Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudways Comparison
Compare Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudways features, pricing, and more.
Last updated: November 2026
Amazon CloudFront
7.9/10
Amazon CloudFront is the AWS content delivery network. It caches and serves websites, APIs and media from more than 750 edge locations, and includes DDoS protection, WAF and edge compute.
Cloudways
7/10
Managed cloud hosting platform that runs WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Laravel and PHP apps on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud servers.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | A Amazon CloudFront | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7.9/10 | 7/10 |
| Integration | 9/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Customization | 9/10 | 6/10 |
| Security | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Reliability | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Ease of Use | 5/10 | 8/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Scalability | 10/10 | 7/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | $15/mo Pro (flat-rate) | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | Free Free (flat-rate) | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) |
| Features | ||
| Managed WordPress | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Content Delivery Network | ||
| DDoS Protection | ||
| Free SSL Certificates | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Automatic Backups | Not listed | |
| Cloud Compute | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Serverless Functions | Not listed | |
| Shared Hosting | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudways cost by team size
Amazon CloudFront costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Amazon CloudFront | Cloudways |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) |
| 5 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) |
| 10 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) |
| 25 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) |
| 50 users | FreeFree (flat-rate) | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Which One Should You Choose?
AWhy choose Amazon CloudFront
- Has a free plan (Cloudways does not)
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: Free vs $14/mo
- Higher Customization score (9/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Scalability score (10/10 vs 7/10)
- Better fit for developers (9/10 vs 6/10)
Why choose Cloudways
- Higher Ease of Use score (8/10 vs 5/10)
- Better fit for small business (7/10 vs 5/10)
- Includes Managed WordPress, which Amazon CloudFront lacks
Pros & Cons
AAmazon CloudFront
Pros
- The network is very large, with more than 750 PoPs plus over 1,140 PoPs embedded inside ISP networks.
- Data transfer from AWS origins such as S3 and EC2 to CloudFront costs nothing, which lowers costs for workloads hosted on AWS.
- Flat-rate plans start at $15 a month with no overage charges, which makes bills predictable.
- It has strong compliance coverage, including PCI-DSS Level 1, HIPAA, SOC, ISO and FedRAMP Moderate.
- Two tiers of edge compute are available: CloudFront Functions at $0.10 per million invocations and Lambda@Edge for heavier code.
Cons
- G2 and Capterra reviewers report complex configuration and a steep learning curve for people new to AWS.
- Capterra-network reviewers rate customer support poorly, around 3.4 out of 5.
- Flat-rate plans lack some features, such as real-time logs, dedicated IP SSL and continuous deployment, and going over the allowance reduces performance.
- Dedicated IP SSL at $600 a month and Anycast Static IPs at $3,000 a month are expensive extras.
- Users on AWS re:Post and GitHub report cache invalidations that occasionally hang for hours or time out during deploys.
Cloudways
Pros
- You can choose from five cloud providers and more than 50 locations from one control panel.
- Hourly pay-as-you-go billing, with a 5-day trial that needs no credit card.
- Every server includes free SSL, Layer 3 and 4 DDoS mitigation, a firewall and offsite backups.
- Agencies get one-click staging, cloning and Git auto-deployment for many client sites.
- Ratings are strong, at about 4.7 on G2 and 4.6 on Trustpilot.
Cons
- Email hosting and domain registration are not included.
- Billing gets hard to track once add-ons and bandwidth overages are added, and some reviewers report charges after cancelling.
- Some reviewers say support quality has dropped since the DigitalOcean acquisition.
- Power users report limited low-level control.
- Phone support requires a paid premium support add-on.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Amazon CloudFront scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.9/10 against 7/10 for Cloudways. The largest gap is in Customization: 9/10 for Amazon CloudFront and 6/10 for Cloudways.
Amazon CloudFront costs less for 10 users: free on its Free (flat-rate) plan, against about $14/mo on its Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) plan for Cloudways, billed monthly.
Amazon CloudFront has a free plan; Cloudways does not list one.
Amazon CloudFront is the better fit for developers: we rate it 9/10 for them, against 6/10 for Cloudways.
Cloudways has Managed WordPress, which Amazon CloudFront lacks.
