Cloudways Tutorial, Is Cloudways Good? Is It Worth Buying?

How is Cloudways?Is it suitable for building websites? Coincidentally, a Naiba client purchased a Cloudways server today. Taking this opportunity,Naiba will share a Cloudways tutorial and offer personal purchasing advice regarding Cloudways servers.

What is Cloudways?

Cloudways is a cloud server hosting platform. To put it plainly, they rent cloud servers from other cloud server providers, configure them for you, and then you use them. It feels a bit like a middleman making a profit. Of course, this middleman provides services; you don't have to manage OS installation, security, updates, or configuration of the server yourself. You can just buy and use it.

Is Cloudways Worth Buying?

For friends learning website building on their own, is it necessary to purchase Cloudways? Let's first look at a comparison:

From the image above, we can see that Cloudways hosts use servers from DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud.

Then let's look at Vultr's configuration.

It can be seen that, purely in terms of CPU and memory, ignoring traffic and storage, on the Vultr official website, a 1H1G configuration costs $6 per month, and a 1H2G configuration costs $12 per month.

On Cloudways, the starting price is $13. That's about double the price.

What services can you get for this extra cost?

• Cloudflare Add-on NEW Built-in Cloudflare CDN acceleration
• 24/7/365 Support Year-round after-sales support
• Free SSL Free SSL certificate
• Free Migration Free migration
• Unlimited Application Installation Unlimited number of applications
• Team Management Team management
• Dedicated Firewalls Professional firewall
• 24/7 Real-time Monitoring 7*24 real-time monitoring
• Automated Backups Automated backups
• Staging Environment Staging environment (used for building temporary websites for testing)
• Optimized With Advanced Caches Optimized with advanced caching
• Auto Healing Auto-healing (automatic recovery/backup restoration)
• Regular Security Patching Regular security patching
• HTTP/2 Enabled Servers HTTP/2 support
• SSH and SFTP Access SSH and SFTP access

Among the features above, if you purchase on Vultr, automated backups would cost an extra $2 per month. Apart from after-sales support, most of the other features are essentially available when you buy a VPS anyway, so they shouldn't be counted as extra cost.

In summary, by spending twice as much on Cloudways, what you gain is year-round after-sales support, automated backups, and a relatively easy-to-use VPS management system.

Is it worth buying?

First, a $13 per month server is not expensive. Even if you buy from Vultr, Naiba recommends at least a $10/month configuration, though the configuration will be one level higher than Cloudways.

However, because Cloudways has configured and managed the server itself, making VPS usage simpler,and the server optimization is definitely more thorough than what a VPS beginner could achieve,so a $13 Cloudways server may run faster than a $12 server you buy yourself.

Also, since the VPS is configured by Cloudways, any issues regarding the VPS will be handled by Cloudways after-sales, and you can use their after-sales service.

Cloudways Purchase Recommendation:

If you have sufficient budget and don't understand technology but want to use a VPS for your website, buy it.

If you have a limited budget but are good at self-learning, you can first buyShared HostingorVultrtheseVPSto build the website. When your website traffic increases and you feel the VPS is slow, then switch to managed hosts like Cloudways.

Because a normal VPS can be made simple to use by installingBaota Panel. In all the years Naiba has shared website building tutorials, only one client running a 2C business had high traffic requiring a server upgrade; other websites generally don't experience server performance issues.

Moreover, for true beginners, using a VPS, including managed VPS like Cloudways, is still too complex. Shared hosting may be more suitable for beginners.

If website traffic doesn't grow, even the best server won't fulfill its purpose. Once traffic grows, upgrading to a better server is not too late.

Cloudways Tutorial

After analyzing what Cloudways is like and whether it's worth buying, we will now officially begin the Cloudways tutorial.

First, registration.

1. Openhttps://www.cloudways.com/Website, click the GET STARTED FREE button to register.

Cloudways official website

Click to register (free trial for 3 days)

Then fill in the registration information and submit.

After registration, a verification prompt may appear, such as the following:

Welcome To Cloudways
To activate your account, please contact our verification team at av@cloudways.com. Once your account is activated, you’ll be able to login and start your free trial.

At this point, we need to manually send an email to av@cloudways.com to verify the account (a reminder email will also be automatically sent to your registered email, and you can simply reply to it).

The email subject can be

Account verification

Email content:

Hello, I am going to buy Cloudways services to build my own website, please help me to verify my account, my email is your email address.

my facebook: your facebook address

my twitter: your twitter address

my linkedin: your linkedin address

Then wait for their reply and follow the instructions in their response email. Generally, they will ask you to provide proof of identity, including ID card, Facebook address, Twitter address, your own website, LinkedIn address, phone number.Select 2 pieces of information and send them.。

Then, create a server.

Once approved, you will receive an account activation email. After activation, log in to Cloudways, and the service creation interface will appear, as shown in the figure below:

Choose the appropriate server provider and configuration according to your needs, then proceed to the next step.

Wait a few minutes, and the website will be created.

Next, server management.

After the server is created, click the server tab to enter the server details page, where you will see an interface like the one shown below.

在Master CredentialsIn the interface, you can see your server IP (Public IP), SSH/SFTP account (Username) and password (Password).

This account is what you can use toXSHELL and XSFTPThis type of software to connect to the server for server management or file upload/download, but generally, novice users on Cloudways do not need to use it.

MonitoringInterface is server monitoring, where you can see your server usage.

Manage ServicesInterface is server process management, similar to the task manager on a computer.

Settings & PackagesInterface is software configuration and optimization, such as setting PHP timeout, upload size, memory limit, changing PHP version, etc.

SecurityInterface is mainly for setting IP whitelist and blacklist for SSH and database.

Vertical ScalingInterface is for scaling the server up or down.

BackupsInterface is for website backup, where you can set up automatic backups or perform immediate backups.

SMTPThe interface is for configuring email sending functionality on the server, but this requires an additional fee (not expensive). You can also install a plugin on WordPress to achieve this yourself.

Manage WordPress

After introducing the server, let's talk about WordPress. After the server is installed, Cloudways has already installed WordPress for you by default.

Click the menu bar or the Applications in the above image to switch to the Applications tab.

From the above image, we can see that a WordPress website has been installed by default.

If you want to create multiple websites, simply click the Add Application button in the upper right corner to create them.

Click the application title to enter the details page, and you will see the interface as shown below.

Access DetailsThis interface displays the basic information of your application, including the URL, account, password, etc.

Staging ManagementThis interface creates an identical testing environment copy of your website for testing or debugging new features. It is generally not frequently used for small websites.

MonitoringThis interface is also for monitoring, allowing you to monitor website traffic, PHP, database, and other information separately.

Bot ProtectionThis interface shows statistics from a security plugin, which requires the WP plugin installed by default on Cloudways to function.

Domain ManagementThis interface is for binding your own domain to WordPress, so you don't have to access it via a temporary domain.

Naiba recommends binding your domain here first, then entering the WordPress Admin Dashboard to build the website and perform other tasks. This avoids potential link errors when switching from a temporary domain to the official domain after the site is built (there is a possibility that Cloudways' automatic domain replacement may not be completely clean).

After adding the domain, you need to go to the domain registrar's website to set up DNS resolution. Simply put, this means adding two A records, with the record value being your server's IP address. Reference tutorials:

• Domain Guide: Comprehensive Tutorial on Domain Query, Registration, Resolution, and Filing
• Namecheap DNS Resolution Tutorial
• NameSilo Domain Resolution and DNS Server Modification Tutorial
• Tutorial on Modifying DNS Resolution Records for Domains Registered on Godaddy
• Alibaba Cloud Domain Resolution Tutorial: How to Modify IP Records for Domains Registered on Alibaba Cloud
• Tutorial on domain registration and DNS resolution on Tencent Cloud

Cron Job ManagementThis interface is generally not used; it is for scheduled task management.

SSL CertificateThis interface is for applying for an SSL security certificate. After your domain resolution is successful, come to this interface to apply for the SSL certificate, so the website can be accessed via HTTPS.

Backup And RestoreThis interface is for backup and restore.

Deployment Via GitThis interface is generally not used; it is for deployment via Git.

Application SettingsThis interface allows you to configure settings such as the WordPress installation folder (not recommended to change) and also configure PHP parameters specifically for this WordPress installation.

Migration ToolsThis interface is for migrating websites. I haven't used it, so I won't comment.

CloudflareThe interface is a free CDN service, just fill in your email to activate it.

How to delete and add a new WordPress website?

If you need to delete a WordPress website, simply click the delete button behind the application, then enter „DELETE“ in the pop-up interface.

It should be noted that you must ensure that at least one Application is running on the server. If you want to delete an old one, you can create a new application first and then delete it.

If you need to add a new website, simply click the Add Application button in the upper right corner, then select the server you want to create it on, choose the WordPress version, add a name, and create it.

How to delete a Cloudways server?

To delete a Cloudways server, directly click the three dots behind the server, select Delete, and then enter DELETE in the confirmation pop-up interface to proceed.

At this point, the basic usage tutorial for Cloudways has been introduced. If you have any further questions, feel free to leave a comment for discussion.