The number one thing I’ve done to increase my website speed is switch from Bluehost to Cloudways to host my WordPress website. This post is the story of how I came to find out about Cloudways and my honest review of Cloudways’ service so far.
As a disclaimer, this post does have affiliate links in it. These help me to keep creating all this free content! Rest assured that I will only ever recommend products and services that I use and love.
Table of Contents
Ditching Bluehost and Switching to Cloudways
A few months ago, I went on a rabbit hole of a search to find ways to speed up my website. This was something that I had put off for quite a few months. I think all bloggers do this at some point or another. We know we need to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes to improve our website. That task can be SO DAUNTING.
But one day, I sucked it up and just did it.
I Googled the phrase “how to speed up my WordPress website.” I came across a wonderful article that listed out 15+ ways to speed up your site. Unfortunately, I can’t find the article to link it here, but as you can imagine, there are a ton of them out there. Just Google it!
One of the points the author made was that Bluehost, a common blogger favorite when it comes to web hosting, had gone downhill in recent years and their base package was making websites slower and slower. Bluehost became a blogger favorite because of their genius marketing. They market their starter package as $4 per month which gets people really excited about starting a website inexpensively. Well, the fine print says that it’s only $4 per month IF you pay for the entire first 3 years upfront. This was enough to deter me, so I ended up starting out around $10 per month to avoid that.
All of this to say Bluehost sucked me in when I first started blogging. So, don’t feel bad if you have Bluehost now and are regretting it.
This article suggested a few different alternatives to Bluehost, but highly recommended Cloudways above all others. I started doing some research myself and found that people really like Cloudways! Best of all – the plan I’d be starting on was only $13 per month.
–> Read more: How I earned my first $100 as a travel blogger <–
Cloudways has a team that will help you migrate your site. They also have step-by-step articles to help you if you want to do it yourself. I consider myself pretty tech savvy, so I switched my site over by myself in a weekend.
I’m not exaggerating when I say within mere HOURS, I noticed a HUGE improvement on my site speed. I could visit my homepage and it would load in a matter of 5-10 seconds as opposed to 20-30 with Bluehost.
If that’s not enough to convince you that you need to move to Cloudways, here is my full review of some other great benefits of their web hosting service:
Unlimited Applications Per Server
Most other hosting platforms have shared environments. However, each server spun up with Cloudways is a dedicated server. This means you can fully utilize all of the resources on that server! The biggest benefit from this is that you can have muliptle websites on a single server without the cost going up! If you want to create a new website for a second blog, a product you’re offering, a test site, or anything else, you can do it in a matter of minutes.
A Choice of 5 Cloud Providers
This is a very unique, and somewhat confusing, benefit of Cloudways. For the sake of this review, I’ll try to simplify it. Cloudways gives you the choice of which cloud providers’ infrastructure you’re server will sit on. You have the choice of Google, Amazon, Digital Ocean, Linode, and Vultr.
Now I know your next question is “why does it matter?” And the truth is, if you’re hosing a website or blog, it probably doesn’t matter that much to you. Any of these providers are great options.
I took the advice of that article I mentioned above and went with Vultr High Frequency. You can check out the different pricing options for each platform here.
Built-in CDN
Cloudways’ CDN can be activiated with the click of a button. It allows you to reach global audiences without sacrificing speed and performance. If you think about it, if your server is in the US, of course people accessing your website in the US won’t have any issues. However, if someone from Europe or Asia wants to visit your site, they’re traveling a much longer distance to access that content. Your site will likely load a lot slower for them, potentially causing them to leave and go somewhere else. This is where a CDN, or Content Delivery Network helps a ton!
Free Cache Plugins for WordPress
Cloudways’ Cache Plugin might be a HUGE reason why I’ve seen such a drastic change in site speed. A cache plugin essentially stores your site data and serves up that stored version whenever someone wants to access your site instead of loading the entire thing from scratch every time.
The only thing you need to remember is that when you make a major change to your site, you’ll want to clear your cache so the stored version can update itself and people are getting the most up to date content!
Customer Service Actually Helps
This section could have been the entire Cloudways review – their customer services is that good! I have friends who are currently with Bluehost and Siteground and hearing their customer service horror stories makes me SO happy I switched when I did. I had to email customer service three times about different things when I was migrating my site over. They were able to get back to me within a day via email. They walked me step by step through the things I needed and best of all, they didn’t make me feel like an idiot for asking basic questions!
Aside from their ongoing customer service, Cloudways also offers one free migration. So, they’ll migrate your entire site over from Bluehost, Siteground, or wherever it’s currently sitting for FREE when you join!
Have I convinced you yet?
I feel like all of us bloggers get sucked into Bluehost or Siteground when we first start blogging which is why I wanted to write this Cloudways Review article SO BAD! There are other options out there and we shouldn’t feel stuck with horrible customer service and mediocre site performance.
Ready to sign up? Here’s my affiliate link to let them know I sent you!
If you have any questions about Cloudways, don’t hesitate to reach out! I’m happy to answer any questions or direct you to someone who can.
