Cloudways review
Not verifiedchecked 1 November 2026What this means
Managed cloud hosting: pick DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud without running a server yourself.
Cloudways runs a cloud server for you, billed as you go with no contract, from $14 a month on DigitalOcean. You can host unlimited websites on it, with NVMe storage. It suits growing sites that have outgrown shared hosting; for one small site, shared hosting costs less.
Cloudways is part of DigitalOcean.
from $14 a month pay as you go, no contract
Visit CloudwaysPrices checked 19 October 2026.
At a glance
- Good for
- Growing sites wanting managed cloud servers without server admin
- Not ideal for
- Beginners with one small site, who will pay less on shared hosting.
- Trustpilot
- 4.6 out of 5 from 3,774 reviews
Plans and prices
| Plan | Price | Websites | Storage | Backups | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | from $14 a month pay as you go, no contract | Unlimited websites | 25 GB NVMe | Not known | Not known |
| Flexible Small (DigitalOcean) | from $28 a month pay as you go, no contract | Unlimited websites | 50 GB NVMe | Not known | Not known |
| Flexible Medium (DigitalOcean) | from $54 a month pay as you go, no contract | Unlimited websites | 80 GB NVMe | Not known | Not known |
Pros and cons
Pros
- Pay as you go, billed by the hour
- Unlimited websites on each server
- NVMe storage on every plan
- Rated 4.6 on Trustpilot
Cons
- Dearer than shared hosting for a small site
- More to learn than simple shared hosting
- Prices in US dollars
How green is Cloudways?
Cloudways is not in the Green Web Foundation's directory of verified green hosting providers (we checked on 1 November 2026). That says nothing either way about the energy behind its hosting.
What the Foundation's verification means
We found no published statement from Cloudways about the energy behind its hosting when we last checked, on 16 October 2026.
Cloudways runs customers' servers on five other companies' clouds (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS and Google Cloud). The countries are those in its own data-centre picker; its pages give other counts.
The data centres we list are in 32 countries, whose grids average 398 g CO2e per kWh, against 218 g in the UK. Lower is cleaner.
The grid in each country
| Country | Grid average | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Netherlands | 254 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| United States | 384 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Bahrain | 902 gCO2e/kWh | 2024 |
| India | 671 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Belgium | 151 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| South Africa | 699 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Germany | 334 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Finland | 57 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Hong Kong (SAR of China) | 676 gCO2e/kWh | 2024 |
| Ireland | 263 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| United Kingdom | 218 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Mexico | 481 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Italy | 284 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Canada | 192 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| France | 41 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Brazil | 109 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| South Korea | 418 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Singapore | 497 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Sweden | 35 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Australia | 518 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Taiwan (China) | 634 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Japan | 474 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Israel | 493 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Switzerland | 39 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Poland | 591 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Indonesia | 705 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| United Arab Emirates | 470 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Qatar | 582 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Spain | 153 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Chile | 291 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Thailand | 526 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
| Malaysia | 606 gCO2e/kWh | 2025 |
We last read Cloudways's own pages on 16 October 2026.
Listing data from the Green Web Foundation's Green Web Dataset, under the Open Database License (ODbL). Grid figures: Ember, Yearly electricity data (2026), CC BY 4.0.