Cloudways alternatives: 8 hosts worth considering in 2026

The best Cloudways alternative depends on why you are looking: Kinsta, WP Engine or Rocket.net if you want WordPress fully managed with no server sizing; Hostinger or SiteGround for the lowest first-term price with email included; a server panel such as RunCloud for root access with a dashboard; and DigitalOcean or Kamatera if you want to run the server yourself. Cloudways is still hard to beat for several sites on one managed server, at $24 a month for a 2 GB machine.

This guide groups the alternatives by the problem they solve, gives each one's list price and its catch, and says plainly what each does better and worse than Cloudways. Prices were checked on each company's own site in October 2026. Cloudways and Kamatera are partners of this site; the others are not.

Cloudways alternatives at a glance

For hands-off managed WordPress

These three suit people who want to host one or two WordPress sites without ever choosing a server size. They cost more per site than Cloudways and do more of the WordPress-level work.

• Kinsta, from $35 a month for one site. Each site runs in its own container on Google Cloud, with a CDN and edge caching, a Cloudflare-backed firewall, free malware removal and 14 days of backups included. Support works on WordPress problems. The costs to watch are $30 a month per additional site and $100 a month per site for Redis, which Cloudways includes. Our Cloudways vs Kinsta comparison does the maths.
• WP Engine, from $28 a month billed annually. WP Engine manages WordPress core and PHP updates and gives each site development, staging and production environments. Essential plans are sized by sites, monthly visits and storage, run on shared resources, and the advertised price is a first-year rate. Larger plans add isolation and compliance at $400 a month and up. See Cloudways vs WP Engine.
• Rocket.net, from $30 a month for one site. Every plan runs behind Cloudflare's Enterprise network with a firewall included, with unmetered visitors, 30 days of backups and a stated policy of no renewal price increases. The first month is $1. It hosts WordPress only, and the entry plan has 10 GB of storage and 50 GB of bandwidth, so media-heavy sites move up quickly.

What all three do better than Cloudways is remove decisions and handle WordPress-level support. What Cloudways does better is price per site, Redis included, and non-WordPress applications.

For the lowest price with email included

• Hostinger Cloud Startup, $7.99 a month on a 48-month term. 4 GB of RAM, 4 CPU cores, 100 GB of NVMe storage, unlimited sites, mailboxes free for the first year and a free domain, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. It renews at $25.99, still well below Cloudways for the same memory. You do not choose the provider or control the server. See Cloudways vs Hostinger.
• SiteGround, $2.99 a month for the first year. Friendly Site Tools dashboard, email and a free domain included, staging from the GrowBig plan. The StartUp plan renews at $17.99 and hosts one site; GrowBig renews at $29.99. Shared resources mean busy sites eventually outgrow it. See Cloudways vs SiteGround.

Both beat Cloudways clearly on price and on bundled email. Both require prepaying a long term for the advertised rate, and neither gives you a server to configure.

For root access with a dashboard

Server panels install and manage a WordPress stack on a server you rent yourself, and leave you with root. RunCloud costs $9 a month for one server, or $19 a month for up to 50, with custom NGINX configuration on that plan. SpinupWP costs $12 a month for one server. Paired with a $12 DigitalOcean Droplet, either costs about the same as a 2 GB Cloudways server, and the gap in your favour grows as servers get bigger.

The trade is responsibility: the panel helps, but the server is yours when it breaks. Our Cloudways vs RunCloud comparison goes into it.

For running the server yourself

• DigitalOcean, from $6 a month for 1 GB. The same hardware many Cloudways servers run on, at roughly half the price at 2 GB, with root, per-second billing and managed databases and object storage available. Nothing about the server is managed for you. See Cloudways vs DigitalOcean.
• Kamatera, from $4 a month. A configurable cloud server where CPU, RAM and storage are set separately, with dedicated cores, 18 locations, Windows images with licensing handled, and a 30-day trial on a server worth up to $100. Unmanaged by default, with a $50-per-server managed tier. See Cloudways vs Kamatera.

When to stay with Cloudways

Cloudways is still the best fit if you host three or more WordPress or PHP sites, want the server managed and supported, and do not need root. Per-server pricing, free staging with selected-table pushes, Redis and Object Cache Pro included, and a choice of five cloud providers are a combination none of the alternatives above matches in full. If you are leaving because of a specific problem, such as support scope, email or root access, check whether a Cloudways add-on or a different server setup solves it before you migrate. Our Cloudways review covers those limits in detail.

How to choose

1. Count your sites. One or two favours per-site hosts like Kinsta or Rocket.net; three or more favours per-server hosting like Cloudways or a panel.
2. Decide who runs the server. If the answer is "not me, ever", rule out panels and unmanaged servers.
3. Price two years, not one month. Include renewal rates, email, and add-ons such as Redis or a CDN.
4. Test with your real site. Most of these hosts offer free migrations and a trial or refund window. The slowest page you have, logged in, tells you more than any benchmark.