BusinessAlternatives
Best Cloudways alternatives
The best Cloudways alternatives ranked with pricing philosophy, trade-offs, and when Cloudways still wins for your workflow.
Affiliate disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you sign up through one of our links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This does not change our ranked recommendations below.
Not every site should leave Cloudways—existing workflows, migration cost, and feature fit matter more than a competitor’s benchmark chart. This guide ranks the best Cloudways alternatives by business stage, covering where each one wins on pricing model, managed-support depth, and how well it fits a developer who wants server-level control versus a site owner who wants hosting handled entirely for them. We also flag the scenarios where switching away from Cloudways costs you more in migration downtime and rebuilt server configuration than it saves in hosting costs. Read our Cloudways review for the full pillar breakdown before you commit to a migration, and see Cloudways pricing to model bandwidth limits before you shortlist replacements.
When Cloudways is still the right choice
Stay on Cloudways when your current stack is profitable, migration cost exceeds the savings a competitor offers, and your official plan tier already covers the feature or traffic-volume bottleneck you’re hitting. Cloudways’ strength is genuine flexibility: it’s a managed layer on top of multiple underlying cloud providers—DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, Vultr—so you get managed hosting convenience with the ability to choose infrastructure and scale server specs granularly, rather than being locked into one provider’s fixed plan tiers. Sites with server configurations, caching setups, and staging workflows already tuned on Cloudways often find that rebuilding that setup elsewhere costs more in migration downtime and re-testing than the hosting savings are worth. Before switching, confirm your exact bandwidth and storage limits on the vendor pricing page rather than assuming a competitor’s advertised tier maps cleanly onto your usage.
Ranked alternatives
We ranked these picks by buyer fit rather than raw feature count—each one solves a different problem better than Cloudways does, whether that’s fully managed WordPress-specific hosting, a simpler entry-level shared-hosting experience, or raw cloud infrastructure control for developers. None of these are drop-in replacements; each requires migrating your site files, database, and DNS, so weigh the switch against how much of your current setup depends on Cloudways’ specific multi-cloud flexibility.
1. Kinsta
Why consider it: Kinsta is a common migration path when Cloudways’ server-management responsibilities outgrow a team’s appetite for hands-on configuration, particularly for WordPress-specific sites that want a fully managed experience—automatic scaling, built-in CDN, and a support team specialized specifically in WordPress rather than general server administration.
Tradeoff: Kinsta’s pricing sits above Cloudways’ at comparable traffic levels, and it’s WordPress-only, so sites running other CMSs or custom applications that Cloudways supports won’t have an equivalent option. Verify live tiers before assuming feature parity.
Compare: Kinsta vs Cloudways · Kinsta review for WordPress
2. WP Engine — best for enterprise WordPress with dedicated support
Why consider it: WP Engine pairs managed WordPress hosting with enterprise-grade features—advanced staging environments, dedicated account management on higher tiers, and deep WordPress-specific security tooling—making it a strong fit for larger WordPress sites or agencies managing many client sites that need white-glove support.
Tradeoff: WP Engine’s pricing climbs quickly at higher traffic and site counts, and like Kinsta, it’s WordPress-only, so it isn’t a fit for Cloudways users running non-WordPress applications.
Compare: WP Engine review for WordPress · WP Engine vs Kinsta
3. SiteGround — best for smaller sites wanting simpler managed hosting at lower cost
Why consider it: SiteGround targets smaller sites and blogs with a more approachable price point and a simplified, beginner-friendly control panel, making it a good fit for site owners who found Cloudways’ server-configuration options more technical than they wanted to manage.
Tradeoff: SiteGround’s scalability and server customization are more limited than Cloudways’ at higher traffic tiers, so growing sites may hit ceilings that require another migration sooner.
Compare: Cloudways pricing · verify SiteGround plan limits on its official pricing page before switching on simplicity alone.
4. DigitalOcean — best for developers who want direct cloud infrastructure control
Why consider it: DigitalOcean is one of the cloud providers Cloudways manages on top of, so choosing it directly appeals to developers who want full root-level server control and are comfortable handling their own server management, security patching, and scaling rather than paying for Cloudways’ managed layer.
Tradeoff: DigitalOcean requires meaningfully more hands-on server administration than Cloudways—there’s no managed layer handling updates, backups, or security patches automatically, so teams without dedicated DevOps resources will take on real operational overhead.
Compare: Cloudways review · evaluate DigitalOcean droplet limits on its official pricing page before removing the managed layer.
5. Flywheel — best for design agencies managing multiple client WordPress sites
Why consider it: Flywheel is built specifically around agency and freelancer workflows, with client-site collaboration tools, white-label billing options, and a clean interface designed for managing many small WordPress sites for different clients rather than one larger application.
Tradeoff: Flywheel is WordPress-only and less suited to high-traffic or custom-application hosting than Cloudways’ broader infrastructure flexibility, so it fits agency-style multi-client hosting better than a single large-scale site.
Compare: Kinsta review for WordPress · evaluate Flywheel agency billing on its official site for multi-client hosting pilots.
Alternatives comparison table
Use this table as a starting point, not a final answer—confirm exact pricing tiers and bandwidth limits on each vendor’s official pricing page, since these change more often than review content does. Read the “best for” column first: it tells you which buyer segment each tool was actually built for, which matters more than any single feature checkbox when you’re choosing a hosting platform to standardize your infrastructure around.
| Alternative | Best for | Key strength | Main tradeoff vs Cloudways |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kinsta | Fully managed WordPress hosting | Automatic scaling, WordPress-specialized support | Higher price, WordPress-only |
| WP Engine | Enterprise WordPress, agencies | Dedicated support, advanced staging | Pricing climbs fast at scale |
| SiteGround | Smaller sites, simpler management | Beginner-friendly, lower cost entry | Limited scalability at higher tiers |
| DigitalOcean | Developers wanting direct cloud control | Full root-level infrastructure control | No managed layer, real operational overhead |
| Flywheel | Agencies managing multiple client sites | Client collaboration, white-label billing | WordPress-only, less suited to large scale |
Notice that none of these five tools tries to be a full Cloudways replacement across every use case—each one specializes, which is exactly why a single “best overall” pick would be misleading. The right comparison isn’t Cloudways vs. one alternative in the abstract; it’s your specific technical comfort level and site type against whichever row above matches it most closely.
How to choose
Segment your decision by what’s actually slowing you down on Cloudways today, not by which competitor has the loudest marketing. If your bottleneck is wanting server management handled entirely by specialists for a WordPress site, Kinsta removes that overhead without a painful platform change. If you’re an enterprise WordPress operation or agency needing dedicated account support, WP Engine’s white-glove service is worth the higher price. If your site is smaller and Cloudways’ server-configuration options felt like more control than you wanted, SiteGround’s simpler panel will onboard faster. If you’re comfortable managing your own servers and want to cut out the managed-hosting markup entirely, DigitalOcean gives you that control directly. And if you’re an agency managing many small client WordPress sites, Flywheel’s collaboration tools are built specifically for that workflow. If none of these fit—your site depends on Cloudways’ specific multi-cloud flexibility or non-WordPress application support—it’s often cheaper to optimize your current Cloudways plan than to migrate at all. Run a small pilot with a staging clone before committing your production site to a new host.
Migration checklist
Migrating off Cloudways rarely fails on file transfer—it fails on PHP versions, caching rules, SSL certificates, and staging workflows that do not transfer cleanly between hosts. Take a full backup of files, database, and configuration before starting anything on the new host, then rebuild server-level settings on a staging environment first. Test the site thoroughly on a staging URL before updating DNS, including forms, checkout, and any custom integrations. Schedule the actual DNS cutover during a low-traffic window, keep Cloudways available in parallel until critical paths validate on the new host, and monitor closely for the first 24–48 hours so you can roll back if performance or checkout breaks.
FAQ
Is Cloudways worth evaluating in 2026?
Yes, particularly if your workflow depends on choosing between multiple underlying cloud providers with granular server-spec control rather than being locked into one vendor’s fixed plans—that flexibility remains a genuine differentiator versus single-provider managed hosts. It’s worth serious evaluation when your workflow matches the use cases above; confirm current plan limits on Cloudways’ official pricing page before subscribing or before deciding to switch away.
Where is the full Cloudways review?
See our Cloudways review for the complete pillar breakdown, including pricing philosophy, standout features, and the workflows where Cloudways outperforms narrower competitors like Kinsta or SiteGround. Pair it with Cloudways pricing if bandwidth or storage caps are your main reason for evaluating alternatives.
Does this article use affiliate links?
Yes. Some links on this page are affiliate links—we may earn a commission if you sign up through them at no extra cost to you. Our editorial rankings and recommendations above are based on buyer fit, not commission rates, and are not influenced by affiliate relationships.
Which Cloudways alternative is best for a non-technical site owner?
SiteGround is generally the most approachable option for site owners who found Cloudways’ server-configuration settings more technical than expected, thanks to its simplified control panel and lower entry price. It trades some of Cloudways’ scalability and infrastructure flexibility for that simplicity, so growing sites may need to migrate again later.