighborhoods by using this site. Visit the link, add your domain name or server IP (you can find it in your hosting dashboard), and hit enter button.

If there are no terrible sites (illegal, pornography, drugs, etc.), you’re a lucky guy. But if there are, start saving some money (or earn more blogging) and switch to Cloudways managed hosting as soon as possible (starts at just $10/month.)

3. Unbelievable Speed

Speed is perhaps the primary motive behind someone’s switch to Cloud hosting. As per reports, 40% of first-time visitors would quit the window if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. As per Google, your web page should load entirely in under 2 seconds for better rankings.

But will that be enough? With Google giving more important to speed and user experience, you should try to aim for less than 1 second, if you seriously want to enjoy some SERPs boost and outrank your competitor’s sluggish sites.

Although possible, getting less than a second load time with a shared host is a very challenging and time-consuming task. Here’s how much time my site used to take when hosted on InterServer.

And this is how fast it loads now on Cloudways + Breeze.

That’s an increase of 458%, almost 4 times faster than my previous load time.

No, I haven’t done any speed optimization, no setting changed, no theme optimization or anything else to improve the speed. All I did was migrate my site from shared host to Cloudways and replace the previous cache plugin with pre-installed Breeze plugin.

Breeze is a powerful WordPress cache plugin developed by Cloudways team. Unlike other WordPress cache plugins, it do not have tons of options. Everything is pre-configured for best speed optimization. I will share a separate guide about Breeze plugin setup in another post.

If you want your site to load faster than The Flash or Quicksilver (whichever you prefer), Cloudways has got you covered. Start with your free 3-day trial, no credit card, no commitments, and test the epic hosting yourself.

Avail Cloudways’ 3-Day Free Trial

While signing up use coupon code BLOGCHARGE to get extra 20% OFF for three months.

What is Cloudways Hosting?

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform, and it connects you with some of the biggest cloud infrastructure providers such as:

• DigitalOcean
• Vultr
• Linode
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Google Cloud Platform
• Kyup

No, Cloudways doesn’t have its hosting network but helps you host your site in any of the above cloud providers with a super user-friendly dashboard which minimizes all the technical knowledge required to manage a cloud server.

In simple words, you choose a hosting infrastructure, application to be installed, pay the amount, and Cloudways will take care of all the technical parts. You don’t have to deal with command terminal nor spend hours searching for codes and tutorials.

Instead, Cloudways provides you with a beginner-friendly user interface which is easy to operate, and all the complicated tasks are just a few clicks away.

To sweeten the experience, you get a single dedicated IP per server, which means only your domains will reside on the IP and no other low-quality domain.

If you want your site to load faster than The Flash or Quicksilver (whichever you prefer), Cloudways has got you covered. Start with your free 3-day trial, no credit card, no commitments, and test the epic hosting yourself.

Avail Cloudways’ 3-Day Free Trial

While signing up, use coupon code BLOGCHARGE to get extra 20% OFF for three months.

Cloudways Features and What Sets it Apart from Competition

Other than speed and other features I’ve discussed till now, there are other essential features of Cloudways worth knowing. I’m sure they’ll make you weak on the knees, and you’ll try Cloudways at least once.

1. Install Powerful Apps with One-Click

One of the primary reasons I started blogging with shared hosting was the availability of CPanel. It is an excellent web hosting control panel that allows installing hundreds of apps and scripts in one-click. On the other side, installing these apps on cloud hosts was a challenging task and required tons of commands and technical know-how.

For instance, if you were to install WordPress on Ubuntu 16.04 server, you’ll have to go through complicated steps involving a lot of commands and prone to failures or errors.

What Cloudways has done is simplify the overall process of installing powerful apps like WordPress, Magento, WooCommerce Drupal, and other PHP-based apps.

After you’ve set up cloud a server, you can choose which application to install, do basic settings, and voila! Cloudways will take care of all the technical part and install it for you with a ready to use account credentials.

2. Make Your Applications Secure by Installing Free SSL Certificates

Secure Socket Layer or SSL is all the jazz of 2018. Even Google has started giving importance to sites with SSL certificates installed. In simple terms, installing an SSL means your regular website with an URL http://yoursite.com will now be accessible over https://yoursite.com with a secure green padded lock beside it.

What it means to you is that all the information shared on the site, like entering an email address, contact form, etc. is now encrypted and hackers can’t eavesdrop on you. For a live example, check your URL bar, my site is SSL-enabled, and you can see the Secure sign.

Additionally, if you think SSL isn’t a big deal, do note that modern browsers will show a “Not Secure” warning for sites without SSL certificate.

Cloudways offers 1-click free SSL certificate for all your applications and installing one is most straight-forward part of the process. It uses Let’s Encrypt free SSL certificates and automatically renews it every 3-months.

To install SSL certificate to your application, follow the simple steps as shown:

1. Go to Application Management > SSL Certificate section
2. Choose Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate (suitable for personal blogs and small sites.) Choose Custom Certificate if you’re a bigger e-commerce store with lots of transactions (you’ll need to buy a custom certificate from other providers)
3. Enter email address and domain name to which you want to install an SSL certificate. You can also add other variants of your site like www and non-www versions as well.
4. Once done, click on “Install Certificate” button.

After you’ve successfully installed SSL certificate, other section of “Auto-Renewal” will appear. Make sure it is enabled.

3. Scalibility as Per Demand

It goes without saying; on-demand scaling is one of the integral features of cloud hostings. Unlike traditional hosting, where you’re stuck with a limited configuration and needs to commit to a hosting plan. With Cloudways you can scale up or down as per your usage.

For example, if your site focuses a seasonal topic like Christmas, there’s no need to spend $100 every month knowing that you wouldn’t get enough traffic. But as Christmas approaches, you can scale up, deploy powerful settings, and get ready for the visitors.

Cloudways offer an easy-to-control vertical scaling option in which you can quickly increase or decrease server size at any point in time. You can also add more “Block Storage” to your current setting without increasing the server size.

To make these changes, go to Server > Server Management > Vertical Scaling. Choose what amount or RAM or block storage you want and click on “Scale Now” button.

4. Pay As Per Your Usage

Another awesome perk of Cloud hosting is that you pay on the usage-per-hour basis and not on a fixed or monthly contract. Cloudways isn’t an exception here and follows the same route.

While setting up a new server or scaling an existing one, you get an overview of how much will the cost be on an hourly basis and monthly estimate.

Although the payment is deducted monthly, the charges are calculated on an hourly basis only and vary as per your server usage.

There’s also an option to check the current charges for your server and an estimate of your next invoice with “Real-Time Billing” feature. You can access it by going to your Account > Real-Time Billing.

5. You Get A Dedicated IP for Each of Your Server

As discussed earlier, with shared hosting, you share a single IP address with tons of sites from different users. Many of these sites aren’t in the same niche and may also host illegal or sexual content. Overall, if your neighborhood isn’t right, your site gets affected; hence search engines won’t favor the site.

As discussed, one of my niche sites is hosted with shared hosting and shares the IP address with 796 other domains, many of which are of very-low-quality and possible spam.

But this isn’t the case with Cloudways as you get a dedicated IP address for every server in your account. Only applications you install will share this IP address thus maintaining the quality of the network.

6. Advance Security is Already in Place

Keeping your server and applications secured from unwanted hackers and malicious attempts is an essential factor which many users avoid (and also a mistake that costs them $$ and hours of stress.)

Cloudways has some fantastic security features that make your server secure from the majority of risks like hacking attacks, loss of data, login breach, etc. To be specific, you will never worry about doing any of the below tasks manually:

• Filtering malicious traffic and keeping out the intruders
• Worry about the loss of data and restoration
• Patching OS and firmware
• Updating applications with the latest versions
• Dealing with SSH and FTP access issues
• Two-Factor Authentication
• Worry about website crashing

If for some weird reasons you stuck with some security-related issues, do not try to resolve it on your own, which may make the situation worse. Instantly contact the customer support and ask them to fix it.

7. Monitor Your Server’s Usage (Real-Time)

Monitoring your server makes it easier to analyze at what time the server utilization is highest and if there’s a need to scale up. With Cloudways, it becomes easier to keep track of CPU state and application monitoring.

You can see the real-time usage of your server by going to Server > Server Management > Monitoring. Here, you can see how busy or idle your server has been for up to last six months along with other technical parameters like Free Disk, Free Memory, Incoming/Outgoing traffic, etc.

8. Migrate Your Current Site for Free

Shared hosting is the best choice for beginners, but as the site evolves, it is recommended to migrate to cloud hosting or better managed hosting services. More traffic means the server utilization will be high and your site will start getting crashed after some time.

Also, you may get warnings from host asking to upgrade as your site is using more server resources than the standard limit (yes, your shared hosting isn’t unlimited, and there are some fair usage rules which limit it.)

If you have faced any of such issues in the past, migrating to Cloudways would be a perfect decision. You can get your site migrated to Cloudways servers with ease as they offer one free migration.

Alternatively, if you have more than one WordPress sites to migrate, use their custom WordPress migration plugin.

Sadly, the plugin does not work for applications other than WordPress, and you’re stuck with two choices: 1. Do it manually or 2. Pay for migration to Cloudways. I’ve discussed migration process and plugin later in this Cloudways review post.

9. Test New Changes before Going Live

Often you might want to test new themes or plugins before going live or disturbing the site appearance. A conventional approach taken by bloggers is to install WordPress locally on your computer, check the changes, and if everything looks fine, deploy it to the live site.

Although there’s nothing wrong with this method, Cloudways offers a better approach – staging environment.

With staging environment, you can easily clone your existing site (with all the data), test new changes, configure other things, and test for compatibility. All this without leaving your cloud dashboard and with few simple clicks. You can read more about Cloudways’ staging environment on this guide.

10. Choose from Tens of Server Location

It’s a known fact that a server located near the target audience will improve the load time and overall speed of the site. With Cloudways you can choose from 60 global locations depending on the cloud provider you want.

They have servers located in different cities in America, Europe, Australia, and Asia-Pacific. If your target audience lives in the US, the best option will be to choose a server located in America only.

You can select the server location while setting up but can’t change it once it has been deployed. Alternatively, you can create multiple servers located in different cities.

11. You Don’t Need to Worry About Losing Important Data

Having duplicate copies of your data is an important strategy and a life-saver in case if the site gets hacked or unwanted data deletion. Shared hosts do not provide automatic backup of data, and you need to use a plugin and and set it up manually.

Fortunately, it’s not the case with Cloudways as it offers free automatic data backups. You can choose the frequency of data backup from 1 hour to 7 days. To manage the backup settings, go to Server > Server Management > Backups.

From there, you can change the backup frequency, backup retention, i.e., how long a should a backup be stored, and on-site backup option. Additionally, you can take local backups and save a copy on your computer as well.

12. All Your Queries will Be Solved Instantly

Customer support is something Cloudways boast about and in my experience, they have stood right on it. Cloudways offers 24×7 live chat options along with email and ticketing support.

You’ll get a reply in less than 10 minutes, and most requests are solved within 1 hour of creating the ticket. For me, the average waiting time is 7 minutes and problem has been solved in around 30 minutes (all of the issues were pretty fundamental.)

Customer executives are experienced and know their work. You won’t get general replies or usual excuses asking to contact someone else. They’ll even go a step ahead to help you out with other website related issues and if required, do it themselves rather than just suggesting.

However, there could arrive some issues given that most customer executives are based in Asia and time zone differs.

13. Extra Perks (CDN, Free Cache and Migrator Plugin)

The last but not the least advantage of hosting your site with Cloudways is their custom developed tools and plugins. The team has developed two amazing plugins for WordPress users to ease out the experience, namely:

• Breeze: Simplest caching plugin and major reason why I got such a great speed improvement
• Cloudways WordPress Migrator: Quickly migrate your existing WordPress site to Cloudways

They also have one of the most affordable CDN network called CloudwaysCDN, which cost only $1 for 25GB per application and $0.04 per GB for additional usage.

If you are unaware, Content Delivery Network aka CDN distributes your site to multiple locations and serve it from the nearest point to the visitor. Using a CDN speeds up the website loading time in addition to security. This guide from CloudFlare will give you detailed information about how CDN works.

What We Didn’t Like and Can be Improved

Although Cloudways is my favorite hosting of 2018 and I don’t see myself switching anytime soon, there are some flaws worth mentioning. These are few things missing which can further improve user experience, and I would personally love to see.

1. Learning Curve for Those Habitual with CPanel

If you’ve been using shared hosting with CPanel, you’d know how easy it is to access file explorer, create custom emails, manage emails, add add-on domains, etc. CPanel makes these things super easy for beginners.

On the other hand, Cloudways offers their platform which is better than any other cloud host but not as user-friendly as CPanel. For a more straightforward thing like accessing files, you need to use FTP and install extra applications on your computer.

So, if you’ve migrated from CPanel to Cloudways, you need some time to get used to it and get your hands dirty with other technologies. Fortunately, there are noob-friendly guides available on the Google which will help you.

2. Staging Area Needs an Update

Although Cloudways takes pride in staging environment and how it makes development more accessible, it is not very handy and accurate to its name. Similar to a local WordPress environment, to apply the changes to live site, you need to repeat them hoping not to break something. It is not very handy, and you may not remember the exact steps taken on the staging site.

What’s expected? Similar to Kinsta, there should be one-click push to live website feature which overrides all the previous data and update it with staging site. It makes everything easier and no hassle of repeating the same steps.

3. More Payment Options Can Be Added

As of now, Cloudways only accepts credit cards and it is a compulsion if you wish to get started. They allow PayPal but only on request. Many of the second-tier countries use prepaid cards, and lack of credit card will stop them from using Cloudways. They are also not very comfortable in giving credit card details to online sites due to lack of knowledge and fear or hacking.

Since there’s already an option to add funds, Cloudways should allow adding funds to it using prepaid cards and other payment methods. The funds can be used to operate the server and user can add more funds when required.

4. Email Setup is Necessary

Unlike CPanel, which automatically configures and takes care of all email related settings, Cloudways require extra setup and email service. First, there’s no option to create a domain-specific email address from the control panel. Therefore, you need to use third-party services like Google mail or Zoho.

Second, if you want your applications to send emails (like when updates are available, someone contacts you, etc.), there’s an additional setup required.

However, there’s an affordable email hosting available from Rackspace for Cloudways users which cost $1/month/mailbox.

5. Not The Cheapest Option

I’m not comparing Cloudways with shared hosting pricing structure as the features and quality are entirely on another level. I’ve already mentioned that Cloudways doesn’t have their hosting infrastructure but they use other cloud providers.

To properly integrate the cloud hosting services and add additional features, Cloudways charges few extra dollars per month than the actual cloud hosting providers.

For instance, the same plan with 1 GB RAM costs $5/month on DigitalOcean but $10/month with Cloudways. That’s twice the actual price, and it is up to you to decide if you want a more straightforward experience or cheaper hosting if you host with DigitalOcean directly.

With that said, we conclude our honest Cloudways review. If you’re impressed and want to start a blog or move your existing site to Cloudways, keep reading.

If you want your site to load faster than The Flash or Quicksilver (whichever you prefer), Cloudways has got you covered. Start with your free 3-day trial, no credit card, no commitments, and test the epic hosting yourself.

Avail Cloudways’ 3-Day Free Trial

While signing up use coupon code BLOGCHARGE to get extra 20% OFF for three months.

How to Start A Blog with Cloudways

You can start a WordPress blog with Cloudways in next 5 minutes. Make sure you’ve purchased a domain name and can access the domain management panel. Follow the guide:

1. Click here to go to Cloudways homepage and click on “Get Started for Free” button. You’ll get free 3-day free trial to test the services before being asked to add funds to your account.

2. You’ll be redirected to a sign-up form. Use any social media account to sign up instantly, or enter your details manually. In the “Got a Promo Code?” column, enter code “BLOGCHARGE” to get extra 20% off for three months once you decide to pay.

Follow the steps and add your personal, payment details, etc.

3. Once your account has been created, you’ll be greeted with the below screen. You won’t have any servers as of now, and we’ll create it first.

4. Click on “Launch” button and select the application you’d like to install. I’m choosing the latest version of WordPress for this guide.

Give a name to your managed app and server (for your understanding only, I named My First Site, My First Server.)

5. Scroll down and select which hosting provider you want to start with, server size, i.e., amount of RAM, storage, and server location. Based on the hosting provider, locations may vary. Choose the nearest one to your target audience country.

As you choose a different setting, there’ll be a rough estimate of how much it’d cost on the hourly and monthly basis. When you’re done, hit “Launch Now” button.

It’ll take some to set up the server, and you can access it once the installation is complete.

6. Once your server has been launched, go to application tab from the top-left menu bar and click on “Add Application”

From the popup, choose your only server which we created earlier. Finally, hit “Add Application” button.

7. On the next page, choose the latest WordPress version, and give it a name. Again, the name isn’t the actual name of your blog, so it can be anything which you can remember and differentiate.

You can see the number of apps installed on a server by clicking on ‘www’ option next to it and manage the application by clicking on its name.

How to Setup Custom Domain with Cloudways

Now that, WordPress has been installed, Cloudways will create a subdomain URL where you can access the live site. It will be something like:

http://wordpress-xxxxxx-xxxxxx.cloudwaysapps.com/

However, we don’t want to continue with it but use our custom domain. So, the next step is to attach a domain to WordPress application.

1 Go to “Domain Management” section from the left-side area. Next, enter your domain name and click on “Save Changes”

2. Next, we need to create A records and check DNS setting. The exact steps vary depending on the domain registrar, so I won’t be able to add the guide here. However, you can refer to this guide from Cloudways – How Do I Take My Website Live from Cloudways?

3. Once your domain has been mapped with Cloudways, you can access WordPress dashboard by using the credentials given in the “Access Details” section.

How to Migrate Your Existing Site to Cloudways

If you already own a WordPress blog and would prefer migrating it to Cloudways (instead of starting one from scratch), here are the steps for you.

There are two methods to migrate your current WordPress blog to Cloudways; 1. Let experts do it for you or 2. Do it yourself.

Method 1: Let Experts Do if for You

With Cloudways, your one migration to their server is free, and you can avail it at any point in time. You have to provide necessary details and rest of the work will be handled by an expert only.

To initiate the migration process, you need to create a new ticket and describe your website, traffic, and server details as explained on this page.

Method 2: Do it Yourself

If you need to migrate more than one applications to Cloudways, you have the option to do it yourself or pay extra if you don’t want to get your hands dirty.

For WordPress blogs, it is quite easy, if you use “Cloudways WordPress Migrator” plugin. The process is straightforward and plugin works like a charm irrespective of your existing hosting company.

You can follow the steps shown in the below video created by Cloudways team.

Cloudways Promo Code

If you’ve made your mind to test Cloudways, it offers 3-day free trial to test out the services and get the experience of Cloud hosting. Once your trial period ends, you have to add billing details in your account which will be charged at the end of the month.

Want extra savings after free trial? Use our exclusive Cloudways coupon code – “BLOGCHARGE” and save extra 20% OFF for next three months.

If you want your site to load faster than The Flash or Quicksilver (whichever you prefer), Cloudways has got you covered. Start with your free 3-day trial, no credit card, no commitments, and test the epic hosting yourself.

Avail Cloudways’ 3-Day Free Trial

While signing up use coupon code BLOGCHARGE to get extra 20% OFF for three months.

Cloudways Review – Final Words

Cloud hosting is the future of blogging and hosting solutions. Unlike past, the prices are more affordable, and Cloudways minimizes the need for technical knowledge and make everything easy-to-learn and straightforward.

I got a speed improvement of 458%, a more secure user experience, dedicated IP address, and super excellent customer support. And all this for just $10/month.

So, if you’re struggling with a slow website or want to experience a more secure hosting experience, test out Cloudways now.

Have you already tried Cloudways before? Do share your experience and Cloudways reviews with other readers and us and help them make an informed decision.

At last, share this post with your friends who want to start a blog or switch to hassle-free cloud hosting.