Getting Started FAQs

New to Cloudways? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Here are the most common FAQs our customers have to get started with Cloudways.

Cloudways Product avatar
Written by Cloudways Product
Updated over a week ago

This guide answers the most common FAQs customers may have while getting started with Cloudways.

FAQs

Does Cloudways provide a free hosting service?
Unfortunately, not. We only provide a 3-day free trial. All our plans are pay-as-you-go once the account is upgraded from trial to full.


How long is the trial period supposed to be?
We offer a 3-day trial period in order for you to get familiar with our platform. The time period starts with the creation of a trial server. We advise our customers to upgrade their accounts before the trial is expired.


How much will I be charged per month after the free trial?
After the trial period has expired, there will be monthly charges applicable (pay-as-you-go basis) based on the server plan you have opted for, such as infrastructure provider, server size, bandwidth usage, and subscribed paid add-ons (Cloudflare Enterprise, SMTP add-ons, etc.).


Are there any extra charges except the server cost?
We charge a very little fee for backup storage per server. Also, you will get charges if you have subscribed to our paid add-on(s).


What payment methods do you support?
We accept all major Credit Cards (i.e. Visa, MasterCard, and American Express). Alternatively, you can pay via PayPal upon request. Please contact our Live Chat support for more details.

Is there a way to change my registered email address?
Yes, you may easily update your registered email address using the Cloudways Platform in just a few simple steps. You may review this article for more information.


Do you offer free website migrations?
We give our customers peace of mind via our hassle-free managed website migrations (one free then paid) performed by our experts.

We also have our easy-to-use and automated WordPress Migrator Plugin (free of cost) to migrate your WordPress website quickly to Cloudways. For more details, please visit our getting started guide.


Do you provide free SSL certificates?
Yes, Cloudways provides free Let’s Encrypt SSL and it can be installed very easily.

Why does Cloudways recommend a 2GB or larger server plan?

It's important to understand that for the best performance of your live websites, we strongly advise opting for a server with 2GB or more. Servers with 1GB are primarily intended for testing and staging purposes.

How many applications can be hosted on the same server?
Although we provide the freedom to our customers to add more than one application on the same server, there may not be a straightforward answer to this question as it depends on a number of factors such as CMS type (WordPress, Magento, PHP, etc.), traffic on your website and server specification, etc.

However, as a guiding example, if you choose a 2GB server, it can handle 4-5 small websites having combined web traffic up to 110K page views per month.

If you have a web store (Magento, Prestashop, etc.), we recommend having 1 website per server or you may group them by type and host them on big servers. For more help visit this guide.


Do you offer a demo website with a test URL so that I can test the performance before I take my website live?
Yes, we do provide a staging/test URL with every web application in order for you to test your migrated website before taking it live from Cloudways.


Does your platform support WHM, Cpanel or File Manager?

Cloudways provides its own powerful platform which is very easy to use and you can manage your server through it easily.

For File Manager, you will be required to access your web application through SFTP or SSH (such as FileZilla, PuTTY, etc.).


What do you provide under-managed hosting services?

Cloudways managed services cover the following areas:

Managed Server: We assure you that we are taking care of everything related to the server including regular OS level patches, security updates, O/S firewall rules, and orchestration of the machines.

Managed Platform: Our easy-to-use platform lets you deploy web applications, servers, perform tasks (such as start/stop/restart/delete server, etc.), deploy unlimited SSL certificates, create a staging environment, and perform a certain level of server customization (such as changing packages and settings of PHP/MySQL, Apache/Nginx settings, installation of Elasticsearch/Redis, etc.) using server management option.

Application Level Support: We have a support portal and Cloudways community where you can find helpful articles and discussions addressing the most common application-level issues. We also provide basic application-level support such as mapping domains, issues with backups or restoration, deploying SSL certificates, basic modification to .htaccess, etc.

Please talk to our Live Chat support to discuss our advanced support options.

Expert Customer Support: We provide 24/7/365 support by our experts (via Live Chat and support tickets) in case you need any help related to the Cloudways Platform features, managed website migrations, managed application upgrades, etc.

That’s it! We hope this article was helpful. If you need any help, then feel free to search your query on Cloudways Support Center or contact us via chat (Need a Hand > Send us a Message). Alternatively, you can also create a support ticket.

Did this answer your question?