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Best Value
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Best Premium Service
Best Custom Plans
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Doesn’t include domain registration or email hosting
IONOS and SiteGround are fantastic choices for cloud hosting, and many will find themselves choosing between them. IONOS is affordable and offers great performance, but it is better for advanced users. SiteGround is dead-simple to use, but expensive. Cloudways is also a solid hosting platform because it essentially serves as an easy-to-use admin interface to the cloud provider of your choice.
But of course, that leaves us with the question of which cloud host is right for you. We'll go over all three of the best cloud hosting services.
Very affordable plans, both during the introductory period and on renewal
Excellent server speed and reliability
Managed WordPress hosting plans include guided setup through the WordPress Cockpit and its AI site builder
Allows users of all skill levels to create a website in minutes
Offers responsive, extensive technical support
Managed cloud hosting with flexible providers
Offers pay-as-you-go pricing with scalable plans
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| Best for | Best value cloud hosting | Best for hands-off cloud hosting | Best for easy custom solutions |
| Star rating | |||
| Starting price | Starts at $1.00/mo | Starts at $2.99/mo | Starts at $11.00/mo |
| Money-back guarantee | Yes — 30 days | Yes — 30 days | |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.99% | 99.9% | 99.99% |
| Dedicated IP address | Costs extra | On all plans | On all plans |
| Pricing | Pay as you go | Fixed | Pay as you go |
| CPU cores | 1 - 16 | 4 - 33 | 1 - 32 |
| RAM | 2 GB - 64 GB | 8 GB - 130 GB | 1 GB - 64 GB |
| Storage | 60 GB - 960 GB | 40 GB - 1 TB | 20 GB - 640 GB |
| Free domain for a year | |||
| Learn more | Get IONOS | Get SiteGround | Get Cloudways |
Very affordable plans, both during the introductory period and on renewal
Excellent server speed and reliability
Managed WordPress hosting plans include guided setup through the WordPress Cockpit and its AI site builder
Affordable pricing: IONOS’ cheapest preconfigured cloud hosting option costs an estimated $5.76/mo, which is pretty decent pricing for cloud hosting. Cloud hosting is often quite expensive (see below), but IONOS is the cheapest option on this list.
Great performance: IONOS performed very well in our testing, which is what you want in a cloud hosting platform. Fast sites convert, which in turn helps you pay for your cloud hosting.
Easy scalability: While IONOS does offer preconfigured plans for cloud hosting, you can quite easily scale up the resources whenever you need to. There may be times when you need to do that in a hurry, so it’s good to know that your host is prepared for it.
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Missing email support: IONOS has live chat and online guides, but no email or ticketing options. Sometimes, email can make it easier to get all of your issues down when compared to live chat, so it’s a shame that IONOS doesn’t offer it.
Our performance testing on IONOS went fantastically, with great site performance scores and low loading times. The site managed reliable uptime during our test, and had quite decent server response times on UptimeRobot. IONOS also passed the stress/load test without breaking a sweat.
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| Uptime | 100% |
| Average response time | 311 ms |
| Did IONOS pass the stress test? | Yes |
| Learn more | Get IONOS |
We score hosts across several categories, the most important of which are features, performance, and security. IONOS offers a solid suite of features, but it is more geared toward advanced users. But the performance and security get high scores, and that’s what you want.
IONOS received a high star rating of 4.7 due to its highly intuitive dashboard, comprehensive features for affordable prices, and impressive performance.
Although we had a positive testing experience with IONOS, it received in a lower score in the experience category due to the upsells on various pages of the dashboard. IONOS also lacks built-in content delivery network.
| Decision factor | Weight | Verdict |
| Our experience | 10% | 4.5 |
| Value and capacity | 18% | 4.8 |
| Performance | 20% | 5.0 |
| Features | 25% | 4.5 |
| Security | 20% | 5.0 |
| Support and reputation | 7% | 4.9 |
Allows users of all skill levels to create a website in minutes
Offers responsive, extensive technical support
Dead-simple configuration: SiteGround’s control panel is easy to use and navigate, and makes hosting simple. If you’re looking to have cloud hosting without the complicated bits, SiteGround is a great option.
Variety of features: These include, but are not limited to: email hosting, daily backups, dedicated IP, performance enhancements, free CDN, and WordPress migration. SiteGround offers an experience much like traditional hosting, but on cloud infrastructure.
Great support: SiteGround’s support team can handle the annoying stuff for you. Given that this is managed cloud hosting, a knowledgeable and responsive support team is important to have.
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Expensive: SiteGround is by far the most expensive option on this list, with the cheapest plan starting at $100/mo. Even though SiteGround has plenty of happy customers, you do need to consider your budget.
Our performance testing went quite well, with SiteGround scoring high in terms of site performance. The average server response time could have been a bit more stable, and the service did fall short of 100% uptime, but only over a week. Meanwhile, the load test went fantastically, and SiteGround handled 250 users over a minute with no issues.
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| Uptime | 99.863% |
| Average response time | 634 ms |
| Did SiteGround pass the stress test? | Yes |
| Learn more | Get SiteGround |
SiteGround scored very high marks in our review. Our experience could have gone just a tiny bit better, hence the non-perfect score, but the features, security, and performance on offer are hard to beat.
SiteGround earned a perfect star rating of 5.0 because of its simple setup process, all-inclusive subscriptions, great performance results, and helpful customer support.
| Decision factor | Weight | Verdict |
| Our experience | 10% | 4.8 |
| Value and capacity | 18% | 5.0 |
| Performance | 20% | 5.0 |
| Features | 25% | 5.0 |
| Security | 20% | 5.0 |
| Support and reputation | 7% | 5.0 |
Managed cloud hosting with flexible providers
Offers pay-as-you-go pricing with scalable plans
Great customizability: Cloudways doesn't have its own servers. Instead, it provides an easy interface for managing cloud hosting on Google Cloud, AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr, letting you build your own custom infrastructure with other providers.
Ease of use: While it may not be as hands-off as SiteGround, Cloudways offers an easy-to-use interface for managing your hosting, including one-click WordPress installs, one-click staging environments, and automated backups.
Migration assistance: If you’re new to cloud hosting, you can get help moving your existing site to your brand-new cloud plan.
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Support quality concerns: We didn’t have any trouble with the support team ourselves, but some user reviews report issues with getting more complex problems resolved. Again, it went fine for us, but it’s something you’ll want to keep in mind.
Our performance testing (we chose DigitalOcean as the cloud provider) went reasonably well, with a high performance score and low loading times. The average server response time could have been a bit lower and a bit more stable for the UptimeRobot test, and the uptime fell short of the 99.99% guarantee. But then, Cloudways passed the load test with flying colors, so that’s fantastic.
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| Uptime | 99.95% |
| Average response time | 673 ms |
| Did Cloudways pass the stress test? | Yes |
| Learn more | Get Cloudways |
Cloudways scores a little lower in terms of available features. This could possibly be because a lot of its resources go toward making sure all the features work right on multiple cloud providers. But our testing revealed great performance (with DigitalOcean) and security.
Cloudways earned a solid star rating of 4.3 due to its high performance rates, extensive security features, and comprehensive customer support methods.
However, our testing experience proved that Cloudways may be difficult to set up for beginners. It also lacks a prolonged free trial or a money-back guarantee.
| Decision factor | Weight | Verdict |
| Our experience | 10% | 4.0 |
| Value and capacity | 18% | 4.2 |
| Performance | 20% | 5.0 |
| Features | 25% | 4.0 |
| Security | 20% | 5.0 |
| Support and reputation | 7% | 4.8 |
Cloud hosting uses many small containers and microservices working together to create a larger system that can run on a single physical server or multiple servers.
For example, virtual machines used in VPS hosting can run on cloud infrastructure. So can shared hosting. And technically, you could build your own cloud with dedicated servers.
If your website or app needs flexibility in server resources, cloud hosting is worth considering. But your average small website will do just fine on shared or VPS hosting.
There are three types of cloud hosting models, each with their own pros, cons, and use cases. Knowing the differences between public, private, and hybrid cloud hosting can make it easier to choose the right cloud hosting plan.
All the hosts listed in this article are public cloud providers. Technically, you could build a private cloud on IONOS yourself with its dedicated servers.
For cheap cloud hosting that gives you full control, IONOS is probably your best bet. It’s one of the best web hosting services we’ve tested, and it offers excellent value for the price.
If you want a managed experience that takes a lot of the complicated stuff out of the equation, SiteGround is expensive but may well be worth it.
Cloudways is good if you want a combination of ease of use and control, and your choice of the major cloud providers. But most people will probably prefer either IONOS or SiteGround.
We use our proprietary grading rubric to evaluate web hosts based on performance, ease of use, features, support, and overall value. Our hands-on approach ensures our ratings reflect how each service actually performs in the real world, so you can choose a host with confidence.
Our process starts with signing up for each service and setting up a real website, just like you would. We run page speed, uptime, and stress tests to measure reliability and performance under load. We also explore the dashboard, test security tools, and contact support to see how responsive and helpful it is.
To learn more about how we test, check out our full testing methodology here.
Yes and no; cloud hosting can be more expensive than other options, at least in the short term, depending on how much traffic your site is getting. But it can also save money in some circumstances by keeping downtime to a minimum and handling large traffic spikes.
The main differences between cloud hosting and VPS hosting — at the consumer level — are pricing and location. VPS hosting plans tend to have a fixed rate and run on a single physical server. With cloud hosting, all the services and features, and even server resources, might be spread over multiple machines, and these services tend to be “pay for what you use.”
For a typical small business website, cloud hosting is usually overkill. However, if you have a custom-developed web app or site that would specifically benefit from the underlying tech, or a site that periodically handles high traffic spikes, then it might well be worth it.
Very affordable plans, both during the introductory period and on renewal
Excellent server speed and reliability
Managed WordPress hosting plans include guided setup through the WordPress Cockpit and its AI site builder
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