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With cloud hosting gaining steam as the preferred hosting choice for individuals, small businesses and agencies, a number of companies focusing particularly on cloud hosting have cropped up.
Some of the top options are DigitalOcean, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Vultr and Linode.
You can go directly to any of these cloud hosts and sign up for unmanaged service if you have the technical skills or resources on your team to manage the server.
However for most of us, we don’t have the technical skills to manage a server, yet we want the benefits of using a cloud host.
That’s where Cloudways and there Platform As A Service (PAAS) comes in.
Cloudways allows you to choose from 5 different cloud hosts, reaping all the benefits of scalability and reliability, while they completely take care of managing your server for you.
And at an affordable price, which starts at only $10 per month USD!
Let’s take a deeper look at Cloudways, and a side note, if you’re looking for recommendations on a different type of hosting, navigate to our web hosting category page.
Table of Contents
Cloudways
Highlights
- Managed cloud hosting provider
- 250,000 managed websites globally
- Access to 60+ global data centers
- 24 x 7 x 365 Support – Phone / Email / Live Chat / Slack
- Privately held European company founded in 2009 based in Malta
Cloudways Hosting Reviews and Rating
Strong reviews and ratings across the board with a 4.8 out of 5 from G2 and multiple awards.
4.7 out of 5 on Trustpilot from over 500 reviews.
Further reviews and testimonials are available on their website from real people which you can fact check easily.
Cloudways Hosting Features
- Managed cloud hosting platform – FREE TRIAL
- 1-click scaling of resources such as CPU, RAM and storage without affecting any customizations
- Choose your preferred cloud host – DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, Amazon Web Services of Google Cloud
- Pay hourly or monthly only for the resources you use
- No contracts
Cloudways offers various tiers of service for each of the 5 cloud hosts that they work with.
Choose your cloud host provider and then choose from monthly or hourly billing.
Cloudways Prices in USD
Starting from:
DigitalOcean: $10 per month
Linode: $12 per month
Vultr: $11 per month
Amazon Web Services: $36.51 per month
Google Cloud: $33.63 per month
See Full Plan and Price List
Cloudways Data Centers
Cloudways provides you access to 60+ global data centers from your cloud hosting provider of choice. A full list is available on their website.
In terms of Canadian data centers:
- Toronto, Ontario – DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode
- Montreal, Quebec – Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud
- Fermont, Quebec – Linode
Summary
Cloudways offers individuals, small businesses and agencies an exciting opportunity to leverage the power of the world’s best cloud hosts in a simple, intuitive managed platform.
Essentially, Cloudways provides a platform that helps manage your hosting service, regardless of which cloud host you choose.
They also make it simply to scale up or down in mere clicks.
So while you can go and sign up for DigitalOcean directly, it would be an unmanaged service, meaning you would need to have the technical knowledge or resources on your side to set up, maintain and support the server.
With Cloudways, you can choose your cloud host – DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud – along with the data center you want to use – and Cloudways will take care of setting up, maintaining, supporting and helping you scale as necessary.
A very innovative company and a different approach to the cloud hosting model.
They’ve been around since 2009 and are European based with rave reviews from customers all around the globe.
They also offer a Free Trial for the first 2 tiers in their DigitalOcean, Linode and Vultr, so you can get in there and check the platform out before you truly commit.
Learn more at Cloudways.com
What is Cloud Hosting?
A cloud hosting solution encompasses a network infrastructure utilizing software to divide a server into multiple “virtual servers.”
You’ll see these cloud solutions referred to as “virtual machines” or VMs.
Cloud hosting is gaining traction in the small business community as an affordable and flexible solution catering to everyday business operations.
Cloud hosting is suitable for a range of applications, from web hosting to remote desktop work environments.
Cloud solutions are available in several formats, including private and public clouds, as well as VPS, dedicated, and managed solutions.
How Does Cloud Hosting Work?
The design architecture in cloud hosting is different from standard web hosting solutions.
Shared hosts typically take a centralized strategy where a single server hosts several websites.
Therefore, if the server goes down, all the sites go down with it.
The distributed strategy of cloud hosting eliminates this problem.
Since all sites on the server exist across the host’s data center, individual sites are not at risk of going down if other sites on the same network fail.
Social networks and search engines rely on distributed strategies because single servers are unable to accommodate the load.
Unlike the features of traditional shared hosting, cloud hosts assign you dedicated server resources.
That stops sites and apps from competing for server resources.
Each of the cloud servers on the network receives partitioned drives featuring storage space accessible from the client’s operating instance.
Each cloud server gets an allocation for a specific number of CPU cores and RAM (memory).
The host allocates the required amount of resources to each site without impacting any other sites using the cloud server.
Cloud servers come in a variety of configurations to meet your hosting needs.
Look for public, private, hybrid, and managed cloud solutions from your hosting provider.
What are the Benefits of using Cloud Hosting?
1. Scales with Your Business
Scaling server resources in cloud hosting is easy.
Most cloud servers come with an intuitive dashboard offering user-friendly navigation.
You can check out the site’s performance in real-time, allocating server resources without the need to wait for approval from the hosting provider.
2. Excellent Availability and Uptime
If you’re using a traditional VPS or shared hosting solution, you rely on a physical server sharing resources to many sites.
If one of the sites on the server causes it to go down, it results in a chain reaction that takes all of the other sites down as well.
With a cloud solution, you get a segregated compartment on the server. If another site goes down, it does not affect your site’s performance.
As a result, you don’t have to worry about downtime anymore.
Since your website uses multiple servers, it’s easy for the hosting provider to switch you over to a functioning part of the infrastructure.
If your site experiences a surge in traffic, it won’t break – the flexible cloud solution accommodates the surge by serving your site from more servers, preventing a crash.
The solution can essentially expand and contract very easily.
3. Better Performance and Speed
Cloud servers offer your site blazing-fast download and upload times.
Cloud solutions make it simple to upgrade your website’s capacity, and a cloud solution also provides load balancing in multiple-server environments.
As a result, there’s less strain on individual servers, giving your site lightning-fast loading times.
Visitors spend less time on loading pages and more time browsing the offers on your site.
4. Simple Dashboard Navigation
Cloud server hosting technologies were hit-and-miss in the early stages of development.
However, over the last few years, cloud providers have refined the best features of the solution, making it one of the more popular choices today.
Today, there’s no technical expertise needed to scale and manage your virtual server effectively and efficiently.
The introduction of the intuitive user dashboard changed the game, making it easy for users to reallocate resources when the cloud starts underperforming.
There’s no technical experience required to make the most out of your cloud hosting solution.
5. Risk-Free Maintenance
A cloud hosting solution offers your site protection from physical server problems like hardware failures.
There are no issues with system overloads, and you get a stable, secure platform for your website.
If the current server you’re using on the cloud network start experiencing technical difficulties, it’s easy to switch your site to another server without seeing any drop in performance.
As a result, you have next to no downtime on your site.
Do I Need Cloud Hosting?
You can consider going with cloud hosting for critical sites to your business that can’t afford any downtime.
It’s a popular hosting choice for eCommerce, corporate (banking), and high-traffic sites.
Cloud hosting solutions also make it easy to scale your business when traffic starts increasing.
As a result, it’s a popular choice with agencies and publishing firms that want to start small but expect to grow quickly.
Cloud solutions are a good choice for most applications and are a competitive rival to virtual servers and shared hosting.
Cloud Hosting vs Regular Web Hosting
Web hosting refers to a general term defining how and where you host your website data.
Your website sits on a server somewhere, and you lease the space from a hosting provider.
With a cloud hosting solution, you get virtual servers instead of physical servers.
As a result, your site has options for unlimited expansion of resources, which is ideal for scaling a fast-growing company.
Another benefit of cloud hosting is that your site is segregated from others on the network.
Therefore, you don’t have to worry about server crashes tasking down your site because someone else overloaded the server.
Public Cloud vs Private Cloud
A public cloud solution means there are many clients on the same cloud server, which is offered by a cloud service provider who manages the maintenance of the service, similar to a managed hosting offering.
A private cloud solution on the other hand would be one that your company sets up and manages themselves.
So, while you’ll be the only client using the solution, your IT department is also responsible for managing and maintaining it.
This makes sense for some companies who house critical data and don’t want that data to be on a service that other companies are using.
There are also firms that will help with maintaining your private cloud.
It’s important to note, even though you won’t control security on public cloud networks, your data stays separate and secure.
