Cloudways Lightning Stack: faster, but check .htaccess first

The Lightning Stack is a web server set-up on Cloudways that runs NGINX and PHP-FPM alone, replacing the older Hybrid stack of NGINX, Apache and Varnish. It handles uncached requests faster, costs nothing, and is chosen per application. The trade-off is that it ignores .htaccess files, so redirects and headers move to a dashboard feature called Web Rules, and sites that depend on Apache rules need care before switching.

Cloudways released Lightning to all customers in November 2025. Existing applications were not moved automatically, and Cloudways' help centre still describes Hybrid as the default for new applications, so many sites are running on the older stack without their owners having made a choice. This guide explains what changes, what the published numbers show, and how to switch safely.

Lightning vs Hybrid: what is different

On the Hybrid stack, a request passes through NGINX, which serves static files and hands dynamic requests to Varnish, a page cache, which passes uncached requests on to Apache, which runs PHP and reads .htaccess. That chain is flexible, because any WordPress plugin can drop rules into .htaccess, but each layer costs time and memory.

On the Lightning Stack, NGINX passes PHP requests straight to PHP-FPM, and Apache and its .htaccess handling are gone. NGINX is event-driven, so it handles many simultaneous connections with less memory than Apache. The gain shows up most on requests no cache can answer: WordPress admin screens, carts, checkouts, searches and logged-in pages. Breeze, Redis and Object Cache Pro work on both stacks.

What the benchmarks show

Cloudways publishes its own comparison: a WordPress site on a DigitalOcean Premium server with 4 vCPUs and 8 GB of RAM, with Varnish, Redis and caching plugins all switched off, loaded with up to 1,000 simulated visitors over 30 minutes who browsed, logged in and visited pages. Hybrid served 255,190 requests with a 95th-percentile response time of 5.7 seconds. Lightning served 394,437 requests with a 95th-percentile time of 4.6 seconds, and average page responses dropped from 3.6 seconds to 2.7.

Cloudways also cites an independent benchmark by Koddr.io showing Lightning completing 58% more WooCommerce checkouts and up to 65% faster uncached response times. Treat both as vendor-supplied: the tests deliberately remove caching to isolate the stack, and your site will see a smaller difference on pages that are cached. The direction, though, matches what NGINX-only set-ups do elsewhere, and the biggest gains land on the pages that are hardest to speed up any other way.

What stops working without .htaccess

Lightning does not read .htaccess at all, and it does not warn you about rules it is ignoring. Check for these before switching:

• Redirects written in .htaccess, such as old URLs from a previous site structure, or forcing a trailing slash. They need rebuilding as Web Rules or in a redirect plugin.
• Security plugin rules. Some WordPress security plugins block access to files or set firewall rules through .htaccess. On Lightning those protections quietly disappear.
• Browser caching and compression rules that caching plugins add to .htaccess. NGINX handles compression itself, but custom cache headers need re-creating as Web Rules.
• Password-protected folders and IP blocks set in .htaccess.
• Non-WordPress applications that rely on Apache modules or complex rewrite logic.

The standard WordPress .htaccess block, the one that makes pretty permalinks work, is not a problem: Lightning handles WordPress routing itself. Laravel's default public/.htaccess is likewise not needed on Lightning.

Web Rules and their limits

Web Rules live in each application's settings and come in two kinds. Header rules add, change or remove response headers, such as security headers or cache-control, with up to 10 per application. Redirect and rewrite rules send requests elsewhere with a 301 or 302, or rewrite them internally, with up to 25 per application. Each rule has one condition, which can use a regular expression.

Cloudways says its analysis of more than 100,000 sites found Web Rules cover 80 to 90% of real-world .htaccess use. For a typical site that is right. A site migrating from an old platform with hundreds of URL redirects needs either a WordPress redirect plugin, which works on any stack, or the Hybrid stack. There is no option to write your own NGINX configuration instead; it is a feature request Cloudways has not delivered.

How to switch an application to Lightning

1. Copy your .htaccess file over SFTP and read it. Note every rule that is not the standard WordPress block.
2. Create a staging copy of the application. The stack is set per application, so you can switch the staging copy on its own.
3. Switch the staging copy. Open Application Settings, choose the Stack tab, select Lightning Stack, click Update Now and confirm.
4. Rebuild the rules you need as Web Rules on the staging copy, and test redirects, logins, forms, the cart and any protected areas.
5. Switch the live application the same way, recreate the Web Rules there, and clear Breeze and any CDN cache.

For many applications at once, the dashboard's "Switch to Lightning Stack" button lets you pick a server and tick several applications. Use it only for sites you have already checked. If something breaks after switching, set the application back to Hybrid from the same Stack tab. Our staging guide covers creating and pushing the staging copy.

Should you stay on Hybrid?

Stay on Hybrid if your site depends on .htaccess logic you cannot easily move, uses Apache-specific modules, or has more redirects than Web Rules allow and you would rather not add a plugin. Hybrid is still supported, and Varnish still gives it a fast page cache for logged-out visitors.

For everything else, and especially for WooCommerce, membership sites and busy admin areas, Lightning is the better default on Cloudways. Pair it with Redis and the caching set-up in our WordPress speed guide, and read the Cloudways review for how the stack fits into the rest of the platform.