Cloudways Pricing Explained: Plans, Costs and What You Get

Cloudways starts at $11 a month for a 1 GB DigitalOcean server, with five cloud providers and no visit caps. See every plan and the add-on costs.

By Galactic News Editorial · Published 2026-11-11T07:27:48+00:00 · Updated 2026-11-11T07:27:48+00:00

Cloudways Pricing Explained: Plans, Costs and What You Get

Cloudways pricing starts at $11 a month. That buys a 1 GB DigitalOcean server with 25 GB of storage and 1 TB of bandwidth. The final bill depends on three choices: the cloud provider, the server size, and any add-ons. This guide explains every plan, what is included, and the costs that catch buyers out. Prices below are US list prices, checked in September and November 2026.

How Cloudways pricing works

Cloudways is managed cloud hosting. It sits on top of five infrastructure providers: DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud. You pick the provider and the server size. Cloudways manages the server setup, security patching, and software stack. You pay for the server, not for visits. There are no monthly visit caps and no traffic overages. Your bill rises only when you scale the server or add a paid extra.

Billing is hourly, invoiced monthly in arrears. There is no annual plan and no annual discount. A 3-day free trial runs without a credit card on most plans. There is no traditional money-back guarantee. Paid fees are non-refundable under the DigitalOcean terms of service, so use the trial before you pay.

Each server hosts unlimited applications and unlimited domains. That is the key difference from per-site hosts. One $11 server can hold several small WordPress sites. The cost per site falls as you add sites to the same server.

Cloudways pricing by provider

The pricing page opens with the Premium toggle on, which shows $14 for a 1 GB DigitalOcean server. The real entry price is $11. That is the Standard tier, which uses standard SSD storage. Premium uses faster NVMe storage. The table below shows the monthly ladder for the main providers.

Google Cloud starts higher. The smallest Google Cloud server costs $37.33 a month for 1.7 GB of RAM. The 3.75 GB size costs $84 a month, and the 7.5 GB size costs $152.02. DigitalOcean and Vultr are the cheapest providers. AWS and Google Cloud cost far more for the same RAM, and suit buyers who need those ecosystems rather than the lowest price.

Storage and bandwidth grow with each size. A 1 GB DigitalOcean Standard server includes 25 GB of SSD storage and 1 TB of bandwidth. The 2 GB size includes 50 GB and 2 TB. The 4 GB size includes 80 GB and 4 TB. The 8 GB size includes 160 GB and 5 TB. Larger servers go up to 192 GB of RAM at $1,056 a month on DigitalOcean Standard.

What is included at every Cloudways price

Every Cloudways server includes staging, free SSL certificates, a server firewall, and one free migration. You can clone a site, test changes on staging, and push them live without a second server. There are no visit caps, so a traffic spike does not trigger overage charges. The bill only changes when you resize the server.

Object Cache Pro is included free on servers with 4 GB of RAM or more. It is a Redis-based object caching plugin for WordPress that normally costs $95 a month on its own. That makes the 4 GB DigitalOcean Standard server, at $46 a month, the value point of the range for WooCommerce and busy WordPress sites.

Cloudways also includes 24/7 support on every plan. Priority support is a paid extra at $100 a month. The platform is owned by DigitalOcean, which acquired Cloudways in 2022. Day-to-day, the platform still runs on its own dashboard and its own support team.

The add-ons that change the bill

The base price is only part of the bill. Four add-ons decide the real monthly cost for most buyers.

• Cloudflare Enterprise CDN: from $4.99 per domain per month. It adds the enterprise firewall, image optimisation, and HTTP/3.
• Off-site backup storage: $0.033 per GB per month. Local backups are included; off-site copies are not.
• Malware protection: from $4 per application per month.
• Priority support: $100 per month.

Redis object caching is reported differently by different reviewers. Some list it as included, others as a paid add-on of about $14 a month per server. Confirm the current terms on the pricing page before you budget for it. A small site on a 1 GB server with the Cloudflare add-on and off-site backups pays about $16 to $18 a month in total, not $11. A store on a 4 GB server with the same extras pays about $52 a month.

Cloudways vs Kinsta: the cost gap

Cloudways and Kinsta solve the same problem in different ways. Cloudways charges for server resources. Kinsta charges by monthly visits and WordPress install count. Kinsta starts at $35 a month for one site with 35,000 visits and 10 GB of storage. Cloudways starts at $11 a month for a server that can hold unlimited sites.

At comparable sizes, Cloudways costs roughly a third to a half of Kinsta. A DigitalOcean 2 GB server at $24 a month holds several sites. Kinsta's two-site plan costs $70 a month. Kinsta answers with a simpler setup, Google Cloud Premium infrastructure, and Cloudflare Enterprise included on every plan. Cloudways answers with lower prices and no per-site or per-visit metering. Agencies that manage many client sites usually save money on Cloudways. A single high-traffic site that needs hands-off management may suit Kinsta better.

Bottom line

Cloudways pricing is transparent and starts at $11 a month for a 1 GB DigitalOcean Standard server. The Premium toggle on the pricing page shows $14 first, so switch it to Standard to see the real entry price. Budget for the add-ons: Cloudflare Enterprise, off-site backups, and malware protection are all extra. The best value is the 4 GB server at $46 a month, which adds Object Cache Pro free and holds several sites. Check the live pricing page before you buy, since server prices and add-on terms change.