Cloudways vs Lumen: Complete Comparison (2026)
An in-depth comparison of Cloudways and Lumen 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.
Lumen
5.5/10
Lumen Technologies offers Edge Bare Metal, single-tenant servers in US edge locations that you can rent by the hour or month, aimed at enterprises running low-latency workloads.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7/10 | 5.5/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 4/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 4/10 |
| Customization | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8/10 | 5/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 5/10 |
| Reliability | 8/10 | 6/10 |
| Scalability | 7/10 | 5/10 |
| Security | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $360/mo Edge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $360/mo Edge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Automatic Backups | Not listed | |
| Cloud Compute | Not listed | |
| Content Delivery Network | Not listed | |
| DDoS Protection | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Free SSL Certificates | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Cloudways vs Lumen cost by team size
Cloudways costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Cloudways | Lumen |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| 5 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| 10 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| 25 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
| 50 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $360/moEdge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) |
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
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: $14/mo vs $360/mo
- Higher Analytics score (7/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Ease of Use score (8/10 vs 5/10)
Why choose Lumen
- 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.
Lumen
Pros
- Single-tenant physical servers in more than 60 US edge nodes, designed for latency of about 5 ms or less.
- Servers can be provisioned in about an hour, with both hourly and monthly billing.
- Flexible OS options, including bring-your-own ISO, plus IPv4/IPv6 dual stack and private networking.
- Published price estimates for each configuration, which is unusual for an enterprise carrier.
Cons
- Servers are billed hourly even when powered off.
- Published prices exclude OS licensing, setup fees, bandwidth, and connectivity, and apply only to qualifying US customers.
- There are no managed databases, Kubernetes, or object storage alongside the servers.
- There are almost no public user reviews, and Lumen has been divesting units such as its CDN and EMEA businesses.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudways scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7/10 against 5.5/10 for Lumen. The largest gap is in Analytics: 7/10 for Cloudways and 4/10 for Lumen.
Cloudways costs less for 10 users: about $14/mo on its Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) plan, against about $360/mo on its Edge Bare Metal entry (10 cores) plan for Lumen, billed monthly.
No, neither Cloudways nor Lumen lists a free plan.
