Cloudways is a SaaS service where you can deploy and manage Linux servers for a variety of tech stacks, including WordPress. It provisions servers at many of the large cloud server providers including AWS, GOOGLE, DIGITALOCEAN, LINODE & VULTR. However, these servers are not under your control – if you leave the service, you cannot take the servers with you.
The company itself is located in Malta.
Both WPCloudDeploy and Cloudways allow you to deploy and manage WordPress servers. All the key WordPress management tools are available in both offerings including:
There are three key differences between WPCloudDeploy and Cloudways:
Since Cloudways is an SaaS service, you are locked into a fixed set of personalization options. We do not know if they entertain requests for customization.
Because WPCloudDeploy is an open source product built on WordPress, the sky’s the limit when it comes to customizations and you have a lot of flexibility in how those are accomplished. You can:
As an experienced WordPress developer or manager, you can do many of the customizations yourself. Or you can ask any other WP developer to do the work for you. Or you can ask us of course.
As with your customization options, Cloudways is limited in the languages that can be used.
WPCloudDeploy can adopt any language you like simply by providing the translation terms using any of the many standard WP translation tools.
As with any SaaS service, your dashboard is running wherever Cloudways determines is best.
WPCloudDeploy can be run on any appropriately configured server anywhere and can be installed in multiple locations if necessary. With this flexibility you can:
Cloudways has direct support for three server providers plus the ability to bring your own server. (They used to support five but dropped support for Cloudways and Linode after DigitalOcean acquired them.)
WPCloudDeploy has built-in support for 12 providers (10 public cloud providers & 2 private cloud providers) as well as ability to “bring your own server”.
WPCloudDeploy also has an extension toolkit where you can build your own provider. Or you can ask to have one built for you at a cost of around 3K (for providers that generally follow the openstack api style format.)
Cloudways does not have a command line option. But you can ssh into your server and perform some management tasks including using WP-CLI.
WPCloudDeploy uses Bash scripts that you can execute in either of two ways:
Sites deployed on Cloudways uses a LEMP stack with a customized Caching plugin (they call it Breeze.) However, because their servers are designed to run multiple types of services (not just WordPress) the stack is not fully optimized for WordPress.
WPCloudDeploy supports both a LEMP stack (Linux, NGINX, MySql/MariaDB, PHP) and a LOMP stack (Linux, OpenLiteSpeed, MySql/MariaDB, PHP).
As an SaaS service it is far easier to get started with Cloudways. WPCloudDeploy has an installation step that can sometimes be tricky (hence our free install service when you purchase a license.)
Consistent with SaaS services, the Cloudways UI is custom-made highly functional, with many micro-interactions. WPCloudDeploy’s UI is recognizably WordPress on the backend with a highly customized UI for your end customers on the front-end.
Cloudways make their money by adding a markup to each server you provision. For example, if you choose to use a $5 server from DigitalOcean they will charge you $10. The more servers you deploy, the higher your monthly bill.
WPCloudDeploy charges a single annual fee or lifetime fee with no per-server or per-site limits. You have three levels to choose from based on the functionality you need.
You can transfer your sites using any WordPress backup tool. We recommend UPDRAFT PLUS though many folks seem to prefer using DUPLICATOR PRO (something we’re far less familiar with).
The above summary is only focused on the product differences and similarities. There are, of course, differences between the companies themselves – including large differences in operations, pricing, support policies, affiliate programs and more.
If you’re looking for an SaaS style product to manage your WordPress business you should look at GridPane or SpinpupWP – unless you have other product stacks you need to support. Obviously, for a self-hosted, privacy-focused, feature-packed product, choose WPCloudDeploy.
Is anything in this article incorrect? If so, please feel free to contact us so we can apply corrections. As you might expect, corrections will be applied at our sole discretion subject to our ability to verify the new data.