Do you want to know more about Cloudways? Do you want to see what features and add-ons Cloudways provide?
In this post, we will cover the 25 best Cloudways features and addons that most web hosts don’t provide.
By the end of this article, you will know the most important features and add-ons of Cloudways web hosting.
Cloudways is a web hosting company that provides a reliable managed cloud hosting service.
1- Cloudways Provides Cloud Web Hosting
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet. Including servers, storage, databases, networking, and so on.
Cloudways hosts your websites on cloud hosting. Cloud hosting tends to be better than the other web hosting types.
But why?
Cloud web hosting costs less than other web hosting types because you pay only for the cloud services you use.
Also, Cloudways is cheaper because it eliminates the expenditures of the resources needed to run and manage the server.
As well as that, Cloud hosting is fast because it reduces the pressure of the applications, it provides service and on-demand.
Cloud hosting is reliable, it hosts your websites on many a cluster server, so your website will suffer no downtime.
On cloud servers, you can easily upgrade or downgrade your resources to the number of resources you need.
Cloud computing is more secure than other types of web hosting, it provides layers of security to keep your data safe.
2- Cloudways IaaS Providers Partners
LaaS stands for Infrastructure as a Service.
Cloudways offers to host your website on five LaaS leading Cloud providers.
These companies provide un-managed cloud hosting, Cloudways do the management and deliver a nice and clean management platform for you.
Not only that but Cloudways also provide great support. So whenever you are in need of support, Cloudways will do the job.
Those five cloud providers are:
DigitalOcean:
DigitalOcean is an American leading cloud hosting provider, it provides the cheapest cloud pricing on Cloudways.
Moreover, DigitalOcean has 13 data centers customers building their websites and applications on it in 185 countries around the world.
Vultr:
Vultr is a global cloud hosting solution that provides reliable and high-performance cloud servers.
Also, Vultr is also an American web hosting company, and it runs its servers in 23 data centers around the globe.
Linode:
Linode is a cloud hosting company based in the United States that provides virtual private servers.
Also, Linode operates 11 data centers in seven different countries and serves 185 countries around the world.
Amazon Web Services:
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud forms a central part of Amazon.
It allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications.
Google Cloud Platform:
Google Compute Engine is the Infrastructure as a Service (LaaS) component of the Google Cloud Platform.
The Google Compute Engine enables users to launch virtual machines on demand.
3- Cloudways Payment System Pay-as-You-Go
Cloudways is a Pay-as-You-Go service, you only pay for the resources you consume.
You will be invoiced for the services used in any given month at the start of the following month.
If you launched a server on Cloudways for one day, you will only be charged for that given day
Cloudways support two types of payments. Credit card or Debit card (Visa, MasterCard, and American Express) and PayPal.
4- Cloudways Features 24/7 Real-time Billing
Cloudways doesn’t charge you in front. Instead, your invoices will be billed after the end of the month.
Therefore, Cloudways offers a 24/7 real-time billing feature.
This Cloudways feature will give you an indication of your server usage for a specific month.
From real-time billing, you can view your current charges along with an estimated cost for your next invoice with real-time billing.
So you know how much money you consumed every time and what are the servers and addons that consume that money.
5- Cloudways Features 24/7 Real-time Server Monitoring
Monitoring server resources is important to ensure server health and problem-free operation of your server.
Cloudways 24/7 real-time monitoring built-in feature makes sure to keep an eye on your server resources to avoid any inconvenience.
This is one of Cloudways features that lets you monitor your server, not after one day, not after 12 hours, but in real-time.
From there you will see your Server resources usage instantly such as CPU usage, RAMs usage, and Storage usage.
Therefore, Whenever your websites on that server need attention like adding additional resources, you can see that in there.
You can find the server monitoring on the Server Management panel of your server.
Cloudways Summary Monitoring:
In this section of server monitoring, you can view a quick summary of your server resources utilization.
From there you will see the summary of the RAM usage, CPU usage, disk usage, and bandwidth usage.
You will see a clear consumption of your server resources so you will know exactly what your server is doing.
Also, just above the RAM USAGE, there is SERVER HEALTH. Click on there to refresh the server monitoring summary to get the real-time monitoring.
In addition, just under the BANDWIDTH USAGE, you will see the APPLICATION WISE DETAILS.
The Application Wise Details show the consumption of resources for each application on the server.
You can see the SPU, RAM, and Disk usage of all the websites you host on that server.
This Cloudways feature will help you determine which and how much a particular website is consuming your server resources.
Cloudways Details Monitoring:
The Details Monitoring monitors important aspects of your server to decide if you need to scale your server.
From there you can monitor a specific server resource at a specific period of time.
You can monitor your CPU performance, free Memory, free Disk Space, reads per second, and writes per second.
For example, if you want to monitor the RAMs of your server, select the Free Memory option and choose the time.
The time is any period between an hour and six months.
Once you do that, the graph shows you exactly what your server was performing.
Cloudways Features New Relic built-in Monitoring:
New Relic is an application performance management (APM) tool used for application monitoring.
It offers real-time insights into your application’s performance and reliability.
So you can monitor all your applications inside the server on the New Relic platform.
Setting up New Relic APM on a server will activate monitoring on all your applications available on that server.
To get a New Relic license key you need to signup for New Relic. Click here to know how to get a license key from New Relic.
Once you get your license key, paste it into its field on the server monitoring. Next, hit Save Changes.
6- Cloudways Features Application Monitoring
Same as Server Monitoring, there’s Application Monitoring where you will get more features and options to monitor your websites from all aspects.
You can find this Cloudways feature on the Application Management panel of your websites.
Click Monitoring to roll down all monitoring options. There are Analytics Monitoring and Logs Monitoring
Cloudways Analytics Monitoring
When you click Analytics Monitoring, you will see a bunch of monitor options. They are Traffic, PHP, MySQL, Running Crons, and Disk Usage.
Traffic Monitoring:
Monitoring traffic statistics is essential in ensuring the success of your website.
This section presents key statistics (IP Requests, Bot Traffic, URL Requests, and Status Code) allowing you to easily monitor and analyze your website’s traffic and health.
PHP Monitoring:
Monitoring PHP performance is essential in ensuring a consistent quality experience of your website.
This section presents important PHP-related statistics including top Requested Pages, currently Running Processes, and Slow Pages, allowing you to quickly analyze and track PHP performance.
MySQL Monitoring:
Monitoring MySQL presents database-level statistics including active connections, currently-running queries, and queries that are taking too long to execute.
Running Crons:
RUNNING CRONS presents cron jobs that are currently running on your application.
Disk Usage Monitoring:
DISK USAGE presents an overview of the application disk usage and lists the webroot directories and database tables that are consuming the disk space.
Cloudways Logs Monitoring:
When you click Logs Monitoring, you will see two monitor options. They are Access Log and Error Log.
Access Log Monitoring:
Analyzing logs is essential to understand web requests, the status of requests, visitors’ IP, viewed pages and user agents, etc.
All the logs are displayed in the UTC, while your current system time zone is +03 (GMT +3).
This section presents logs of Apache (for dynamic requests such as PHP requests), NGINX (for static assets such as images/JS/CSS), and PHP.
Detailed PHP process information such as files/routes, CPU, and memory consumption.
Error Log Monitoring:
Apache error log contains information about the issues the application encounters.
This may contain details of errors and warnings that indicate potential problems with an event or application configuration.
Error logs are displayed in the UTC, while your current system time zone is +03 (GMT +3). There is a 3 hours difference between both time zones.
7- Host Multiple Websites On One Server On Cloudways
Cloudways allows users to host multiple websites on one server.
Instead of creating a server for each website, you can create as many websites as you want.
As long as your server can handle them, you can create unlimited websites for as much as $10/month.
All you need to do is to create a server on Cloudways, then add an application, choose the server, and enter the application details.
Repeat the whole process every time you want to create an application.
To know in detail how to create multiple websites on one server on Cloudways click here.
8- Cloudways Seamless Vertical Scaling
Server vertical Scaling means adding more resources to the server such as Disk space, Ram, and CPU.
Upgrading your server on Cloudways is not a problem. You can scale up your server at a glance.
There are two types of upgrading the servers on Cloudways, upgrading the whole server and scaling up the storage space (add block storage).
How Do I Scale Up (Upgrade) Cloudways Server?
To scale up your server on Cloudways go to the control panel of your server that you want to upgrade.
On the Server Management panel click Vertical Scaling. Once you do that, the Vertical Scaling window will appear.
Drag the slider bar to the right side to increase the server resources.
Hover over the RAM size under the slider bar to know what resources you will get after you upgrade to a certain size.
Notice that while you scale up the server, the monthly cost of the server increases.
Why Do I Need Scale Up Cloudways Server?
If your website starts to perform really badly due to a lot of traffic every month, you need to scale up your server resources.
When Do I Need Scale-Up Cloudways Server?
When your website grows and needs more performance and resources, you need to scale up your server.
9- Cloudways Block Storage (Volumes)
Block Storage is a cost-effective way of increasing the available disk space of your server.
If your website hosts a lot of large-size files, you may need to attach additional storage space.
instead of increasing the whole server, you can add block storage (volume) to the server. That means more storage on the same server.
You can add up to 1 TB of storage per block storage for $1 per 10 GB.
How Do I Add Block Storage On Cloudways?
To attach block storage navigate to your Servers and choose the targeted server.
Select the Vertical Scaling from the left navigation bar (Server Management) then select the Block Storage tab instead of the Server Size.
Next, tick the Attach Block Storage.
Now, either drag the slider bar or enter your desired Block Storage volume in GBs.
Finally, click Attach Now.
Once you do that, a warning pop-up window will show up, click Proceed to create the block storage. It may take up to 10 minutes.
When attached, all the application data is moved from the server disk to the Block Storage. Read more about how to add block storage to Cloudways server.
Cloudways Block Storage is now available only for DigitalOcean servers.
10- Cloudways 1-Click Local And Automated Backup & Restore
Cloudways powerful backup allows you to backup the whole server or the applications individually.
It also allows provides automated backup –Cloudways daily backup– and local back –download your website files and data manually.
Cloudways Server Backups
Cloudways backs up your website files on Amazon on a time basis that you specify.
From the Server Management tab go to Backups. Configure the settings and click Save Changes.
You can backup your website manually by making a ZIP copy of your website and downloading it from your server using an SFTP client such as Filezilla.
This In-Demand Backup feature will take place when you enable it from the Local Backup toggle.
The local backup will be stored on your server. So, it’ll take some of your server disk space. Unless you delete it after you download it.
Cloudways Application Backups
This Cloudways feature allows you to back up and restore application data (files and database) individually.
You can also create multiple on-demand backups for each application.
You can find this Cloudways feature on the Application Management tab of your applications.
Cloudways Application Restore
If anything goes wrong and lost your website’s data, you can restore them safely.
Using one of the backups available on your Cloudways backup system, you can restore either part of your application or the complete application in one go.
11- Cloudways SMTP Add-on
The SMTP addon adds the capability to deliver your newsletters (Emails) using an SMTP service.
Basically this Cloudways addon setup outgoing email delivery on your Server.
Cloudways gives you the choice of integrating your own SMTP account or using the built-in Elastic Emails.
You can configure Elastic Email SMTP Add-on to send transactional emails (or, outgoing emails) in bulk from your server, starting from as low as 0.10$ per month.
12- Cloudways Rackspace Email Add-on
Rackspace Email is a business-class email hosting solution.
Rackspace has its own platform. With Cloudway’s partner, you can manage it through the Cloudways platform.
With the Rackspace add-on on Cloudways, you can make business emails like ([email protected]) send and receive emails.
Get cloud-based email inboxes powered by Rackspace guaranteed up-time, supreme protection, and around-the-clock support.
For just a $1/month, you will get a 25GB mailbox, Secure IMAP (Outlook & Mobile), domain aliases, Web-based, and anywhere access.
Read how to setup Rackspace email on Cloudways
13- CloudwaysBot Protection
Bots are targeting websites to acquire possession of it, gather information, or cause some damage.
Bot Protection aims to identify and block malicious traffic, and protect from attacks like Dictionary attacks, Web Scraping, XMLRPC attacks, and Brute Force attacks.
It also helps to reduce server resource usage for WordPress applications.
Bot Protection monitors all these activities and proactively blocks them upon detection.
What Does Cloudeays Bot Protection Do?
- No setup or installation; toggle Bot Protection ‘On’, and let it do its job.
- Login Page protection.
- Filtering of Bad Bots and Rouge Traffic.
- Independent dashboard for monitoring.
- Included in all Server Plans.
- No impact on site performance.
14- CloudwaysBot Notifications And Channels
The AI-based smart assistant sends real-time performance insights to help optimize servers and apps and integrates with Slack, emails, etc.
This is one of the Cloudways features designed to keep a close eye on your Cloudways account.
It will notify you about alerts for your Servers, Applications, Security, Billing, and overall performance.
Along with that, it will also be sending you different recommendations, tips, and tricks on how to improve the performance of the server.
CloudwaysBot Channels allows you to create channels to receive real-time CloudwaysBot notifications on your favorite channels like Slack, Email, etc.
15- Cloudways Regular Security Patching
One of the Cloudways features is that Cloudways perform regular OS patches on your server.
This Cloudways feature is to ensure a secure managed cloud server and avoids vulnerabilities.
16- Cloudways SSH and SFTP Access
Secure Socket Shell (SSH) is a network protocol that gives users a secure way to access a computer or a server over an unsecured network.
Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is a network protocol that uses SSH and provides a secure way to transfer files between computers or servers.
Cloudways offers users to access their servers and applications via both SSH and SFTP.
That access will grant you more than just one method to edit and manage your servers and applications.
17- Cloudways Applications
Cloudways supports a variety of CMS, E-commerce, and other PHP web applications.
There are three main applications you can host on CLoudways available as 1-click installations including:
- WordPress (including WooCommerce and WordPress Multisite)
- Magento
- PHP (including Laravel framework)
Besides these inbuilt 1-click install applications, you can install several other applications and frameworks on your Cloudways servers through the PHP stack. These are:
- OpenCart
- Drupal
- Joomla!
- PrestaShop
- Yii
- Yii 2
- osCommerce
- Symfony 3
- Codeigniter
- CakePHP
- ProcessWire
- Zen Cart
- X-Cart
18- Cloudways WP Migrator Plugin
Migrating your WordPress website from your current hosting provider to Cloudways is super easy with the WordPress Migration Plugin.
To migrate your WordPress website to Cloudways you should have an active Cloudways account and admin access to your current WordPress website.
To do that, you should have the server credentials.
19- Cloudways Application Migration Add-on
If you don’t want to go through the website migration by yourself, you can use this Cloudways add-on to request an application migration.
When you use the Cloudways migration add-on, the Cloudways support dos the heavy lifting.
You get one free managed migration with your Cloudways account. When you use the free one, you will be charged next time.
20-Cloudways Features HTTP/2 Supported Servers
Cloudways servers are HTTP/2 enabled which significantly increases the speed of communication between the web servers and clients.
The HTTP/2 loads the web page elements together, instead of loading them individually.
21-Cloudways Auto-Healing Managed Cloud Servers
You don’t have to worry about your website crashing. Most of the issues within the server are resolved with auto-healing restarts.
22-Cloudways Application & Server Cloning
Cloning involves creating a fully operational copy or replica of your server, including all its applications.
However, application cloning involves creating a copy of a specific application you wish to clone.
The cloning process only creates an identical copy of all your sites and their contents (data).
By doing so, you can:
- Change your cloud provider.
- Change the server region.
- Move onto a new server or a different server type.
- Swapping your server with a smaller server size
- Load testing.
23-Cloudways Transfer Server Ownership
This Cloudways feature allows you to completely move one server from your account to another Cloudways account.
This feature is ideal for agencies and developers creating applications in their own Cloudways account and then moving them to another account.
24-Cloudways Features Premium Support
Cloudways has three levels of support. Standard support, Advanced support, and Premium support.
1. Standard Support:
For most Cloudways customers, Standard Support is more than enough.
It’s free and includes 24/7/365 access to Live Chat guidance through any operation on the Cloudways Platform.
Every request is routed to a specifically trained Support Team member.
2. Advanced Support:
If you’ve grown beyond a regular support relationship, Advanced Support is the answer.
This add-on speeds up response times and opens up a wider range of Cloudways expertise.
You get expert answers, deeper application troubleshooting, customization support, proactive monitoring, etc.
3. Advanced Support:
If your business runs mission-critical sites where every minute matters, then this addon offers an even closer partnership with Cloudways.
Get all of the Advanced Support with even quicker response times, a dedicated Account Manager, a private Slack channel, and direct phone support.
25-Add Team Members On Cloudways
There are two ways to get people to collaborate with you.
One, if you simply need to give SFTP access to an external party to one of your applications.
And another if you want to give external party access to the Cloudways Platform (including servers and applications) with a much more fine-grained level of control.
There are the best Cloudways features and Addons that we recommend every Cloudways user should know.
Read also:
Cloudways Review
Create Multiple websites on Cloudways
Pint domain to Cloudways
