Hostinger vs Cloudways compared in 2025
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If you’re looking at cloud or VPS hosting, you’ve probably come across both Hostinger and Cloudways — and while they offer similar types of services on paper, they actually take very different paths.
Hostinger is more of an all-rounder. It covers everything from basic shared hosting (great for simple websites and blogs) to more advanced options like VPS and cloud hosting. Cloudways, on the other hand, is all about managed cloud hosting. It doesn’t run its own servers — instead, it helps you host on big-name providers like Google Cloud, AWS, or DigitalOcean, but with an easier interface and management included.
Now, whether or not you need managed cloud hosting really depends on a few things — like how comfortable you are managing servers and how powerful your website or project needs to be. If you're just starting out or want something simple, I’d personally recommend shared hosting. But if you're planning to grow or need more performance and flexibility, cloud hosting might be the better fit.
In this comparison, I’ll walk you through how Hostinger and Cloudways stack up — from pricing and performance to ease of use and security — so you can decide which one makes more sense for you.
Hostinger vs Cloudways 2025: overview
From what I’ve seen, both Hostinger and Cloudways are great, but they’re built for different needs.
- Hostinger is perfect if you’re launching a smaller site, blog, or something simple. It’s super beginner-friendly and affordable.
- Cloudways is better for large projects or if you’re managing lots of sites and want extra flexibility and scalability.
| Hostinger | Cloudways | |
| ⭐ Rating: | ||
| 💵 Price: | From $2.69/month | From $8.25/month |
| 📑 Uptime guarantee: | 99.9% | 99.99% |
| 🔥 Coupons: | Hostinger coupon 78% OFF | Cloudways coupon 25% OFF! |
| Storage space (from): | 25GB SSD | 25 GB SSD |
| ✂️ Free domain (first year): | Yes | No |
| 🔒 Free SSL certificate: | Yes | Yes |
| ➡️ Site migration: | Free unlimited migrations for WordPress and open-source sites | Free first any site migration and a WordPress Migrator plugin |
| 💾 Automated backups: | Free (weekly) | Yes |
| 📧 Email accounts: | Free (up to 100 accounts) | No |
| 👨💻 24/7 live support: | Yes | Yes |
| 💰 Money-back guarantee: | 30-day | Free 3-day trial |
Pricing comparison: Hostinger is more affordable, Cloudways is more flexible
The two services show vastly different approaches to pricing and hosting offers. Hostinger offers multiple different hosting services, ranging from shared hosting to cloud hosting, while Cloudways focuses solely on managed cloud hosting. Here's a breakdown of the services each provider offers:
| Hosting type | Hostinger | Cloudways |
| Shared | ✅ Yes, from $1.79/month | ❌ No |
| WordPress | ✅ Yes, from $2.69/month | ✅ Yes, from $8.25/month |
| VPS | ✅ Yes, from $4.49/month | ❌ No |
| Cloud | ✅ Yes, from $7.19/month | ✅ Yes, from $8.25/month |
| Dedicated | ❌ No | ❌ No |
Note that Cloudways’ WordPress plan is essentially a part of its Cloud offer.
As you can see, Hostinger offers far more hosting options, making it the best option for people looking to build a simple website. However, if you’re looking for something more powerful, it might be good to compare Hostinger’s VPS and cloud plans with Cloudways’ cheapest DigitalOcean offers. If you’re looking to learn more about shared hosting plans, I’d suggest reading our Hostinger review.
Hostinger VPS vs Cloudways DigitalOcean plans:
| Hostinger (2-year plan) | Cloudways (DigitalOcean) | |
| 1-core CPU plan | $4.49/month | $8.25/month |
| 2-core CPU plan | $6.29/month | $34.50/month |
| 4-core CPU plan | $8.99/month | $66.00/month |
| 8-core CPU plan | $17.99/month | $111.75/month |
Hostinger cloud vs Cloudways DigitalOcean plans:
| Hostinger (2-year plan) | Cloudways (DigitalOcean) | |
| 2-core CPU plan | $7.19/month | $8.25/month |
| 4-core CPU plan | $14.39/month | $34.50/month |
| 6-core CPU plan | $14.39/month | - |
| 8-core CPU plan | - | $111.75/month |
Hostinger’s pricing on its 1-month plan is $14.99/month for the cheapest VPS server, and $29.99/month for the cheapest cloud server, making it more expensive than Cloudways. Cloudways’ plan pricing also scales very aggressively when you're looking for better performance.
In terms of resources, our Cloudways review shows that it also offers unlimited websites with each plan. Hostinger, meanwhile, limits the number of websites to 100 on its cloud plans, which can be a problem for people looking to build whitelabel solutions. On the other hand, Hostinger’s cheapest plan offers double the CPU resources compared to Cloudways’ cheapest plan. This means that, if you’re looking for a good price-to-quality ratio, I’d say Hostinger is the clear winner.
Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all its long-term plans, while Cloudways does not offer a money-back guarantee. However, it does offer a 3-day free trial for you to see whether its services are appropriate for you or not.
Cloudways vs Hostinger performance
Along with our research team, I tested the performance of each provider. The results show that the providers are very similar, with a slight edge going to Hostinger.
We performed the tests on Hostinger’s VPS servers and Cloudways’ DigitalOcean servers for our comparisons. Note that Cloudways' performance may vary strongly depending on the provider chosen.
Uptime
For our uptime tests, I focused on uptime, reachability and latency for each website over a week long test.
Hostinger showed high uptime and reachability, with 99.52% and 99.59% respectively. It also had an average latency of 669.77ms across the three servers in tested. The nearest server to the testing setup in North Virginia came in at 145ms, well within acceptable parameters.
Cloudways has managed to maintain 100% uptime, 99.76% reachability, and an average latency of 782.37ms. While this average is mostly affected by the test servers in Mumbai and New York, tests from the North Virginia server were also a bit slower than Hostinger's results.
| Provider | Uptime | Reachability | Average latency | North Virginia latency | London latency | Mumbai latency |
| Hostinger | 99.52% | 99.59% | 669.77ms | 145ms | 443ms | 1390ms |
| Cloudways | 100% | 99.76% | 782.37ms | 396ms | 711ms | 1230ms |
Website speed
When testing website speed, I focused on the most important metric for websites – Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). This metric shows how long it takes for a website to load its biggest part. This can affect how search engines rank your website, and Google recommends an LCP of under 2.5s.
Our research team performed two loading tests to test the metric.
In our first test, using GTMetrix, Hostinger scored an LCP of 0.794s, which is an excellent score. It also stayed under 1s when we retested it using webpagetest.org, scoring a 0.975s LCP, for an average of 0.885s.
Cloudways, on the other hand, had more inconsistent results, scoring a very fast LCP of 0.622s. However, the webpagetest.org test showed a far slower score of 1.347s for an average of 0.985s.
This means that, overall, both providers offer very similar performance. Hostinger has a slight edge due to more consistent performance across two locations in the US compared to Cloudways, but the change should be barely noticeable.
| Provider | GTMetrix test location | GTMetrix LCP | Webpagetest location | Webpagetest LCP | LCP average |
| Hostinger | San Antonio, TX, USA | 0.794s | Dulles, Virginia, USA | 0.795s | 0.885s |
| Cloudways | San Antonio, TX, USA | 0.621s | Dulles, Virginia, USA | 1.347s | 0.985s |
Stress test
We stress-tested both servers using virtual users (VUs) from the Ashburn load zone. In both cases, we used 50 VUs over a five- minute period to check how their servers handle high, intense load.
For Hostinger, a total of 6.8K requests were made, with no HTTP failures, indicating strong reliability. The system achieved a peak request rate of 43.33 requests per second and maintained a 95th percentile (P95) response time of 206 milliseconds. Although the overall response times were stable, a brief spike occurred near the 4-minute mark, which quickly stabilized. Despite this fluctuation, the response time remained within acceptable performance thresholds, suggesting that the system handled the increasing load efficiently with consistent throughput and minimal latency.
As for Cloudways, the test successfully completed with a total of 6.1K requests made and no HTTP failures, indicating stable system behavior under load. The peak request rate (RPS) reached 41 requests per second, while the 95th percentile (P95) response time was 248 milliseconds, suggesting that the vast majority of responses were handled quickly. Throughout the test, response times remained consistent with no notable spikes, and the failure rate stayed at zero, reflecting the system's reliability and responsiveness under increasing virtual user load. This performance is slightly more stable than Hostinger's, but it's unlikely to be noticeable for end users.
Hosting features and ease of use: Hostinger is slightly easier to use
Both Hostinger and Cloudways are focused on ease of use, with Cloudways in particular being specifically designed to make managing cloud VPS servers far easier than it would be with its base providers.
That's why I compared the control panels and basic installation features for each provider to see how hard it is to install an app and launch your server.
Control panels
Hostinger's VPS account management dashboard is pretty simple and functional, giving you an overview of your server and quick access to backups, firewall rules, the malware scanner, reboots, and passwords. It also tracks CPU, memory, and disk usage, as well as incoming and outgoing traffic, along with bandwidth usage. If you ever run into trouble, the Kodee AI Assistant is your first line of assistance, capable of answering simple questions that will help you solve your issues. You can also use it to install one of seven control panels: cPanel, CloudPanel, Coolify, CyberPanel, DirectAdmin, Dokploy, or Plesk.
If you’re using other Hostinger plans, including the cloud plan, you’ll be able to use the very simple and intuitive hPanel. I really like this panel, as it’s very easy to use, and offers quick access to everything you need to manage your hosting in a very user-friendly interface.
Cloudways's control panel doesn't offer a default dashboard the same way Hostinger does. However, it is still very functional and gives you quick access to many of the same features that Hostinger offers. Overall, it is quite easy to use, although total beginners may need some time to get accustomed to it. Unfortunately, Cloudways doesn't offer an AI assistant to help you get through those parts.
WordPress installation
Hostinger offers a simple WordPress installation through its OS window, as an additional app. However, I have to note that if you're looking solely to install WordPress on Hostinger, you'll probably be better off using its WordPress plan. However, if you need to combine other VPS options with a WordPress installation, the process is very easy, which I appreciate.
Cloudways makes installing WordPress relatively easy, even including a WooCommerce and multisite version. The installation may be slightly less user-friendly than Hostinger's clean UI. That said, it will still give you everything you need.
Overall, both products will let you install WordPress without a hassle. Although I wouldn't recommend purchasing a VPS solely to run a WordPress website, if you're combining WordPress with other software, this is a good solution.
Hostinger vs Cloudways security: Cloudways offers a bit more
Both Hostinger and Cloudways offer essential security features that guarantee your website stays up without any hiccups. However, Cloudways’ approach comes with more advanced built-in security features, compared to Hostinger, where you will have to implement the more advanced security yourself. Both providers offer:
- Simple SSL installation. Whether you're using a free or paid SSL certificate, installing it is simple on both Cloudways and Hostinger.
- DDoS protection. Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) attacks can paralyze your website. Luckily, both Hostinger and Cloudways offer strong DDoS protection.
- Malware scans. Built-in scans will ensure malware won't be entered onto your server.
- Firewall. Both services offer an excellent firewall that will detect malicious traffic.
- Automated backups. Thanks to automated backup systems, if you ever have issues with your website, you'll be able to revert to a working version from the past without any issues.
However, Cloudways also offers some very unique security features that I feel give it the slight edge over Hostinger. These include:
- Bot protection. Cloudways offers special features focusing on stopping bot traffic.
- Web honeypot. The provider traps threat actors in special layers designed to detect bots and malware.
- Automated Fail2Ban protection. Fail2Ban monitors logs to spot brute-force attacks, password breaches, and security exploits.
Although these advanced features are basically redundancies for features offered by both providers, Cloudways’ plug-and-play approach to advanced security features really shines. This doesn't mean Hostinger isn't secure by any means, but its VPS services require a bit more tinkering to match Cloudways.
Customer support: Hostinger wins thanks to Kodee AI
Both Hostinger and Cloudways offer multiple customer support options, including live chat, ticketing systems, and knowledge bases. Cloudways also offers phone support if you pay for the Premium support option.
| Customer support solution | Hostinger | Cloudways |
| 24/7 live chat | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Phone call | ❌ No | ✅ Yes (Premium plan only) |
| ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes | |
| Ticketing system | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
| Knowledge base | ✅ Yes | ✅ Yes |
Both support teams are capable of answering your questions in rather prompt times. However, Hostinger's Kodee AI chatbot is superior compared to its Cloudways counterpart. While Cloudways’ bot will answer preset questions very well, Kodee is essentially both a support and hosting feature, helping solve very detailed issues with ease.
What also works against Cloudways is that to get the most out of its support, including 24/7 phone support, you need to pay $500/month in support fees. The price shows that the service is tailored toward large enterprises looking for top-tier support. However, I cannot help but feel that locking phone support behind such a large paywall is not the most customer-friendly approach.
Hostinger vs Cloudways: final recommendations
While Hostinger and Cloudways aren't directly comparable in a lot of aspects, I feel that for most users, Hostinger's VPS offer is superior to Cloudways’ managed cloud. However, if you're looking for an enterprise solution, Hostinger can't really compete with Cloudways and its wide array of highly specialized services.
But if you're not running a large enterprise, I'd definitely recommend Hostinger, as it offers more powerful servers, better performance, and more usability for lower prices. If you're highly security conscious, Cloudways might be a slightly better choice.
| Feature | Hostinger | Cloudways | Verdict |
| Pricing | Cloudways pricing scales very expensively with better performance, while Hostinger, with both its cloud and VPS services, offers attractive prices. | ||
| Ease of use | Both providers are easy to use, but Hostinger’s panel and Kodee AI assistant make it slightly easier to use than Cloudways. | ||
| Performance | While both providers offer great performance, Hostinger's is slightly more consistent. | ||
| Security | Cloudways’ focus on plug-and-play advanced security and redundancy gives it the slight edge over Hostinger, which requires far more user input. | ||
| Support | Hostinger wins because Kodee AI is a great support tool, and Cloudways locks parts of its support behind a very expensive paywall. |
FAQ
Is Cloudways or Hostinger better for beginners?
Based on my testing, Hostinger is better for beginners than Cloudways. This is because of Hostinger's lower pricing and more usable panel, including the Kodee AI assistant.
Which host is more scalable: Hostinger or Cloudways?
Cloudways is far more scalable than Hostinger. With over 40 plans to choose from, including some very advanced cloud offerings, Cloudways is a better option if you're looking for superior scaling.
Is Cloudways a good choice for WordPress hosting compared to Hostinger?
Hostinger is a better choice for WordPress hosting. While Hostinger has WordPress- dedicated plans, Cloudways sees WordPress as more of an add-on. Since in most cases, you don't need a managed cloud to use WordPress, Hostinger is the better choice.
Does Hostinger offer managed hosting like Cloudways?
No, Hostinger doesn’t offer managed cloud plans. However, it offers regular cloud services and managed WordPress hosting.
Can I migrate my website easily from Hostinger to Cloudways or vice versa?
Yes, both Cloudways and Hostinger offer migration plugins and apps that should help you migrate your website quickly between the two.
