Cloudways Managed Cloud
Best for: The Cloudways trial is short but genuinely free: no card, a real server, and the full dashboard. Three days is enough if you plan them: launch at the size you would actually buy, migrate a copy of a real site on day one, and spend day two testing the slow pages, a staging push and a backup restore. You cannot test scaling, AWS or Google Cloud, or a second server until you upgrade.
- No credit card needed to start
- A real server on DigitalOcean, Vultr or Linode with the full dashboard, not a demo
- The free WordPress migrator plugin works during the trial, so you can test with your own site
- Flexible and Autonomous trials are separate, so using one does not use up the other
- Upgrading carries the trial server and its sites over, with nothing charged until the next invoice
- Three days, counted from when the trial server is created
- One server only, with no cloning and no vertical scaling until you upgrade
- AWS and Google Cloud servers are not available on the trial
- The Autonomous trial has limited resources, and the site stops if they run out
- Upgrading needs a card or PayPal, with a $1 card authorisation or a $5 PayPal charge
Cloudways free trial: what to test in your 3 days
The Cloudways free trial lasts 3 days, needs no card and allows one server. What it excludes, a day-by-day test plan, and what happens when you upgrade.
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We buy the hardware and pay for the subscriptions we write about. Claim a deal through our link and we may earn a commission — our readers sometimes get a discount or a freebie out of it too, but it never pushes the price up, and it never changes what the review says.
The Cloudways free trial gives you one real server for three days, with no credit card required. The clock starts when the trial server is created, not when you sign up. You get the full dashboard on DigitalOcean, Vultr or Linode, can install WordPress or migrate an existing site, and can upgrade at the end without losing anything. What you cannot do is scale the server, add a second one, or try AWS and Google Cloud.
Three days goes quickly. This guide covers exactly what the trial includes, a plan for using it so you finish with a clear decision, and what happens to billing when you upgrade.
What the Cloudways trial includes
The Flexible trial is a normal Cloudways server with a few restrictions, not a sandbox. You pick the provider, size and region, launch WordPress, WooCommerce, Laravel, Magento or a PHP application, and use the same staging, backup, SSL, SSH and caching tools a paying customer gets. Cloudways' free WordPress migrator plugin works on the trial too, so you can test with a copy of your real site rather than an empty install.
The restrictions, from Cloudways' help centre:
- One server. And because cloning creates a second server, cloning is blocked too.
- No vertical scaling. You cannot upgrade the trial server's size, so launch at the size you would buy.
- No AWS or Google Cloud. Those providers need a full account.
- Three days from the creation of the trial server.
Cloudways Autonomous has its own separate 3-day trial for one WordPress site, available in all regions. It comes with limited resources, and if the site uses them up it stops working until you upgrade. If you already have a payment method on file when you start the Autonomous trial, it upgrades automatically at the end. Using one trial does not affect the other.
Pick the server you would actually buy
The most common trial mistake is launching the smallest server because it is free, then judging Cloudways by it. Cloudways itself describes 1 GB servers as being for testing and staging, and a WordPress site with a page builder or WooCommerce will feel slow on one. Since you cannot scale during the trial, choose the size you would pay for:
- One or two ordinary WordPress sites: DigitalOcean 2 GB ($24 a month after the trial).
- A WooCommerce store: 4 GB or more, which is also where Object Cache Pro is included.
- Several client sites: 4 GB or 8 GB, sized for the portfolio you plan to move.
Choose the region closest to your visitors. Our provider comparison covers the differences between DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode.
A plan for the three days
Day one: set up and move a real site. Launch the server and a WordPress application, then run the Cloudways WordPress Migrator plugin on your current site to copy it onto the trial server's temporary address. Choose the web stack before you start; our setup guide explains the Hybrid and Lightning options. Turn on Redis.
Day two: test what matters for you. Load your slowest pages logged in and logged out, and compare the time to first byte with your current host using your browser's developer tools. If you run a shop, add to cart and go to checkout, because those pages are never cached. Make a staging copy, change something, and push it back. Take an on-demand backup and restore it. Connect over SSH or SFTP if your workflow needs it.
Day two, also: test support. Open the live chat and ask a real question about your setup, such as why a page is slow or how to configure a cron job. How the answer comes back tells you more than any review.
Day three: decide. If the site works and the numbers are better, upgrade before the trial ends. If not, delete the server. Do not change your live site's DNS during the trial; test on the temporary address or with a hosts-file entry.
What to check, by type of site
- A blog or brochure site: time to first byte on the home page and a long post, logged out; Breeze page caching working; SSL and a staging copy.
- A WooCommerce store: add to cart and checkout with caching on, because those pages are never cached; Redis installed; a staging push using Selected Tables so you understand it before you need it. Our WooCommerce guide covers the details.
- An agency portfolio: two or three representative client sites on one server, team member permissions, and how the server's memory holds up with all of them loaded.
- A Laravel or PHP app: Git deployment, Composer over SSH, a cron entry for the scheduler and a Supervisor queue worker, to see whether anything in your deployment needs root.
What you cannot judge in three days
Some things only show up later: how the server behaves under a month of real traffic, how quickly support responds to a ticket at 3 am, and whether the backup storage and add-ons push the bill higher than expected. The trial also cannot show you scaling behaviour or the AWS and Google Cloud options. None of that is a reason to skip the trial. It is a reason to treat the first paid month as a continuation of it, which hourly billing makes cheap to back out of.
Upgrading, and what you are charged
To keep the server, open Billing from your profile menu, go to Settings and add a payment method. Cloudways places a $1 authorisation on a card, which is reversed, or takes $5 from PayPal as credit against your first invoice. Nothing else is charged at the moment of upgrade, because Cloudways bills in arrears: the server's hours this month appear on the invoice at the start of next month.
New customers usually get an automatic discount on upgrade. In October 2026 Cloudways' pages showed 30% to 40% off the first three or four months, depending on where you signed up. The discount applies once, cannot be combined with another code and ends after the promotional period. Our promo code guide explains how to check which offer you are getting.
From then on, billing is hourly with a monthly cap on DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode. If you decide in the first week that Cloudways is not for you, delete the server and you pay only for the hours it ran. A stopped server is still billed, so delete rather than stop. Our guide to cancelling Cloudways covers the clean exit, and the full Cloudways review covers what to expect after the trial.
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