Cloudways is one of the best managed cloud hosting platforms on the internet. A while back it announced a new product called Cloudways Autoscale. It has since left early access and is now sold as Cloudways Autonomous (the old Autoscale page now redirects to it).
Cloudways Autonomous is fully managed hosting built for WordPress, whether it’s a blog, an online store, a business, news, or a membership site.
Key Takeaways:
- Cloudways Autonomous (formerly Autoscale) is a WordPress hosting solution for high-traffic websites and sites that get traffic spikes.
- Server resources are adjusted in real time during traffic increases or decreases.
- Cloudways Autonomous pricing starts at $99 per month, and there is a 3-day free trial.
- Every plan includes Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, free SSL, a firewall with DDoS protection, Redis, and Object Cache Pro.
Read Cloudways review.
What is Cloudways Autonomous (Formerly Autoscale)?
Cloudways Autonomous is a WordPress hosting solution powered by Kubernetes that scales server resources automatically whenever needed. Instead of making one server bigger, it adds more servers behind a load balancer (horizontal scaling) and removes them when traffic drops.
This is very helpful for websites that get sudden traffic increases. Whenever your site receives a spike in traffic, the server resources will be increased in real time.
Once the traffic decreases, the server will downgrade the resources to match the website’s needs.
This gives your website better availability and faster loading times, and since there is a failover system, traffic is moved to healthy servers if one fails.
What is Cloudways Autonomous Best For?
Cloudways Autonomous is best for WordPress websites with high traffic or sites that get sudden traffic spikes, such as:
- Online stores that get high volume traffic or sudden traffic on Black Fridays.
- Big blogs and news sites that have high traffic.
- Business websites that want fast, reliable WordPress hosting without managing servers.
- Sites with lots of logged-in users, like membership sites and online courses (LMS).
Cloudways Autonomous Pricing
Back in early access, Autoscale was announced from $35 per month. Today, Cloudways Autonomous starts at $99 per month (Growth plan) for 1 website, 1 baseline autoscale server, 20 GB disk space, 150 GB bandwidth, unmetered visits, and 100 PHP workers per server. The Scale plan costs $199 per month (2 baseline servers, 50 GB disk, 250 GB bandwidth), Plus costs $399 per month (3 baseline servers, 100 GB disk, 1,000 GB bandwidth), and Enterprise is custom. Extra disk space costs $1/GB, extra bandwidth $0.04/GB, and every extra server added during a spike costs $0.07 to $0.12 per hour depending on the plan. Prices are from the Cloudways pricing page in October 2026.
You also get Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, SSL, a firewall with DDoS protection, unlimited offsite backups, free managed migration, and 24/7 support.
Cloudways Autonomous Features
- Cloudways Autonomous is powered by Kubernetes to automate deployment, scaling, and management.
- Autoscaling the server resources in real-time, no need to monitor your server.
- Load balancing and a failover mechanism for better uptime and loading speed.
- Integrated caching and CDN powered by Cloudflare Enterprise.
- More security features, including free SSL, a built-in firewall, DDoS protection, and free malware protection.
- Redis caching plus Object Cache Pro with Relay, and unlimited offsite backups.
How to Get Cloudways Autonomous?
The waitlist is gone. Cloudways Autonomous is open to everyone, and you can try it with a 3-day free trial before you pick a paid plan.
Go to the Cloudways Autonomous page and click Start Free Trial, or click View Pricing to choose a plan right away.
Sign up and follow the steps to launch your site. If your site is hosted somewhere else, every plan includes a free managed migration, so the Cloudways team can move it for you.
The screenshot below shows the old early access form from when the product was still called Autoscale, so the page looks different today.
Bottom Line
Cloudways Autonomous (formerly Autoscale) is a WordPress hosting solution that offers automatic scaling and high availability.
It’s a great choice for high-traffic websites and larger businesses, and it’s the one to go for if your site gets sudden traffic spikes. If your traffic is small and steady, a regular Cloudways Flexible server is much cheaper.
You no longer need to wait for access: you can start a 3-day free trial and test it with your own site.
Read also:
Cloudways Pricing.
Why Cloudways?
Cloudways vs. WP Engine.
