Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels
Table of contents
- Introduction
- 1. Great support
- 2. Simplicity and ease of use
- 3. Scalability
- 4. Performance
- 5. Storage and number of WordPress installations
- 6. Staging environment
- 7. Security
- 8. Free migrations
- 9. Email
- 10. Temporary URL
- 11. Backups
- 12. Pricing based on server specs
- 13. Supporting independent small tech
- So which one should you choose?
- But wait… why not Kinsta? Or Flywheel?
- OK, but what about Siteground, Dreamhost, Hostpapa, and the others?
- Conclusion
- Your turn
Introduction
Choosing your web host is an important step in planning your website. Over the years, I’ve tried HostPapa, Siteground, InMotion, Flywheel, Dreamhost, and Kinsta, among others, but lately, I’ve narrowed it down to two—WPX and Cloudways.
Let’s find out a bit more about them…
WPX is a shared hosting service, meaning that your website will be located on the same server as other websites. Many shared hosting companies put too many websites on the same server. This reduces server speed and uptime, but Terry Kyle, the owner of WPX, launched his company precisely as an alternative to “low-spec servers massively overloaded with websites” (WPX), and he seems to have succeeded because WPX feels faster and better managed than all the other shared hosts I’ve tried. WPX also takes pride in being independent. They own all their servers, and they built their own content delivery network (CDN) rather than using third-party options. The company is also giving back to the community by way of its non-profit—a no-cage open-yard dog sanctuary.
Cloudways, on the other hand, get its cloud hosting infrastructure from three cloud providers: DigitalOcean (its parent company since 2022), AWS (Amazon), and Google Cloud. You can buy your hosting services directly from those providers for about half the price, but Cloudways manages the hosting for you. In other words, it acts as a middle person for those of us who don’t have much experience in server configuration and administration. Unlike shared hosting with many sites located on the same server, cloud hosting is based on a network of servers working together to distribute resources. This generally makes cloud hosting more flexible, scalable, and reliable than shared hosting.
Let’s now compare the two hosts based on 13 criteria that you may want to consider when selecting a host.
1. Great support
For some reason, when I started publishing websites, I never cared too much about support, maybe because I not-so-humbly thought I wouldn’t need it. But even if you don’t need a lot of support, it’s pretty nice to have someone knowledgeable always close by to quickly answer any question. And when things don’t go as planned, I’m really thankful to have good support.
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
| WPX is no doubt the best at this. I’ve never had such consistently great and quick support anywhere else. | At Cloudways, the support options are a bit slower and harder to find. |
| Chat support There are no bots taking your questions here—you can reach someone via chat in a few seconds, literally, and you are always talking to someone who is knowledgeable, helpful, and polite. The chat support service appears as a bubble in the bottom right corner of all WPX website pages. This means it is available to clients as well as for prepurchase questions and that no login is required. | Chat support Chat support is only offered to existing clients. If you have a prepurchase question, you have to send an email through a form or request a phone call. I haven’t asked many prepurchase questions, but those I have asked were answered within two to three hours. The answers were always clear and to the point. To use the chat support, you have to be a client, log in to your admin panel, and click on a not-so-obvious “Need a hand?” tab on the right-hand side of your browser window. To my knowledge, there is no “Support” menu item elsewhere in the admin panel. When using chat support, you don’t chat with a human right away. A bot gives you potentially helpful resources based on your questions. To be fair, it does quickly give you the option to “Talk to a person,” but there is that extra step. My experience is that the person replies within about five minutes. This person doesn’t seem to have access to the question you just asked the bot, so you have to copy and paste your question for them. That said, the support agents have always been knowledgeable, helpful, and polite. |
| Ticket-based support WPX also offers ticket-based support to its clients. The support section where you can open and follow up on tickets is easy to locate in the main menu of the WPX admin panel. Of course, the answers are not as instantaneous as with chat, but it is still quite fast—within 20 to 30 minutes—and just as helpful. | Ticket-based support The ticket-based support option is accessed with the same “Need a hand?” tab. To view your ticket history, you have to click on “Click here to create a Support Ticket,” so I had a hard time finding my history the first time around. When opening a ticket, my experience is that support agents reply within seven hours. In some cases, the answers were helpful, but in other cases, I was redirected to articles I had already read and steps I had already taken. This was a bit frustrating, as these felt like canned responses instead of personalized support. Once I marked a ticket “Solved” even when it wasn’t because I felt we were talking in circles. |
| Phone support WPX does not offer phone support, but since their chat and ticket-based support is so great, I never had a need for phone support. | Phone support I mentioned phone support for prepurchase questions, but once you are a client, phone support is only included in a premium plan available for 500 USD per month. |
Round 1: Support
Point for WPX. It’s just the fastest and most helpful support out there.
WPX: 1
Cloudways: 0
2. Simplicity and ease of use
Gone are the days when you were stuck in an ugly cpanel. Kinsta, Flywheel, and the likes have increased our expectations on that front, and that’s great. Both WPX and Cloudways offer custom admin panels, but they are quite different.
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
| WPX’s admin panel is an improvement on the cluttered cpanel, but it could still be a bit more modern and refined. What it’s great at, however, is making it super easy for non-tech people. WPX gives you access to what you need (PHP settings, databases, FTP users and settings, file manager, backups, etc.), but it doesn’t get lost in the details. | Cloudways’ admin panel is definitely prettier and more modern than WPX’s. In terms of ease of use, hosting a site on a DigitalOcean server (or another) through Cloudways is much simpler than doing it directly with DigitalOcean, but Cloudways presents many more configuration options in its admin panel than WPX. If you have a bit of knowledge in the field, you may love this—it’s pretty nice to be able to restart your server or increase its size with a few clicks, for example. If not, you may find this a bit intimidating at first and not know what to do with all the options offered. But you also don’t have to touch these options if you don’t want to. You can just leave them as they are and ask support if you need help. |
Round 2: Simplicity and ease of use
Points for both because preferences will vary based on the type or level of each user. That said, both could do a bit of usability testing to improve.
WPX: 2
Cloudways: 1
3. Scalability
A scalable host allows you to increase and decrease (scale up and down) your server’s central processing unit (CPU), random access memory (RAM or simply “memory”), and storage capacity to handle surges in visits and requests without disrupting your visitors’ experience.
Who needs a scalable host? You generally need a scalable host when you have a very high volume of traffic or you expect to need a lot more storage in the future.
Cloudways wins in terms of scalability. At WPX, if you need more space or bandwidth, you have to switch hosting plans, and you have only three plans to choose from. At Cloudways, if you opted for DigitalOcean, for example, you have about 16 increments to choose from and can therefore go from 1 GB of RAM, 25 GB of storage, 1 TB of bandwidth and 1 Core processor up to 192 GB of RAM, 3840 GB of storage, 12 TB of bandwidth and 32 Core processors in just ten minutes (provided you have the budget for that).
In WPX’s defense, their Elite plan offers “unlimited” bandwidth, but being a shared host, they do put a limit at some point. And you can’t scale beyond 60 GB of storage (which is really more than enough for most websites) and 3 Core processors.
One thing to note is that if, at Cloudways, you opted to use DigitalOcean, Linode, or Vultr as the cloud provider, you can easily scale up by dragging a toggle, but this is permanent. If you want to scale down, you can’t just drag it back on an as-needed basis like you can on the pricier Google or Amazon cloud solutions. You instead have to go through a server cloning procedure. Also, you can only increase the CPU, memory, and storage all at once; you can’t upgrade just the CPU and memory or just the storage like you could on a Google or Amazon cloud solution. That said, it is still much more scalable than any shared hosting will ever be.
Round 3: Scalability
Point for Cloudways.
WPX: 2
Cloudways: 2
4. Performance
Speed
It’s been said time and time again: your site should load within two seconds or people will start leaving. This is especially true for e-commerce websites. Your host is not the only factor that will impact the speed of your site, but it’s where it all begins. Both Cloudways and WPX are doing great in terms of speed and are good starting points for having a quick-loading website.
In the case of WPX, this is despite being a shared host. The people at WPX say this is possible thanks to SSD servers being underloaded with accounts, plus their very own content delivery network being optimized for WordPress.
Because Cloudways is a cloud host, one would expect it to be a faster host than WPX. However, some have tested the same website on multiple hosts and found that Cloudways was not always faster. Some say WPX is faster (here, for example) while others say Cloudways is (here, for example). Who knows? But both are quite fast.
Reliability
In terms of reliability, cloud hosting should be more reliable because sites are hosted on a network of servers. That said, in the time I’ve used WPX and Cloudways, I’ve experienced a significant downtime once at both hosts. Cloudways promises 99.99% uptime, while WPX has a 99.95% uptime guarantee.
A closer look and at ram, CPU and bandwidth
Let’s start with a quick spec comparison of WPX’s and Cloudways’ entry-level plans:
| WPX Business ($24.99/mo) | Cloudways on DigitalOcean Standard ($11/mo) |
|---|---|
| Shared hosting | Cloud hosting |
| Solid-state drive servers (SSD) | Solid-state drive servers (SSD) |
| 1 GB per site (up to 5 GB of ram for the account) | 1GB of ram (for the whole server) |
| 1 Core CPU | 1 Core CPU |
| 200 GB bandwidth | 1 TB bandwidth |
| Up to 5 websites | No limit on the number of websites |
| Content delivery network (CDN) | Content delivery network (CDN) |
| 3 server locations (US, UK, AU) + CDN with 35 end points | 65+ global data centers |
On paper, Cloudways wins in terms of bandwidth, but not in terms of ram if you have more than one site.
One thing to note is that Cloudways’ $11 and $24 plans are meant for staging sites, not production sites. They unfortunately don’t say this clearly when you sign up, but they do inform you of this when you are in their Vertical scaling page. In my experience, if you use those plans for production sites, you will run into database connection issues when editing your site in the WordPress admin. I’m not sure why that is—their specs are better than WPX’s—but that’s what I experienced twice with sites hosted on a Cloudways $11 plan. I recently upscaled one of these sites to their 2 GB premium option ($26) and the database connection issue disappeared. I haven’t yet experienced that issue with WPX’s entry-level plan.
Considering that Cloudways’s entry-level plans are not meant for production sites, between these two plans, I would personally opt for WPX’s. Granted, Cloudway’s entry-level plans are less expensive and have more bandwidth, but if they’re not reliable for production sites, they are somewhat useless.
Let’s take this a little further and compare WPX’s and Cloudways’ $41-$46 plans:
| WPX Professional ($41.58/mo) | Cloudways on DigitalOcean Standard ($46/mo) |
|---|---|
| Shared hosting | Cloud hosting |
| Solid-state drive servers (SSD) | Solid-state drive servers (SSD) |
| 1 GB per site (so up to 15 GB of RAM) | 4GB of ram (for the whole server) |
| 2 Core CPU | 2 Core CPU |
| 400 GB bandwidth | 4 TB bandwidth |
| Up to 15 websites | No limit on the number of websites |
| Content delivery network (CDN) | Content delivery network (CDN) |
| 3 server locations (US, UK, AU) + CDN with 35 end points | 65+ global data centers |
Here, Cloudways wins in terms of CPU and bandwidth. It also wins in terms of ram if you have five websites or fewer on your server. In that case, and if you expect a lot of traffic, Cloudways’ $46 plan will be your best option. If you know you don’t need 4 TB of bandwidth, and you prefer WPX for reasons other than performance (its support, for example), then go for it.
How much bandwidth do you need?
Bandwidth determines the amount of traffic your site can handle. If you already have a website, you can determine how much bandwidth you need by multiplying:
your monthly visitors (sessions) x the average page views per visitor (session) x the average page size of your website
Your monthly visitors and average page views per visitor can easily be found in Google Analytics or most analytics services. To find the average page size of your site, you can check as many of your site’s pages as possible using the free Web Page Size Checker.
So if you get 5,000 visitors (sessions) per month who view an average of three pages per visit and your average page size is 2 MB, the following calculation will determine how much bandwidth you need:
5,000 × 3 × 2 = 30,000 MB, or 30 GB per month.
With WPX’s $40 plan, it’s best not to exceed 65,000 monthly visitors (2,165 daily). But if you can reduce your page size (which is always a good idea), you’ll be able to handle more visitors.
Round 4: Performance
This may come as a surprise because Cloudways seems better at first glance, but I will give a point to both, mainly because Cloudways’ entry plans are not meant for production sites. When you reach Cloudways’ $46 plan, however, it’s another story: Cloudways is reliable and offers more bandwidth. But do keep in mind that if you put too many sites on that Cloudways server, you’ll have less ram per site than at WPX.
WPX: 3
Cloudways: 3
5. Storage and number of WordPress installations
Of course, when choosing a host, you need to look at how much space and how many WordPress installations you need and are allowed to have. Cloudways wins this round hands down as it offers much more storage than WPX (although WPX’s offer is more than enough for most websites) and it doesn’t limit the number of websites you can install. However, keep in mind that installing more websites on your Cloudways server will eventually lead to lower ram per site than with WPX and reduce performance. For those who want to install applications other than WordPress, that is only possible at Cloudways.
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
| Here’s an overview of WPX’s plans: | At Cloudways, the specs will vary based on the cloud provider, but in all cases, the number of application installations is unlimited (WordPress or others). Let’s take a look at the volume and pricing with DigitalOcean, for example: |
| No $10 plan | $11/month plan: 25 GB of storage, unlimited installations |
| Business plan ($20.83/month): 15 GB of storage, 5 installations. | $24/month plan: 50 GB of storage, unlimited installations |
| Professional plan ($41.58/month): 30 GB of storage, 15 installations | $46/month plan: 80 GB of storage, unlimited installations |
| Elite plan ($83.25/month): 60 GB of storage, 35 installations | $88/month: 160 GB of storage, unlimited installations |
Round 5: Storage and number of WordPress installations
Point for Cloudways.
WPX: 3
Cloudways: 4
6. Staging environment
Whenever you update or deactivate plugins, themes, or WordPress itself, or you make important design changes, you should do so in a staging environment—meaning in a testing site—before applying or pushing the changes to the live site. In my opinion, a staging environment is a must to prevent broken websites during updates. Both WPX and Cloudways offer this feature. Let’s see how they compare:
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
| Website slot WPX has a staging environment, which is great, but there’s a problem—your staging sites count toward the number of sites in your account. This is uncommon and a bit disappointing. If you max out your business account with five websites, you can’t use the staging functionality. | Website slot Cloudways has a staging environment and, since it doesn’t limit the number of sites you are allowed to have, you can create staging sites as long as you have space to do so. |
| Space limitations At WPX, there is a 1 GB database limitation and a 4-5 GB files size limitation for staging sites. | Space limitations There are no space limitations that I’m aware of, other than your server space limit. |
| Incremental push WPX offers an incremental push or what they call a “merge”. This means only files changed in the staging environment will be pushed to the live environment. Files that are deleted in the staging site will not be deleted in the live site. One thing you can’t do, however, is exclude files and folders from the push. The merge is the only option, which means you cannot do a complete overwrite of the staging site to the live site. | Incremental push Cloudways offers an incremental push. This means only files changed in the staging environment will be pushed to the live environment. Files that are deleted in the staging site will not be deleted in the live site. You can also exclude specific files and folders which you don’t want to push. Cloudways also offers the possibility of doing a complete overwrite of the site. |
| Multisites WPX warns that the staging area does not play nice with WP Multisite installations. | Multisites At the time of this writing, their out-of-the-box staging environment doesn’t truly support multisites. If you use it with multisites (which I have), you will have to make changes to your database, and pushing the staging multisite back to the live site is not recommended. |
| Online stores WPX warns that their staging environment will alter your live site’s database tables’ IDs (post IDs, user IDs, order IDs, etc.). The functionality of the website will remain the same, but if you have services that rely on those IDs they recommend avoiding their staging area and cloning your website in a sub-domain instead. By “services that rely on those IDs”, they mean Order and Product IDs. | Online stores Cloudways offers the option to exclude tables when pushing the changes back to the live site, so I believe this is a way to work around the alterations made to the Order and Product IDs. I have not had the chance to test this however. |
Regardless of the host you choose, always do a backup before pushing changes back to the live site. The safest is really to use the staging site as a test area and then go to your live site and apply the same changes without using the push feature.
Round 6: Staging environment
I’m giving a full point for Cloudways and half a point for WPX because they both have staging areas, but WPX has more limitations. As someone who had maxed out their business account, I couldn’t use their staging environment until I deleted a site or upgraded to the next plan.
WPX: 3.5
Cloudways: 5
7. Security
Full disclosure: I am not a security expert, so this has to be taken with a grain of salt. My understanding is that WPX offers better security than most shared hosts but that Cloudways offers even better security. It is apparently a myth that cloud hosting is, by default, more secure than shared hosting—even Cloudways says so, so let’s have a look at what each host lists on their site as security features:
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
| Custom and constantly-updated Web Application Firewall (WAF) | Dedicated firewalls |
| Enterprise-level distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) protection by Incapsula | Login security for their users (rate-limiting for SSH and SFTP logins) |
| Free systemwide malware scans | Protection against brute force login attacks and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, thanks to Malcare |
| Free systemwide malware/malicious file removal | Database security: no remote access to the database except allowed IP addresses |
| Cleanup of malicious redirects, backdoors, and script injections | Application isolation: each application is isolated from the rest to prevent an application level issue from compromising the entire server |
| Daily updates to server security rules | Free SSL certificates |
| Individual site audits in specific cases by the WPX | User role management: you can customize server access as you see fit. |
| Malware Team | Follow-up on operating system security and patching |
| Bot protection on the wp-login.php screen | Use of BugCrowd to crowdsource vulnerability discovery |
| Free SSL certificate | Two-factor authentication to access their platform |
| End-to-end encryption of Cloudways platform | |
| Suspicious device login control: email notification when there is suspicious access to your account |
Round 7: Security
I’m giving one full point for Cloudways, and half a point for WPX because of its bonus free malware removal and the fact that their server is still secure enough for most people’s needs.
WPX: 4
Cloudways: 6
8. Free migrations
I don’t know about you, but I hate to do site migrations, so this is an important feature for me. Here, WPX wins hands down because it offers unlimited site migrations, whereas Cloudways offers only one.
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
| WPX offers unlimited site migrations which is quite rare. I’ve used this free service multiple times without any hiccups, so I’m very grateful. They also do it fast—within 24 to 48 hours. They do have one limitation: if you’ve changed your domain name, the migration won’t be free because it will require database editing. You can also include your emails in the migration if they were hosted at your previous host. | Unless you get a Black Friday special, Cloudways only offers one site migration. Maybe I had bad luck, but the first time I registered with Cloudways (in 2020), they never managed to properly migrate my site. They tried it twice to no avail. It wasn’t a complex site—just a simple portfolio website. I ended up canceling my account, and only later, when I worked again with Cloudways on a client’s account, did I discover that it had pretty cool features. I eventually requested a migration for another site, and it took some time, but they managed to do it that time. |
Round 8: Free migrations
Point for WPX for unlimited and always successful migrations.
WPX: 5
Cloudways: 6
9. Email
I personally don’t look for this feature because I host my email at more secure places like ProtonMail and Tutanota. That said, even though I recommend keeping your emails and website hosting separate, some clients do want this feature.
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
| WPX offers free email with your account. You can then access your emails through a webmail interface or by using your preferred email client. WPX reminds clients that their priority is fast WordPress hosting, not email, so they really only offer email accounts for convenience. | Cloudways does not include free email, but for $1/month, you can add the Rackspace Email Hosting add-on. This will allow you to access your emails through a webmail interface or by using your preferred email client. Note that for an additional $1/month, you can also add the Elastic Email SMTP service to manage all your automated emails triggered by user actions, such as order confirmations, password reset link emails, etc. |
Round 9: Email
Point for both because even though you have to pay $1 per month at Cloudways for Rackspace Email, their plans still offer more for around the same price.
WPX: 6
Cloudways: 7
10. Temporary URL
This is not something everyone needs, but it’s a feature I really appreciate. I often wish to work on a website directly on the server before I point the domain name to this server. The easiest solution for this is for the host to offer a temporary URL.
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
WPX offers a temporary URL, but it’s not meant to be used for website editing purposes: “Do not use this URL to edit anything on your website” warns the WPX website, “because this may cause the live site to break when the Temp URL expires.” It only lasts up to 24 hours and is meant to be used to share your website with clients and colleagues for viewing purposes. So to work on your website before you point your domain name to the server, you have to change your computer’s host file and point it to the server. This is not really complicated, but it’s an extra step, and if you are working on an existing site, it can be annoying to keep changing your host file or work on two computers. And when clients or plugin support agents need access to the admin too, it can get complicated. | Cloudways does offer such temporary URLs, making life just a little easier for everyone. |
Round 10: Temporary URL
Point for Cloudways.
WPX: 6
Cloudways: 8
11. Backups
Both hosts offer daily system backups and on-demand backups as well as an easy-to-use one-click restore option.
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
In the case of WPX, your on-demand backups are placed on your server and therefore take space from your disk allowance. These on-demand backups are only available for 24 hours. Regular daily backups don’t count in your storage. | At Cloudways, you can do both server-level and website-level backups. Unless you select Local backup (only available at server-level), your backups are saved off-site to a remote S3 bucket, a service provided by Amazon. Off-site backups will momentarily take space on your server until all data are transferred to this S3 bucket. When you select Local backup, this will take space on your server, but you will be able to download the backup and remove it from your server afterward if you wish. |
WPX and Cloudways are both great at this. Cloudways may have a slight edge since the on-demand backups only momentarily take space on your server, but you will still need that space. Also, at Cloudways, you get to choose whether to delete that on-demand local backup, whereas at WPX it will auto-delete within 24 hours. For me, this is not enough to make Cloudways win over WPX, so I will call it a tie.
Round 11: Backups
Point for both.
WPX: 7
Cloudways: 9
12. Pricing based on server specs
Even if you’re not considering Cloudways’ entry plans (which are really cheap) because they’re not production-ready, Cloudways wins this round by offering much more bandwidth and storage for around the same price. Here, we will again compare the two hosts’ $40 plans as well as their $80 plans:
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
| WPX Business $41.58/mo 1 GB per site (up to 15 GB of RAM) 2 Core CPU 400 GB bandwidth 15 WordPress installs 30 GB of storage Content delivery network (CDN) with 35 end points 3 server locations | Cloudways on DigitalOcean Standard $46/mo 4GB of ram (for the whole server) 2 Core CPU 4 TB bandwidth No limit on the number of websites 80 GB of storage Content delivery network (CDN) 65+ global data centers |
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
WPX Elite $83.25/mo 1 GB per site (up to 35 GB of RAM) 3 Core CPU Unlimited bandwidth bandwidth 35 WordPress installs 60 GB of storage Content delivery network (CDN) with 35 end points 3 server locations | Cloudways on DigitalOcean Standard $88/mo 8GB of ram (for the whole server) 4 Core CPU 5 TB bandwidth No limit on the number of websites 160 GB of storage Content delivery network (CDN) 65+ global data centers |
Round 12: Pricing based on server specs
Point for Cloudways.
WPX: 7
Cloudways: 10
13. Supporting independent small tech
We read more and more about how big tech companies like Google and Amazon have monopolistic practices and don’t seem to value people’s privacy. One way to help all of us have more choices is by supporting independent small tech companies. Are independent small tech companies more ethical by definition? No. I don’t know what goes on at WPX or Cloudways headquarters. I don’t know what values they promote or if they truly respect our privacy, but it is nice to be able to choose a company that is not dependent on the big players engaging in monopolistic practices. Being a completely independent company, WPX has the edge here.
| WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|
As I said in the intro, WPX takes pride in being independent. They own all their servers and built their own content delivery network (CDN) instead of using big tech third-party options. The company is also giving back to the community thanks to its non-profit—a no-cage open-yard dog sanctuary. This, in addition to its awesome human-only support, does give it a bit more of the human-sized feel. According to Growjo, there are 25 employees behind the success of WPX. | While it is not independent the way WPX is—it doesn’t even operate its own servers—Cloudways does let you choose your cloud provider which allows you to stay away from Google and Amazon if that is your preference. That said, with 200 to 500+ employees, the alternatives may not be what you would call “small tech.” And regardless of which cloud provider you choose, your off-site backups will be saved on an Amazon server, so you are still supporting one of the big players. |
Round 13: Supporting independent small tech
Point for WPX.
WPX: 8
Cloudways: 10
So which one should you choose?
On paper, Cloudways wins by 2 points. But the reality is, you may not give the same weight to each of these 13 criteria. One thing is sure: Both are better hosts than all the others I’ve tested out there. The one you choose should depend on your needs and priorities.
WPX is perfect for people who:
- are not too technical or don’t feel the need to have control over their server
- want human-only super-fast customer service for all
- want fast hosting while staying with the familiar shared host solution
- want unlimited site migrations
- don’t have super high traffic or traffic peaks or, if they do, don’t mind paying a higher price for it (see WPX’s Elite plan)
- want to support a truly independent company that owns its own servers and content delivery network.
Cloudways is perfect for people who:
- like having more control over their server and applications, or aren’t too intimidated by this
- are OK with “good enough” support, and don’t mind logging in, encountering a bot, and waiting ten minutes for chat support or up to seven hours for ticket-based support
- want fast and scalable cloud hosting
- don’t mind doing their own migrations
- want lots of storage and bandwidth for a low price
- want to enjoy a few perks, such as a modern admin panel and temporary URL
- don’t mind having their backups hosted on a big tech company (Amazon) server.
But wait… why not Kinsta? Or Flywheel?
Kinsta and Flywheel offer great user experience, fast cloud hosting, free migrations (unlimited in the case of Flywheel), etc. So why wouldn’t I choose them? First, pricing goes up pretty fast for a lot fewer WordPress installations and less bandwidth and storage than Cloudways, and for even less installations and bandwidth than WPX. I’m not sure how to justify that. Another issue I have with them is that they limit your number of visits per month, and they count your visits differently than most analytics software does, so it’s hard to know which plan you’ll need. Although it may be fine for some, I simply don’t want to worry about my visits that way, and I wouldn’t want my clients to worry about it, either.
OK, but what about Siteground, Dreamhost, Hostpapa, and the others?
There are two main reasons I wouldn’t choose these hosts:
- They’re just not as good as WPX and Cloudways.
Most of them offer cheap, basic shared hosting with limited resources to match that price. This may be OK for some sites, but many people will outgrow this option. When they do, they often upgrade to the same company’s managed shared hosting services, which are slower than Cloudways and WPX, more expensive than Cloudways, and definitely can’t compete with WPX’s support. - They try to do everything, but aren’t experts at anything.
I like a host that specializes in something. Some of these hosts offer basic shared hosting, managed shared hosting, VPS hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated server hosting, in addition to email. They do a bit of everything to reach more clients, but they don’t specialize in anything and often can’t keep up with providing good service and support for all of those services.
WPX, on the other hand, specializes in fast shared hosting with great support. And Cloudways specializes in making fast and reliable cloud hosting accessible to everyone. Neither is trying to do everything, and I appreciate that.
Conclusion
My recommendation is this: don’t do what I did for so many years. Skip the really cheap shared hosting options, the average managed WordPress hosts, and the good but overpriced managed WordPress hosts. Go for Cloudways for cloud hosting or WPX for shared hosting. Understand that they have both strengths and limitations:
Go with WPX if your deal-breakers are 1) super fast human-only support, 2) unlimited free migrations, and 3) encouraging an independent small tech company. Scalability should not be your top priority here. Performance is available, but it’s important to do the math regarding your bandwidth needs. If you need lots of it, you’ll pay more for it than at Cloudways, but you’ll also get other advantages for that price.
Go with Cloudways if your deal-breakers are 1) bandwidth and storage at a low price, 2) scalability, and 3) more control over your server. Free migrations, having the best support out there, or escaping big tech shouldn’t be your top priority here. Remember to skip Cloudways’ entry level plans —at least their $10 one— because they’re just not meant for production sites.
Which host am I using? I’m currently using WPX for my sites, including this one, but Cloudways for some of my clients’ websites.
Your turn
Where are you hosting your website on and why? What are your experiences with past hosts?
