Cloudways
Cloudways is a web hosting provider based in Saint Julians, Malta, founded in 2011. As of 2026 it holds an HRI of 97/100, an exceptional signal, ranked independently by HostList with no paid placements.
Cloudways, a managed cloud hosting platform based in Saint Julians, Malta, offers a range of hosting services tailored for developers and businesses seeking simplicity and performance. Founded as part of DigitalOcean, Cloudways provides managed hosting services using multiple cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode. Their infrastructure supports global data centers, ensuring high availability and scalability. The platform is compatible with popular applications like WordPress, Magento, and WooCommerce, and features include enterprise-grade security, automated backups, and a dedicated control panel. Cloudways is suitable for businesses and developers looking for hassle-free server management and scalable hosting services.
Measured on this provider's public website, not customer sites on their platform.
We are manually deploying identical test website instances across the top 200 hosts by HRI rank. Rollout details.
How we measure this →Before You Sign Up
Promoted placement. Does not affect HRI, ranking order or eligibility.
What Cloudways Discloses
Facts the company has published and HostList has verified. Blanks are informative: a question a host has not answered cannot be answered on its behalf. Completeness measures how much this host discloses, not how good it is.
26 of 30 questions unanswered
- Entry plan price
- Refund window
- Site migration
- Verified coupon
- Uptime SLA
- Ownership
- Legal entity
- Data residency
- GDPR DPA
- Datacenter regions
- Storage
- Security included
- Security contact
- Certifications
- Data centre model
- Backups
- Support
- Support languages
- Published plans
- Resource limits
- Renewable energy
- Description
- Logo
- Social profiles
- YouTube
- Changelog
4 of 30 applicable facts disclosed. Hosts control this section. HostList verifies every entry and never charges for it.
What Customers Say About Cloudways
Share Your ExperienceAggregate scores sourced from third-party review platforms. The quotes below are stored excerpts, linked back to their source; click through to read each one in full.
What people are saying
I’m working on a real estate website on WordPress and I need your advice.“have more than 5,000 property listings, so I know it’s a heavy setup. One important thing: I don’t want to store images on my WordPress hosting they will be external /For hosting, I’m planning to go with something strong like Cloudways or AWS. For the setup, I was thinking about using Kadence (or a fast…”
DecisionUseful2375Read on Reddit ↗
Kinsta Awarded #1 Web Hosting Provider in G2's 2026 Rankings“G2 is one of the online review platforms I trust since most of the reviews there seem to come from real customers. They announced the winners of their annual Best Software Awards for 2026 a few days ago. In the "[Best Web Hosting Software Products for 2026](https://www.g2.com/best-software-companies/top-hosting)"…”
ZGeekieRead on Reddit ↗
What hosts are people using/recommending nowadays?“I have a client located in Australia; decent-sized WooCommerce site, currently hosted on WPengine on their Asia/Pacific server. We've noticed a significant decrease in performance in recent months (true for all of my clients on WPengine, to be honest) without any major changes or plugins added to explain it, and…”
dalek_999Read on Reddit ↗
Quoted from public third-party discussions; HostList does not edit review text.
Cloudways holds 140U across 16 racks, leading 1 of them. Rack space is allocated by rank alone and cannot be bought.
- Laravel Hosting16U · held 22+ days
- Agency Hosting10U · held 22+ days
- cPanel Hosting10U · held 16 days
- Enterprise Hosting10U · held 7 days
- Magento Hosting10U · held 22+ days
- Managed WordPress Hosting10U · held 7 days
Embed this badge
<a href="https://hostlist.io/server-room" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://hostlist.io/api/server-room/badge?slug=cloudways" alt="Cloudways holds 140U in the HostList Server Room" width="340" height="80" loading="lazy"></a>Longest hold: Laravel Hosting, held 22+ days. The wall moves on the nightly HRI recompute, never on payment.
Where Cloudways Ranks
Live positions across the HostList Best rankings, by HRI™. Positions are earned, never bought.
Waiting on data
HostList only shows what it can verify. Each of these sections appears the moment the data exists.
Frequently Asked Questions About Cloudways
Is Cloudways a good web hosting company?
Cloudways has a HRI™ of 97/100 on HostList.io with a Trustpilot score of 4.6/5, placing it among the better-rated providers in its category. HRI (HostList Ranking Index) is calculated algorithmically from trust signals, profile completeness, data freshness, and performance data, no provider can pay to improve it. A score of 90+ indicates an exceptional, highly verified provider.
What type of hosting company is Cloudways?
Cloudways is classified as a dedicated web hosting company on HostList.io. Use the HostMatch™ tool at hostlist.io/match to describe your project requirements and get a ranked recommendation from 30,000+ hosting providers including Cloudways.
Where is Cloudways based?
Cloudways is headquartered in Saint Julians, Malta. Hosting companies based in Malta are listed at hostlist.io/hosting/malta.
How does Cloudways compare to other web hosting companies?
Cloudways can be compared to any other hosting provider using HostList.io's side-by-side comparison tool at hostlist.io/compare. The tool shows both providers' HRI™ breakdowns, sub-scores (Trust, Completeness, Freshness, Performance), and review data side by side. Cloudways has a current HRI of 97/100.
Does Cloudways offer coupons or discounts in September 2026?
Cloudways has no HostList-verified coupon code right now. Hosting providers commonly discount the first term of shared and WordPress plans, with the lowest prices on longer billing cycles. For codes checkout-verified across the market this month, see hostlist.io/deals/web-hosting-coupons, updated continuously.
What's Happening at Cloudways
Our website, platform and/or any sub domains use cookies to understand how you use our services, and to improve both your experience and our marketing relevance. It’s Q4 2025 and by now we all know th
What People Say About Cloudways
Public mentions from X, Reddit, and other social platforms. Unfiltered and not part of the HRI score, shown for context.
I manage a WordPress site hosted on Cloudways (DigitalOcean server) that has been reporting "Blocked by robots.txt" in Google Search Console's URL Inspection Live Test for months. …
have more than 5,000 property listings, so I know it’s a heavy setup. One important thing: I don’t want to store images on my WordPress hosting they will be external /For hosti…
Hey everyone !! I’m building a WordPress-based membership + directory platform and I’m trying to make solid hosting/infrastructure decisions early so I don’t end up doing a painfu…
I'm planning to build a few websites with: * Domain from Squarespace * Managed hosting on Cloudways * CDN/security through Cloudflare (free plan) Cloudways also offers Cloudflare…
We have a b2b manufacturing site with lots of pdf resources that change frequently throughout the day, and lots of minor spec details on product pages change on the fly. We ho…
I have a client located in Australia; decent-sized WooCommerce site, currently hosted on WPengine on their Asia/Pacific server. We've noticed a significant decrease in performance …
How Cloudways's Score Is Calculated
HRI is calculated algorithmically based on publicly available data. It considers trust signals (reviews, ratings), data completeness, freshness of information, and technical performance. No host can pay to improve their score.
Full methodology →HRI over the last 50 days
WordPress plugin fit
Hosting Intelligence mappings. Editorial rows cite HostList research; host-declared rows come from the claimed dashboard and stay labelled until verified. Order is by fit tier, not paid placement.
- Breeze CacheBundled / native
Breeze is Cloudways native cache plugin for WordPress apps. Source
- Contact Form 7Recommended
Standard forms plugin on Cloudways WordPress. Source
- Elementor Website BuilderRecommended
Flexible cloud resources for Elementor sites. Source
- JetpackRecommended
Common stack choice on Cloudways WordPress apps. Source
- LiteSpeed CacheRecommended
LiteSpeed stack option available on Cloudways. Source
- Rank Math SEORecommended
Flexible cloud resources for SEO plugin workloads. Source
- Really Simple SecurityRecommended
HTTPS helper on cloud WordPress stacks. Source
- UpdraftPlusRecommended
Popular backup choice on cloud WordPress stacks. Source
- WooCommerceRecommended
Cloud stacks commonly used for WooCommerce at scale. Source
- Wordfence SecurityRecommended
Common security layer on self-managed cloud WordPress. Source
- Yoast SEORecommended
Flexible cloud resources for SEO-heavy WordPress sites. Source