Cloudways Review Plus Setup – WP Media Mastery

It’s super easy to get started on the Cloudways platform and it’s better than shared hosting in every respect, from speed to value for money. By the time you’ve read through this Cloudways review and set yourself up on Cloudways, you’ll know just as much as I do.

I Switched And I Never Looked Back

I have to admit that the thought of switching my hosting provider was daunting.

Not that switching hosts is difficult, it’s just that I’d never been on cloud hosting before and I was pretty familiar with cPanel, so learning about a new platform and how to set things up required a good deal of reading before taking the leap.

To be honest, it’s probably more difficult for the cPanel aficionados to get their heads around a different management panel than it is for newbies who don’t know any different.

But I was actually amazed at how easy it was to migrate to Cloudways and equally surprised at the simplicity of their custom built control panel that it left me wondering whether I wasn’t missing something. Everything you need is at your fingertips, far more so than with cPanel.

I felt compelled to write this Cloudways review and comprehensive setup guide for everyone else who may want to benefit from super fast hosting and dedicated resources at more than attractive prices but may be reticent in taking the first step.

This guide provides a shortcut to getting started on Cloudways without having to read through multiple knowledge base articles.

You’ll be up and running within 15 to 20 minutes maximum and save yourself heaps of anxiety.

And if you use my promo code WPMM25OFF, you’ll get 25% off your first 2 months.

It doesn’t get any sweeter than that!

REVIEW

1. How Cloudways Works

As a cloud WordPress hosting provider, Cloudways boasts over 60 data centers around the globe and operates as a server management conduit between 5 different cloud providers and their clients.

As such, their focus is on managed cloud hosting.

Nevertheless, they also cater for developers who wish to run their own PHP applications. Deployment can even take place from a GIT repository. Each time the repository is updated, the application updates automatically. Command line access is provided through SSH but root access is not possible due to security reasons.

In truth, you could go direct to a cloud infrastructure provider such as Digital Ocean and set up your own “droplet”. It may save you a couple of dollars but then you’re entirely on your own.

Considering the management and support you get in return for a really small management fee, it’s money well spent.

TRY CLOUDWAYS FREE FOR 3 DAYS

1.1 Super Easy Control Panel

There are 2 Control Panels plus an Account Management Panel.

No more messing about with an outdated and difficult to use cPanel.

The Application Control Panel is simple, modern, natural, easy to use and everything is right there at your fingertips.

The Server Control Panel is just as easy to navigate.

1.2 The Cloudways Bot

The Cloudways bot is a highly intelligent and automated monitoring and notifications assistant which eyeballs your account on a regular basis.

It will notify you about the health of your servers, applications, security, billing and performance.

Depending on the channel you choose to receive notifications (Hip Chat, Slack, Email, API) it will alert you to recommendations, tips and tricks on how to improve the performance of your server.

Moreover, it helps with support as you will see later on.

2. Top Features

Pay As You Use – NO CONTRACTS!
Plans From $10 Per Month.
5 Cloud Providers (Digital Ocean, Google, Amazon, Linode, VULTR).
Host Unlimited Websites.
Fully Dedicated Resources (No deceptive marketing).
Latest Speed Technology (SSD, HTTP/2).
Optimized Stack With Caching (Including Memcached, Apache, Varnish, NGINX, Redis).
FREE Breeze Inhouse Caching Plugin (Or Use Your Own).
Multiple PHP Versions And PHP 7.X Ready For Ultimate Speed.
Cloudways CDN (Powered By Stackpath – was MaxCDN).
60+ Data Centers For Superior Performance And Global Response Times.
1-Click FREE SSL Certificates.
24/7 Live Chat And Ticketing For Unsurpassed Support.
Comprehensive Knowledgebase.
1 Free Managed Migration.
1-Click Automated Or On-Demand Backup And Restore – Choose A Frequency From 1 Hour to 7days.
1-Click Revert.
Extend And Scale Storage In A Few Clicks.
Vertical Scaling – 1-Click Hosting Feature Scales RAM, CPU And Storage.
Deploy Over 10 Sites In 1-Click.
Dedicated Staging.
Git Integration.
1-Click Cloning Of Entire Server Or Individual Site.
FREE Cloudways Migrator Plugin Can Move Your Site Seamlessly To Cloudways.

3. Independent Cloudways Reviews

4. Choice of 5 Cloud Providers

With a choice of 5 cloud infrastructures, there’s something for all types of site development from simple blogs to advanced e-commerce stores.

4.1 Digital Ocean

Relatively new in the cloud arena.
Cheapest cloud provider but growing rapidly.
Very reliable infrastructure.
Cheap, UNLIMITED, bandwidth. Great if you use plenty of it.
Ability to scale up but not down. (Although you can always clone the server to a smaller one).
Backup/restore processes are a bit slower than with Amazon (as Cloudways stores backups on Amazon infrastructure).
High performance SSD storage.
7 Data centers in 3 countries.
From $10 per month.

4.2 Linode

Mid priced cost effective option offering cheap bandwidth.
Performance orientated.
Reliable infrastructure.
Ability to scale up but not down. (Although you can always clone the server to a smaller one).
Backup/restore processes are a bit slower than with Amazon (backups stored on Amazon infrastructure).
8 Data centers across the USA, Europe, Singapore and Japan.
From $12 per month.

4.3 VULTR

Relatively New Provider but growing quickly.
Most economical provider of all offering almost unlimited bandwidth.
Very reliable infrastructure.
Cheap bandwidth. Great if you use plenty of it.
Ability to scale up but not down. (Although you can always clone the server to a smaller one).
Backup/restore processes are a bit slower than with Amazon (as Cloudways stores backups on Amazon infrastructure).
High performance SSD storage.
Data centers across 13 locations.
From $11 per month.

4.4 AWS (Amazon)

On the expensive side (especially for smaller servers).
Extremely reliable infrastructure.
Ability to scale up and down.
Quick backup/restore processes (as Cloudways stores backups on Amazon infrastructure).
Snapshot backup available.
Bandwidth is expensive so expect bigger invoices with higher usage.
Data centers in 14 locations.
Well recognized brand.
From $36.51 per month.

4.5 Google

Cheaper than Amazon.
Extremely powerful infrastructure.
Ability to scale up and down.
Quick backup/restore processes but a little slower than Amazon (as Cloudways stores backups on Amazon infrastructure).
Snapshot backup available.
Most expensive bandwidth.
Aimed at large businesses and resource intensive websites.
Data centers in 13 locations.
Well recognized brand.
From $33.30 per month.

5. Managed CMS And PHP Services

Cloudways offers a number of managed CMS platforms and PHP services.

WordPress.
Magento.
PrestaShop.
Joomla.
Drupal.
PHP.
Laravel.
Open Cart.

6. Designed For Maximum Speed

6.1 Advanced Stack

Cloudways have ingeniously designed their webstack so as to pump up both performance and stability.

Nginx is well known for performance while Apache is renowned for Stability.

Cloudways uses both of them and then sandwiches Varnish (cache) in between, creating a perfect combination whereby the static content is served by Nginx and the dynamic content is passed to Apache which is cached by Varnish in between.

This intensifies stability from back and speed from the front.

Brilliant!

To further enhance speed, the stack comes with built-in caching such as Memcached (speeds up database queries), Varnish and Redis together with the latest PHP versions (default is PHP 7) and a choice of MySQL or MariaDB databases.

6.2 Dedicated Resources

Unlike shared hosting where resources are shared, Cloudways allocates completely dedicated resources to each and every server. The resources referred to include memory, bandwidth, disk space (storage) and processor (CPU) resources (the better the processor the greater the amount of traffic your site will be able to handle and the quicker your pages will be loaded).

Additionally, servers are SSD based which speeds up disk access tremendously. These are fully managed by Cloudways.

You still have full control of your own cloud server with blazing fast global response times.

6.3 Additional Speed Enhancements

FREE Breeze page caching plugin.
Cloudways CDN, powered by Stackpath – formerly MaxCDN. The additional data centers across the globe means that your site will be served to visitors from the center closest to their location, thereby speeding up the delivery of your site. The cost is ridiculously low at $1 per 25GB of bandwidth.

7. Top Shelf Security

Dedicated Firewall Plus Regular Security Patches– Protects all servers.
1-Click SSL Certificate Installation – Additional protection is provided with a FREE Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate or Let’s Encrypt Wildcard SSL. A really nice feature is that you can easily add additional domains to update your certificate – something you can’t do with shared hosting.
Automated Backups – By default, backups are performed daily but you change frequecy from every hour through to every 7 days.
Restore – 1-Click.
Auto Healing Servers – Auto healing server restarts ensure that most cloud server issues are automatically healed so you won’t have to worry about your site crashing.
Two Factor Authentication For your Account.
IP Whitelisting – For unrestricted access when using SFTP and SSH.

8. Unrenowned Flexibility

Pay As You Go – No long term contracts. Pay only for the resources you use.
1-Click Vertical Scaling – Resources can be easily scaled without affecting server customization.
Easily Allocate Addition Storage – Without changing other server parameters.
1-Click Deploy – Install unlimited applications (sites) on a single server.
1-Click Revert – Rollback changes pushed from staging to live environment. You can also revert a restored backup with 1 click.

9. Expert Support

9.1 Support Via 5 Entry Points (Bot, Live Chat, Ticketing, Knowledge Base, Forum)

You can request support in one of 5 ways.

Cloudways have developed their own intelligent bot designed to provide answers to a number of queries without having to waste unnecessary time with a support person.

This service is invoked through search and the live chat facility and oftentimes you will be provided with links to knowledge base (KB) and how-to articles. You can also access knowledgebase articles directly.

Should you want to speak to a live person, simply type “person” into the chat field. You can request a chat transcript by email with any chat service (bot or live).

You also have the option to send a support request by ticket if you feel your issue deserves a greater level of attention.

Support can also be sourced through the forum.

9.2 Active Community

Not only does Cloudways have their very own community forum for logged in users, they also have a Facebook group dedicated only to users.

Both of these platforms will give you input from various different experts in their respective fields.

9.3 Managed Migrations (One Free)

You get one free managed migration. But seriously, migrating a site to Cloudways is as easy as pie!

Simply install Cloudways’ migration plugin, enter a few details from your Cloudways control panel and the migrator tool does the rest.

Your site is migrated to a Cloudways URL (within minutes) which cannot be indexed by search engines so there’s no fear of duplicate content.

To make your site live, simply point your domain to Cloudways.

That’s all there is to it!

10. Easy Staging And Cloning

Staging your application (website) is achieved in a total of 2 clicks.

The staging environment is password protected so no need to worry about duplicate content. An SSL certificate comes pre-installed. You can elect to use a custom certificate if you wish.

Staging provides a completely separate but exact copy of your site on either the same server as your live environment or a new server. Your choice.

You use staging to test out any coding changes, design changes and plugins without affecting the live site in any way.

Once you’re happy with the changes on your staging site, you simply push them to the live environment.

INGENIOUS FEATURE: If you have pushed changes from your staging environment to your live environment, you can revert the changes by using the Rollback option (in the staging section of the live environment).

You can copy data back and forth between live and staging at any time (push and pull operations).

It’s worth noting that, being a testing environment, the Cloudways CDN is not available on staging.

Cloning is used to make an exact copy of your live site to a new environment. You make it live on the new environment after effecting any changes you wish to.

11. Add-Ons

DNS Made Easy – Easily manage all of your DNS services right here under one roof. If you are going to use Cloudflare, then your DNS will be managed there.
Rackspace Email – If you need mailboxes for your domain. Managed by Cloudways for $1 per month per mailbox.
Elastic Email – For high volume emails such as newsletters and campaigns. These are sent via your server. Cost varies according the number of emails chosen (different packages). Personally, I would recommend you use an email service provider like Convertkit. You also benefit from being able to add subscribe forms on your site in order to build your email list.

12. Pricing

The pay as you go pricing model is based on actual resources used in any given month.

The above illustration shows some of the most popular plans offered using Digital Ocean as the cloud infrastructure.

You can monitor server usage from the control panel.

And then keep a tab on your up to date billing.

13. Review Summary – Pros And Cons

I choose to host with Cloudways because I firmly believe that their hosting platform is top shelf and offers tremendous value for money compared to other hosting providers.

Granted, you can go direct to the likes of Digital Ocean and set up a “droplet” for as little as $5 per month (compared to $10). But most of us aren’t equipped enough to setup and manage servers.

Considering what Cloudways are putting in behind the scenes, the small premium is well worth every cent.

Were it not for the fact that the Cloudways CDN integration (for $1 per 25GB bandwidth) is pretty much limited to use with the Breeze cache plugin, I would have given Cloudways a rating of 5 (out of 5) and not 4.9.

That said, it’s a free world. Cloudways don’t disallow integration with other caching plugins and CDN service providers. If you choose not to use Breeze, then you have to do that independently at a slightly higher cost (and I strongly recommend Stackpath) or run Breeze together with your own caching plugin, which I wouldn’t suggest.

Other than what I’ve mentioned, you’ll see from the setup tutorial below that Cloudways is a breeze (pun intended) to use. Not only do I have no hesitation in suggesting them, I am 100% confident that they are the very best out there and I highly recommend them for all levels of hosting, from beginner through to advanced.

REMEMBER TO USE MY PROMO CODE (WPMM25OFF) FOR 25% OFF YOUR FIRST 2 MONTHS.

REMEMBER TO USE MY PROMO CODE: WPMM25OFF FOR 25% OFF YOUR FIRST 2 MONTH’S HOSTING FEES.

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SETUP GUIDE

1. Start Trial

Dial up the Cloudways website.

You automatically get a 3 day free trial. Click either “Try For Free” or “Start For Free”.

Complete your details and enter my promo code WPMM25OFF fore 25% off your first 2 months. This will take effect once you upgrade to the paid plan. Make sure you do this before your trial expires.

Head on over to your email inbox and confirm your email address. You’ll then be presented with the following screen.

Fill out all the necessary details, as numbered.

The process to launch the server could take anywhere from 7 minutes to 13 minutes.

When complete, you will see a screen with your IP address.

It can’t get any simpler.

Your server is setup and WordPress is installed.

Let’s move onto configuration. You can go to your application by clicking on the www link (as seen above) or by following the Applications link on the website’s navigation menu.

2. Map Domain And Install SSL Certificate.

You will notice that Cloudways has assigned an application URL (1), a WordPress admin URL (2), a WordPress username and password (3) as well as a database name and password (4).

At this stage, the site is not yet live on the internet.

The above URL’s will change as soon as the domain name is mapped. Once you point your domain name to Cloudways and the DNS propagates, your site will go live.

Before mapping the domain, it’s best to visit your domain name host and point your domain name to Cloudways by setting up an A record for both www and non-www versions of your site. (I’m with Namecheap but Cloudflare handles my DNS so the illustration below uses the Cloudflare interface. They work exactly the same way).

Now select Domain Management on your control panel.

Add your canonical and non-canonical domain.

That completes domain name mapping.

Select SSL Certificate.

Key in your email address and domain name. Then click Install Certificate.

If the SSL certificate does not install at this stage, it’s because your domain name has not fully propagated. You can check for propagation at whatsmydns.net.

If you return to the Access Details tab, you will notice that the application URL and WordPress admin URL have been changed.

Your site is now live.

3. Migrate A Site To Cloudways.

Migrating to Cloudways follows almost the exact same procedure as setting up a site.

Cloudways has built a plugin that makes it real easy to migrate your existing site.

Here’s how you do it.

Follow steps 1 and 2 above to create an account, set up a server on Cloudways, map your domain and install an SSL certificate.

Now login to your WordPress dashboard on the site you are going to migrate. Go to Plugins > Add New. Then search for Cloudways WordPress Migrator.

Now fill in details marked 1 to 7 below.

You can match the field entries using the 2 images below with the corresponding numbering.

The Email address you used to register with Cloudways.
The full URL of the site on the Cloudways server. This should match your current site.
Database Name. Copy from Application Settings screen.
IP Address. Copy from Application Settings screen
SFTP Username. Copy this from Server Management > Master Credentials.
SFTP Password. Copy this from Server Management > Master Credentials.

Agree to the terms and conditions and click Migrate.

You will be returned to the Cloudways platform where you will wait until the migration completes.

That’s all there is to it!

4. How To Set Up Cloudflare (Free) On Cloudways

The Cloudflare CDN adds a whole lot of data centers from which your site will be delivered to visitors in close proximity thereby giving you the extra benefit of cloud hosting.

Moreover, Cloudflare speeds up websites by 100% and reduces the number of requests from your server by over 65% with a concomitant decrease in bandwidth usage.

This will save you hosting costs and the great thing is it’s free.

Head on over to Cloudflare and sign up for an account. (I already have a Cloudflare account running a number of sites so your initial couple of screens won’t appear here).

Now Add a Site.

Click on the Free Plan and then the Confirm Plan button.

Now confirm.

Cloudflare will query your DNS.

Click Continue.

Go back to your domain host and change the nameservers. Here’s how I do it with Namecheap.

Cloudflare will complete the nameserver check. You may need to click on Re-check Nameservers.

You will receive an email when Cloudflare is done. Then return to the Cloudflare website, click the Overview button and refresh your page.

Now go back to the Cloudways Server Management dashboard > Settings and Packages > Advanced. Then select Cloudflare under the WAF module. This will allow your server to see the visitor’s real IP address.

Done!

Settings You Need To Enable Within Cloudflare

Changing the nameservers at you domain host to point to Cloudflare automatically assigns your DNS management to Cloudflare. Any additions or changes will have to effected through Cloudflare’s DNS management tab.

Forcing HTTPS is better achieved with a rewrite rule in the .htaccess file. (See the rewrites section). A 301 gives Google and other search engines a clear idea of which version of your site is the canonical.

Don’t confuse this with forcing HTTPS. They are not the same. This function rewrites only the URL of the specific resource that may exist on HTTP.

Please don’t enable minification twice. If enabled through your page caching plugin then disable it here or vice versa.

I use the WP Rocket caching plugin and I enable minification and concatenation (merging) of JavaScript from there. For me Rocketloader doesn’t improve speed. You may like to experiment with this as each site is different.

5. Cloudways CDN

Unlike Cloudflare which caches a domain, a CDN caches static assets such as images and other media, JavaScript, CSS and HTML files.

This is called Offloading. Because these assets are stored on the CDN’s network, it greatly reduces the number of requests from your server (and traffic) whilst also reducing bandwidth and subsequent hosting costs.

Furthermore, due to the geographical distribution of edge servers, a CDN will also have a very positive effect on page loading times.

The Cloudways CDN is powered by Stackpath (previously MaxCDN), the very best CDN in my personal opinion.

The CDN integrates seamlessly with the Breeze caching plugin which was built by Cloudways specifically for use with their hosting platform and if you activate and integrate the Cloudways CDN, Breeze will be automatically installed too.

Whilst I personally don’t use Breeze, I can understand why some people claim it’s the fastest caching plugin around.

If you’re happy to stick with Breeze cache, the Cloudways CDN comes at a cost of $1 per month (for 25GB), which is insanely cheap. If you prefer to stick with your own caching plugin, then it’s best to go direct to Stackpath and integrate the CDN with your site. This option will cost you around $10 per month. All the best caching plugins have included integration with Stackpath.

OK. Let’s get to the setup.

Head on over to your Applications Control Panel and select the CDN tab.

Enter your site’s full URL including http / https and click Create.

Now integrate the CDN with your application by clicking Apply.

If you ever decide to remove the CDN subscription, please make sure to visit the Breeze > CDN tab and disable the integration and remove the URL (CName) before deleting the CDN subscription. If you don’t do this, you may find broken parts of your site.

Rewrite Rules You Must Add To .htaccess File

If you have set up your DNS records correctly, you may have 4 versions of your site living on the internet.

https://www.example.com
https://example.com
http://www.example.com
http://example.com

When your site runs on HTTPS, you need to ensure that users who may manually enter your site’s URL using the HTTP protocol are redirected to the secure (and canonical) version of your site.

Please place the following rewrite rule into your .htaccess file.

This rule forces HTTPS. Without it, someone using the HTTP protocol will get a security warning and will not be able to access your site.

Make sure you use this rule and not another one you may find on the internet:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

If your site runs on HTTP, use this rule:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} ^https$
RewriteRule .* http://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}</IfModule>

If your canonical site is preceded with www, I would suggest you add another rewrite rule that directs all traffic to this canonical.

Don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain details.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

If your canonical site is non-www, use this rule.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

The above redirect rules serve 3 purposes:

They help Google (and other search engines) to understand which version of your site is the canonical version. This is important because …
If you don’t put them in place, you may (inadvertently) be diluting your SEO juice by sharing it between 4 different versions of your site.
They create sound user experience protocols because users will ALWAYS reach your website.

That’s All Folks

Well that’s it for the setup guide.

It’s now up to you to go through the rest of the control panel screens and familiarize yourself with what’s there.

As you can see, it’s super easy to navigate your way around Cloudways.

Are you ready to switch to the best Cloud Hosting Platform available?