Cloudways vs IONOS Cloud: Complete Comparison (2026)
An in-depth comparison of Cloudways and IONOS Cloud to help you choose the right tool for your business.
Last updated: November 2026
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.
IONOS Cloud
6.4/10
European public cloud from IONOS offering pay-as-you-go VMs, bare metal, managed Kubernetes, databases and S3-compatible storage for businesses needing GDPR-aligned hosting.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7/10 | 6.4/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 6/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Customization | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Security | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Reliability | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8/10 | 6/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 5/10 |
| Scalability | 7/10 | 6/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Contact for pricing |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Contact for pricing |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Automatic Backups | ||
| Cloud Compute | ||
| Content Delivery Network | ||
| DDoS Protection | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| VPS Hosting | ||
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Free SSL Certificates | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed Databases | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
Cloudways vs IONOS Cloud cost by team size
| Team size | Cloudways | IONOS Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Contact for pricing |
| 5 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Contact for pricing |
| 10 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Contact for pricing |
| 25 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Contact for pricing |
| 50 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Contact for pricing |
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?
Why choose Cloudways
- Higher Ease of Use score (8/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Analytics score (7/10 vs 5/10)
Why choose IONOS Cloud
- Higher Cost score (7/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Customization score (7/10 vs 6/10)
Pros & Cons
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.
IONOS Cloud
Pros
- The Kubernetes control plane is free, so you pay only for node cores, RAM and storage.
- Hourly per-resource pricing is transparent, and Savings Plans can cut dedicated core rates by roughly half over three years.
- EU-based provider with GDPR alignment and reported ISO 27001 and BSI C5 attestations.
- Strong automation options, including a Terraform provider, Cloud API, CLI and visual Data Center Designer.
- Broad catalog covering managed databases, Kafka, CDN, DDoS protection and GPU servers.
Cons
- No Asia-Pacific or Latin American regions, and multi-zone resiliency is thinner than at the hyperscalers.
- Reviewers report billing friction, renewal price increases and difficult cancellation.
- GPU capacity is reported to be limited to Frankfurt, with small default quotas.
- IAM granularity and observability depth lag behind AWS-class providers.
- Very few independent user reviews of the cloud product specifically.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudways scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7/10 against 6.4/10 for IONOS Cloud. The largest gap is in Analytics: 7/10 for Cloudways and 5/10 for IONOS Cloud.
No, neither Cloudways nor IONOS Cloud lists a free plan.
