Cloudways is the High-Performance WPEngine Alternative
With 0.5 second loading speeds and virtually 100% uptime, Cloudways won’t let you down
Cloudways gives you more speed, storage, and bandwidth at lower rates, for unlimited sites. Our starter plan alone offers 1TB bandwidth, as opposed to WPEngine’s 50GB. And the performance gap only increases from there.
Your visitors notice when you migrate to Cloudways
“Website loading speed has increased substantially since we migrated.”
Pedro Flores
Marketing Director at GLED Global EducationCategory leader in G2.com
Ease of Use
WPEngine score: 9.1
Web hosting average: 8.6
Quality of Support
WPEngine score: 9.1
Web hosting average: 8.6
Ease of Setup
WPEngine score: 9.1
Web hosting average: 8.6
Your hosting provider shouldn’t slow you down as your business ramps up
WPEngine is one of the best-known brands in the WordPress hosting space. But what users get to know only after they’ve paid upfront is that it:
- Won’t let you pick which server to host your site on
- Eats up storage and bandwidth as your site grows
- Locks critical features behind their higher plans
WPEngine customers say poor performance disrupts their business
“My site had a D rating for speed, despite having paid extra for their apparently useless CDN software.”
Verified WPEngine Review on G2
“A few months of less than 99.9% uptime. Downtime occurred during peak hours with ads running.”
Verified WPEngine Review on G2
“Slow backend wordpress pages. Painfully long times to update website pages.”
Verified WPEngine Review on G2
“I’m tired of explaining to my clients why they have problems and downtime. I’m done!”
Verified WPEngine Review on Trustpilot
“…the servers are extremely slow now and we regularly see DNS issues and downtime.”
Verified WPEngine Review on Trustpilot
“They don’t reveal how many people you are sharing with either, but they’ll happily have their salespeople hunt you down and constantly tell you that you need to spend more!”
Verified WPEngine Review on Trustpilot
Cloudways gives you fast, secure servers with on-time customer support
Go beyond WordPress
Manage Drupal, Magento, Laravel and Joomla sites, too. If you run on PHP, you’re covered.
Host unlimited websites
Cloudways doesn’t limit the number of websites included in your plan. Launch as many as you want.
Pick and manage your server
Choose from 5 different providers: Digital Ocean, AWS, and Google Cloud.
Stop sharing resources
All Cloudways users get dedicated servers. Control and manage your server as you please.
Transparent billing with no surprises
Get access to all core features on any plan. Know exactly what you’ll pay, every month.
Control how your sites look, load, and perform — without spending time managing them
WordPress? Check. Any other PHP CMS? Also check.
Our PHP 7.3 servers running on PHP-FPM (Fast Process Management) will optimize your website for fast, reliable loading time.
Choose the cloud provider you trust the most
WPEngine shoehorns your website into whichever cloud provider they choose. Cloudways gives you the power of choice. Pick a server that matches your budget and performance needs, from 5 world-class companies.
All core features included on all plans
With Cloudways, you get unlimited sites, free SSL, Firewalls, Monitoring, Backups, Staging, and more included on any plan — for as low as $11/mo.
Launch 1 or 100 sites — there’s no limit
WPEngine limits how many sites you can host on each plan. With Cloudways, you can have as many as you want, as long as you have resources available in your plan. Ideal for agencies.
Focus on content creation, not site maintenance
Hate managing servers? Cloudways solves it for you. Enjoy access to top cloud server solutions without having to manage every detail. Cloudways makes sure your site runs as expected.
Adapt Cloudways to your needs, not the other way around
WordPress is built as an open ecosystem that anyone can modify for their needs. WPEngine, though, has more of a closed-in approach: it’s their way or the highway. Cloudways sits closer to the WordPress ideology, offering open customization:
- No plugin restrictions
- PHP extension additions
Cloudways starts affordable…
 |
 |
|
|---|---|---|
| Lowest Available Plan | ||
| Monthly Price | $30/mo
MANAGED HOSTING STARTUP
|
$28/mo
Digital Ocean
|
| Site Included | 1 | unlimited |
| Visit/Month | 250,000 | unlimited |
| Storage | 10GB | 50GB |
| Bandwidth | 50GB | 2TB |
| Ram | Undisclosed | 2GB |
| Processor | Processor | 1Core |
| Highest Available Plan | ||
| Monthly Price | $350/mo
Ecommerce Hosting Scale
|
$241.62/mo
Google Cloud
|
| Site Included | 30 | unlimited |
| Visit/Month | 400,000 | +67,00,000 |
| Storage | 50GB | 20GB |
| Bandwidth | 500GB | 2GB |
| Ram | Undisclosed | 15GB |
| Processor | Processor | 4vCPU |
Cloudways gives you a free trial to see for yourself
No Trial
Free Trial
Cloudways serves drastically more visitors each month
Results based on loader.io, comparing plans at three levels.
Cloudways consistently outperforms WPEngine’s response time
Results based on loader.io, comparing similar sites and plans for speed optimizations.
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Plan | GROWTH | 4GB DIGITAL OCEAN |
| Average | 8705 ms | 3439 ms |
| Min | 150 ms | 1,039 ms |
| Max | 37649 ms | 9,296 ms |
Cloudways lets you choose your preferred cloud hosting provider
Cloud Hosting Providers
Pick a provider based on your performance needs
Cloud Hosting Providers
WPEngine picks a server for you
Cloudways gives you 3x as many data centers to pick from
Leverage location hosting to provide a faster user experience for your vistors
See all available data centers when you choose Cloudways
Knowledgeable support that’s always available
Any issue that hurts your users’ experience is time sensitive. Our customer support specialists are ready to help you 24/7/365, so your team can go back to smooth sailing, as quick as possible.
Cloudways customer support performance
Q3 2020 – Q1 2021
-
2.1 minutes
Initial response time
-
30 minutes
Average time to solve and close a support inquiry
-
90%
Percentage of support inquiries closed with a happy and satisfied customer
Dedicated Account Manager
Private Slack channel
Phone Support
Frequently Asked Questions
What is managed WordPress hosting?
Managed WordPress hosting is a form of web-hosting that makes installing and managing your WordPress site easier, where most technical and server-side issues are managed by the company you hire. Managed hosting means freeing up your time from having to handle security risks, backups, monitoring your sites’ uptime, and scaling your infrastructure when your site grows.
Cloudways provides managed WordPress services, but doesn’t stop at WordPress. You can also host other applications, such as Joomla, Magento, Drupal, and other PHP-based apps.
How does WP Engine pricing compare to Cloudways?
The main difference between WP Engine and Cloudways is that WP Engine offers plans based on core feature limitations and number of sites you can host.
With Cloudways you can launch as many sites as you want, on any plan. And you get access to the same set of features, no matter which plan you choose. We believe that structuring our plans this way helps all kinds of business start and grow with total control on their websites’ performance.
WP Engine’s lowest plan starts at $30/mo and includes only 1 site. With Cloudways you can get started for as low as $10/mo, with unlimited sites.
What kind of support do I get with Cloudways?
At Cloudways, we believe no one should stress about their website being down or not working. We put a lot of effort and resources into making that a reality, with the help of our support team.
Standard Support: It’s free and includes 24/7/365 access to Live Chat assistance with trained Support Team members.
Advanced Support add-on: Speeds up Live Chat response times and includes deeper application troubleshooting, customization support, and proactive monitoring.
Premium Support add-on: For businesses running mission-critical sites where every minute matters. Advanced service with even quicker response times, a dedicated Account Manager, a private Slack channel, and direct phone support.
Can I see speed tests comparing Cloudways vs WP Engine?
Yes! You can read our own articles comparing overall performance and speed tests, or read this 3rd party review of Cloudways vs. WP Engine (with speed tests)
How does Cloudways caching compare to WP Engine?
Cloudways offers an out-of-the-box caching stack which includes Memcached, Varnish, Nginx, and Redis to deliver fast responses. WP Engine forces you to install an Advanced Caching plugin to match this level of performance.
WP Engine also disallows plugins like WP Super Cache, WP File Cache, and W3 Total Cache, preventing you to apply further optimizations that can’t be done server-side.
Is CDN available with Cloudways?
Yes — it’s included on any plan you choose. You can easily set up CDN from your dashboard, even if you’ve never done this kind of integration before. CloudwaysCDN delivers extremely fast experiences for your user, starting as low as $1 per 25GB.
How can I be sure my business site is safe?
Security is a top priority at Cloudways. We take a proactive approach to keeping your servers safe and secure from malicious traffic, malware and attacks.
These measures are available on any plan you choose:
- Dedicated Firewalls
- 1-Click Free SSL Certificate
- IP Whitelisting
- Regular Security Patching
- Two-Factor Authentication
- Bot Protection
