Hosting Admiral Deploys Hermes with Zero Provisioning on Cloudways Managed AI Agents

About Hosting Admiral

Jerry Broadway is the creator of Hosting Admiral, a blog and video tutorial platform that helps new web developers, blog owners, and tech users choose the right hosting provider and launch their first websites with confidence.

Before founding the site, he built WordPress sites for clients at a Minneapolis web design agency. Today his workflow is deeply embedded in AI, spanning Cursor, Claude, and the Cloudways API and MCP server for atomic deployments.

At the center of his stack sits the Hermes agent, routing subscriptions like Kimi, Claude Code, and Grok through one interface and handling tasks like calendar management. Read on to see exactly how Cloudways Managed AI Agents reshaped that setup.

The Challenge: Self-Hosting AI Agents

Before adopting Cloudways Managed AI Agents, Jerry Broadway ran everything from his own machine. He downloaded CLIs for each tool and stitched his workflows together locally, which kept him in full control but left every operational burden on his shoulders.

The heaviest of those burdens was security. As Jerry Broadway described it, “it could take a lot to provision a server or VPS adequately in order to secure it and lock it down.”

“If you have to provision a server yourself, that’s a little bit of a daunting task for most people.” — Jerry Broadway

That difficulty was not just his own problem. It was the same wall standing between his beginner audience and the AI workflows he wanted to teach them, since locking down a VPS demands expertise most newcomers simply do not have.

– A comparison of self-hosting, Cloudways Managed, and other fully managed options across setup, security, and pricing. (Source: cloudways.com)

The Solution: AI Agents, Fully Managed

Cloudways removed the provisioning work entirely. Jerry found that the platform “makes it super easy,” noting that “everything is already taken care of, and you can just hop right in and connect your apps together.”

Getting the Hermes agent live was similarly quick. He set up the server, connected WhatsApp, and the agent was operational, with the sandbox environment ready to handle his tasks from day one.

“Just having Cloudways to be able to take on the burden of provisioning the server and setting up the sandbox environment is really nice. It’s really easy to just spin it up and get going.” — Jerry Broadway

The platform also lets him bring his own API key and keep those costs separate, an arrangement he considers a good one. He currently runs his OpenAI key through the platform to power his agent.

– Cloudways Managed AI Agents dashboard with access details, gateway controls, and an OpenAI API key connected. (Source: platform.cloudways.com)

The Result: A Simpler AI Workflow

Today, Jerry Broadway works with Hermes primarily through WhatsApp, supplemented by what he calls a “quite nice” web UI where he can log in and access everything in one place. He plans to migrate to the Discord integration next for an even smoother messaging experience.

The agent is also compounding its own usefulness. Jerry observes it “writing to memory and creating skills for itself,” a built-in Hermes capability he sees updating automatically as it works.

For the wider platform, his endorsement is emphatic. He ranks Cloudways among his top hosting providers and credits it with the strongest API and MCP tooling for WordPress development he has used.

“The API, especially the MCP server, it’s fantastic. I love using it because I can hook up my AI agents to it and it will just do everything for me.” — Jerry Broadway

His verdict for others is clearest for newcomers: the onboarding is seamless and suits anyone who wants to run an AI agent without standing up a secure server themselves. He notes that connecting outside services naturally involves a few hands-on steps, like adding API keys, which comes with the territory of any agent setup and is no reflection on Cloudways itself.

– Cloudways Managed AI Agents feature overview covering provisioning, maintenance, security, expert support, agent control, and transparent pricing. (Source: cloudways.com)

Looking ahead, Jerry wants Hosting Admiral to make exactly these workflows feel simple, breaking them down step by step and publishing YouTube walkthroughs showing how agencies can manage dozens of client sites with AI from a local computer, with Cloudways as a core piece of that stack.

Deploy Your AI Agent with Zero Provisioning.

Cloudways Managed AI Agents run on secured, dedicated instances with messaging and dashboard access, your own LLM keys, and full API and MCP connectivity.

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