Cloudways
You host several sites, anything beyond WordPress, or traffic you do not want metered.
WP Engine
A marketing team runs one business site and wants WordPress itself managed.
Essential from $28/mo, billed yearly
Rounds won
| Round | Cloudways | WP Engine |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Server size; visits are not countedWins | Sites, visits and storage; overages may apply |
| Five sites | One server, $24–$46/moWins | A larger plan tier |
| WordPress updates | Yours, or automated with Site Manager | Managed for youWins |
| Environments per site | Live plus one staging copy | Development, staging and productionWins |
| WordPress support | Plugin help is a paid add-on | WordPress-focused, 24/7Wins |
| Object caching | Redis free; Object Cache Pro from 4 GBWins | Depends on the plan |
| Beyond WordPress | Magento, Laravel, PHPWins | WordPress only |
WP Engine suits marketing teams and businesses that want WordPress itself managed, with development, staging and production environments per site and WordPress-specialist support, and are happy to pay per visit. Cloudways suits anyone hosting several sites, anything that is not WordPress, or traffic that would push a WP Engine plan into overages, because it charges for the server rather than for visitors. On price per site, Cloudways wins clearly; on hand-holding, WP Engine does.
Cloudways vs WP Engine: which managed host fits you?
Cloudways vs WP Engine compared: a $24 server for many sites against plans priced by visits, what each manages for you, support scope and renewal pricing.
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Cloudways charges for a server and lets you run as many sites on it as it can handle; WP Engine charges for WordPress plans sized by sites, monthly visits and storage, and manages more of WordPress itself. Cloudways' practical starting point is a $24 a month server. WP Engine's Essential plan starts at $28 a month, billed annually as $336 upfront, at a first-year price for new customers. Which one fits depends on how many sites you run and how much of WordPress you want someone else to handle.
Both are well-established managed hosts, both are aimed at people who do not want to administer Linux, and neither gives root access. This comparison covers the four points that usually decide it.
Cloudways vs WP Engine at a glance
| Deciding factor | Cloudways Flexible | WP Engine Essential |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $24/mo for a 2 GB DigitalOcean server, monthly | From $28/mo billed annually, first-year price |
| What the plan counts | Server RAM, CPU and disk | Sites (1–30), visits (25,000–400,000) and storage (10–50 GB) |
| Resources | Your own virtual server | Shared; isolated from the $400/mo Core plan |
| WordPress core and PHP updates | Yours, or automated with Site Manager | Managed by WP Engine |
| Environments per site | Live plus one staging copy | Development, staging and production |
| Object caching | Redis free; Object Cache Pro from 4 GB | EverCache page cache included; object caching depends on plan |
| Applications | WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Laravel, PHP | WordPress |
How each host prices: servers against visits
WP Engine's Essential plans scale along sites, monthly visits and storage, from one site and 25,000 visits up to 30 sites and 400,000 visits, with 75 GB of bandwidth. The fine print notes that overages may apply, and the advertised $28 a month is a first-year price for new customers on annual billing, with renewal pricing "subject to change". Larger needs move to the Core plan, which starts at $400 a month and adds isolated resources, managed migrations and a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
Cloudways does not count visits at all. You pay for a server by the hour, capped monthly, and its capacity is your limit. A viral post that triples traffic for a week costs nothing extra; it either fits on the server or tells you it is time to scale. For a portfolio, the per-server model is far cheaper: Cloudways' guidance is four or five small sites on a 2 GB server, and the twentieth site on an 8 GB server costs nothing on its own. Our pricing guide works through realistic invoices.
What WP Engine does better on price is predictability for a single business site: one plan, a known visit allowance, and nothing to size. If you do not want to think about RAM, that is worth something.
How much of WordPress each host manages
This is WP Engine's strongest point. It keeps WordPress core and PHP versions updated for you, runs security patching and plugin risk scans, and gives each site separate development, staging and production environments that you can copy between. Its 1-click staging fits a team workflow where a developer works in development, a client approves in staging, and changes are copied to production.
Cloudways manages the server: operating system patches, the web stack, the firewall, backups. WordPress updates are yours, unless you use Site Manager, whose free tier does bulk quick updates and whose Pro tier, from $3 a site, runs updates on a temporary clone with visual regression checks first. Each application has one staging copy with push and pull, including pushes of selected database tables only. It works well, but it is one environment fewer than WP Engine, and the update routine is something you set up. Our Site Manager review covers it.
Support and where its scope ends
WP Engine's 24/7 support is WordPress-focused and will look at WordPress-level problems on standard plans. Cloudways' standard 24/7 support is strong on server issues, such as SSL, PHP limits, backups and migrations, and stops at your plugins and themes, which need its Advanced Support add-on at $100 a month (offered at a $25 flat rate in October 2026, with a six-month minimum). For a non-technical team that expects its host to help when a plugin breaks, that difference is real. Our Cloudways support review describes each tier.
Performance and caching
Both hosts cache aggressively. WP Engine includes its EverCache page cache and a global CDN on every plan. Cloudways includes Breeze page caching, Varnish on the Hybrid stack, Redis on every server and Object Cache Pro from 4 GB, and sells Cloudflare Enterprise with edge page caching at $4.99 a domain. For logged-in users and WooCommerce carts, which page caches cannot serve, Cloudways' bundled object cache is an advantage. Neither host's raw speed is a good reason on its own to choose it; caching set-up and server size matter more.
WP Engine's Essential plans run on shared resources. A Cloudways server's RAM and CPU belong to your own applications, which matters for busy stores. Our speed guide covers the Cloudways caching layers.
Two-year costs for one site and for five
For a single business site, WP Engine's Essential plan at the first-year rate of $28 a month is $336, and the second year depends on renewal pricing, which WP Engine describes as subject to change. A 2 GB Cloudways server is $576 over two years, plus Cloudflare Enterprise at about $120 if you want an edge CDN comparable to WP Engine's. For one site, the two land in the same range, and WP Engine includes more WordPress management for the money.
For five sites the picture changes. WP Engine's Essential plans count sites, so five sites need a larger tier. On Cloudways, five small sites fit on the same 2 GB server, or a 4 GB server at $46 a month if they are busier, and Cloudflare Enterprise drops to $3.99 per domain at five domains. Price your actual portfolio on WP Engine's plan builder before deciding, because its tiers move with visits as well as sites.
Moving between them
Both hosts migrate WordPress sites for free: WP Engine through its automated migration plugin, Cloudways through its WordPress Migrator plugin or a managed migration by its team. WP Engine sites sometimes rely on its EverCache rules and environment settings, so test the copy on Cloudways' temporary address before switching DNS. Our migration guide covers the cut-over without downtime.
Who should choose which
- A business site run by a marketing team: WP Engine. Managed core updates, three environments and WordPress support suit people who should not be thinking about servers.
- An agency or developer with many sites: Cloudways. Per-server pricing beats per-site plans quickly.
- A site with unpredictable traffic on a budget: Cloudways, since visits are not metered.
- WooCommerce with many logged-in shoppers: Cloudways on 4 GB or more, for dedicated resources and object caching.
- A large organisation needing compliance paperwork: WP Engine's Core or Enterprise plans, which add isolation, an SLA and SOC 2.
WP Engine's free migration plugin and Cloudways' free migrator make it cheap to test both with a copy of your real site. Try Cloudways for three days without a card, and compare the slowest logged-in page you have. For a wider field, see our Cloudways alternatives guide.
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