- 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 Money-back Guarantee
- High Availability Hosting, VMware Private Cloud
- Support available 24/7/365 via Chat, Phone, Email and Tickets
Cloudways vs Liquid Web: Quick Summary
Cloudways wins for its speed, affordability, and global coverage. It offers managed cloud hosting from top providers, free SSL, daily backups, and great uptime for a great price.
Liquid Web delivers excellent human support, strong security, and a money-back guarantee, but costs more and has fewer server locations.
Overall, Cloudways is best for flexible, budget-friendly cloud hosting, while Liquid Web works best for businesses that need premium support and power.
Cloudways vs Liquid Web: Overview
Cloudways Profile
Cloudways is a web hosting provider founded in 2011 and was acquired by DigitalOcean in 2022. It provides exclusive cloud hosting services and is backed by cloud servers like Google, Vultr, DigitalOcean, Linode, and AWS.
Cloudways has 80,000+ customers worldwide and hosts 570K+ websites for agencies, SMBs, and Individuals. Cloudways won the High-Performance accreditation from G2 in 2022.
Liquid Web Profile
Liquid Web is a hosting company that focuses on web and cloud professionals, catering to growing businesses, designers, developers, and agencies. The company was founded in 1997 and serves 45,000+ customers from 150 Countries.
Liquid Web is known for their excellent customer support, with a team of over 250 professionals providing 24/7/365 support.
Their web hosting services include dedicated servers, VPS, cloud dedicated servers, VMware private cloud, and managed WordPress and WooCommerce services, among others.
1. Hosting Features and Services Comparison
Cloudways Features
Cloudways offers only cloud hosting with 5 different providers: AWS, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud, Vultr, and Linode. You get unlimited application installation options, free daily backups, an SSL certificate, and site migration on all plans.
Plus, their servers are NvMe-based and with a dedicated environment. The host also provides 1-click installs for over 10+ applications.
With Cloudways, you can clone fully configured servers, migrate, and add all your sites to one place at no additional cost.
Furthermore, you can change your data center location, cloud provider, expand your storage, or even collaborate with other team members in real time. Although it doesn’t provide a website builder, Cloudways is an excellent option for those who want the flexibility and scalability of a cloud server.
Liquid Web Features
Liquid Web offers different types of hosting, including VPS, Cloud, Managed WordPress, and Dedicated.
They offer automatic SSL installation on every plan, free and convenient website migration, high-performance SSD/NVMe hybrid storage, free WordPress installation, and automatic daily backups – accessible in just one click.
They also provide the Beaver website builder with their managed WordPress hosting.
2. Pricing and Plans Comparison
Cloudways exclusively provides managed cloud hosting to their customers, while Liquid Web also offers VPS and dedicated hosting.
Liquid Web also offers specialized hosting solutions like HIPAA-compliant hosting, starting at $600 per month (for managed), and enterprise-level solutions like VMware Private Cloud, starting at $510 per month.
Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing Comparison
You can use the cloud hosting solutions of Cloudways to manage your WordPress hosting.
Cloudways managed WordPress plans
DigitalOcean plans range from $11/month for 1GB RAM, 1 Core Processor, and 25 GB storage, to $1056/month for 192 GB RAM, 32 core processor, and 3840 GB storage.
AWS and Google Cloud plans are generally more expensive, starting at around $20.56 and $37.45 per month, respectively. All Cloudways plans include features like free migration, 24/7 support, automated backups, free SSL certificates, and more.
Linode and Vultr plans are somewhere in the middle of the pricing level, starting at around $14/month and $16/month, respectively.
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Liquid Web managed WordPress plans
Begins with the Spark plan at $24 per month, which includes 15 GB storage and 2TB bandwidth, and can handle up to 1 site. The pricing scales up based on the resources and number of sites you require.
There are higher-tier plans like Maker, Designer, Builder, Producer, and Enterprise, with the latter costing $492.80 per month for 800 GB storage, 10 TB bandwidth, and up to 250 sites.
Each of these plans includes various features such as plugin performance monitoring, WooCommerce automated testing, and Solid Security Pro.
Managed VPS Hosting Pricing Comparison
Liquid Web’s Managed VPS Hosting offers a good balance between cost, performance, and flexibility, making it a suitable choice for growing businesses, e-commerce sites, and web professionals who need more power and resources than traditional shared hosting but don’t require a dedicated server.
The plans start at $5 per month for the basic plan, which includes 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB SSD storage, and 10 TB bandwidth.
The pricing increases with the resources offered, with the highest plan priced at $196 per month, providing 12 vCPU, 32 GB RAM, 400 GB SSD Storage, and 8 TB bandwidth.
These plans include features like DDoS Attack Protection, local site backups, enhanced security, CloudFlare CDN, and more.
Cloud Dedicated Hosting Pricing Comparison
Liquid Web’s Cloud Dedicated Hosting starts at $52.50 per month. This hosting solution combines the dedicated resources of a traditional server with cloud features.
It’s particularly suited for enterprises with high-traffic websites, resource-intensive applications, or those requiring a high degree of customization and control.
The pricing increases with the resources offered, with the Intel 6226R Dual plan priced at $266 per month, providing 32 cores, 4x 3.21 TB SSD in RAID-10, 192 GB SSD storage, and 10 TB bandwidth.
Managed Dedicated Hosting Plans Comparison
Liquid Web’s Managed Dedicated Hosting starts at $89-139 per month for the INTEL E-2356G plan, with higher-tier options like the Intel Xeon 6226R Dual available at $266–$279/month.
These dedicated servers are customizable and include features such as DDoS protection, CloudFlare CDN, backup drives, and advanced security.
3. Website Performance Comparison (Uptime & Speed)
32% of your visitors will bounce if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load. So, it’s important that your host’s servers load quickly.
It’s also important to consider your host’s uptime. In Layman’s terms, uptime means the percentage of the time your host servers are online.
To test Cloudways and Liquid Web, I tested one website hosted on Cloudways and one hosted on Liquid Web using GTmetrix, PageSpeed Insights, and Checkhost.
These were the results:
Cloudways Uptime & Speed Test
Cloudways had an overall score of 70% on GTMetrix and a TTFB of 372 ms, which is quite decent.
Cloudways performed better on Google Page Speed Insights with a TTFB of 0s, with a 99% overall performance.
The fastest ping time here is from Ukraine, Khmelnytskyi, at around 0.4 ms, which indicates one of the servers is either very close or exceptionally well-connected to that area. USA, Atlanta also shows a very fast ping time, at around 0.7 ms, suggesting strong connectivity there as well.
Liquid Web Uptime & Speed Test
Liquid Web performed slightly worse than Cloudways on GTMetrix with an overall 63% performance and a 1.4s TTFB.
PageSpeed Insights shows a performance of 73% on desktop with a TTFB of 540ms, which is quite good.
The fastest ping time here is from Atlanta, USA, at around 36 ms, which likely means the server is nearby or well-connected to that area.
4. Customer Support Comparison: Who’s Got Your Back?
Cloudways Customer Support
Cloudways offers 24/7 support through several channels, including phone, live chat, a Slack community, YouTube video guides, a detailed knowledge base, and a blog.
The phone and live chat support are especially great if you need to solve urgent problems.
The host also offers advanced and premium support add-ons like a Slack community, a dedicated account manager, and more.
The knowledge base is quite handy if you prefer figuring things out yourself. It covers topics like subscriptions, billing, account management, troubleshooting, and more.
You can find a live chat option on the home page or the support menu.
There’s a Facebook group for support on Cloudways, which is quite great.
If you’ve got questions before signing up, you can reach out through their contact us page. 
They have regular updates on their blog and YouTube, which you can use to gain more knowledge throughout your website building and management journey.
You can also see how frequently their content gets updated on YouTube:
Liquid Web Customer Support
As an alternative to Cloudways, Liquid Web also has a strong customer support system, especially, human support. As you can see, they have a live chat option right on their front page.
You will also find a ticket support option on their contact page. When I clicked on the “create a ticket” option, it redirected me to the signup page.
Liquid Web offers 24/7 phone support, but when I tried calling, I wasn’t able to reach them from my location.
Like Cloudways, Liquid Web has a built-in search tool in its knowledge base, organized by categories to help you find what you need. I tested it by searching ‘DDoS Protection’ and instantly got a list of useful guides
In the content hub, I found numerous webinar videos from Cloudways experts. When you click “Watch now,” it will show you to fill in your information to watch the videos. Once you do that, however, they are free to watch. The same videos are available on their YouTube channel.
They also run an active blog packed with hundreds of articles covering various product categories, which is great if you want to dive deeper into specific topics.
I decided to give the live chat a try. After clicking the ‘Chat with a human’ button, I was prompted to sign up.
Once I did, a live agent joined almost instantly. I was impressed by the quick response, no waiting around. You can see how the chat went below.
5. Ease Of Use Comparison: Which Platform Is Easier to Use?
Cloudways Ease of Use
Cloudways has a clean website interface, and as they provide only cloud hosting, everything is straight to the point.
Once you sign up as a customer, you get access to Liquid Web’s custom cPanel. It’s clean, easy to use, and lets you handle all your backend tweaks without hassle.
There’s also a help page with step-by-step guides on how to use the control dashboard.
Cloudways has solid support, but their contact details are a bit tricky to find. Also, integrated email hosting isn’t included by default.
Liquid Web Ease of Use
Liquid Web provides versatile products and services and its UI groups it all nicely. The home page is minimal and clutter-free, with easy navigation to the different relevant pages.
Liquid Web has the old-school cPanel, and if you are big on tradition, you’d feel right at home.
Liquid Web’s Account Management Dashboard also has a clean look:
Plus, if you don’t have a website yet, the Beaver website builder included will help you create one with its easy to use drag-and-drop themes.
6. Privacy and Security Comparison: Which Platform is More Secure?
Cloudways Security
Cloudways offers plenty of security features, including free SSL, two-factor authentication, regular security patches, 24/7 real-time monitoring, bot protection with the Malcare plugin, daily backups, a web application firewall, and more through premium add-ons.
Plus, their advanced Cloudflare CDN helps speed up your website.
Liquid Web Security
Like Cloudways, Liquid Web also gives you great security features on all its plans. Some of their no-cost security solutions include DDoS protection, free SSL encryption, Cloudflare CDN, and daily backups and restore.
If you want more, the paid add-ons include firewalls and VPNs, data protection, server protection, routine malware scans and removal, and an anti-virus.
7. Server Locations Comparison
You want to go for a host with a wide server footprint, especially if you are targeting a global audience. The closer your host’s servers are to the user, the faster your website will load.
Cloudways Server Location
Cloudways has servers all over the world, including locations in England, the Netherlands, India, Germany, the USA, Singapore, Australia, South Africa, and more.
Liquid Web Server Location
Liquid Web runs its own data centers in three main spots: Lansing, Michigan; Phoenix, Arizona; and Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Cloudways vs Liquid Web: Final Recommendations
Why Choose Cloudways
Cloudways is a solid choice for affordable cloud hosting. I’d recommend it if:
- You want a managed cloud hosting plan.
- You don’t have the biggest hosting budget.
- You want to try Google Cloud or AWS but don’t want to manage it all alone.
- You want an easy-to-use interface and are new to hosting.
- You want community support.
- You want strong security features.
- You target a worldwide audience.
When To Consider Liquid Web
Liquid Web is a strong alternative to Cloudways, offering a range of hosting plans and plenty of add-ons. In short, Liquid Web is a great choice if:
- Your target audience is based in the United States or Europe.
- You want a super-fast speed and high uptime.
- You want a money-back guarantee.
- You want real-time and quick human support.
- You want a host with security as a priority.
Cloudways and Liquid Web Alternatives
| Provider | Overview | Expert & User Reviews | |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Offer cloud web hosting, WordPress hosting, and managed cloud servers. Verpex is known for great customer support, site migration assistance, and performance optimization. | Verpex Hosting Review | Visit Verpex Hosting |
 | Known for its cloud and VPS hosting plans, which offer excellent performance and a variety of features. It is an appealing choice for users seeking reliable and scalable hosting solutions. | ScalaHosting Review | Visit ScalaHosting |
 | Known for their slightly higher-priced plans but compensate with speedy support and a generous 45-day money-back guarantee. | ChemiCloud Review | Visit ChemiCloud |
The Bottom Line
In this 7-round matchup, Liquid Web comes out on top as the better host. They offer versatile plans, fast support, strong performance, impressive server speeds, and a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans.
That said, Cloudways is still a solid choice, especially if you’re on a budget. It shines with strong security, ease of use, and a broader global server network.
