Bluehost vs Cloudways – Which Web Hosting is Better?

Managed WordPress plans are starting to become popular as more site owners are looking for experts to handle the back end of their website.  

Without someone to manage your WordPress site, you might end up losing more time doing updates, installations, and monitoring.  

And no website owner wants that. The time you spend there is time lost for your business or hobby. 

Fortunately, Bluehost and Cloudways are known to provide reliable and excellent service for Managed WordPress plans. 

But the question is, which one is better? 

Read our Bluehost vs Cloudways comparison to find out. 

Bluehost vs Cloudways: A Side by Side Comparison

To compare both web hosts, we’ll look at:

• Uptime and performance
• Website building
• Migration services
• Features and products
• Security
• Pricing
• Customer Support

Uptime and Performance

First things first - reliability. 

You’ll be happy to know that Bluehost and Cloudways are super reliable, boasting 99.93% (August 2023) and 99.99% average uptime respectively.

Among the two, Cloudways has a slightly higher uptime rate which means that your website will almost never face any downtime. And if it does, only for a short period. 

The difference, though, is that Cloudways offers a guarantee. If their uptime doesn’t reach 99.99%, then you can get a full refund. (Of course, if you do get a refund, you can no longer use Cloudways’ server.)

What about performance? 

When it comes to speed, both Bluehost and Cloudways have their own CDN (content delivery networks) that will boost your site’s speed and accessibility. 

These two also use SSD (solid-state drives) storage, this means faster transfer speeds compared to old storage drives. 

With all that, Bluehost offers speeds of 616 ms (August 2023), while Cloudways goes as low as 400ms. 

There’s no doubt about it. Bluehost and Cloudways have some of the best uptime and performance. 

Whichever you pick, you’ll be in very reliable and good hands. 

Website Building

One of the selling points of Bluehost is that they’re a recommended partner by WordPress itself. 

The perks of that are getting a 1 click WordPress install, thousands of WordPress themes - from free to premium - and so much more. These make building your website so much easier. 

As for Cloudways, while they don’t have a large suite of themes as Bluehost, they allow you to have access to a lot of plug-ins. You can even use their Git integration feature where you can clone repositories to your site. 

Check out this video to see how easy Bluehost is:

Migration Services

Already have a website but want to transfer web host? 

Don’t worry, Bluehost and Cloudways have free migration services. Plus, they both offer migration experts that will help you move hassle-free! 

Note: We are only referring to the Managed WordPress plans. Some other packages or plans might not have a free migration or might not offer transfer support.

Features and Products

We’ve been talking about Managed WordPress plans for a while now and you might be wondering - what does it mean to get this plan? 

To help you out, it’s a lot like having either Bluehost or Cloudways to manage the hosting and WordPress management of your site. 

That means that they will handle the updates, installations, security, and all the other things their plans offer you. 

What about the features in this plan? 

One great feature of Cloudways is that they offer unlimited WordPress sites. That means that there’s no limit to how many WP sites you’re able to support (as long as their files can fit with your given storage space). 

Besides that, Bluehost and Cloudways offer pretty similar features in their Managed WordPress plans. 

As for products, there’s a big difference between Bluehost and Cloudways.

Aside from Managed WordPress hosting, Bluehost also offers Shared, VPS, and Dedicated hosting. And in each category, there are several plans that fit different website requirements. 

Unfortunately for Cloudways, they only have Managed WordPress hosting plans. The company chose to focus on this single type of hosting and nothing else. 

Security

Are Bluehost and Cloudways secure?

Yes!

Both web hosts have a lot of security features in place, such as a free SSL certificate, server monitoring, and malware detection. You also get backups, meaning you don’t have to worry about data loss. 

And what’s great about getting a Managed WordPress plan is that someone guards your site for you. 

Pricing

Which host has more affordable plans? 

Both Bluehost and Cloudways have several Managed WordPress plans to cater to different clients. 

Bluehost’s plans start at $2.95 if you subscribe for three years. 

On the other hand, Cloudways starts from lows of $10/mo and highs of $3500/mo. 

If you’re wondering why Cloudways has such a big price range for their plans, it’s because they cater to a large set of clients, from small WordPress sites to huge enterprise sites.

Customer Support

You might not think it, but good customer support is so important. 

While Bluehost and Cloudways are known for their consistent track record of being reliable and high-performing, there will be instances when your site will experience technical issues. 

And when that time comes, you need a strong customer support team that will fix issues quickly. 

As you might expect, both these web hosts offer excellent support. 

Cloudways has a 24/7 live chat and ticketing system for all of its plans. This includes a knowledge base and an active community that will help you with your concerns. 

I have to say, these two additional features are great complements to their attentive live chat. 

On the other hand, Bluehost has 24/7 live chat and phone support available. They also give tutorials to new clients that will serve as their how-to guide. 

Verdict

As you can see, both Bluehost and Cloudways have a lot of strengths and few weaknesses. 

Since both are excellent hosting partners, you will have a hard time answering the question:

Which one is better?

Well, that will depend entirely on your needs and preferences. 

We recommend identifying your priorities and see which web hosting provider best suits it. This will help you choose between two reliable, feature-packed, and speedy web hosts.