Cloudways Pricing Explained: What You Actually Pay For
Cloudways pricing explained properly. If you’ve read why I’m actually migrating to Cloudways, this is the page that answers the next honest question, what does it actually cost, and what are you paying for at each tier.
A note before the numbers below: Cloudways bills globally in US dollars, there’s no Australian pricing option. Every figure on this page is USD, labelled that way throughout rather than just once here, since it’s easy to skim past a single disclaimer. At today’s rate, roughly 1 USD = 1.43 AUD, so that US$11/mo entry plan works out to somewhere around A$16 once converted, plus whatever your bank charges on the international transaction. Worth checking your own card’s foreign transaction fee before assuming the sticker price is the final one.
The thing worth understanding first
Cloudways doesn’t own its own servers. It partners with five cloud infrastructure providers, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, and Google Cloud, and layers its own management dashboard, security, and support on top. So when you’re pricing Cloudways, you’re actually pricing two things bundled into one number: the raw server cost from whichever provider you pick, and Cloudways’ management fee for not having to touch that infrastructure directly yourself.
That markup is real, typically somewhere around double what the raw cloud infrastructure would cost you buying it directly. Worth being upfront about that rather than pretending Cloudways is simply cheap. What you’re actually paying for is not having to be your own sysadmin.
| Provider | Entry price (monthly, USD) | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean Standard | ~US$11/mo | 1GB RAM, 1 core, 25GB SSD, 1TB bandwidth |
| DigitalOcean Premium (NVMe) | ~US$14/mo | Same specs, faster NVMe storage |
| Vultr Standard | ~US$14/mo | Comparable specs to DigitalOcean |
| Vultr High-Frequency | ~US$16/mo | Faster CPUs, NVMe storage |
| Linode (Akamai) | ~US$14/mo | Similar to Vultr, no premium tier |
| AWS | ~US$36/mo | Enterprise infrastructure, higher overhead |
| Google Cloud | ~US$37/mo | Enterprise-grade, strongest global network |
For most WordPress sites, DigitalOcean or Vultr is the sensible starting point, not AWS or Google Cloud. Those two exist for genuinely large, enterprise-scale applications, not a small business site or a growing blog. Don’t let “AWS” sound more serious and end up paying triple for infrastructure a US$14 server would handle fine.
Paying annually instead of monthly typically saves around 25%, DigitalOcean’s US$11 becomes roughly US$8.25/mo, Vultr and Linode’s US$14 becomes roughly US$10.50/mo. Worth doing once you’re confident in the migration, not before, since switching servers again if something’s wrong wastes the discount.
What’s actually included, not gated behind a higher tier
This is the part that matters more than the base price, since it’s where a lot of budget hosts quietly claw money back later.
That last one is worth pausing on. Pricing is per-server, not per-site, so if you’re running more than one WordPress install, like I am, griffithpromarketing.com plus the other sites in my own stack, a single server can host all of them, you’re not paying a separate fee per domain the way some hosts structure it.
Where the real costs actually add up
Nothing hidden exactly, but worth knowing before you commit, since these are genuinely easy to skip past on a pricing page.
- Cloudflare Enterprise CDN — optional, roughly US$5/mo, only worth it once you’ve got real global traffic to justify it.
- Premium phone support — optional, US$100-500/mo, most people never need this, standard support is included free and generally responsive.
- Bandwidth overages — mostly a concern on AWS or Google Cloud plans specifically, less of an issue on DigitalOcean or Vultr’s more generous default allowances.
- Server upgrades as you grow — the honest, expected cost. You’ll outgrow a US$14 server eventually if the site actually succeeds, and that’s a good problem to have, not a hidden fee.
One genuinely good inclusion worth flagging: Object Cache Pro comes bundled free on 4GB+ servers, a caching tool that normally costs around US$95/mo bought separately. If your site’s already at the size where that matters, it’s a real saving, not just a marketing line.
What this actually costs for a site like mine
For griffithpromarketing.com specifically, a straightforward WordPress site without huge traffic yet, the entry-level DigitalOcean plan is the realistic starting point, somewhere around US$11-14 a month depending on standard versus premium NVMe. That’s genuinely comparable to a mid-tier shared hosting plan, not a dramatic jump, which is worth knowing if you’ve been assuming “cloud hosting” automatically means paying enterprise prices.
If your site’s already dealing with real traffic spikes or you’re running several sites off one server, worth sizing up from there, but there’s no reason to start bigger than you currently need. You can scale the server up later without penalty, since there’s no lock-in either way.
Test your own site’s actual TTFB before assuming you need this at all, by the way, my own testing found hosting wasn’t actually my bottleneck. I’m still migrating, for scalability reasons, not because the numbers demanded it. Worth knowing which situation you’re actually in before you spend anything.
See the Current Plans Yourself
Pricing shifts, worth checking the live numbers before deciding rather than relying purely on what’s written here.
See Cloudways Plans →All prices on this page are USD, since Cloudways bills globally in US dollars with no Australian pricing option. Sourced and accurate at the time of writing. Cloudways uses pay-as-you-go billing and pricing can change, always check the current plans page for the live figure before purchasing, and factor in your own bank’s foreign transaction fee on top of the exchange rate.