Cloudways vs SpinupWP (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Cloudways and SpinupWP share a 2.2 GPA, neither has a free plan, and Cloudways starts cheaper, at $11 a month against $12 a month.
Checked Oct 17, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 · graded Oct 17, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA
Cloudways grades higher on value for money. SpinupWP grades higher on the free plan. They get the same grade on features, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Cloudways
Managed cloud hosting on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google
SpinupWP
WordPress server management for servers you rent yourself
Which one is for you
Pick Cloudways if
- Fits if your site has outgrown shared hosting but you don't want to run a server
- Works for agencies hosting WordPress, Laravel or other PHP apps on servers they control
Look elsewhere if
- Not for you if you want email included, as it's a paid add-on, like the CDN and malware protection
- Skip it if picking a server size sounds like homework, since you choose it yourself
- Tight if you want a proper look before paying, as the free trial lasts 3 days
- Watch out: offsite backup storage is $0.033 per GB per server on top, and prices exclude tax
- Pricey if you want autoscaling, as Autonomous starts at $99 a month for one site
Pick SpinupWP if
- Fits if you rent servers for WordPress and don't want to set up Nginx by hand
- Works for agencies running many servers, since extra servers get cheaper
Look elsewhere if
- Not for you if you want a free plan, as there's a 7-day trial only
- Watch out: servers are billed by your provider
- Watch out: support is 2am to 6pm Eastern, Monday to Friday, with no malware cleanup or custom server configs
- Tight if you want more than 1 snapshot a day, as that's Advanced
- Watch out: migrations from $300 a site
How we grade them
| 2.2GPACloudwaysFair | 2.2GPASpinupWPFair | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | BGraded against the managed hosts it's weighed against. A 1 GB DigitalOcean server is $11 a month, billed hourly with no intro price to expire, so two years cost $264. Rocket.net and Kinsta run $25 to $29 a month, though here you size the server yourself. | C$12 a month for 1 server and 1 user on Essentials, $19 on Advanced, around the category middle ($11), with server rental extra. Extra servers are $8 each on Essentials. |
| Free plan and trial | DA 3-day free trial with no credit card. Three days is less than a week, too short to judge a host properly, so it lands at D. | CA 7-day trial with no card, then you pick a plan to keep the dashboard. |
| Features | CManaged servers on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud, with SSL, backups, staging, Object Cache Pro, Copilot and free migration. The gaps the listing names: email, the CDN and the malware protection service are paid add-ons. | CTuned server setup, snapshots, staging, Git deploys, an API and a CLI. A WordPress-only job done fully, and monitoring is a $1 a site add-on. |
| Ease of use | CNo app store rating to go on. You choose and size the server yourself, which is more decisions than a shared hosting plan asks of you. | CNo store rating on record. You connect a provider and build servers before sites. |
| Platforms and integrations | BA web console with no app on record, plus a published API and a choice of five cloud providers, with WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento and Laravel apps on top. | BWeb only, with Vultr, Akamai/Linode, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2 and Cloudflare DNS. |
| Best for | managed cloud servers without running them yourself | WordPress servers you rent yourself |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Cloudways and SpinupWP. How we grade
Price against what you get
Cloudways starts at $11 a month and scores 2.3 out of 4 on features, ease of use and platforms. SpinupWP starts at $12 a month and scores 2.3.
They score the same, and Cloudways starts $1 a month lower. Of the other web hosts on the chart, 3 score higher than Cloudways for less, and 3 score higher than SpinupWP for less.
Features, ease of use and platforms, averaged
What paid plans start at, a month (each step along is roughly double) →
- The best score at each price
- Has a free plan
- No free plan
Where they differ
- Cloudways also covers malware protection.
- SpinupWP also covers page speed.
At a glance
| Cloudways | SpinupWP | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free trial | Free trial |
| Starts at | $11 per month for a 1 GB DigitalOcean server, billed hourly | $12 per month (Essentials, 1 server) |
| Free plan | None | None |
| Free trial | 3-day free trial, no credit card required | 7-day free trial, no credit card required. |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Cloudways, LLC | SpinupWP |
| Price read from | cloudways.com | spinupwp.com |
| Checked | Oct 17, 2026 | Nov 12, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Cloudways
- Offsite backup storage is billed at $0.033 per GB per server on top of the server price, and listed prices exclude tax.
- Email hosting, the Cloudflare CDN and the malware protection service are paid add-ons rather than part of the server price.
- You choose and size the server yourself, which takes more decisions than a shared hosting plan.
SpinupWP
- The server itself is billed separately by your provider; SpinupWP charges only for the panel.
- Extra servers cost $8 each a month on Essentials and $10 on Advanced for servers 2 to 3, falling to $1 beyond 60.
- After the trial ends you must pick a plan to keep access to the dashboard.
- Support hours are 2am to 6pm Eastern Time, Monday to Friday, and the vendor says it will not do malware cleanup or customize server configs.
Key features
Cloudways
- Choice of cloud provider
- Servers run on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud, and you pick the provider, size and location, then scale up later.
- Managed server essentials
- Cloudways sets up and maintains the server with free SSL, backups, one-click staging and Object Cache Pro, and moves an existing site over for free.
- Copilot AI monitoring
- Cloudways Copilot watches the server's critical components and uses AI to diagnose issues and suggest fixes.
- Security and malware scanning
- Servers get malware scanning and vulnerability alerts, with a fuller malware protection service and a Cloudflare CDN sold as add-ons.
- Cloudways API
- Cloudways publishes an API, linked from every page, for working with the platform from your own scripts and tools.
SpinupWP
- WordPress-tuned server setup
- Servers are configured with full page caching, Redis object caching, security hardening and a correctly set up WordPress cron.
- Scheduled backups
- Site snapshots can be sent to Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, Google Cloud Storage or Akamai/Linode Object Storage.
- Staging sites
- Sites can be cloned to the same or another server and refreshed from live, on both plans.
- Developer tools
- Git deploys with git push, a REST API and a command line tool are listed, along with Composer, Roots Bedrock and multiple PHP versions.
- Site monitoring
- Site monitoring is a paid add-on on the Advanced plan, at $1 a month per monitored site.
- Migration service
- A paid migration service starts at $300 per site, with the vendor setting up the site for you to test before the domain is pointed.
Plans
Cloudways
Flexible, 1 GB server$11
per month, billed hourly
DigitalOcean Standard server with 1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 25 GB SSD and 1 TB bandwidth, for unlimited sites. $0.0164 an hour; Premium with NVMe is $14.
Flexible, 2 GB server$24
per month, billed hourly
DigitalOcean Standard server with 2 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD and 2 TB bandwidth. The Premium version with NVMe storage is $28 a month.
Flexible, 4 GB server$46
per month, billed hourly
DigitalOcean Standard server with 4 GB RAM, 2 vCPUs and 80 GB SSD, where Object Cache Pro is included. Premium is $54; an 8 GB server is $88.
Autonomous Growth$99
per month
Autoscaling WordPress for one site, with 150 GB bandwidth and 20 GB disk. Extra disk is $1 a GB, bandwidth $0.04 a GB and extra servers $0.07 an hour.
Autonomous Scale$199
per month
One site on two baseline autoscaling servers, with 250 GB bandwidth and 50 GB disk. Plus, with three servers and 1,000 GB, is $399 a month.
SpinupWP
Essentials$12
per month for 1 server and 1 user
Unlimited sites, 1 daily backup snapshot per site, unlimited staging sites and standard email support.
Advanced$19
per month for 1 server and 1 user
Adds up to 4 daily, 4 weekly and 4 monthly snapshots, priority support, external MySQL and extra users at $2 a month each.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Cloudways or SpinupWP?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Cloudways is cheaper to start with: $11 a month, against $12 a month for SpinupWP. Cloudways starts at $11 per month for a 1 GB DigitalOcean server, billed hourly, and SpinupWP starts at $12 per month (Essentials, 1 server).
Which has a free plan, Cloudways or SpinupWP?
As of Nov 12, 2026, neither Cloudways nor SpinupWP has a free plan. Both have a free trial.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.