- 3-Day Trial Without Credit Card
- Dedicated cloud resources with automated SSL, firewalls, real-time monitoring, and daily backups with one-click restore — no shared hosting slowdowns.
- Support available 24/7/365 via Phone, Chat, Knowledge Base and Blog
- 30 Day Refund Policy
- Free Domain, Free SSL, Free CDN
- Support available 24/7/365 via Phone, Chat, Knowledge Base and Blog
Quick Summary
Cloudways is the overall winner for developers, agencies, and growing WordPress sites that need cloud infrastructure flexibility and genuine performance headroom. It scored 99% on GTmetrix with a 119ms TTFB on a real content-built site, supports unlimited apps per server at $14/month, spans 150-plus data center locations across five cloud providers, includes Imunify360 and Patchstack vulnerability monitoring on every plan, and connected me to a real support agent in under 30 seconds.
Bluehost wins on pricing, ease of use, and support channel breadth.
1. Hosting Features Comparison
Cloudways’ Unlimited Apps, Site Manager, Vertical Scaling, and Imunify360 Stack Give It the Infrastructure Edge
Cloudways Features
Cloudways is built for operators who want managed infrastructure with genuine control. Unlimited apps per server means a $14/month DigitalOcean server can host as many WordPress sites as its RAM and CPU support without a per-site fee.
Vertical scaling lets you increase RAM and CPU from the Cloudways dashboard without rebuilding or migrating.
Cloudways Site Manager is one of the platform’s most practical tools for agencies managing multiple client sites.
From a single dashboard, Site Manager surfaces WordPress updates, monitors uptime and performance, runs security scans, and provides performance insights across all applications without logging into each site individually.
At $3/app/month, it is an add-on rather than a free inclusion, but for agencies managing ten or more WordPress sites, the consolidated visibility it provides is a genuine operational advantage.
Imunify360 is included on every server at no extra cost: dedicated firewall, brute-force blocking, bot mitigation, and real-time malware scanning. Patchstack monitors WordPress plugins and themes for known CVEs before they can be exploited. Both run without configuration.
Object Cache Pro is included free on servers with 4 GB RAM or above, eliminating a plugin cost that most WordPress performance stacks require.
What costs extra or is not available:
- No free domain
- No AI website builder
- No managed WordPress core updates
- Email via Rackspace at $1/mailbox/month
- Advanced Malware Protection (active removal) is a paid add-on
- Cloudflare Enterprise CDN from $4.99/domain/month
Bluehost Features
Bluehost’s feature set is built around WordPress ease and completeness. The AI WonderSuite generates a full, themed WordPress site from a one-sentence description in under 60 seconds.
Managed WordPress updates keep core, themes, and plugins patched automatically.
A WAF filters SQL injection, XSS, and other exploits on all plans. Cloudflare CDN is included free. Staging environments are available across all shared and WordPress plans.
The Business plan and above adds malware detection and removal alongside the malware scanning available on the Starter plan. Domain privacy is included free for the first year on Business and above.
What costs extra or is not available:
- No cloud provider choice
- No vertical scaling (plan upgrade required)
- No vulnerability monitoring for WordPress plugins
- Daily backups require CodeGuard add-on on entry shared plans ($2.99/month)
- Phone support requires Business plan or above
2. Customer Support Comparison
Cloudways Delivered a Real Agent in Under 30 Seconds; Bluehost Adds Phone Support Cloudways Does Not Offer
Cloudways Customer Support
I tested Cloudways support from inside the dashboard by clicking “Need a Hand?”, selecting Technical Help, and choosing SSH/SFTP as the issue type.
My question was about sudo access restrictions after encountering a “user not in sudoers file” error.
The chatbot responded immediately with an accurate explanation: Cloudways restricts root and sudo access by design on managed hosting, with most server-level settings adjustable through the dashboard instead.
I clicked “Get more help” and reached a real agent named Faraz in under 30 seconds. He confirmed the restriction, explained the security rationale, and sent a relevant Knowledge Base article. The answer was accurate, complete, and arrived without routing friction.
Cloudways provides no phone support at any plan level. Its Knowledge Base covers more than 300 articles across nine categories, with a dedicated new-user onboarding section surfacing the most important setup guides immediately.
Bluehost Customer Support
I tested Bluehost support via live chat with a multi-part migration question: the step-by-step process for migrating a WordPress site running WooCommerce, how to avoid downtime, and what free migration tools were available.
Agent Louie connected in under one minute and answered everything without any sales pressure. He presented two concrete options: a free DIY migration using Bluehost’s Free Site Migration Tool, and paid Professional Migration at $149.99 per site.
He shared the direct knowledge base link and confirmed the process handles transfers without downtime.
Bluehost’s Business plan and above includes phone support alongside chat, with the website claiming average response times under 30 seconds across channels. Its self-service documentation library covers more than 1,000 WordPress-specific guides alongside video tutorials and a community forum.
3. Website Performance Comparison
Cloudways’ 119ms TTFB Versus Bluehost’s 478ms Is the Defining Gap in This Comparison
Cloudways Performance Results
I tested Cloudways on a real content-built WordPress site with plugins, images, and actual page content installed before benchmarking.
Metric by metric:
- GTmetrix grade: 99%. Top-tier result on a real customer account
- TTFB 119ms: The server responded in under 120ms with only 64ms of backend processing time. Under 200ms is considered excellent; 119ms places Cloudways in the top tier for managed hosting server response
- LCP 925ms: The largest visible element loaded in under a second, inside Google’s 2.5s Good threshold
- TBT 1ms: The page was effectively non-blocking; visitors could interact immediately after content appeared
- CLS 0: Perfect visual stability throughout the load sequence with no layout shifts
- Fully loaded 5.5s: The extended total reflects media and plugin asset weight on the test site. The TTFB and LCP are the more accurate infrastructure indicators
Lightning Stack and Cached vs Uncached Performance
Cloudways’ Lightning Stack adds an edge caching layer on top of the managed server stack. The practical difference between cached and uncached performance is significant.
An uncached request to a dynamic WordPress page must reach the origin server, run through PHP, query the database, and return HTML, a sequence that produces the 119ms TTFB result above.
A cached request served by Lightning Stack delivers pre-built HTML from a geographically closer edge node, compressing TTFB to single-digit milliseconds for returning visitors and dramatically reducing origin server load during traffic spikes.
For WooCommerce stores, membership sites, and content publishers where returning visitors make up a meaningful share of traffic, the cached performance improvement from Lightning Stack is the most impactful infrastructure change available within the managed hosting layer.
Bluehost Performance Results
I tested Bluehost on a real content-built WordPress site (hosttest525.blog) with the same testing conditions.
Metric by metric:
- GTmetrix grade: 89%. A solid shared hosting result on a real content site, though 10 percentage points below Cloudways
- Structure score: 89%. Page architecture optimization with room for improvement compared to Cloudways’ 96%
- TTFB 478ms: The most significant gap in this comparison. With 192ms of connection time and 286ms of backend processing, Bluehost’s server took nearly four times longer than Cloudways to begin delivering content. This cascades into every subsequent metric since all content delivery waits on this initial server response
- LCP 1.5s: The largest visible element loaded in 1.5 seconds, within Google’s Good threshold but 575ms slower than Cloudways’ 925ms
- TBT 0ms: The one metric where Bluehost edges Cloudways. Perfect zero blocking time means the page became interactive the instant content appeared
- CLS 0.13: The only non-zero layout shift in this comparison, indicating visible content movement during load that users can detect. Google considers anything below 0.1 as Good; 0.13 falls into the Needs Improvement range
- FCP 876ms: Visible content appearing at under a second is a positive result
- TTI 1.2s: The page became interactive in 1.2 seconds
- Fully loaded 2.1s: All resources completed loading in 2.1 seconds, faster than Cloudways’ 5.5s total, reflecting a lighter asset load on the test page
4. Ease of Use Comparison
Bluehost’s AI Builder, Managed WordPress Updates, and Guided Onboarding Make It the More Accessible Platform
Registration Process
Cloudways Registration
Cloudways’ free trial required no credit card.
I entered name, email, and password, answered onboarding questions about experience level, monthly spend, and use case, then reached the dashboard immediately.
The three-day trial began without any payment commitment. The no-credit-card policy removes the most common friction point in managed hosting evaluations.
Bluehost Registration
Bluehost’s checkout followed a clean three-step flow: select a plan, claim or skip the free domain, and complete the secure checkout.
Optional add-ons including CodeGuard, Yoast SEO Premium, and eCommerce tools appeared clearly labeled and unchecked.
Payment accepted credit cards, Google Pay, and PayPal. Total time from the homepage to a confirmed account was approximately five minutes with no technical gatekeeping. The 30-day money-back guarantee badge stayed visible throughout.
Dashboard and Interface
Cloudways Dashboard
After logging in, the Cloudways home screen opened with a personalized greeting and three summary cards running across the top of the main area: Total Servers showing 1, Flexible Apps showing 3, and Autoscale Apps showing 0, each with a direct link to view all items in that category or add a new one.
Below the summary cards, the Applications panel organized active deployments into two tabs.
With Flexible Apps selected, three application cards appeared in a list view, each showing a live site thumbnail, the application name, creation date, assigned server name, project category, and the number of team members with access.
The Resource Center at the bottom of the home screen surfaced three contextual getting-started guides without navigating away.
The left sidebar uses icon-only navigation, which keeps the layout compact but requires hovering to identify what each item opens before the labels become familiar. The overall design is clean and modern, built around showing what you have deployed rather than promoting what you could add.
Bluehost Dashboard
Bluehost’s dashboard uses a clean left sidebar covering Websites, Email and Office, Domains, Hosting, and Security.
The main content area shows quick-access actions and recent activity without cross-selling banners.
A persistent chat icon stays in right half of the page. The Hosting Settings panel consolidates PHP version control, CDN toggle, SSH credentials, staging, file browser, and cache controls in a single screen within two clicks of the home dashboard.
The AI WonderSuite and guided WordPress installer are accessible within two clicks of first login.
WordPress Setup
Cloudways WordPress Setup
- Navigate to the Applications tab and click Add Application
- Select the target server from the dropdown
- Choose WordPress from the application list
- Confirm PHP version and application name
- Wait a few minutes for deployment
The process is automated once initiated but requires knowing which server to deploy to. For users already familiar with cloud server concepts, the flow is straightforward.
For users arriving from shared hosting, the server-to-application distinction is a new conceptual layer.
Bluehost WordPress Setup
Bluehost offers two paths: the AI WonderSuite for a guided themed site from a description, or Softaculous for a standard installation.
The AI path generates pages, content, images, navigation, and SEO metadata from a single sentence input. WordPress arrives fully configured on Managed WordPress plans without any installation step required.
Hosting Management
Cloudways Hosting Management
Clicking into a server reveals controls for monitoring, vertical scaling, security, backups, SSH key management, and service management across Nginx, Apache, MySQL, and Redis.
Application-level controls cover domain management, SSL, deployment, staging, cache flushing, and backup scheduling.
Vertical scaling adjusts RAM and CPU from a single dropdown without any server recreation or downtime.
Bluehost Hosting Management
Bluehost’s Hosting Settings panel surfaces PHP version control, CDN toggle, database access, SSH credentials, staging environment, file browser, and cache controls in a single consolidated view.
For non-technical users managing a WordPress site, the WordPress-specific panel covers everything relevant without exposing unnecessary server controls.
5. Privacy and Security Comparison
Cloudways’ Imunify360 Plus Patchstack Vulnerability Monitoring Covers More Threat Vectors Than Bluehost’s Default Stack
Cloudways Security
Imunify360 runs on every Cloudways server at no extra cost: dedicated firewall, brute-force blocking, bot mitigation, and real-time malware scanning.
Patchstack monitors WordPress plugins and themes for known CVEs and alerts before exploits can be weaponized against the site.
Fail2ban handles IP-level intrusion blocking. SSL installs in one click and renews automatically. IP whitelisting is configurable from the dashboard.
What costs extra:
- Advanced Malware Protection (active removal beyond scanning) is a paid add-on
- Cloudflare Enterprise CDN with additional security filtering from $4.99/domain/month
Bluehost Security
Bluehost’s WAF filters SQL injection, XSS, and common exploits on all plans. Real-time malware scanning runs on all plans, with malware detection and removal added from the Business plan.
Cloudflare CDN is included on all plans and provides edge-level traffic filtering against known malicious sources. SSL renews automatically at no tier-dependent limitation.
What costs extra or is limited:
- Daily automated backups require CodeGuard add-on at $2.99/month on entry shared plans
- Malware detection and removal requires Business plan upgrade
- No vulnerability monitoring for WordPress plugins at any plan level
6. Prices and Plans Comparison
Bluehost Wins on Entry Pricing and All-In Inclusions; Cloudways Wins at Scale
Bluehost’s shared hosting opens at $3.99/month on a 36-month term, renewing at $9.99/month, and includes a free domain for the first year, free SSL, a free CDN, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Cloudways’ entry is $14/month for a DigitalOcean server, with no free domain, no MBG beyond the 3-day trial, and email hosting available only as a paid Rackspace add-on.
For a single WordPress site on a budget, Bluehost is the more accessible and complete starting point.
7. Server Locations Comparison
Cloudways’ 150-Plus Cities Across Five Cloud Providers Gives It a Category-Level Geographic Advantage
Cloudways Server Locations
Cloudways aggregates the networks of five cloud providers across more than 150 cities in 50-plus countries: DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, Vultr, and Linode.
You select both the provider and the specific city at server creation.
If your primary audience shifts geographically or latency testing reveals a better origin location, you can clone the server to a different data center from the dashboard without a support ticket.
Coverage extends across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, the Middle East, and Africa.
Bluehost Server Locations
Bluehost expanded from its US-based infrastructure to nine global data centers including Frankfurt, Paris, London, Madrid, Mumbai, São Paulo, and Sydney, covering four continents.
Cloudflare CDN is included on all plans and extends content delivery to edge nodes globally regardless of which origin data center the account uses.
Location selection is available at checkout via a dropdown.
The Bottom Line
Cloudways is the overall winner for developers, agencies, and any WordPress operation that has outgrown the performance and scalability ceiling of shared hosting.
A 99% GTmetrix score with 119ms TTFB and 1ms TBT on a real content-built site, Lightning Stack edge caching that dramatically compresses cached page delivery for returning visitors, unlimited apps per server at $14/month, Cloudways Site Manager for consolidated multi-site monitoring and updates, Imunify360 with Patchstack vulnerability monitoring on every server, and 150-plus city-level location options across five cloud providers make Cloudways the more capable and scalable infrastructure platform.
Bluehost earns a direct recommendation for users launching their first WordPress site who want a free domain, the AI WonderSuite to go live in minutes, automatic managed WordPress updates, phone support, and a 30-day refund window with no long-term infrastructure decisions to make upfront.
| Category | Winner | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Bluehost | Shared hosting starts at $2.49/mo with a free domain. Dedicated plans begin at $141.19/mo. Cloudways uses a flexible pay-as-you-go model starting at $14/mo. |
| Customer Support | Cloudways | Offers rapid technical assistance and high G2 ratings for support quality. Bluehost is noted for its beginner-friendly phone support but faces criticism for longer wait times during peak periods. |
| Hosting Features | Cloudways | Provides advanced cloud tools including vertical scaling, automatic backups, and choice of 5 major cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, etc.). |
| Performance | Cloudways | Delivers superior TTFB (Time to First Byte) and uptime (99.99%) through optimized stacks and SSD storage. Bluehost performs well primarily for US-based traffic. |
| Ease of Use | Bluehost | Features a guided onboarding process, one-click WordPress installs, and a custom dashboard specifically designed for newcomers. |
| Security | Cloudways | Includes enterprise-grade managed security with dedicated firewalls, Bot Management, and built-in Cloudflare integration. |
| Server Locations | Cloudways | Access to over 65 data centers globally, offering 19x more physical data center locations than Bluehost’s primary US-centric centers. |
