Cloudways vs Bluehost
Cloudways and Bluehost compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. Cloudways scores higher overall.
By Jennifer T. · Updated
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Verdict
CloudwaysWins overall
DigitalOcean's managed cloud layer: servers from $11 a month on five clouds, billed hourly, staging and caching included
Newfold's WordPress-recommended host: three shared tiers on 36-month terms, weekly backups, a 5 percent SLA coupon
Cloudways wins 4 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.8 vs 7.6).
How do the scores compare?
Cloudways leads on 4 sub-scores, Bluehost on 2. Higher is better.
Which one is faster and more reliable?
Which one costs less?
On renewal, Bluehost is cheaper ($9.99/mo vs $14.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term.
| Cloudways | Bluehost | |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest plan | DigitalOcean Premium Micro | Starter |
| Intro price | $14.00/mo | $3.99/mo (better) |
| Renewal price | $14.00/mo | $9.99/mo (better) |
| Required term | 1 months (better) | 36 months |
| Websites | unlimited | 10 |
| Storage | 25 GB | 10 GB |
| Money back | 0 days | 30 days (better) |
What does each include?
| Cloudways | Bluehost | |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | No | First year, with a 12-month or 36-month term |
| Free SSL | Let's Encrypt certificates on every application | Let's Encrypt |
| Backups | On-demand and scheduled server backups with one-click restore; offsite storage billed at $0.033 per GB per server | Weekly website backups on every shared plan |
| Free migration | Free migration of existing sites | Site migration tool |
| Free CDN | No | Not stated |
| Caching | Lightning Stack (NGINX), Object Cache Pro and Redis included on every plan | Advanced static content caching and object caching |
| Staging | Advanced staging and cloning on every plan | WordPress staging site on every plan |
| No | Not stated | |
| Resource limits | A whole server per customer: 1 to 8 GB RAM and 1 to 4 vCPU on the listed sizes, larger sizes and other providers available | Not stated |
| Data center choice | The provider's regions, chosen per server: DigitalOcean 9, Vultr 30, Linode 25, AWS 28, Google Cloud 28 | Not stated |
| Uptime guarantee | No | 99.99% SLA; at most one coupon per month for 5% of the monthly hosting fee |
| Security | Built-in firewall with IP blocking, WordPress vulnerability scanner, bot protection and dedicated firewalls per the pricing page | Malware scanning on Starter; AI malware removal, web application firewall and DDoS protection from Business |
| Free trial | 3 days without a credit card | Not stated |
| Phone support | No | Business and above; Starter has chat only |
| Windows hosting | No | No |
| CDN | Not stated | Yes |
| SSH and WP-CLI | Not stated | Yes |
| Choice of data center | Not stated | Region selected at checkout (North America, South America, Europe, Asia) |