Best for: Cloudways is best for small teams, agencies, and store owners who want managed hosting without hiring an ops engineer.
Avoid if: Skip Cloudways if you need custom VPC patterns, deep IAM policy design, or service-by-service architecture control.
Biggest tradeoff: Cloudways buys you speed and simplicity, but you give up some native AWS flexibility and usually pay a management premium.
Scope first: this comparison focuses on operational fit in 2026, not affiliate claims. I reviewed onboarding, control surface, support models, and published pricing documents. Limits: this is not a 30-day synthetic load benchmark, and Cloudways’ catalog is dynamic, so I used official pages and help docs checked on February 16, 2026.
First Impressions
When I first opened Cloudways, setup felt like a guided workflow built for people who need production today, not after a week of reading docs. I could launch a server, map a domain, and get SSL inside one interface with minimal context switching. The interface is opinionated, and that is mostly a strength.
When I first opened AWS for the same goal, I got maximum flexibility and maximum responsibility in the same package. If you choose EC2 directly, you make more decisions early: instance family, storage class, network rules, backups, monitoring scope, and patching routines. That control is powerful, but it front-loads complexity.
Here is the practical contrast:
| Area | Cloudways | AWS | What It Means in Practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onboarding speed | Guided launch flow | Service-by-service setup | Cloudways gets a first site online faster; AWS needs architecture choices first |
| Default stack posture | Managed app stack | DIY stack unless using higher-level services | Cloudways reduces day-1 ops work |
| Control depth | Moderate | Very high | AWS fits teams with infra skills and compliance design needs |
| Operational burden | Lower | Higher | Cloudways is friendlier for lean teams |
One quick reality check: AWS is not “hard”; it is just explicit. Every knob is visible, and every knob can become a ticket later.
What Worked
Cloudways worked best when the use case was clear: run WordPress, WooCommerce, or client sites with predictable operational workflows. Useful defaults matter here. You get managed platform behavior, built-in backup workflows, and add-ons like enterprise CDN from a single billing surface. For busy teams, consolidation has real value.
AWS worked best where architectural control was the product. If your team needs to combine services, automate infrastructure deeply, or optimize workload placement, AWS wins on capability ceiling. You can build exactly what you need, then tune over time.
Hard numbers that matter:
- AWS EC2 regional SLA target can reach 99.99% when running across multiple Availability Zones in a region (EC2 SLA).
- AWS Support pricing now starts at $29/month minimum per account for Business Support+, with Enterprise Support at $5,000/month minimum (AWS Support Pricing).
- Cloudways standard support is included, while Advanced Support is listed at $100/month or 10% of invoice (whichever is higher) and Premium at $500/month (Cloudways support page).
Performance implications in plain English: both can be fast. Cloudways removes many tuning tasks; AWS gives you the room to tune far beyond defaults. If your team will not actively tune, “theoretically better” AWS architecture usually loses to “well-managed enough” Cloudways execution.
What Didn’t
Cloudways limits can show up once your infrastructure requirements move beyond the platform’s opinionated model. If you need unusual network segmentation, deep policy-level governance, or custom service composition across many AWS services, Cloudways can feel restrictive. You may also pay more than direct infrastructure cost because management is part of the product.
AWS pain points are predictable but significant for non-ops teams. First, billing complexity can spike when traffic and service count grow. Second, support at meaningful response levels is not cheap once you need urgent help. Third, “simple website hosting” on raw AWS often turns into a tooling project.
Support reality is a common blind spot:
- Cloudways SLA page states high-priority ticket response target of 30 minutes and normal priority target of 6 hours (acknowledgment/start time, not full resolution).
- AWS case management docs show severity-based first response targets, including 1 hour for production system down on paid plans and faster for critical tiers.
Implication: both can respond quickly, but response target is not resolution time. If your team lacks troubleshooting depth, provider response speed alone will not protect uptime.
Pricing Reality Check
Marketing says “pay as you go” on both sides. The important part is what the invoice looks like after month three.
Cloudways pricing notes (checked Feb 16, 2026):
- Cloudways pricing page shows managed cloud server plans starting at $11/month.
- Cloudways Autonomous docs show single-site plans at $100 / $200 / $400 per month tiers.
- For AWS/GCE-backed servers on Cloudways, Cloudways help docs state billing is hourly with no monthly cap.
- Cloudways help docs list AWS bandwidth pass-through at $0.12/GB for usage on that provider context.
AWS pricing notes (checked Feb 16, 2026):
- AWS Lightsail Linux instances are listed from $5/month, with $12/month for a 2 GB plan.
- AWS EC2 page states first 100 GB/month of internet data transfer out is free across services/regions (with exclusions), then tiered charges apply.
- AWS paid support starts at $29/month/account minimum (Business Support+).
Here is the side-by-side cost lens buyers usually need:
| Cost Factor | Cloudways | AWS | What It Means in Practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Starts around $11/month on Cloudways plans | Lightsail starts at $5/month | AWS can be cheaper at low scale if you self-manage |
| Management layer | Included in platform price | Mostly DIY unless adding managed services/support | Cloudways can reduce internal labor cost |
| Support upsell | Advanced: $100/month or 10% invoice; Premium: $500/month | Business Support+ min $29/month/account; Enterprise min $5,000/month | Critical support economics differ sharply by team size |
| Renewal delta | Usually no intro-renewal jump pattern | Usually no promo-renewal model | More stable than “intro discount then spike” shared hosts |
| Hidden pressure points | Add-ons, provider-specific transfer rules | Data transfer, multi-service billing, paid support | Budget forecasting is easier only if architecture is simple |
Plain-language takeaway: AWS often wins raw infrastructure price; Cloudways often wins total operating cost for teams without dedicated cloud engineering.
Sources (checked 2026-02-16):
- Cloudways pricing: https://www.cloudways.com/en/pricing.php
- Cloudways Autonomous pricing model: https://support.cloudways.com/en/articles/12810522-how-payment-and-pricing-work-on-cloudways-autonomous
- Cloudways billing behavior: https://support.cloudways.com/en/articles/12157984-understanding-monthly-vs-hourly-billing-on-cloudways
- Cloudways bandwidth notes: https://support.cloudways.com/en/articles/5119679-bandwidth-charges-of-infrastructure-providers
- Cloudways support add-ons: https://www.cloudways.com/en/support.php
- Cloudways SLA: https://www.cloudways.com/en/sla.php
- AWS Lightsail pricing: https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/pricing/
- AWS EC2 pricing/data transfer notes: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/
- AWS Support pricing: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/pricing/
- AWS support plans/docs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awssupport/latest/user/aws-support-plans.html
- AWS case response targets: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awssupport/latest/user/case-management.html
- AWS EC2 SLA: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2-sla/
Who Should Pick Which
Pick Cloudways if you are:
- A freelancer or agency managing multiple client sites and billing for outcomes, not infrastructure design.
- A WooCommerce operator who needs a managed stack, quick fixes, and straightforward day-to-day operations.
- A small product team that wants predictable hosting workflows without building an internal SRE function.
Pick AWS if you are:
- A technical team needing deep service integration, strict IAM/network controls, or custom compliance architecture.
- A scaling SaaS that will actively optimize compute, storage, and networking as first-class engineering work.
- An organization where cloud architecture is strategic IP, not just a utility line item.
Ranked recommendation by user type:
- First-time business site owner: Cloudways
- Web agency with many WordPress installs: Cloudways
- Dev-heavy startup with infra engineers: AWS
- Enterprise platform team with compliance constraints: AWS
Switch trigger: move from Cloudways to AWS when platform constraints block architecture goals for two consecutive quarters, or when your cloud team can clearly save more than the management premium while maintaining reliability.