If you’re looking for fast, managed cloud hosting without the usual technical headaches, Cloudways is a strong option worth exploring . But how much does it really cost?
The short answer is Cloudways pricing starts at around $11 per month. Yet your final bill may be higher. Your server, backups, email, support, and other extras can all affect the total.
Cloudways also offers two very different hosting products. One gives you more control. The other handles traffic spikes for you.
This guide breaks down each option in plain English. You will learn what you get, what costs extra, and which plan may suit your website.
Quick note: Cloudways can change its plans, prices, and special offers. Check the final checkout page before buying.
Cloudways Pricing at a Glance
Cloudways has two main hosting options:
- Cloudways Flexible: Managed cloud servers for WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Laravel, and PHP websites.
- Cloudways Autonomous: Fully managed WordPress hosting that can add resources during traffic spikes.
Here is the simple difference.
Flexible gives you control over your server. You choose the provider, location, and server size. You can also host several websites on one server.
Autonomous takes a more hands-off approach. It manages the server and adjusts resources when your traffic grows. However, each plan supports one website.
How Much Does Cloudways Cost?
The lowest Cloudways Flexible plan starts at about $11 per month. This is normally a DigitalOcean Standard server with 1 GB of memory.
DigitalOcean Premium plans start at $14 per month. These use newer processors and faster storage.
Cloudways Autonomous costs more. Its Growth plan sits near $99 per month, though the exact price may vary. It also charges for extra resources during traffic spikes.
Your final cost may include:
- Server hosting
- Offsite backup storage
- Email accounts
- Cloudflare Enterprise
- Malware protection
- Premium support
- Extra storage or bandwidth
- Local taxes
That means the headline price may not reflect your true monthly bill.
How Cloudways Billing Works
Cloudways uses a pay-as-you-go system. You pay for the time your server or website stays active.
It collects your usage during the month. Cloudways then creates an invoice on the first day of the next month.
You can pay with:
- Major credit cards
- Debit cards
- PayPal
- Prepaid account funds
- Cloudways account credits
Any available credit gets applied before Cloudways charges your main payment method.
You can track your estimated bill from the Cloudways dashboard. However, the estimate may differ slightly from the final invoice.
Does Cloudways Bill Monthly or Hourly?
The answer depends on your cloud provider.
DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode servers have hourly billing with a monthly limit. If you keep a server active for the full month, you will not pay more than its listed monthly price.
If you delete it early, you only pay for the hours it ran.
AWS and Google Cloud work differently. They use hourly billing without the same monthly price limit. This can make the final cost harder to predict.
What Happens When You Upgrade a Server?
You can change your server size as your website grows.
Cloudways splits the bill based on how long you used each size. For example, you might use a 2 GB server for ten days and a 4 GB server for the rest of the month.
You will pay the hourly charge for each period.
Does Deleting a Server Stop Billing?
Yes. Cloudways stops adding server charges after you delete the server.
You must still pay for the time it was active. Other services may also remain active, so check your add-ons before closing the account.
Some third-party add-ons charge for the full month as soon as you turn them on. Deleting them early may not reduce that month’s fee.
Cloudways Flexible Pricing
Cloudways Flexible is the best-known Cloudways product. It gives you a managed server without forcing you to handle every technical task yourself.
You choose:
- Your cloud provider
- Your server size
- Your data center
- Your applications
- Your backup settings
- Your paid add-ons
You can install several websites on one server. Cloudways does not charge a separate hosting fee for each one.
However, all those sites share the same server resources. More websites can mean less memory and processing power for each site.
DigitalOcean Standard Pricing
DigitalOcean Standard is often the cheapest option on Cloudways.
Typical starting prices include:
- 1 GB server: Around $11 per month
- 2 GB server: Around $24 per month
- 4 GB server: Around $46 per month
- 8 GB server: Around $88 per month
These plans work well for blogs, small business sites, test websites, and light WordPress projects.
The smallest plan can handle one basic site. Still, it may struggle with heavy plugins, busy stores, or sudden traffic growth.
DigitalOcean Premium Pricing
DigitalOcean Premium servers use faster storage and newer processors. They cost more, but they can offer better speed under load.
Common Premium plans include:
| Memory | Processor | Storage | Bandwidth | Monthly Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | 1 core | 25 GB | 1 TB | $14 |
| 2 GB | 1 core | 50 GB | 2 TB | $28 |
| 4 GB | 2 cores | 80 GB | 4 TB | $54 |
| 8 GB | Varies | Varies | Varies | $99 |
Cloudways may change the resources or pricing shown for each location. Always check your chosen data center before launch.
Other Cloud Providers
Cloudways may also let you build a server with Vultr, Linode, AWS, or Google Cloud.
Vultr
Vultr offers standard and high-frequency servers. Its faster options use quick storage and strong processors.
It can be a good choice if Vultr has a data center close to your audience.
Linode
Linode, now part of Akamai, offers reliable general-purpose servers. Its prices often sit near the affordable end of the Cloudways range.
Availability may vary by account and region.
AWS
Amazon Web Services offers a wide range of server sizes and locations. You can scale resources up or down as needed.
The downside is cost. AWS pricing can feel less predictable because Cloudways bills it by the hour. Storage and bandwidth choices also affect the final amount.
Google Cloud
Google Cloud offers strong performance and a wide global network. It also supports both server upgrades and downgrades.
Like AWS, it can cost more than DigitalOcean. The billing structure may also be harder for beginners to estimate.
What Do Cloudways Flexible Plans Include?
Most Cloudways Flexible plans include a useful set of managed hosting features.
You normally receive:
- Around-the-clock standard support
- Free SSL certificates
- A free website migration offer
- Automated backups
- Staging sites
- Server monitoring
- Dedicated firewalls
- Built-in caching
- Automatic server recovery tools
- Security updates
- Team access
- SSH and SFTP access
- Multiple applications per server
Some larger plans also include Object Cache Pro at no extra cost. This tool can help WordPress sites handle database requests more quickly.
The smallest server may not include every premium feature.
Does Cloudways Offer Unlimited Websites?
Cloudways lets you install many websites on one Flexible server. It does not set a simple website limit.
That sounds like unlimited hosting. In practice, your server still has fixed resources.
Every website uses a share of the same:
- Memory
- Processor power
- Storage
- Bandwidth
- Database capacity
You might host ten small brochure sites on one server with no trouble. Ten busy online stores would be a different story.
Think of the server as a pizza. You can cut it into many slices, but you do not get more pizza.
Cloudways Autonomous Pricing
Cloudways Autonomous is built for busy WordPress sites. It aims to remove most server work from your day.
The service watches your website’s needs. When traffic rises, it can add extra resources. When traffic falls, it reduces them again.
This makes Autonomous useful for:
- WooCommerce stores
- Membership sites
- Online learning websites
- High-traffic blogs
- Ticket sales
- Product launches
- Seasonal businesses
- Viral content
How Autonomous Billing Works
Autonomous uses hourly billing for each website.
Each plan supports one application. In simple terms, that means one WordPress site per plan.
If you need to host five websites, you need five plans.
Cloudways charges for the time each plan remains active. It may also charge for extra resources used during traffic surges.
The current plan structure includes options such as:
- Growth: Around $99 per month
- Scale: Around $199 per month
- Plus: Higher resource limits and a higher monthly price
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for large or critical websites
Cloudways has used both $99 and $100 in examples for the Growth plan. Check the live dashboard for the final price.
Autonomous Autoscaling Charges
Autoscaling helps your website survive traffic spikes. But extra capacity is not always free.
Typical extra rates include:
- Growth: $0.07 per extra container per hour
- Scale: $0.10 per extra container per hour
- Plus: $0.12 per extra container per hour
A container is simply an extra block of computing power. You do not need to manage it yourself.
Cloudways uses this basic formula:
Extra containers × active hours × hourly rate
You can set a monthly autoscaling budget. Once you reach that amount, Cloudways can stop adding more capacity.
This protects your budget. Yet it may also limit how much traffic your site can handle during a sudden rush.
Autonomous Overage Fees
Each plan includes set amounts of storage and bandwidth.
If you go over those limits, Cloudways may charge:
- Extra storage: $1 per GB per month
- Extra bandwidth: $0.04 per GB
- Extra visits: No visit-based fee
Cloudways removed visit limits from the newer Autonomous pricing model. You now pay for the resources your site uses instead.
What Does Autonomous Include?
Autonomous includes several costly features in its base plan:
- Cloudflare Enterprise
- Daily backups
- Free SSL
- Automatic scaling
- Edge caching
- Redis
- Object Cache Pro with Relay
- Managed WordPress hosting
These tools can make the high starting price easier to justify.
Cloudways Add-On Costs
Cloudways includes many useful tools. However, it does not include everything in the server fee.
Here are the most important extra costs to consider.
Offsite Backup Storage
Cloudways charges about $0.033 per GB per server for offsite backup storage.
The amount depends on your stored backup data. Your live website may use 20 GB, but several backup copies can use much more.
For example:
- 10 GB costs about $0.33 per month
- 50 GB costs about $1.65 per month
- 100 GB costs about $3.30 per month
- 500 GB costs about $16.50 per month
The fee looks small at first. It can grow across several large servers.
Cloudflare Enterprise
Cloudflare Enterprise starts at about $4.99 per domain each month on Flexible hosting.
The price may drop for accounts with more than 25 domains. Large users may pay as little as $1.99 per domain.
The service adds:
- Faster global content delivery
- Protection from large attacks
- A website firewall
- Edge caching
- Smart traffic routing
- Lower load on your server
Cloudways often offers a 30-day trial for this add-on.
Autonomous plans already include Cloudflare Enterprise. You should not need to buy it again for the same site.
Email Hosting
Cloudways does not include normal business email in its base Flexible price.
Rackspace email starts at around $1 per mailbox each month.
For example, five business email accounts may add about $5 per month.
You may also use an outside email provider. That can work better if you need more storage, shared calendars, or office tools.
DNS Made Easy
DNS Made Easy starts at around $0.50 per month.
This service can help connect visitors to your site quickly and reliably. Most small websites do not need it right away.
Malware Protection
Managed malware protection starts at around $4 per month.
This add-on checks your website for harmful files. It may also clean infected files.
It can offer peace of mind for business sites. Still, strong passwords, updates, secure plugins, and regular backups remain important.
Advanced Support
Every plan includes standard support. Advanced and Premium support cost extra.
Paid support starts at around $100 per month. It gives you faster access to senior support staff and more personal help.
Most small website owners will not need it. Agencies and large online stores may find it useful.
Migration Fees
Cloudways offers free migration for many WordPress and WooCommerce websites.
A managed migration for a non-WordPress application may cost $99 per migration.
The free migration offer may come with rules. Request it soon after opening your account.
Cloudways Discounts and Free Trials
Cloudways often runs offers for new customers.
One common deal gives new users 30% off for the first three months. You may need to enter a promo code when signing up.
Keep two things in mind:
- The discount ends after three months.
- Your bill then returns to the normal price.
Do not choose a plan based only on the sale price. Make sure you can afford the regular monthly cost.
Cloudways may also offer a short free trial for selected Flexible servers. The trial can depend on your account, provider, and location.
Cloudflare Enterprise has its own 30-day trial in many cases.
Real Cloudways Pricing Examples
The examples below show how small add-ons can change your final bill. Taxes are not included.
A Small WordPress Blog
A basic setup might include:
- DigitalOcean Premium 1 GB server: $14
- 10 GB of backup storage: $0.33
- One email account: $1
Estimated monthly cost: $15.33
This setup may work for a light blog with modest traffic. A site with many plugins may need more memory.
A Small Business Website
A stronger setup might include:
- DigitalOcean Premium 2 GB server: $28
- 25 GB of backup storage: $0.83
- Cloudflare Enterprise: $4.99
- Three email accounts: $3
Estimated monthly cost: $36.82
This option gives you more room for plugins, forms, traffic, and business tools.
Five Websites on One Server
An agency or site owner might use:
- DigitalOcean Premium 4 GB server: $54
- 50 GB of backup storage: $1.65
- Cloudflare for five domains: $24.95
- Five email accounts: $5
Estimated monthly cost: $85.60
You could lower the cost by using Cloudflare only on key sites. You could also use a separate email provider.
Does Cloudways Have Hidden Fees?
Cloudways does not hide its fees on purpose. Still, the pricing page focuses heavily on the server price.
That can make the total cost look lower than it is.
Watch for these extra charges:
- Backup storage
- Business email
- Cloudflare Enterprise
- Malware protection
- Premium support
- Extra bandwidth
- Extra storage
- Full-month add-on fees
- Local taxes
AWS and Google Cloud bills may also vary more than DigitalOcean bills.
The safest approach is simple. Build a full monthly budget before you launch.
Is Cloudways Pricing Worth It?
Cloudways costs more than buying a basic server directly from DigitalOcean or another cloud provider.
That extra money pays for convenience.
Cloudways handles or simplifies:
- Server setup
- Security updates
- Backups
- Monitoring
- Caching
- SSL certificates
- Staging sites
- Firewalls
- Server recovery
- Support
A direct cloud server may look cheaper. But you must manage it yourself or pay someone else to do it.
For many website owners, Cloudways offers a useful middle ground. You get more freedom than shared hosting without taking full care of a server.
Which Cloudways Plan Should You Choose?
Choose a 1 GB Flexible Plan If:
- You run one small blog.
- Your traffic is low.
- You use a light theme.
- You keep plugins to a minimum.
- You have a strict budget.
This plan offers the lowest entry price. It also gives you the least room for growth.
Choose a 2 GB Flexible Plan If:
- You run a business website.
- You use several WordPress plugins.
- You host two or three small sites.
- You expect steady traffic growth.
- You want better day-to-day stability.
For most WordPress users, this is the best starting point.
Choose a 4 GB Flexible Plan If:
- You run a small online store.
- You host several active sites.
- Your site uses heavy plugins.
- Your traffic is growing quickly.
- You need more room for busy periods.
A 4 GB plan costs more, but it can reduce slowdowns and server limits.
Choose Autonomous If:
- Your WordPress site gets sudden traffic spikes.
- Your store cannot afford to crash.
- You do not want to manage server resources.
- You need Cloudflare Enterprise.
- Your traffic changes from week to week.
- You can afford a higher base price.
Autonomous can save time and stress. Yet it is often too costly for a small blog or a new business site.
How to Lower Your Cloudways Cost
You do not need every add-on from day one.
Use these tips to keep your bill under control:
- Start with a 2 GB server instead of buying too much power.
- Host several small sites on one server.
- Review backup storage each month.
- Remove old staging sites and test copies.
- Use Cloudflare Enterprise only where it adds value.
- Compare Rackspace email with outside email services.
- Set budget limits for Autonomous scaling.
- Delete unused servers instead of leaving them active.
- Avoid turning on paid add-ons just to test them.
- Use new-customer discounts, but budget for the full price.
- Check your billing dashboard each week.
A bold option is to split your websites by value. Put money-making sites on stronger servers. Keep small or inactive sites on a cheaper server.
This can improve speed without raising the cost of every website.
Cloudways Pricing: Final Verdict
Cloudways pricing starts low, but the cheapest plan will not suit every website.
A small DigitalOcean server may cost only $11 to $14 per month. A more practical WordPress setup often costs $28 to $40 per month after common extras.
Busy stores and large websites may spend far more.
Cloudways Flexible offers the best value for most blogs, business sites, and small agencies. It gives you control and lets you host several websites on one server.
Cloudways Autonomous makes more sense for one important WordPress site with uneven traffic. It costs more, but it handles traffic growth with less work from you.
Before signing up, calculate the whole bill. Include backups, email, Cloudflare, support, overages, and taxes.
The cheapest Cloudways plan is not always the best deal. The best plan is the one that keeps your website fast, stable, and ready to grow.
Cloudways Pricing FAQs
What Is the Cheapest Cloudways Plan?
The cheapest Cloudways plan starts at around $11 per month. It usually includes a 1 GB DigitalOcean Standard server.
Does Cloudways Charge Per Website?
Cloudways Flexible does not charge a separate hosting fee for each website. You can install several websites on one server.
Autonomous works differently. Each plan supports one website.
Is Email Included With Cloudways?
No. Standard business email is not part of the base Flexible hosting price. Rackspace email starts at around $1 per mailbox each month.
Are Cloudways Backups Free?
Cloudways includes automated backup tools. However, it charges about $0.033 per GB for offsite backup storage.
Does Cloudways Offer a Free Domain?
No. Cloudways does not normally include a free domain. You need to buy and renew your domain through a separate company.
Does Cloudways Have a Money-Back Guarantee?
Cloudways uses pay-as-you-go billing rather than a standard prepaid hosting contract. You pay for the time you use the server. This model reduces the need for a normal money-back guarantee.
Can I Cancel Cloudways at Any Time?
Yes. You can delete your server and stop future server charges. You still need to pay for the hours already used and any active add-ons.
Is Cloudflare Included With Cloudways?
Cloudflare Enterprise is a paid add-on on most Flexible plans. It starts at around $4.99 per domain each month.
Autonomous plans include Cloudflare Enterprise.
Is Cloudways Good for WooCommerce?
Yes. Cloudways can work well for WooCommerce. A 4 GB Flexible server is a more sensible starting point for a growing store than the cheapest 1 GB plan.
Autonomous may suit stores with sharp and unpredictable traffic spikes.
Is Cloudways Cheaper Than Shared Hosting?
Usually not. Basic shared hosting often costs less.
Cloudways gives you more control, stronger resources, and better growth options. It can offer better value once your website needs more than a starter shared plan.