WP Engine vs Cloudways: guide for 2024

Final verdict

Looking over WP Engine vs. Cloudways, it’s clear why both hosts are so popular. They have both hosted millions of
websites that run on WordPress for decades, building up a loyal customer base.

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  WP Engine (Overall grade: 8.6)
  
  
  is renowned for its managed WordPress hosting, providing a wealth of features specifically optimized for WordPress sites. It offers proprietary tools like EverCache® and extensive media optimization, ensuring optimal performance. The platform’s high uptime, impressive security measures, and 24/7 support make it a dependable choice for WordPress-focused businesses and developers. However, the higher price point and lack of certain features like email hosting might be a drawback for some users.
  
• 
  Cloudways (Overall grade: 8.5)
  
  
  excels in flexibility and performance, catering to a variety of applications beyond just WordPress. Its strengths lie in vertical scaling, the ability to choose from multiple top-tier cloud providers, and performance-enhancing features like built-in caches. The user-friendly control panel and extensive support options, including premium add-ons, make Cloudways a robust option for businesses needing scalable and high-performing hosting solutions. However, the absence of native email hosting and domain registration might require additional solutions, which could be a minor inconvenience.
  

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 WP Engine: Outstanding uptime and global support for WordPress sites.

WP Engine excels in maintaining high uptime and site availability. With 24/7 monitoring, the platform ensures prompt alerts for any outages. Its 99.99% SLA guarantees reliability, making it ideal for handling significant traffic without downtime. Global data centers reduce latency, enhancing site performance across regions.

Cloudways boasts impressive uptime and strong performance metrics. The platform supports multiple cloud providers and offers vertical scaling, ensuring flexibility and scalability. However, Cloudways doesn’t provide domain registration or email hosting, which might require additional solutions. While it offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee, its overall feature set places it slightly behind WP Engine.

🏆 Winner: WP Engine: Exceptional managed WordPress hosting with remarkable speed and security.

WP Engine and Cloudways both offer impressive performance, but nuances set them apart. WP Engine boasts fast page load times due to EverCache® technology and a global CDN with 200+ points of presence. Cloudways also offers speed with SSD drives and built-in caches like Memcached and Redis. While WP Engine focuses on a global CDN to ensure peak performance, Cloudways uses Cloudflare Enterprise for enhanced security and speed. WP Engine has data centers worldwide, including the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, while Cloudways allows easy expansion with leading cloud providers, though specific locations aren’t detailed.

Website Speed

WP Engine shines in website speed, thanks to its EverCache® technology and free global CDN, combined with the latest PHP versions. This ensures that pages load quickly, crucial for both user experience and SEO. Cloudways leverages SSD drives and advanced caches like NGINX, Memcached, and Redis for fast load times. It also provides PHP 8.2 ready servers and Breeze, a preinstalled WordPress cache plugin. Both hosts deliver impressive speed, but WP Engine’s proprietary technologies and end-to-end optimization give it an edge.

Scalability

WP Engine offers scalable architecture with isolated resources to manage traffic spikes effectively. Users may need to upgrade plans manually based on their needs. Cloudways, on the other hand, provides vertical scaling, allowing resources like RAM and CPU to scale seamlessly, with options to adjust on-demand. Though specific costs aren’t clearly outlined, Cloudways tends to offer more flexibility with its 1-click scaling features and integration with leading cloud providers.

🏆 Winner
WP Engine: Offering robust security features including continuous threat monitoring and multiple compliance certifications, WP Engine stands out.

Technical security measures:

WP Engine employs enterprise-grade technology, blocking 72 million attacks daily and providing automated updates. It also boasts advanced protections such as Global Edge Security, managed Web Application Firewall (WAF), DDoS mitigation, and SSL. Cloudways offers free 1-Click SSL and dedicated firewalls, alongside tools like Fail2ban and bot protection powered by MalCare. Additionally, Cloudways supports PHP versions up to PHP 8.2, including regular security patches and updates. WP Engine, on the other hand, focuses significantly on proactive threat detection and real-time security management.

Operational security measures:

WP Engine provides 24/7 support with a live team monitoring security feeds, and daily backups. It includes features like data encryption, two-factor authentication, and automated plugin updates. Cloudways enhances operational security with two-factor authentication, auto-healing servers, and IP whitelisting for secure server access. Both providers offer DDoS mitigation, but WP Engine’s Global Edge Security offers an advanced solution that includes Argo Smart Routing for optimal web traffic paths.

Compliance and certifications:

WP Engine is SOC-2 compliant and ISO 27001-2013 certified, meeting high standards for security and information management. Cloudways doesn’t specify its GDPR compliance explicitly but focuses on security and data protection. For PCI compliance, WP Engine sites may be scanned for vulnerabilities, though results can vary. Cloudways relies on its cloud infrastructure providers for PCI-DSS level 1 compliant hardware, indicating indirect compliance dependent on customer implementation.

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🏆 Winner
Cloudways: A solid choice with high performance and flexibility.

WP Engine and Cloudways both offer robust hosting solutions, but they cater to different needs. WP Engine is highly specialized in managed WordPress hosting with plans that include essential features for basic sites all the way to enterprise-level performance. Its fully managed services, daily backups, and comprehensive security features make it a go-to option for businesses primarily focused on WordPress. The free automated migration plugin and 24/7 support bolster its user-friendly approach. Unique offerings like EverCache® technology and Edge Content Delivery ensure optimized speed and reliability.

Cloudways, on the other hand, is well-known for its flexibility and performance. Its focus goes beyond just WordPress to WooCommerce and other applications, providing built-in caches like Memcached, Varnish, and Redis to enhance speed. Cloudways also offers vertical scaling, so users can easily adjust resources like RAM and CPU based on their needs without any long-term contracts. They emphasize ease of use with features like 1-Click actions for backups and server cloning, along with SSH/SFTP access for secure server management. The absence of a free domain and email hosting could be a downside, considering these are often desired by small business owners.

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 WP Engine and Cloudways 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:

WP Engine does not include email hosting, making it less convenient for users who want an all-in-one solution. Cloudways offers a Rackspace Email Add-on and Elastic Email for transactional email services, but it doesn’t include native email hosting in its plans. This means users may need to rely on third-party services like Google Workspace or Zoho for their email needs, which is a simpler setup compared to WP Engine’s complete absence of email features.

🏆 Winner
Cloudways: Cloudways offers a diverse range of hosting solutions, catering to various needs and budgets.

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, we have created separate tables for each to enhance clarity.

Cloudways provides a wider range of hosting plans with varying levels of RAM, processor cores, and storage capacities, catering to both WordPress and eCommerce hosting needs. Their starting price tends to be lower across the board. In contrast, WP Engine focuses exclusively on managed WordPress hosting, offering extensive security features, automated updates, premium themes, and a robust global CDN. WP Engine’s premium comes with higher price points but includes advanced features such as EverCache® and Genesis blocks for site creation.

Enterprise plans

WP Engine and Cloudways cater to enterprises with their Custom and high-tier plans. WP Engine provides a detailed suite of advanced features with comprehensive priority support, making it ideal for businesses requiring extensive security and dedicated account management. Cloudways offers a broad selection of scalable cloud environments across multiple infrastructures, allowing enterprises to tailor resources more flexibly.

🏆 Winner
Cloudways: A hosting provider with an intuitive and highly functional control panel that simplifies server management.

WP Engine offers a custom control panel designed specifically for WordPress sites. Its layout is clean and easy to navigate, making it suitable for both technical and non-technical users. The panel includes integrated tools for backups and migrations, though the platform’s specialized focus can limit flexibility for users needing broader capabilities.

In contrast, Cloudways provides an intuitive control panel that caters to a broad range of applications, including WordPress, Magento, and Laravel. It offers 1-click actions for various tasks, enhancing usability for users of any skill level. The inclusion of vertical scaling options directly within the control panel further helps streamline resource management, making the hosting experience efficient and straightforward.

WP Engine facilitates site migration through a free Automated Migration plugin or a Manual Migration Checklist for more complex scenarios. These options make it easier for users to transfer their WordPress sites, with 24/7 support available to help. Cloudways also offers free migration services for the first website from any host and includes automated solutions like server cloning and staging URLs. Both providers offer strong migration tools, but Cloudways edges out with its 1-click cloning and staging capabilities.

WP Engine’s Support Center is comprehensive, featuring articles on diverse topics such as site setup, troubleshooting, and optimizing performance. The resources cater to both novice and expert users, backed by 24/7 phone and chat support. Cloudways has a similarly extensive Help Center, offering articles, guides, troubleshooting tools, and a ticketing system. The active community forum and premium support add-ons complement their extensive resources.

🏆 Winner: WP Engine: A comprehensive solution for advanced user management and control.

Both WP Engine and Cloudways offer diverse user management features, but their approaches vary in flexibility and scope. WP Engine provides an extensive set of user roles and capabilities, allowing for granular control over who can perform specific actions on the platform. It has distinct roles like Owner, Full, and Partial, each with specific permissions tailored to different needs, making it easy to delegate and manage responsibilities. On the other hand, Cloudways relies on the native WordPress Admin Panel for user management, which includes standard WordPress roles such as Administrator, Editor, and Subscriber. While this is straightforward and integrates well with WordPress, it lacks the detailed role customization available on WP Engine.

When it comes to user interfaces and tools for managing users, WP Engine offers a dedicated User Portal that streamlines the management of users and their roles. The steps for adding, editing, and removing users are clearly defined and straightforward, ensuring ease of use. WP Engine also provides a feature-rich environment for managing SFTP logins and technical contacts directly from the User Portal. Cloudways uses the WordPress Admin Panel for similar functions, which is familiar to WordPress users but may feel limited compared to WP Engine’s comprehensive User Portal. The Cloudways interface focuses more on application-level management rather than providing specialized tools for user role administration.

In evaluating the effectiveness of access control measures and handling a growing number of users, WP Engine stands out with its robust set of defined actions and audit logs. The ability to filter logs by user, environment, and action adds another layer of security and accountability, essential for growing businesses. WP Engine’s various user roles allow for precise access control, ensuring that users only have the permissions they need. Cloudways, while effective for smaller teams, may struggle to offer the same level of detailed access control and monitoring as team sizes increase and more complex permissions are required.

WP Engine user roles table:

🏆 Winner Cloudways: Offers extensive support options, including proactive monitoring and different premium support tiers with varying response times.

WP Engine and Cloudways both excel with their 24/7 customer support. WP Engine provides phone and live chat support as standard, along with a user portal and extensive knowledge base. Its customer satisfaction is high, benefiting from the expertise of WordPress specialists. Premium plans allow access to more experienced support staff and other advanced support features.

Cloudways matches WP Engine’s 24/7 support but extends its channels to include email/ticket systems, live chat, and support over Skype or phone by request. Cloudways also offers three tiers of support add-ons, tailoring response times based on chosen plans. The premium support add-ons provide phone support, a dedicated account manager, and a private Slack channel. With proactive monitoring and customization support, Cloudways offers extensive support capabilities.

User feedback

WP Engine exudes excellence in managed WordPress hosting, boasting top-notch technical support that’s often highlighted as a standout feature. Users appreciate the user-friendly dashboard, seamless migration tools, daily backups, and solid security measures, all of which contribute to high performance and reliability. However, the service does come at a higher price point, which some users find steep, especially for entry-level plans or smaller projects. Despite occasional concerns about costs and some technical nuances, WP Engine’s premium service quality justifies the expense for many, making it a highly recommended solution for businesses and developers alike.

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.

FAQ