Yes, I can agree with the fact that Cloudways is arguably one of the top cloud hosting service providers. I would assume that you have followed the latest trend of hosting your website on cloud servers and ultimately opted for Cloudways. But the concerning question here is does your website require all the resources and memory space offered by Cloudways? If you have a high traffic website then it is OK (not good). Cloudways can handle all the traffic surges or resource utilization. But if you have a website with low to medium traffic, you are wasting your hard-earned money. So in this blog, I am going to explore all the 7+ best Cloudways alternatives in 2020 that you must seriously consider. But before diving in detail, allow me to talk about –
What Is Cloudways & Why Users Love It?
Cloudways is one of the leading hosting service providers that specialize in managed cloud hosting. It further extends its services to cloud-based managed WordPress hosting, Magento eCommerce cloud hosting, and more… Since it offers many cloud server options, the website hosted through it is known for its blazing-fast load times. Altogether, if used and configured correctly, it will handle all your hosting requirements for high traffic. However, in spite of so many benefits, there are some negative aspects of Cloudways that are causing its users to search for Cloudways alternatives.
Cons Of Cloudways Hosting Service
The user must be technically strong to handle its configuration.It does not offer free domain registration for the first time users.You’d have to purchase professional email addresses as well.The cPanel used in Cloudways is very unconventional and hard to grasp.Cloudways has a reputation for offering expensive plans.It does not offer any long-term plan. Rather, monthly plans only.
Now, tell me my friend, don’t you think it would be wise for you to look for reliable Cloudways alternatives? And, if you have a site with medium traffic, you must seriously switch to some other hosting service. Since you have felt the gravity of this situation, I would not be wasting any more time and take you straight to all the alternatives to Cloudways.
1. Bluehost
If you are a blogger, small business owner, or even have an eCommerce store, chances are that you are using WordPress as your CMS. Hence, you should definitely opt for one of the hosting services that WordPress officially recommended, i.e. Bluehost. This is one of the most liberal Cloudways alternatives that offer tons of amenities upon migration or new sign up. It includes free SSL, domain registration (for new users), 1 click WordPress installation, updates, and more.
Why Should You Pick Bluehost As Cloudways Alternative?
Bluehost offers a respectable hosting performance of 99.99% uptime with 405 ms as minimum response time.You also have the option to revolutionize your managed WordPress hosting experience by opting for WP Pro – its advanced WordPress hosting plan. It will also offer you premium themes for free.Apart from this, Bluehost has a decent reputation in providing shared, VPS, dedicated, reseller, and also eCommerce hostings.
Bluehost Pricing
Bluehost is known for its features, efficiency, and affordability. This makes it one of the prime candidates among other Cloudways alternatives. Also, since there are many hosting options, I would briefly talk about its WordPress hosting pricing plans.
Basic – By paying $3.95/month, you would be able to host 1 website with 50 GD SSD storage space, free SSL, free domain registration, 25 subdomains, and more.Plus – At the same time, if you pay $5.95/month, you could host unlimited websites with unmetered storage, subdomain, etc.Choice Plus – This plan would also allow you to host unlimited websites but it will also offer CodeGuard Basic Backup as and additional feature.
2. SiteGround
Since we have already covered one of the hosting services recommended by WordPress, it’s logical to mention the second official recommended service – SiteGround. As of now, SiteGround is hosting nearly 2 million websites from across the world. In addition to being one of the most popular Cloudways alternatives, Siteground is widely appreciated for its awesome performance. According to the latest tests, it has an uptime of 99.99% with 673 ms. At first, it may not impress you but with SiteGround’s own SG Optimizer plugin, you can break all speed barriers.
Why Should You Pick SiteGround As Cloudways Alternative?
SiteGround offers a completely free migration of your site to their servers. The StartUp plan offers a migrator plugin. But if you opt for subsequent higher plans, the SiteGround team will professionally perform the migration.Moreover, if you decide to move to SiteGround, it would offer you free SSL, CDN, email accounts, unlimited databases, and other performance-oriented features.It also offers cloud hosting services. So if you wish to stay on cloud servers, you can opt for SiteGround’s cloud hosting service.
SiteGround Pricing
SiteGround too has different hosting services (that are recommended & used by many platforms and users) and their pricing plans. But here, in this blog, I would be talking about its WordPress hosting plans.
StartUp – At $3.95/month, you would be able to host 1 website with 10 GB web space, free WordPress installation & updates, etc.GrowBig – This plan would charge you $5.95/month and allow you to host unlimited websites but with 20 GB web space. Other advanced features are also included in this plan.GoGeek – If you further wish to increase your web space limit to 40 GB, include advanced features like dynamic caching, white-label clients, staging, etc. then you’d have to pay $11.95/month.
3. Kinsta
Kinsta is one of the greatest examples of the best managed WordPress hosting services. Unlike other Cloudways alternatives, Kinsta only focuses on one type of hosting service i.e. managed WordPress. Due to this sheer dedication and exemplary performance, Kinsta has managed to acquire some big clients like Ubisoft, MariaDB, Buffer, Flippa, etc.
Why Should You Pick Kinsta As Cloudways Alternative?
It has one of the fastest response times that is clocked at 398 ms and easily maintained a 99.99% uptime record. The reason behind such performance is its speed obsessive architecture and the use of the latest technology.If you have an undying love for cloud servers, you would be relieved to know that Kinsta uses Google Cloud Platform for their managed WordPress hosting services.Kinsta will provide you a migration expert team in order to transfer your site from Cloudways.
Kinsta Pricing
Just like Cloudways, Kinsta does not believe in extremely long term commitments. Hence, it offers monthly, as well as yearly plans for their services. But keep in mind, all the plans of Kinsta offer almost all the features but with different limits.
Starter – $30 month for 1 WordPress install with 20,000 monthly visits & 10 GB space.Pro – For 2 WP install, 20,000 monthly visits & 20 GB space, you’d have to pay $60/month.Business 1 – 4 – This plan has 4 different tiers and starts at $100/month for 5 WP installs and ends at $400/month for 40 WordPress installations.Enterprise 1 – 4 -Similarly, the Enterprise plan has 4 tiers starting at $600/month for 60 installs and ending at $1,500/month for 150 WP installs.
4. WPX Hosting
I would now like to introduce you to WPX Hosting so as to keep the streak of mentioning top managed WordPress hosting services. But don’t even think that it isn’t any good. Contrary to your assumptions, WPX Hosting offers lightning-fast loading speed. It has been proudly recommended by top marketer Mathew Woodward due to its performance and quick support team.
Why Should You Pick WPX Hosting As Cloudways Alternative?
Unlike other Cloudways alternatives that only offer 1 free site migration, WPX Hosting will provide your unlimited site migrations.In addition to this, WPX Hosting also offers free SSL certificates for forever. This will definitely help in reducing the overall cost of your hosting expenditure.WPX Hosting is primarily famous for its CDN service i.e. WPX Cloud. According to its claims, this CDN service is 3 times faster than others available in the market.
WPX Hosting Pricing
WPX Hosting team likes to keep their pricing simple. Therefore, it offers 3 plans with monthly and yearly billing cycles. All the plans include common features like free custom CDN, SSL, staging area, DDoS protection, etc. The only difference between plans would be the number of sites hosted and storage space.
Business – By subscribing to the monthly plan of $24.99, you’d be able to host 5 sites with 10 GB storage.Professional – This plan allows you to host 15 websites with 20 GB storage space at the cost of $49.99/month.Elite – At last, this plan would cost you $99/month and would enable you to host 25 websites with 40 GB storage space.
5. Flywheel
Are you a freelancer, an agency or do you have a high traffic website? If your answer is “Yes” the Flywheel is here to offer you the most fluidic managed WordPress hosting service. As you can tell, Flywheel only hosts WordPress sites. This means that they have perfected the technical art required to host sites with good performance. Speaking about performance, you’d be relieved to know that it has a 99.99% uptime record with nearly 400 ms minimum response time.
Why Should You Pick Flywheel As Cloudways Alternative?
Flywheel, just like some other Cloudways alternatives, uses Google Cloud Platform for its servers. Moreover, the configuration part is handled by Flywheel itself.This hosting service will offer you a free site migration service if you are seriously considering moving from Cloudways (or from any other service provider).Also, once you sign up on Flywheel, it will greet you with tons of amenities like free SSL, free demo site, staging area, backups, etc.
Flywheel Pricing
When we compared Flywheel’s pricing with other managed WordPress hosting services we found that their pricing is quite cheaper. On top of this, if you opt for the annual billing option, you would get 2 months of hosting for free. Other than this, each plan has different feature access and restrictions.
Tiny – This plan will cost you $15/month and would allow you to host 1 website with 5 GB storage and 20 GB bandwidth.Starter – At $30/month, you can increase the storage limit to 10 GB and bandwidth to 50 GB for 1 website.Freelance – It will cost you $115/month to host 10 websites with 20 GB storage and 200 GB bandwidth.Agency – The final plan is for big agencies as it allows you to host 30 websites. The storage space and bandwidth allotted are 50 GB and 500 GB respectively.
6. A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting is one such hosting service that acts as an umbrella and provides numerous hosting services under it. Some of the most notable options are shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, reseller, and dedicated hosting. Another great thing about A2 Hosting is that it perfectly adjusts its services according to your CMS platform. So, if you have a blog on WordPress or an eCommerce website on Drupal, Magento, or OpenCart. A2 Hosting will efficiently take care of it.
Why Should You Pick A2 Hosting As Cloudways Alternative?
According to the recent tests, A2 Hosting came up to be the fastest hosting service available in the market. The minimum response time recorded was 317 ms with 99.93% uptime.A2 Hosting is also liberal with offering free and paid features. So, along with free SSL, auto set up, global servers, you are also going to get free site migrations.This service is primarily recognized for its Turbo Servers. These servers are built with the latest technology and offer 20 times faster hosting experience.
A2 Hosting Pricing
Despite offering so many hosting services, A2 Hosting has managed to keep their pricing extremely affordable (which isn’t the case with most of the Cloudways alternatives). Also, since there are so many options to choose from, I will be laying out the pricing for its Shared WordPress hosting.
Startup – By paying just $2.99/month, you would be able to host 1 website with 100 GB SSD storage.Drive – However, at $4.99/month, you are allowed to host unlimited websites with unlimited SSD storage space and 2X resources.Turbo Boost – This plan introduces Turbo Servers for 20 times faster hosting experience. It would cost you $9.99/month for hosting unlimited websites with unlimited NVMe storage space.Turbo Max – At $14.99/month, you get to further enhance your hosting experience by accessing 5X resources and Turbo Servers. This plan offers hosting for unlimited websites with unlimited NVMe storage space and other advanced features.
7. WP Engine
WP Engine is being mentioned at the last spot doesn’t mean that it is in any way bad. On the contrary, I was saving the best for the last. Just like most of the Cloudways alternatives mentioned in this blog, WP Engine specializes in managed WordPress hosting. Hence, because of its mastery over hosting, many big organizations like America’s Funniest Videos, Thomson Reuters, Arizona State University, etc. have opted for it.
Why Should You Pick WP Engine As Cloudways Alternative?
WP Engine is the only hosting service provider in the world that offers Genesis Framework and 35+ premium StudioPress themes for free.This alternative to Cloudways is also able to provide fast hosting services. It is backed up by Cloudflare CDN, Evercache, and a multi-datacenter clustered environment.WP Engine offers a helping hand in the form of 24×7 live customer chat support. Also, you can avail phone support services by subscribing to its higher-tier plans.
WP Engine Pricing
The service is quite flexible when it comes to pricing plans as it offers monthly and yearly billing options. WP Engine, as of now includes almost all the features in all the plans but with certain plan-based limits. However, higher-tier plans include some exclusive advanced features too.
Startup – $30/month for hosting 1 website, 10 GB local storage, and 50 GB bandwidth.Growth – By subscribing to the $115/month plan, you would be able to host 10 sites with 20 GB local storage and 200 GB bandwidth.Scale – The number of sites included for hosting is 30 at the cost of $290/month. The storage and bandwidth limit is also increased to 50 GB and 500 GB respectively.Premium – The basic tier of Premium plan would cost you $400/month and allow you to host 50 sites. Along with this, you’d get 100 GB local storage and 1,000 GB bandwidth.Premium 1 – At the same storage and bandwidth limit, you can increase the number of sites limit to 100 by subscribing to $600/month.Premium 1.5 – The final plan of the WP Engine would facilitate hosting for 115 sites. The local storage and bandwidth limits stay the same as of Premium plan but it surely includes some advanced features.
8. GoDaddy
Over the past few years, GoDaddy has managed to reach its pinnacle point. All thanks to its plethora of hosting options and, of course, its performance. Some of the hosting options offered are WordPress, shared, reseller, dedicated, and also VPS hosting. The recent test results have concluded that it has a respectable uptime record of 99.97% and good minimum response time – 554 ms. Due to these performance stats, it has managed to gain a loyal customer base from across the world and also a spot in this Cloudways alternatives blog.
Why Should You Pick GoDaddy As Cloudways Alternative?
GoDaddy has recently launched its auto-migration feature that facilitates you to migrate your site to GoDaddy servers with 1 click.All of your sites hosted on Godaddy will be backed up every day. Also, there’s an easy restore option in case you want to revert back to your previous version.The Godaddy team has created an exclusive hosting environment for eCommerce websites. It includes pre-installed WooCommerce and other premium plugins & extensions.
GoDaddy Pricing
Unlike other alternatives to Cloudways, GoDaddy plans offer hosting service for 1 website only. To compensate this, they include free amenities like free business email, SSL certificate, domain registration, etc. Here’s a short summary of GoDaddy’s WordPress hosting plans –
Basic – It will cost you $6.99/month to host 1 website with 30 GB storage space.Deluxe – At $9.99/month, your storage space for 1 website is increased to 75 GB. This plan also includes SEO optimizer and testing site.Ultimate – The Ultimate plan will cost you $12.99/month for 1 website hosting with unlimited storage space. This plan also includes unlimited malware checks and hack repair features.Ecommerce – This plan is ideal for an eCommerce website as it offers unlimited storage, bookings & appointment scheduling modules, real-time shipping rates, and more in just $15.99/month.
Wrapping Up
Now that you have explored all the Cloudways alternatives, you are one step closer to finding your ideal replacement. I assure you that the services mentioned in this blog have a good reputation when it comes to hosting. So all you are required to do now is assess your requirements, finalize your best Cloudways alternative and apply for free migration. That’s it..!! Of course, if you have any queries regarding these services, feel free to drop them in the comments section. I would love to help you out. You May Also like:
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