Cloudways Review: In-depth Analysis of Managed Cloud Hosting provider
April 6, 2017
Hosting
Cloudways Review: In-depth Analysis of Managed Cloud Hosting provider. Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting provider whose aim is to provide “managed cloud hosting for everyone.” In order to stay true to its tagline, Cloudways has built a powerful solution using world’s most reliable cloud infrastructure providers. It lets you host your website on AWS as well as Google, both are trusted cloud brands. Plus, it has DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Kyup.
It does not matter whether you have an ecommerce website or a blog, Cloudways will manage your server and provide you with top-notch hosting service. Through this Cloudways review, you will know more about Cloudways.
Pros
- Multiple hosting providers and apps
- Improved performance of your site
- Easy-to-use platform
- Increased speed
- Fully Managed Hosting
- High level of security
- Affordable plans
- Scalability
Cons
- No domain name registration
- Has bit of learning curve
- Does not offer phone-based customer service
Cloudways Review: What’s Good About Cloudways
Cloudways has managed to create a good name for itself in a very competitive market. That is because of the high quality of service that it provides. However one thing that usually goes unnoticed is that how consistent Cloudways has been over the years. It is built on the simple rule of providing convenience to the end user.
1. Multiple Cloud Infrastructure
Using Cloudways, you have the option of setting up your server on either one of AWS, Google Cloud Platform, DigitalOcean, Kyup, or Vultr. All of these servers have their respective strengths. You can choose the one that most suits your need.
Amazon Cloud (aka AWS) is widely regarded as the best infrastructure provider in the industry; however, it is expensive. There might be a lot of people who would say that they can get more value out of the money they pay by opting for, let’s say, DigitalOcean. It is always beneficial to have numerous options at your disposal and Cloudways empowers you to choose for yourself what you deem best.
If you want an auto scaling option, you can pick Kyup.
2. Multiple Apps Support
In addition to providing multiple cloud infrastructure provider, Cloudways also offers support for 12 different web app building CMS and frameworks, including WordPress, Drupal, Magento and Laravel.
This means, as a development agency, you can create websites of different types on the same server. Plus, there is a PHP stack for custom deployments.
3. Fast Page Load Time
Fast page load time is arguably the most desired feature that any visitor on your website would want. Every second of delay increases the visitor abandonment rate exponentially. Statistically speaking, 42% of your visitor expects your page to load before 2 seconds. Hence, predictably, 40% of your visitor abandon your site if the page load time exceeds 3 seconds. Therefore, the importance of fast page load time cannot be emphasized enough.
Cloudways realizes the importance of speed and its ramification on visitor’s user experience. Keeping it in mind, it has created a mechanism called ThunderStack.
It is designed to decrease page load time and increase the overall performance of your website or online store. This optimization is made possible because of the unique combination of servers (Nginx and Apache), cache (Varnish and Memcached), and database choices (MySQL or MariaDB). All these components combine together produce a speedy website.
4. 1-Click Platform
Cloudways has a very user-friendly platform. All you have to do is to choose the cloud provider, basic hosting app, and server parameters such as RAM, storage, and location.
It takes about 20 minutes for the platform to set up a server and configure it with the installation package of your choice. After the completion of this process, you will have complete access over details of the app and server.
The platform’s interface is all one-click based. You can easily perform 50+ functions including choosing cloud providers, applications, server size and server location. In most cases, you do not have to integrate anything.
In order to protect your website and keep it secure, Cloudways offers a free SSL certificate which is installed automatically. SSL certificate keeps safe personal and sensitive information such as credit card numbers, name and address. In order to set an extra layer of protection, Cloudways also provides SSH and SFTP access which lets you upload data in full confidence.
Cloudways gives you access to a staging area, which is basically a testing environment. Staging Area allows you to make changes to your live website without taking it down. Instead, you make a staging website where you make all the changes that you intended, and meanwhile the live website continues to function normally. Once you are confident about your changes, you can point the domain.
5. CloudwaysBot
CloudwaysBot helps you keep tabs on your server and website related performance metrics. The bot sends you instant notifications about your server health and application optimization alerts. These notifications are sent via selected channels that include email, Slack, and Hipchat. The bot can pass on its messages to other communication channels through API integrations.
Scalability & Backup
Cloudways allows you to schedule a time for automated backups for cloud server images. This feature is very useful as it gives you a contingency plan in case disaster strikes, as you have the option to revert to the backup copy. Vertical Scaling is another ingenious little feature that allows you the increase the size of your server according to the traffic spikes that your website receive.
6. Pay as you Go
“Pay as you Go” is one of the reasons why I started preferring cloud servers over shared and dedicated server. This is because it allows you to only pay for the resources you consume. This type of usage makes sense when you may have to scale servers or spend more bandwidth than usual due to traffic spikes.
Cloudways Review: Verdict
Cloudways has its share of advantages and disadvantages. The platform offers speedy, secure, and reliable service at economical prices making it a solid solution for cloud hosting. People who have never used a cloud hosting solution should not worry. They would find the Cloudways Platform to be far more user-friendly and performance focused.
The best bit about Cloudways: It gives a free trial period where you can test it for yourself. My advice: Go check it out!
Thanks for spending time on Cloudways Review. Don’t forget to try these Cloudways promo codes at checkout page to save your money
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