We got covered by a large publication and traffic went up forty times in an hour. Resized the server from 2GB to 8GB from my phone, took ninety seconds, no migration and no downtime. On shared hosting that would have been a dead site.
Pros
Vertical scaling actually works under pressure. Real cloud resources. No contract.
Cons
Had to buy email hosting separately, which I did not expect at signup.
Problems it solves
Survived a traffic spike that would have taken the old host down.
R
Ryan O.
Head of Delivery · Marketing agency · 11–50 employees
4.5
June 6, 2026
“Our default for client sites above a certain size”
Used daily for 2+ years
Shared hosting for brochure sites, Cloudways for anything with traffic or a shop. Cloning a server to build a staging copy takes minutes and the team features mean junior staff can deploy without root access.
Pros
Cloning and staging are excellent. Hourly billing means test servers cost pennies.
Cons
Base-tier support is fine for platform issues and unhelpful for application problems.
B
Ben C.
Freelance Consultant · Consulting · Self-employed
3.5
April 26, 2026
“More than I needed”
Used monthly for 6–12 months
Moved from shared hosting expecting a speed boost and got one, along with concepts I did not want to learn — servers versus applications, choosing a provider, sizing. Fine for a developer. I went back to managed shared hosting.
Pros
Fast and genuinely flexible.
Cons
Assumes more technical comfort than a small business owner has.
