Cloudways vs phoenixNAP: Complete Comparison (2026)
An in-depth comparison of Cloudways and phoenixNAP 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.
phoenixNAP
6.5/10
phoenixNAP is an infrastructure provider whose services include API-driven Bare Metal Cloud, dedicated servers, colocation, object storage, and backup for developers and IT teams.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 5/10 |
| Customization | 6/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Reliability | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8/10 | 6/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 4/10 |
| Scalability | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $616/mo Bare Metal Cloud a2 |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $616/mo Bare Metal Cloud a2 |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Cloud Compute | ||
| DDoS Protection | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Automatic Backups | Not listed | |
| Content Delivery Network | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Free SSL Certificates | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Cloudways vs phoenixNAP cost by team size
Cloudways costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Cloudways | phoenixNAP |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $616/moBare Metal Cloud a2 |
| 5 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $616/moBare Metal Cloud a2 |
| 10 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $616/moBare Metal Cloud a2 |
| 25 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $616/moBare Metal Cloud a2 |
| 50 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $616/moBare Metal Cloud a2 |
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 $616/mo
- Higher Analytics score (7/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Ease of Use score (8/10 vs 6/10)
- Better fit for small business (7/10 vs 3/10)
Why choose phoenixNAP
- Higher Customization score (8/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Support score (7/10 vs 6/10)
- Better fit for developers (8/10 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.
phoenixNAP
Pros
- Single-tenant bare metal servers can be provisioned by API, CLI, or Terraform and billed by the hour.
- Integrates natively with Terraform, Ansible, and Pulumi, and can deploy servers with SUSE Rancher pre-installed for Kubernetes.
- Hardware options range from small Xeon E3 machines to dual-socket servers with 1 TB of RAM and Ampere Arm servers.
- DDoS protection and 24/7 support by phone, ticket, and chat are included.
Cons
- Prices are higher than traditional budget dedicated hosts such as Hetzner or OVHcloud.
- Servers are unmanaged, so the customer handles patching and administration.
- There is no shared hosting or managed WordPress for simple websites.
- Few public user reviews are available; G2 shows only one.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudways scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7/10 against 6.5/10 for phoenixNAP. The largest gap is in Analytics: 7/10 for Cloudways and 4/10 for phoenixNAP.
Cloudways costs less for 10 users: about $14/mo on its Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) plan, against about $616/mo on its Bare Metal Cloud a2 plan for phoenixNAP, billed monthly.
No, neither Cloudways nor phoenixNAP lists a free plan.
Cloudways is the better fit for small business: we rate it 7/10 for them, against 3/10 for phoenixNAP.
