What Cloudways manages on an $11 server
You pick a cloud server from DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud, and Cloudways runs the stack on it. Every Flexible plan includes:
- Free Let's Encrypt SSL and a server-level firewall (Imunify360)
- Staging environments, with no limit on apps per server
- Automated or on-demand backups, though offsite backup storage costs $0.033 per GB per server
- 24/7 support by live chat and tickets
- Free migration of your first website by Cloudways' engineers
Object Cache Pro, which Cloudways says usually costs $95 a month, is free only on servers with 4GB of RAM or more, so the $11 Micro misses out. Cloudflare Enterprise CDN costs extra on Flexible, from $4.99 per domain a month.
If you'd rather run a server yourself without the managed layer, see our DigitalOcean page.
DigitalOcean prices on Cloudways, by the hour and capped
Prices as listed on Cloudways' pricing page on 4 October 2026, in US dollars, for DigitalOcean's Basic servers with the Standard or Premium toggle. There's no intro price, term or renewal price, because nothing is billed up front.
Each hourly rate is the monthly price spread over 672 hours. Run a DigitalOcean, Linode or Vultr server through a longer month and Cloudways' billing guide says you'll "still pay only the capped monthly price". AWS and Google Cloud have no cap. Autonomous, the hands-off product billed per application, starts at $99 a month on its Growth plan.
Delete, don't stop: trimming an hourly bill
Start on Standard Micro and scale when traffic says so. If you resize mid-month, Cloudways splits the bill by the hours each size ran, so testing a bigger server for a weekend costs a weekend.
Delete what you've finished with. Cloudways' own guide is blunt: "Stopping, pausing, or leaving a server inactive does not stop billing." Charges end once the server is deleted, so download a backup first. A forgotten server is the hosting version of an unused subscription.
Switch paid add-ons on early in the month. They're "charged for the full month upon activation", even if you delete them days later.
Watch bandwidth on busy sites. Extra DigitalOcean bandwidth costs $0.02 per GB.
Check the banner before signing up. On 4 October 2026 the pricing page read "Get 30% OFF for 3 Months on All Plans", and its button opened the normal signup with no code shown. Discounts appear under Credits & Discounts in billing, and only one discount promo code can be active at a time.
Agencies and multi-site owners get the most from Cloudways
Cloudways fits people who run several sites or apps and want a server to themselves. There's no limit on applications per server, so five small client sites on one $24 Standard Small works out to $4.80 a site each month. That's plain arithmetic, and whether five fit depends on their traffic. WordPress, Magento, Laravel and PHP apps all get the same managed stack.
Test your site on the trial, then start paying on Standard Micro. Move to Premium only if NVMe storage matters to you, since it costs $3 more a month at Micro size. Keep AWS and Google Cloud for when you need a specific region, because neither has a monthly cap to protect your budget.
Skip Cloudways if you want one fixed price paid up front for years, or if you'd rather never think about servers: the hourly model rewards attention. For everyone else, the 3-day trial is the Cloudways coupon to use first, with no card and nothing to type.
