Note: This site you are reading is now hosted on Digital Ocean via Cloudways. Please read Jerry's Cloudways review to learn more about the company.
Cloudways may not be the household name that people think of when it comes to a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) cloud hosting provider. But the brainchild of Pere Hospital, Aaqib Gadit, and Uzair Gadit is making strides in the industry as being the PaaS for small-to-medium businesses.
We were honoured to be given the opportunity to talk to the folks at Cloudways and understand a little bit about their inner workings, how they came to be, and what the are doing to maintain their position as a key player in the cloud hosting industry.
The (Simple) Vision For Cloudways
When Cloudways was founded in 2011, the three co-founders (Pere Hospital, Aaqib and Uzair Gadit) had a simple and straightforward vision for the company and what they aim to do:
The idea was to provide a managed cloud hosting experience for all users regardless of their technical competence.
Being steadfast in their original vision, Cloudways ultimately went on to become a platform that puts simplicity at the forefront. But, they knew that just offering a platform that was simple to use was not enough, along the way, they managed to improve and further fine-tune their approach to cloud hosting services.
“Over time, Cloudways has grown into a platform that emphasizes on simplicity. But we’ve also put emphasis on choice and facilitating users to achieve business success, which we were able to do thanks to our top-tier cloud infrastructure partners and round-the-clock expert support.”
With a clear and concise vision, they knew how to approach the cloud hosting industry and put the proper strategy in place, paving the way for Cloudways to grow and succeed as it has today.
Knowing Your Audience And Giving The Right Benefits
Being a provider that specializes in managed cloud hosting, it was important early on that Cloudways identified who their target audiences were and how they were going to penetrate the market.
SMB [Small to medium business] and Agencies are our primary target customer profiles, and we have tailored the Cloudways platform to ensure that these customers experience the best-managed cloud hosting for their business.
Knowing the needs of their users, Cloudways was able to focus on features and utilities that were both essential and beneficial for their users. And, when it comes to features and benefits, they mean business.
“With Cloudways, we have a user-friend UI that offers 50+ actions in a single click, ironclad security (we provide FREE Wildcard SSL certificates), and 24/7 expert support. In addition to that, our CloudwaysBot delivers near-real-time insights into the health and performance of the customers’ servers and applications.”
Also read – 10 outstanding alternatives to Cloudways hosting
Power of Choice And Diversity of Value
As it currently stands, Cloudways packs all the necessary punch to put them as a major player in the cloud hosting industry.
But of course, that wasn’t enough for them. They wanted Cloudways to be a platform that can work with any other application, demonstrating their commitment to giving as much choice as possible for the users.
“Our platform is optimized for any PHP powered application, For SMB and agencies, this translates into a very broad support for any custom project they need to develop and deploy without worrying about compatibility issues.”
Some of the applications supported by Cloudways includes WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Laravel, Symfony and even custom PHP projects.
But compatibility with other applications is not the only thing that Cloudways excels at. To be a PaaS that can cater effectively to their users, they had to include a wide range of extra features that would further cement Cloudways as the PaaS of choice for SMBs and agencies.
Cloudways CDN, Block Storage, Staging Environment, powerful team member management features, server features (server start/stop/transfer), Cloudways Premium Support Add-ons are just several of the diverse value additions that our customers could leverage for greater ease of use and hassle-free hosting experience.
Standing Above (And Ahead Of) The Competition
While Cloudways continues to enjoy great success within the cloud hosting industry and as a PaaS provider, the trend of price reduction for PaaS plans has seen plenty of companies taking hits to their bottom line.
The folks at Cloudways knows this very well and acknowledged how it could affect the company moving forward.
“We think that Moore’s law is valid for all areas of technology, cloud hosting included. We predict that the pricing will continue to come down as more players enter the market and the overall costs of infrastructure management will become more accessible to second and third-tier vendors. That being said, we believe that the quality and consistency of services have a huge impact on the business revenues.”
For the team at Cloudways, staying ahead of the competition and maintaining their position as a prominent PaaS provider meant providing the experience that users expect and making the necessary changes to improve their platform and website.
If your service offering matches (or exceed) the expectations of the users, they will continue to trust your platform. This idea is reflected in the newly redesigned Cloudways website and platform that is tailored to present all relevant information to the visitors and ensure a consistently high level of services delivered to our customers.
Cloudways Platform
Technology is an evolving industry. Even in a niche market such as the PaaS industry, newer technology will continue to make the barrier to entry for other competitors easier.
Despite that, Cloudways knows that keeping to the original vision and continuing to provide the services that users want will be the key to their continued success.
The most important benefits of using Cloudways as a PaaS provider are freedom to choose, simplicity and ease of use and innovation in services and features.
And to establish themselves as a platform that’s truly unique from the competitors, Cloudways has gone above and beyond in providing its users with a wide variety of features and benefits that are key pillars to their services.
Features highlights
The Cloudways Platform offers a host of other benefits that truly sets them apart from the competition, with features such as:
- CloudwaysBot [for real-time server and application performance stats reporting],
- Cloudways CDN [a cost-effective CDN solution for users],
- Dedicated Staging Environment,
- Free SSL certificates [Wildcard, SANS, and others],
- Full support for PHP 7.x,
- Block Storage,
- Git integration,
- Team member management,
- Server management,
- CloudwaysAPI [for the implementation of custom solutions based on the Cloudways Platform], and
- Cloudways Breeze [home-built WordPress cache plugin].
The features alone would be enough to make them a top-tier PaaS provider but innovation has always been a part of their identity and they managed to find ways to further improve their hosting capabilities.
“Our hosting stack, “Thunderstack” is fully optimized to handle any PHP project. This means that unlike some competitors, we support a wide range of CMS and framework including WordPress, WooCommerce, Laravel, Symfony and custom PHP projects. These applications are supported by the user’s choice of cache (Varnish, Memcached or Redis) and database (MariaDB and MySQL).”
Praise on Cloudways platform (Quotes from Twitter)
Wondering why https://t.co/eKruIH0yJ7 runs fast.We host on the Cloudways Platform. If you are considering starting a blog or upgrading your existing site or project host with #Clouways and ditch #cPanel https://t.co/ltU0LDjL6x pic.twitter.com/MZg03OiDx5
— Michael Glock Ph.D. (@DrMichaelGlock) September 1, 2018
I've moved a ton of sites to @Cloudways and am really happy so far using their interface + AWS, Digital Ocean, and Google
— Michael Torbert (@michaeltorbert) November 26, 2016
Putting A Human Touch
For all their technological feats and milestones in the industry, Cloudways knows that it’s due to the people and their dedication to the original vision that had brought them so much success.
Everyone at Cloudways is dedicated to providing the best experience for users that just want a simple managed hosting solution. This dedication is evident when it comes to their support team.
“All of the features at Cloudways are supported by a competent support team that is available 24/7, equipped with a comprehensive knowledge base and also Live Chat for prompt support.”
If that wasn’t enough, they even provide Premium Support Addons for those who want priority support in handling their servers.
The Cloudways Vision
We would like to give thanks to the team at Cloudways for taking the time to talk to us. It’s clear that they are a passionate team that wants to create a platform that brings a real hosting solution to small / medium businesses.
With Cloudways, the key to their success has always Feen their steadfast vision. We hope that it continues to keep them being a lean and innovative company, bringing them more success in the future.
