This head to head Cloudways vs SiteGround comparison takes a look at how features, performance, prices, pros and cons, etc stack up to help you choose between these two web hosting companies.
Let's start with comparing the most important feature of any web host.. speed
Head-to-head Speed Comparison
Here I’m going to check the speed performance of Cloudways and SiteGround by testing the speed of this website (hosted on SiteGround) vs. an exact cloned copy of it (but hosted on Cloudways).
That is:
- First, I’ll test this website’s load time at my current web host (which is SiteGround).
- Next, I’ll test that exact same website (a cloned copy of it *) but hosted on Cloudways **.
* Using a migration plugin, exporting the entire site and hosting it on Cloudways
** Using DigitalOcean on Cloudways’s DO1GB plan ($10/mo)
By doing this test you'll get an understanding of how fast loading a site hosted on SiteGround vs Cloudways is.
Here’s how my homepage (on this site – hosted on SiteGround) performs on Pingdom:
My homepage loads in 1.24 seconds. That’s actually really fast in comparison to many other hosts – Because SiteGround is no ? by any means.
The question is, will it load faster on Cloudways? Let’s find out..
Oh yeah it will! On Cloudways the exact same homepage loads in just 435 milliseconds, that's close to 1 second (0.85s to be exact) faster!
How about a blog page, say this review page? Here's how fast it loads on SiteGround:
This review page loads in just 1.1 seconds, again SiteGround delivers great speed! And what about Cloudways?
It loads in just 798 milliseconds, well under one second and again a lot faster!
So what to make of this?
Well one thing is crystal clear, if this website was hosted on Cloudways instead of SiteGround then it would a lot faster. (note to self: move this site over to Cloudways pronto!)
Cloudway vs SiteGround Head-to-head Comparison
  | Cloudways | SiteGround |
| About: | Cloudways is a cloud hosting provider who offer managed cloud servers which are feature rich and are easy to start with and manage and scale as required. | SiteGround is known to have reasonably priced plans for its customers along with accompanying technical features and amazing customer support. |
| Founded in: | 2012 | 2004 |
| BBB Rating: | Not Rated | A |
| Address: | Cloudways Ltd. 52 Springvale, Pope Pius XII Street Mosta MST2653 Malta | SiteGround Office, 8 Racho Petkov Kazandzhiata, Sofia 1776, Bulgaria |
| Phone Number: | (855) 818-9717 | (866) 605-2484 |
| Email Address: | [email protected] | [email protected] |
| Types of Support: | Phone, Live Support, Chat, Ticket | Phone, Live Support, Chat, Ticket |
| Data Center / Server Location: | Ohio, USA, Montreal, Canada, London, The United Kingdom | Chicago Illinois, Amsterdam Netherlands, Singapore and London UK |
| Monthly Price: | From $10.00 per month | From $6.99 per month |
| Unlimited Data Transfer: | No (From 1TB) | Yes |
| Unlimited Data Storage: | No (From 20GB) | No (10GB - 30GB) |
| Unlimited Emails: | No | Yes |
| Host Multiple Domains: | Yes | Yes (Except on StartUp plan) |
| Hosting Controlpanel / Interface: | Cloudways Interface | cPanel |
| Server Uptime Guarantee: | 99.90% | 99.90% |
| Money-Back Guarantee: | 3 Days Free Trial | 30 Days |
| Dedicated Hosting Available: | No (only Cloud available) | Yes |
| Bonuses & Extras: | Free SSL certificate. Free site migration. 24/7 customer support. | CloudFlare content delivery network (CDN). Free backup and restore tools (except with StartUp plan). Free private SSL certificate for one year (except with StartUp). |
| The Good: | 30-day free trial is available. Host unlimited sites. Automatic site backups. Pay-as-you-go pricing system. WordPress is easy to get started with. | Free Premium Features: SiteGround includes advanced features like automatic daily backups, CloudFlare CDN, and Let's Encrypt SSL certificates with every plan. Optimized Plans: SiteGround offers hosting packages designed specifically for top performance on content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, or e-commerce platforms like Magento, PrestaShop, and WooCommerce. Fantastic Customer Support: SiteGround guarantees near-instantaneous reply times across all of its customer support channels. Robust Uptime Guarantee: SiteGround promises you 99.99% uptime. |
| The Bad: | No cPanel because Cloudways is a Platform-as-a-Service company. | Limited Resources: Some of SiteGround lower-priced plans are saddled with limitations like domain or storage space caps. Sluggish Website Migrations: If you've got an existing website, numerous user complaints indicate that you should prepare for a long transfer process with SiteGround. No Windows Hosting: SiteGround's boosted speed relies in part on cutting-edge Linux container technology, so don't expect Windows-based hosting here. |
| Summary: | Cloudways WordPress hosting (review here) is known for enabling users to host resources as their website grows. Deployment is possible within minutes as it allows users to choose the server resources such as storage, RAM and CPU. Any of the offered infrastructures such as Kyup or Vultr, DigitalOcean, Google and Amazon can be chosen for the Cloud. Users can also build their App utilizing any of the offered 10+ PHP-based frameworks, emcommerce builders and CMS. | SiteGround (review) is the perfect base framework for users to host their blogs or websites. Features are astounding such as SSD drves for all plans and improved speedy performance with NGINX, HTTP/2, PHP7 and free CDN. More features include free SSL certificate an user app updates. The proprietary and unique firewall security rules enable users to avoid system vulnerabilities. There is also free website transfer and serves which have been placed on three continents. There also exists premium features for WordPress along with highly responsive live chat. |
Cloudways “wins” this head-to-head comparison and is the recommended web hosting service to use – especially if you want a very fast loading WordPress site.