Founded in 2009, Cloudways is a Malta-based hosting company offering app deployment and fully managed cloud hosting.
Review
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Sales
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Cloudways offers email and live chat for pre-sales questions. I first sent an email to Cloudways, curious to learn more about the free trial offered, but received no response to my questions. After seven days of waiting, I popped on live chat. I spoke with support rep Peter in-depth about Cloudways history, free trial plan and guarantees. Peter was attentive and polite, answering all of my questions easily. When I mentioned that I had not received a response to my email questions, Peter asked for my email address and told me that he would see to it that answers were forthcoming. I never heard anything back. Though live chat support is excellent, the email sales team needs to get their act together.
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Setup
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PowerCloud plans can only be started up after potential clients request a free quote and Click & Go hosting plans are activated instantly after signing up for the 24-hour free trial. Seconds after signing up for the trial plan I received an email that detailed everything I needed to know to get started. The Click & Go plans time out after a day. I was told I could restore my cloud drive to continue my trial after the initial testing period had expired from within my online control panel, but that did not work. I reached out to support and they were able to take care of that for me.
When you’re ready to move from a trial drive to a full-on hosting account, you simply enter your payment details into the web-based control panel and then verify your account through live chat or email. Setup was easy-going and smooth as can be.
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Billing
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Cloudways accepts all major credit cards and billing questions are answered through a web-based ticket system. I was billed correctly during my stay and had no difficulty with cancelling my account.
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Pricing
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Self managed hosting account prices start at $14.95/month, fully managed hosting is $54.90 a month and up, and PowerCloud accounts are $99/month or more.
I ran one app--Wordpress--on a Rackspace First Generation Cloud Server that allowed for up to one gigabyte of bandwidth and was charged $28.95/month. This puts Cloudways on the more expensive side of the hosting scale, though certainly within the realm of acceptable.
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Reliability
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Cloudways shines when it comes to reliability. The hardware and network at Cloudways operated at 100-percent during a one year stay.
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Help & Support
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Cloudways uses a ticket system and live chat to handle support calls, and support engineers are available around the clock. There is an international telephone number available as well, though I found techs slow to answer questions, often putting me on-hold, making it not worth the cost of calling.
Live chat responds quickly, though I was referred to an online trouble ticket system for more advanced support. Ticket response times varied largely. I was able to get a response nearly instantly on a few occasions, but most times it took from a few hours to a few days to hear back.
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Uptime
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According to my premium uptime monitor, Cloudways held on to a 100-percent uptime rating over a one-year period.
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Guarantee
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99.999% uptime guarantee.
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30-day money back guarantee.
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Terms of Service
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The Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy can be read in full online. Highlights include:
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Clients must be of legal age to enter into binding hosting contract.
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Accounts may not be shared or resold.
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Illegal files and content not allowed.
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Unsolicited advertising and spamming forbidden.
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Bottom Line
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Advantages
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Solid uptime.
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Mobile monitoring apps are exceptional.
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Wordpress and Joomla migrators.
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Free Click & Go trial accounts available.
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Web-based console is easy-to-use and understand.
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Good help documentation.
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On-demand scalability.
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Money back guarantee.
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Ability to deploy apps on single or multiple cloud hosts.
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Disadvantages
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No toll-free telephone support.
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PayPal payments not allowed.
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