What’s up everyone, through my years of creating websites for clients as well as providing maintenance plans for clients and hosting websites for them, I’ve gone through a fair share of hostings, and in this video/article, I want to explain how I ended up and why it went all-in on Cloudways and now hosts all of our websites over there.
I also want to take you through a very quick walkthrough and show you how to get set up with your WordPress website on Cloudways. I’m going to give you my honest opinions and full Cloudways review, and feedback on my pros and cons I’m not going to hold anything back ever, and I’m only an affiliate to something that I actually use inside my own personal web design business all right.
Contents
Best Hosting WordPress
So really quick, I want just to break down my journey as a host and how I ended up here, now my first one was when I was brand new, I started off with GoDaddy I was a brand new web developer wet behind the ears and had no idea about hosting and I didn’t know just how bad GoDaddy was until I got WP engine, and it was just a massive difference in performance, and usability it was great the problem was I was still a new web developer, and I wasn’t able to really charge high prices yet and WP engine was quite expensive I didn’t want to go back to you know like GoDaddy or Bluehost I’ve I experienced a lot of bad hosting from clients that purchased hosts that weren’t that great mostly shared hosting.
So I went to the flywheel, and I jumped on promotion with the flywheel. Flywheel was very similar to the WP engine, but I tested the two together and on Flywheel, the sights actually did just a little bit faster, and I had a really good promotion.
So the prices were good at the time, and it was great I stuck with them for a while then I also got Siteground and I used Siteground for our maintenance plans for the clients that were on our lower tier plans because it was cost-effective. The thing with Siteground is after one year that price tripled, and then also my WordPress maintenance plans started to grow we started to get clients in different parts of the world, and we needed servers I needed servers in their locations because if I have all my clients and servers where I’m at, but they’re located out in Europe, or they’re located in the United State or Australia, they’re not going to get the quality performance that they need to get and get individual servers inside each region with a Siteground or a WP engine was still very expensive for me.
so that’s when I started looking into cloud-based hosting particularly I started looking into the digital ocean now the price for the digital ocean was super low and very attractive, but I felt like I was a bit in over my head it was very technical, and I know I could figure it out, but it was going to take time is going to take a lot of work and then also the upkeep and management and that’s when I stumbled upon cloud ways and at first, I have to admit I was a bit skeptical when I saw cloud base because it’s different it’s way different from anything else that I use and that’s the reason why I wanted to make this video because I wanted to explain and show how to get set up because I know when I got set up with it, I was you know I was a skeptical I was still learning I wasn’t too sure of it because it was so different.
So I started off with just one side on my own personal side. I didn’t want to test on the client-side. I did mine, and I was happy with the results. Slowly, I started moving client sites over, and then in about a couple of months, I canceled everything. I canceled Siteground, I canceled Flywheel, and I have just been all in on Cloudways. It has been just cost-effective through it. It was the most cost-effective and highest-performing solution for my business that hosts several websites and several locations. That’s how I ended up here. And why now I’ve been with Cloudways for close to two years.
Cloudways Review
Let me go ahead now and show you how to get started. The first thing you want to do is you want to create your account there is a link in the description it’s The affiliate link, it doesn’t cost you anything extra to use it, but it does help to support my channel is much appreciated, so after you sign up and start your account you’re going to get to a screen like this.
How does Cloudways work?
Once you’ve signed up for your account you’re going to get started on a page, and we need to select the server really quick let me explain how Cloudways works, and what Cloudways does is they set up optimize, and manage the server for you, for example, say you want to go with DigitalOcean to get started on DigitalOcean you got to set up the server or droplet, then you got to optimize it for the right environment that you’re going to be using, then you got to install WordPress, and then you got to do the upkeep and management on it. it’s a bit more technical. it’s time-consuming and even for myself a front-end developer it’s a big learning curve.
So with Cloudways, they do all that for you. All you gotta do is select the server that you want the server size, and they optimize it. They manage it for you, and they have everything built-in. But then they also have the other things that are needed with hosting and needed with the website, like emails, domain emails SMTP, and CDN. so they have all these things already built-in Also as well.
Cloudways Hosting Plan
We have five options after registration, you got Digital Ocean, Linode, and Vultr, these three are going to be your base three right here they’re all very similar in price and performance if you’re going to be running say just a regular standard website these are one of the three to go with my personal go-to has been digital ocean lately I’ve been using Vultr, I’m been happy with both performances has been great.
Now, the big guys right here are AWS and Google Cloud platforms these are like the industry and enterprise-level servers right here they’re also a lot more expensive, so I would only use these on something that really needs those kinds of resources if you have a huge platform if you have something that you know is going to it’s going to need that extra strength on it and also has a healthy budget to go with it than you would use these right here.
Server Size & Location
Now this is where things get fascinating you see here we got a selection of the server size and when you change the size of the server you’ll see down here the price changes as well.
So with the server size this is what I really like right here I could always start with the least, and I recommend starting with the least one because I am looking at cost-effective solutions I am looking to save money I want to save where I need, I don’t want to spend more than I have to spend and if you start with the bottom, and you build your site and then your site maybe it starts to get heavier maybe you have more resources maybe you got like WooCommerce or translation plug-ins on it you might be getting a lot of traffic, and then you need more resources well you can just click a button and move it up anytime, later on, you don’t have to start big, start small save your money.
Below is also the location section, this part was something that I really needed and that was to choose my locations and there are a lot of choices for the locations if you got a client that is in the UK you can go ahead and get them a server that’s in London, or if you’re located there the same thing with United State and Asia Europe is all over the place, so there are locations all over, and you can choose a server and that’s really important to have a server close to where the website traffic is going to be because the website’s just going to be faster there. I mean, it just makes sense if the server is saying I’m located in Asia. The servers in Asia website viewers are in America. It’s going to take a lot longer for that information to go all the way halfway around the planet.
Cloudways Pricing
Now, let me explain this pricing. This is where I was skeptical, because this at first, did not make sense to me.
If you choose the minimum server size, it is this small package for Digital Ocean, the price will be ten dollars a month, but then it also gives me this price is for hourly. So I was a little confused by this, but I did a lot of testing and I figured out what it was. First off, I could say that I’ve never paid more than what the estimated cost monthly was. In fact, sometimes I actually paid less. Sometimes I paid less than ten dollars for the month but the hourly, so for example, for this video I created this account, and I’m creating this server is just for this video.
so it’s probably only going to be up for like one or two days now I’m not going to have to pay the ten dollars for the whole month instead only pay for the two days once I delete the server I don’t have to pay for it anymore you only pay as you go and this has been very cost-effective I only scale up when I need it. One of the problems that I had with WP engine and the flywheel was I would get the freelancer package which would be like 10 or 12 websites on there, but maybe I would only have four client websites that are currently on our maintenance plan, so I would have you know six or eight empty slots that I was paying for, and they were just sitting there, and I was losing money on with this one right here I’m only paying for exactly what I need and this is why I found this to be the most cost-effective solution.
Setup Server
So let’s move forward let’s set up our server. The next step would be to choose your application. The application is going to be your website, so right here you want to choose regular WordPress. It should always be the updated version multi-site which is really awesome. We’re not going to get too much into it but if you ever want a multi-site I think it’s awesome that they have it ready to go here. and then, I will choose “clean (without Cloudways optimization)”, and basically that just doesn’t add the Cloudways optimization app. I usually go with this one because I optimize my websites with WProcket and when I’m in development as well I don’t use any optimization I only do that after development.
So let’s start with the clean, no Cloudways optimization, I’ll leave that up to you. Now let’s go ahead and give your application or website a name “e.g. my new site”, and your server a name, and then your project, you can go ahead and create projects this comes in handy later on if you ever start to manage several clients because like myself I have some clients, and they’ll have two three four up to five websites, so it’s really handy to organize and put the websites all into a project. After everything is set up, go ahead and select “launch now”, and give it about five to ten minutes, and it’ll set up your server.
Building Website
So now our server is all set up, let’s get started building a website I’ll show you how easy it is and how quickly you can get started building the website. So, you’ll come to a page like this.
where there are two places you could go to find your application or website, and just keep in mind anytime you see the “application” word that means the website. you can either click on “WWW”, and you’ll see your website, or you could go to the “applications” tab at the top, and you’ll see a list of your websites. After clicking on the site name you will get access details. You can get started right away with this temporary domain that the Cloudways gives you, Just click on the icon (square and arrow) next to it and you will be taken directly to the page of your new website, you could also log from admin panel, you will need to enter your username and password, so we can login, and you see we’re ready to go the website is now ready to get started with.
so you can actually build your site using this temporary domain once your site is ready, and you’re ready to transfer it over and make your website live, what you want to do is you want to go to “domain management”, and in here you’re going to want to put in your domain you’re going to want to put in two. For example on the left, I would put in “example.com”, no HTTP, HTTPS, or any for slashes, then on the right, I would also add a domain “www.example.com”, you’d want to add both of them not just one of them because that way if somebody does click on WWW, or you know vice versa without it, they both go to your website.
Then go to the “Access Details” tab, and you will see the presence of the public IP address, which is what you’re going to put inside your DNS settings, and you’re a record. I can’t show you how to do this in this video because well it all depends on where you purchase your domain from but go back to wherever you purchase your domain go to your DNS settings and look for your record, and you want to put in your IP, this IP into your domain record and that’s how you point and get your website, your domain pointed to your website in Cloudways, that’s how quickly it is to get started.
After you’ve connected your domain, the next step would be to go to the “SSL certificate” tab, and you want to install it, leave it on “let’s encrypt” it’s free it’s easy to use, and you just put in your email address and domain and that is its same thing though add on both domains your regular domain and the domain with WWW, add in both of those you get your SSL installed. The whole process takes minutes, and you’re good to go your website should be going live it really is kind of it’s that easy to go no okay.
Conclusion
so that’s it that’s how it is to get started on here you can get started and deploy after minutes it usually takes me about we have got to wait for the server to set up, I don’t know about 15 20 minutes, and I could have a website going live on theirs.
Now there is more value though there are a lot more there are more reasons why I use this, and here’s one of the biggest reasons why I and also all of them with Cloudways WordPress, and that’s going to be the support, you could always go to support and there is going to be a live chat that you could go to that’s always available, it’s easy to find, it’s intuitive to use. if you’ve used other platforms you might know that getting support isn’t that easy, I know a lot of platforms purposely hide their support, but you might not know, this there’s a thing called dark UI, where people don’t want people contacting them, so they make it hard to find. Cloudways is the complete opposite they make it super easy to find, and I’ve always had nothing but good experiences with their support.
