Cloudways vs Domain.com: guide for 2024

Final verdict

Reviewing Cloudways vs. Domain.com, Cloudways emerges as the overall winner due to its reliable uptime, extensive features, and superior performance.

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  Cloudways (Overall grade: 8.5)
  
  
  Cloudways offers a sophisticated hosting experience suitable for a variety of needs, from small business websites to enterprise applications. Highlights include impressive uptime and fast website speeds thanks to SSD hosting and advanced caching solutions. The platform supports a range of hosting types, including cloud, WordPress, eCommerce, and VPS hosting. Cloudways excels in high-traffic and advanced security measures, providing automated backups, real-time monitoring, and robust user management. However, its slightly higher entry costs and the necessity for third-party email services could be seen as drawbacks for some users.
  
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  Domain.com (Overall grade: 6.5)
  
  
  Domain.com is a more budget-friendly choice, suitable for smaller websites and businesses looking for straightforward, cost-effective hosting. It provides shared, dedicated, and WordPress hosting, with perks like a free domain and SSL certificate for the first year. Despite its affordability and ease of use, especially with its drag-and-drop website builder, Domain.com’s performance and reliability fall short. It struggles with slower response times and less advanced security features and customization options. This makes it less ideal for businesses needing high reliability and advanced management features.
  

Hosting types offered

Both platforms provide a variety of hosting types, each designed to meet the different needs of users.

Although both offer a variety of hosting plans tailored to different needs, in certain cases, one platform may prove to be more suitable.

Detailed comparison

🏆 Winner Cloudways: Reliable cloud hosting with excellent uptime and speedy performance.

Cloudways offers impressive uptime and availability, making it a reliable choice for businesses. With uptime consistently at 100% in 2020 and 2021, and only a slight dip to 99.99% in 2022, Cloudways stands strong compared to other providers. Cloudways also provides a detailed system status page and has a robust support system, including 24/7 live chat and ticketing.

On the other hand, Domain.com lacks the reliability seen in Cloudways. Despite a 99.99% uptime guarantee, actual performance tests have shown that it falls significantly short with uptime around 99.11% to 98%. The average response times are also much slower at 2.97 seconds, highlighting the need for better infrastructure and performance optimization. Overall, Cloudways clearly outshines Domain.com in both uptime and performance metrics.

🏆 Winner Cloudways: Superior performance with advanced caching and scaling features.

When comparing general performance, Cloudways offers remarkable speed enhancements through SSD hosting, which is three times faster than traditional HDDs. The built-in advanced caching solutions, including Memcached, Varnish, Nginx, and Redis, contribute to its exceptional load times and PageSpeed scores. Cloudways also provides the latest PHP versions and auto-healing servers, ensuring seamless operations. In contrast, Domain.com boasts unlimited bandwidth and a 99% uptime guarantee, but lacks the advanced caching methods and performance optimizers found in Cloudways. Furthermore, Cloudways integrates Cloudflare Enterprise for top-tier CDN services, whereas the CDN options for Domain.com are not clearly specified.

Website Speed

Cloudways delivers superior website speed due to its optimized stack with NGINX, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, and PHP-FPM, which is built to handle high traffic and server requests efficiently. Their SSD drives drastically reduce page load times. Cloudways includes a preinstalled WordPress cache plugin, Breeze, setting it apart in terms of speed. Conversely, Domain.com relies on its generic unlimited bandwidth offering and lacks the tailored performance enhancements provided by Cloudways.

Scalability

Cloudways excels in scalability with its vertical scaling feature, allowing users to adjust resources like RAM, CPU, and storage as needed without excessive costs. Users can scale their server resources easily depending on the demand. Information about dedicated servers is not detailed. Domain.com’s plans, such as basic, plus, and premium, require users to upgrade to higher tiers for additional resources, which can be less flexible and potentially more costly. Detailed costs and ease of scaling are less transparent for Domain.com.

🏆 Winner
Cloudways: Offers robust automated security measures and server-level firewalls for enhanced protection.

Both Cloudways and Domain.com, have notable differences in their approaches to technical and operational
security, as well as in their compliance with regulations.

Technical security measures:

Cloudways offers a range of technical security features, including free one-click SSL certificates through Let’s Encrypt. They support the latest PHP versions, including PHP 8.2. Domain.com provides a variety of SSL certificates with warranties and supports encryption and authentication, though their specific PHP version support isn’t specified. Both providers offer firewall protection, but Cloudways includes server-level firewalls and platform-level firewalls, adding layers of security. Domain.com includes SiteLock security, which automatically removes malware and scans databases, offering comprehensive malware protection.

Operational security measures:

Cloudways stands out with automated protection mechanisms such as Fail2ban and bot protection powered by MalCare. They also ensure regular security patches and updates. Domain.com offers SiteLock security features, including blacklist monitoring and web application firewall protection on higher-tier plans. Additionally, Cloudways provides application isolation and auto-healing servers for consistent uptime, features not mentioned for Domain.com. Both companies offer two-factor authentication and database security measures, but Cloudways includes advanced features like SSH and SFTP access.

Compliance and certifications:

Both Cloudways and Domain.com align with GDPR standards to protect user data. Domain.com highlights its GDPR compliance since May 2018, ensuring the rights of EU residents. Cloudways, while not explicitly PCI-DSS compliant, relies on compliant hardware from its cloud infrastructure providers. Domain.com emphasizes PCI compliance and offers PCI compliance scanning to meet credit card processing standards. HIPAA compliance is not specified for either provider.

🏆 Winner
Cloudways: Cloudways offers an array of high-performance features and security measures designed for reliability and scalability.

Cloudways brings a sophisticated hosting experience with SSD hosting, built-in caches, and an optimized stack including PHP 8, Cloudflare, and more. Its automated backups, real-time server monitoring, and application isolation cater well to users who demand robust infrastructure and security. The hosting also supports advanced management capabilities like vertical scaling, extensive support, and Git integration. Additionally, free migration and Cloudflare Enterprise add-ons are attractive for users looking to switch providers smoothly or enhance website performance.

Domain.com positions itself as a user-friendly and cost-effective solution with its drag-and-drop builder, unlimited bandwidth, and FTP accounts. A free domain for the first year and free SSL also make it appealing for budget-conscious users or small businesses. Its 99% uptime guarantee ensures reliability, and the combination of shared, dedicated, and WordPress hosting means it can cater to a variety of user needs. However, its lack of advanced customization and lack of SSH access may sway power users towards competitors like Cloudways.

Both providers support a range of users from beginners to experts with user-friendly website builders and WordPress staging areas. However, in terms of developer tools, both Cloudways and Domain.com offer robust options including SSH access, support for multiple programming languages, and Git for version control, thus appealing to developers looking for advanced capabilities.

Email services:

Cloudways offers additional tools like Rackspace Email Add-on and Elastic Email, facilitating custom email setups and transactional emails. This makes it versatile for businesses needing reliable email capabilities. Domain.com includes basic email hosting and handles email tasks effectively, but it does not emphasize advanced configurations or transactional email services Typically, users may need to integrate with third-party solutions for extended email functionality.

🏆 Winner
Cloudways: Offers a broad spectrum of hosting options tailored for diverse needs, from WordPress to enterprise-level hosting.

Evaluating the pricing of plans among various hosting providers can be complex due to their differing pricing and renewal strategies. Additionally, certain plans require annual commitments, which adds to the difficulty of making comparisons. The prices listed are based on monthly commitments; plans requiring annual commitments are indicated. Although some providers offer identical plans for WordPress and shared hosting, separate tables have been created for each to enhance clarity.

When comparing the pricing plans, Cloudways offers a variety of hosting types with an extensive range of options. Their WordPress and Ecommerce hosting plans, which start at $11 USD/month, provide ample storage and bandwidth. In contrast, Domain.com offers simpler, more affordable plans, starting at $3.75/mo for both shared and WordPress hosting, but with fewer resources and features. Cloudways also has cloud options like AWS and GCE, which are more expensive but come with advanced features suitable for enterprise needs. Domain.com includes helpful extras like a free domain for the first year and SSL certificates, maintaining consistent pricing across various durations, making it budget-friendly but less flexible for scaling.

Enterprise plans

Cloudways caters to enterprises with high-resource plans such as AWS 24XL or DO192GB, providing extensive RAM and processor cores. These plans help manage high traffic and complex applications, making them suitable for large businesses. On the other hand, Domain.com focuses on more economical plans, lacking the advanced resource capacities to support enterprise needs. Cloudways emerges as the better option for enterprises needing scalability and robust infrastructure.

🏆 Winner Cloudways: The ultimate in simple and efficient website setup and migration.

Cloudways offers an intuitive control panel specifically designed for ease of use, whether you’re a novice or an expert. The control panel supports 1-click actions for common operations like backup/restores and application launches, which makes managing websites straightforward. Pre-installed Git, SSH, and SFTP access further assist developers by simplifying code deployment and file management. In contrast, Domain.com has a drag-and-drop website builder integrated into their hosting plans, along with an AI-powered builder for quick setups. While their custom control panel is tailored for ease of use, it may not offer as much depth for advanced users who prefer open-ended functionality and more technical control.

Domain.com’s admin panel is also user-friendly and integrates Google Workspace directly for seamless access to business tools. However, it lacks the advanced operational controls Cloudways provides, such as server cloning or vertical scaling with just a click. This makes Domain.com an excellent option for business owners looking to quickly build and manage their sites without diving into intricate server details. In comparison, Cloudways’ control panel is more detailed, allowing for greater customization, which could be more appealing to those with technical expertise seeking higher control over resources and applications.

When comparing migration tools, Cloudways offers a significant advantage by providing a free migration for the first website. This can be a hassle-free experience, saving time and resources for users switching from another host. Domain.com does not explicitly mention whether their migration service is free or carries a fee, making Cloudways the more attractive option for users concerned about the costs and complexity of switching hosts.

The platforms provide extensive knowledge bases filled with guides, how-to articles, and instructional content. Cloudways offers a wide range of resources alongside 24/7 chat and phone support. Domain.com also boasts a detailed help center with an intuitive search function and around-the-clock support via live chat, phone, and ticketing, ensuring comprehensive user support.

🏆 Winner
Cloudways: Efficient user management and collaborative features.

When comparing Cloudways and Domain.com in terms of managing user roles, permissions, and accessibility, Cloudways stands out with its detailed step-by-step approach to user management through the WordPress Admin Panel. Both platforms provide the core WordPress user roles—Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, and Subscriber. However, Cloudways adds an extra layer of collaboration, allowing team members to be part of different teams and assigning them specific roles, which is an advantage for more complex organizational needs. Domain.com offers the fundamental features needed for user management but lacks the additional collaboration capabilities seen in Cloudways.

Regarding user interfaces and tools for managing users, Cloudways integrates seamlessly with the WordPress Admin Panel and its Cloudways Platform, making it easy to manage access details and navigate through different sections effortlessly. The clear instructions for adding, editing, and deleting users are user-friendly. Domain.com, on the other hand, provides a straightforward but more basic interface through WordPress, which is sufficient for smaller operations but might not cater as well to growing teams requiring advanced management.

In assessing access control measures and the capacity to manage a growing number of users effectively, Cloudways offers robust control over user roles and permissions, alongside additional features like team collaboration. This makes it well-suited for businesses looking to scale efficiently. Domain.com’s system is appropriate for smaller setups but could face limitations in a rapidly expanding environment where more granular control and collaboration are necessary.

Cloudways user roles table:

Domain.com user roles table:

🏆 Winner Cloudways: Cloudways offers a more diverse range of customer support options and better response times across all tiers.

Cloudways stands out due to its extensive customer service channels. It offers phone support, live chat, email/ticket support, and a private Slack channel available with its premium support add-ons. Response times are swift, particularly with the premium support plan, which guarantees an initial response within 10 minutes for high-priority tickets. Their proactive monitoring and dedicated account manager further enhance the support experience.

Domain.com also provides 24/7 phone and live chat support, with quick response times for live chat, typically within two minutes. However, it lacks an explicit email support channel and does not offer dedicated enterprise support like Cloudways. Some users report mixed experiences regarding the responsiveness and effectiveness of their support team. Despite these shortcomings, Domain.com maintains a reliable uptime guarantee and a refund policy that allows for cancellations at any time.

User feedback

Cloudways consistently receives high praise for its ease of use, robust performance, and excellent customer support. Many reviewers highlight the platform’s intuitive interface, effective server management features, and the ability to choose from top-tier cloud providers like AWS and DigitalOcean. Users appreciate the scalable hosting options and reliable customer service, which often includes quick response times and helpful assistance. However, some customers note areas for improvement, such as the absence of email hosting, limitations on server vendor choices, and discrepancies in pricing transparency. Overall, Cloudways is deemed a solid hosting provider, especially valued for its managed hosting features and performance enhancement capabilities.

User feedback for this hosting provider reveals a mixed experience. Many users appreciate its user-friendly platform, straightforward domain registration process, and reliable customer support. However, significant criticisms include poor customer service practices, confusing pricing and add-ons, and outdated or slow web interfaces. While some users praise the affordability and efficiency of domain management, others warn of hidden costs and problematic service.

FAQ