Stuck between Cloudways vs. Bluehost for a hosting provider? Check out this post for 8 reasons why Cloudways is the best choice.
As someone who made the big switch from Bluehost to Cloudways two years ago, I couldn’t be more happier with my decision. My blog is much more efficient today because of Cloudways and it’s even faster than it was before.
In fact, since switching I even had the opportunity to create my own staging site on Cloudways to change my blog to a different theme. The process to creating one was easier than I thought and I even had the opportunity to push my staging site’s changes to my live site with the click of a button.
So, if you’re hosting your site on Bluehost and you’re looking for a change, you’ve come to the right place. Cloudways, compared to Bluehost, is 10x times better in comparision when it comes to cloud hosting, site speed, and reviews.
Cloudways Offers Cloud Hosting Unlike Bluehost
The no.1 thing that sets Cloudways apart from Bluehost is their cloud hosting. Cloud hosting, for those who are not familiar with it, is a web hosting service that uses the power of server virtualization for its clients. So, in other words, cloud hosting gives its clients complete control over their server virtually, which ensures high uptime and optimal performance for your site.
Because… if you think about it… traditional web hosting services, like Bluehost, do the opposite in which a single web server is used to host multiple sites. Therefore, if you as a client are sharing your server with several other clients, imagine how much resources are being used if one client had a spike in their traffic???!!!!
IT WOULD SLOW DOWN YOUR SITE.
However, with Cloudways, you’ll get your own personalized server for you and only you. In fact, if you sign up today, Cloudways will give you the option to choose from 5 of the top cloud providers for your site. These cloud providers include: Digital Ocean, AWS, Google Cloud, Vultr, and Linode.
In addition to Cloudways, you might also wonder, doesn’t Bluehost offer cloud hosting too.
Well…
They used too.
According to an article I read on their knowledge base, they are unfortunately not offering cloud hosting anymore which is not surprising. It didn’t have a fighting chance from the looks of it so it could not compete with the competition.
Cloudways Beats Bluehost When It Comes to G2 Ratings
Cloudways, without a doubt, is also beating Bluehost when it comes to G2 reviews. For those who are not familiar with G2, they are a peer-to-peer review site for the software marketplace. So, there are a lot of different hosting providers on the site.
In fact, if you were to compare Cloudway’s ratings to Bluehost, you would see that Cloudways has a star rating that’s really close to 5.0, while Bluehost has a star rating of 3.6.
Again, this is not surprising to see at all.
After assessing the two hosting providers, G2 found that Cloudways was easier to use, set up and administer in comparison to Bluehost. In fact, not only that, but a lot of reviewers felt that Cloudways was able to meet the needs of their business better than Bluehost. This, in addition to Cloudways‘ ongoing product support and roadmaps, made the hosting provider a no-brainer when compared to Bluehost.
However, if you still need some convincing, check out this review:
Not only did this user compliment Cloudways’ affordable prices when it comes to cloud providers but they also recommended the platform due to the immediate increase of speed it had on their site. And.. as a current user of the hosting provider, I DO NOT DISAGREE.
Cloudways Offers More Caching Layers Than Bluehost
One of the reasons why Cloudways is able to offer its users more speed in comparison to Bluehost has everything to do with their caching layers. Cloudways offers more caching layers than Bluehost in this area and these layers include Varnish, Nginx, and Redis Object Cache Pro. So, if you’re looking for a hosting provider that’s going to take care of your caching needs, look no further.
Bluehost, itself, doesn’t even offer the layer of depth Cloudways provides in terms of caching. In fact, Bluehost only provides page cache which is typically set for ecommerce websites, blogs, and portfolios.
Cloudways’ Dedicated Hosting Leads to Faster Site Speed Than Bluehost
Furthermore, to give you some further proof as to how Cloudways contributes to site speed. I have organized two GTmetrix site speed tests between my site which is hosted by Cloudways and another site which is hosted by Bluehost.
As you can see, when you compare the two GTmetrix speed reports against each other, you’ll notice some major differences between the two. For example, my site, which is hosted on Cloudways, has a GTmetrix grade of A in comparison to the Bluehost website which has a grade of B. In addition, my site only takes 957ms to start loading while the Bluehost website takes 1.9s to do so. Overall, the reason why there’s a huge discrepancy between my report and the Bluehost website has everything to do with our servers.
Because I have my own dedicated server for my site, I don’t have to worry about my speed ever being slow or inconsistent. However, since the Bluehost website is sharing a centralized server with other websites, the speed won’t be consistent.
Cloudways Has a More Flexible Cancellation Policy Than Bluehost
Cloudways’ cancellation policy is also more flexible than Bluehost since they don’t do long-term agreements or contracts. In fact, if for whatever reason out of the blue you needed to cancel your account, you can do that at any time on your portal.
Cloudways’ also charges their clients once a month, so if you were to cancel in the middle of the month, you would only be charged for the resources you used prior to your last paid invoice.
However, with Bluehost, there’s no really easy way to cancel your account since canceling requires you to call them first here: 888-401-4678.
In fact, when I canceled my account to switch over to Cloudways, the one thing I wasn’t aware of was the data they deleted from my DNS.
Apparently, on the phone, I was told by one of their agents that since I was canceling my hosting account, they were no longer responsible for managing my DNS records. Hence, why they were deleted. However, I was only told this AFTER THE FACT so I had to use my long-term memory to remember which record went where when it came to my CNAME, MX, and TXT records.
As of today though, my domain is still with Bluehost but I’m the one who’s responsible for managing it. Therefore, if you’re planning to cancel your hosting account with Bluehost, I highly recommend taking a screenshot of your DNS records before you do. It took a while for me to add my records again and I don’t want anyone else to go through that stress.
Cloudways Offers Its Users Server Scalability in Comparison to Bluehost
Another thing that makes Cloudways stand out in comparison to Bluehost is the ability for users to upgrade their server. As a website owner you may know that no one’s traffic stays the same. In fact, there may be times where you experience a sudden growth in traffic that may be to much for your 1GB server to handle. So, to account for this, Cloudways has a feature in their portal called Vertical Scaling where you can literally increase your server size by scaling up.
However, if for some reason you wanted to scale down your server due to a loss of traffic, you would need to do that using their cloning feature.
Cloudways Offers a Free Unrestricted Managed Migration Compared to Bluehost
Cloudways also offers its users a free, unrestricted, managed migration if they’re interested in moving their site over to one of their cloud providers. This made everything very hassle-free for me when I switched over from Bluehost. They assigned me someone who was responsible for my migration/orientation and he showed me the ropes of how to get around my portal.
Bluehost, however, is very restricted in who they give a free migration to as you can see above. Your site for one thing has to be a WordPress site and it needs to meet their standards in regards to WordPress version, size, database, and etc. Therefore, if your site didn’t qualify for the free migration for whatever reason, YOU WOULD HAVE TO PAY.
In fact, when I did the research myself, I saw that their migration packages start at $149, which is way too expensive! It also won’t work if you’re coming from a dedicated server account so you can just forget about that.
Bluehost Websites Experience More Downtime Compared to Cloudways
Lastly, since I’m using Digital Ocean as a cloud provider from Cloudways, I thought what better way to compare the cloud provider to Bluehost than by looking at their downtime. In fact, as a client of Cloudways, it’s very rare for me to experience any downtime from Digital Ocean. It’s only happened once since I switched over from Bluehost and that says a lot. So, why not put both providers to the test with the Down Detector.
Each chart above showcases the amount of times an outage was reported in the last 24 hours. As you can see, Bluehost had the most outages within a 24 hour period while Cloudways had the least.
In fact, to take things even further, I even took a screenshot of the comments that were listed below Bluehost.
From reading them, one customer of Bluehost even said he wishes he had REALIZED what a total trainwreck Bluehost was before he hosted with them. And if that alone doesn’t motivate you to leave Bluehost, then what will? The hosting provider has clearly shown that rapid uptime isn’t important to them and that alone can be detrimental to your site.
So What Are You Waiting For…
Head to Cloudways right now to start your free trial today! No credit card is required to partake in the 3-day free trial so you can try it worry-free.
Cloudways vs. Bluehost FAQs
Overall, to end this post, I thought it would be helpful to answer some frequently asked questions you might have about Cloudways as a hosting provider.
Why is Cloudways so expensive?
I wouldn’t say Cloudways is so expensive in my opinion because you literally do get what you pay for. Cloudways offers a pay-as-you-go service so that you’re only charged for the resources you consume.
In addition, if the traffic to your site were to increase for whatever reason, you would need to upgrade the server that you purchased to the next gigabyte to account for it. This, however, will lead to an increase in your bill.
But… if your traffic is growing then that alone should be enough to account for it.
For example, as shown previously, this is where you would need to go if you wanted to upgrade your server. For Digital Ocean, the lowest server size is 1GB for $11 a month and the highest server size is 192GB for $1092 a month. Some of these server sizes also come with their own premium core processors if that’s of interest to you. I, for transparency, am on the 2GB server with a fast core processor for $28 a month.
How many websites can be hosted on Cloudways?
With Cloudways, you can host as many websites as you’d like on your server. There is no limit to this which is one of the perks of hosting with them.
Can I buy a domain from Cloudways?
Unfortunately, you cannot purchase a domain from Cloudways. If you don’t own a domain prior to your free trial, you’ll need to purchase one before you can start hosting with them.
Does Cloudways offer email hosting?
Cloudways offers email hosting as an add-on on their site and these add-ons are perfectly capable of creating an email server for any site. I for one currently use Elastic Email as my email hosting solution and I’ve been happy with them ever since.
How do I move my website to Cloudways?
If you’re interested in moving your site to Cloudways, there are many ways the migration process can be done. I, personally, did everything with the Cloudways WordPress Migrator and no issues came up.
The steps are as easy as 1,2,3:
- Install Cloudways WordPress Migrator on your current hosting server (Bluehost)
- Enter your necessary credentials
- Then click on “Migrate”
And if you’re feeling really apprehensive about using the plugin, don’t worry!
These reviews should put you at ease!
In the end, I really hope you enjoyed reading this post about the 8 reasons why Cloudways is a better choice compared to Bluehost. Please let me know in the comments down below which fact about Cloudways surprised you the most. I would love to hear from you! 🙂
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