Cloudways and GridPane are among the few managed cloud hosting providers in the market today. If your websites have outgrown shared hosting plans and are ready for a faster, more scalable host infrastructure, cloud hosting is an excellent, cost-effective option. However, setting up and maintaining your server is not exactly for the average user, and this is companies like Cloudways and GridPane come in.
Both providers offer managed cloud hosting from DigitalOcean, AWS (Amazon Web Services), Google Cloud Compute, Vultr, and Linode, but their pricing is very different. Keep reading to find out more about which provider can better address your web hosting requirements.
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Cloudways vs GridPane Hosting Comparison Chart
| Model | Cloudways | GridPane |
| Â |  |  |
| Price | Check Price at Cloudways | Check Price at GridPane.com |
| Payment Options | Pay-As-You-Go (Monthly/Hourly) | Fixed |
| Supported Infrastructures | DigitalOcean Linode Vultr AWS EC2 Google Cloud | DigitalOcean Vultr Linode AWS Lightsail UpCloud More VPS providers if you opt for Custom VPS |
| Stack Options | Nginx | Nginx or OpenLiteSpeed and MariaDB or Percona |
| WordPress-Specific | No | Yes |
| Server Cloning | Yes | Yes |
| Site Cloning | Yes | Yes |
| Managed Backups | Yes | Yes |
| Free Site Migration | Yes | No |
| Free SSL | Yes | Yes |
| Free Trial | 3 days (but not available on AWS) | Free Forever Plan Two weeks on the Developer and Pro tiers |
| 24/7 Chat and Ticket Support | Yes | Yes |
Pricing
Cloudways uses a pay-as-you-go pricing while GridPane has a fixed monthly rate on top of your chosen cloud hosting provider
Cloudways and Gridpane have pretty different pricing schemes. One is not necessarily more affordable than the other as it depends on your web hosting requirements. As a reseller, Cloudways adds to the cloud host platform’s fees and uses a pay-as-you-go pricing scheme where your bill will depend on your storage and bandwidth usage.
The more affordable cloud hosting providers that Cloudways supports are DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode. Their plans can range from $10 to $90/month, depending on your RAM, bandwidth, and storage. Meanwhile, premium cloud hosting providers AWS and Google Cloud range from $33.18/month to $274.33/month.
GridPane’s pricing model is fixed and doesn’t include your cloud hosting provider’s charges.
- Free forever plan: lets you set up one server and add up to 10 sites
- Professional ($50/month): best for agencies with a couple of websites
- Developer ($200/month): best for fast-growing agencies
- Enterprise ($1,000 or higher): Can be up to 72% cheaper than on-demand rates
The monthly costs above don’t include the charges you’ll incur from your cloud hosting provider, which varies greatly.
Ease of Use & Reliability
Cloudways is more beginner-friendly, but GridPane provides the video instructions you need to configure your servers properly
As managed cloud hosting platforms, Cloudways and GridPane make setting up your server faster and more convenient than doing so on your own. Granted, you’ll still need some guidance while setting them up, but even if you don’t know Linux or have never set up your own servers before, it’s still doable.
With that said, Cloudways is easier to configure between the two. Cloudways provides an easy, one-click installation process, including WordPress websites. Their free migration service will also be a godsend if you’ve never migrated your own site before. GridPane doesn’t offer free migration, so you’ll need to use a migration tool to move your website to GridPane. They do have a responsive customer support and knowledge base in case you encounter issues while migrating.
Managed Cloud Hosting Features
Cloudways and GridPane take care of security and backups, but GridPane is more WordPress-focused
Here are some of the similar managed cloud hosting features of Cloudways and GridPane:
- Optimized stack
- PHP-ready servers
- Automated backups
- Built-in CDN
- Staging environment
- Site cloning
- Free SSL
- Caching
- Ticket and email support
When it comes to firewalls, Cloudways boasts dedicated firewalls, while GridPane offers 6G and 7G web application firewalls (WAF). Both managed cloud hosting providers also keep your sites secure through Cloudways’ auto-healing features and GridPane’s malware scanner.
Between the two, Cloudways is the more versatile option as it supports other CMS apart from WordPress. GridPane’s focus is hosting WordPress sites and while it’s possible to host a different CMS, GridPane doesn’t recommend this and you won’t get sufficient support if you encounter issues along the way.
Supported Infrastructures
GridPane supports more infrastructures than Cloudways
Cloudways and GridPane support the following cloud hosting infrastructures:
- DigitalOcean
- Vultr
- Linode
- AWS (EC2 for Cloudways and Lightsail for GridPane)
Cloudways also supports Google Cloud, while GridPane also lets you use UpCloud
and more VPS providers if you opt for custom VPS.
Verdict
Opt for GridPane if the websites you want to host run on WordPress. Otherwise, Cloudways is the more versatile option.
Cloudways is the better option if you want an easier way to manage your websites on your preferred cloud host. The set-up is more streamlined as you won’t need to open an account with your preferred cloud host because Cloudways takes care of everything for you. However, their pricing plans can get expensive fast if you’re hosting bigger websites as they resell from the cloud hosting providers.
Meanwhile, GridPane is the better option if the websites you manage all run on WordPress or are thinking of switching from Kinsta or WPEngine. The set-up is not as simple compared to Cloudways’, but you’re getting excellent value for your money as they don’t resell hosting and their pricing is fixed. Since GridPane is WordPress-focused, you can rest assured that you’re getting the best managed cloud hosting service for your WordPress websites.
FAQs
Yes, GridPane supports Vultr and many other major cloud hosting infrastructures like DigitalOcean, AWS, and Linode.
Cloudways is the more versatile managed cloud hosting provider, while GridPane is best for agencies who manage a handful of WordPress websites.
Yes, GridPane delivers excellent support and cloud hosting services and their plans are more cost-effective than Kinsta’s.
No, you’ll need a third-party email hosting provider for emails.
