WPX vs Cloudways Web Hosting: Which Web Host Is Better?
- WPX from $17.99 monthly
- Cloudways from $11 monthly
- No visitor overages
- Current limits compared
WPX and Cloudways solve different hosting problems. WPX is a WordPress-only managed service that bundles its XDN, daily malware removal, 28-day backups, migrations and hands-on “Fixed For You” support. Cloudways is a managed cloud layer offering provider choice, broader PHP application support, multiple apps per Flexible server and more infrastructure control.
Cloudways Flexible is the better value for technical users and mixed portfolios; WPX is easier for WordPress owners who want more support included. Cloudways Autonomous is a separate $99+ autoscaling product—not the old $35 plan and not a substitute for Flexible in entry-level comparisons.
Cloudways Wins on Flexibility; WPX Wins on Bundled WordPress Care
Choose Cloudways for the $11 entry point, DigitalOcean/Vultr/Linode/AWS/Google Cloud choice, hourly billing, multiple applications and non-WordPress workloads. Expect to pay separately for offsite backup storage, mailboxes and optional Cloudflare Enterprise.
Choose WPX for an all-in-one WordPress workflow with XDN, daily backups, malware removal, migrations and broader application-level help. Starter is $17.99 month-to-month or $179.90 annually; its $11.99 advertised equivalent requires five years prepaid plus 20 bonus months.
Table of Contents
At a glanceWPX vs Cloudways Comparison
| Category | WPX | Cloudways | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $17.99 monthly; $179.90/year | Flexible from $11/mo | Cloudways |
| Model | Managed WordPress plan | Managed cloud server or autoscaling app | Depends |
| Applications | 1–35 WordPress sites | Multiple Flexible apps; one per Autonomous plan | Cloudways Flexible |
| Backups | Daily, separate server, 28 days | Flexible storage billed; Autonomous included | WPX |
| CDN | XDN included | Cloudflare Enterprise optional Flexible; included Autonomous | WPX at entry |
| Malware removal | Included | Scanning/tools; Autonomous adds protection | WPX |
| Business+ mailboxes | Rackspace $1.50/mailbox | WPX Business+ | |
| Provider/region control | 3 origin regions | 5 providers and many regions | Cloudways |
| Support emphasis | WordPress + Fixed For You | Platform/server services | WPX for app help |
Core differenceWordPress Service vs Managed Cloud Platform
WPX: a bundled WordPress service
WPX controls the stack and packages LiteSpeed, XDN, backups, malware help, migrations and support around WordPress. You select a plan and origin region instead of a cloud provider or VM size.
Read our WPX review →Cloudways: managed infrastructure
Flexible lets you choose a provider, region and server size. Applications share its finite CPU, RAM, disk and transfer. Autonomous is a Kubernetes service that automatically adds server capacity for one WordPress/WooCommerce app.
Read our Cloudways review →Our separate Cloudways Autonomous review covers that autoscaling product in depth. It should not be confused with Flexible when evaluating low-cost hosting.
Current costsWPX and Cloudways Pricing
WPX WordPress plans
| Plan | Monthly | Annual total | 5-year effective* | Sites / storage / transfer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $17.99 | $179.90 | $11.99 ($719.60 due) | 1 / 10 GB / 100 GB |
| Business | $29.99 | $299.90 | $19.99 ($1,199.60) | 5 / 20 GB / 200 GB |
| Professional | $59.99 | $599.90 | $39.99 ($2,399.60) | 15 / 40 GB / 400 GB |
| Elite | $119.99 | $1,199.90 | $79.99 ($4,799.60) | 35 / 80 GB / unlimited** |
*The lowest equivalent requires five years prepaid and includes 20 bonus months; it is not ordinary monthly billing. **Unlimited bandwidth remains subject to terms and finite CPU, RAM and workers.
Starter supplies 3 GB RAM, 0.5 CPU and 9 PHP workers. Business has 5 GB/1 CPU/15 workers; Professional 15 GB/2 CPU/45; Elite 35 GB/3 CPU/105. Visits are not metered, but resources and bandwidth determine practical capacity.
Cloudways Flexible
| Item | Current term | Practical meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Entry server | $11/mo; $0.0357/hr shown | 2 GB RAM, 1 vCPU, 50 GB storage, 2 TB transfer |
| Apps/visits | Unmetered | All apps share server resources |
| Offsite backups | $0.033/GB | Required storage, $0.50 billing increments |
| Cloudflare Enterprise | $4.99/domain at 1–4 | Volume rates fall to $1.99 at 25+ |
| Rackspace email | $1.50/mailbox/mo | Web server does not host normal mailboxes |
| Advanced Support | $100/mo or 10% of invoice | Standard published price |
DigitalOcean, Linode and Vultr bill hourly with applicable monthly caps; AWS and Google Cloud always bill hourly. Transfer overages vary by provider from $0.01/GB in some Vultr regions to roughly $0.17/GB on Google Cloud. Deleting—not merely stopping—a Flexible server ends future server billing.
Cloudways Autonomous
| Plan | Base | Baseline capacity | Disk / bandwidth | Extra server |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Growth | $99/mo | 1 server, 100 PHP workers | 20 / 150 GB | $0.07/hr |
| Scale | $199/mo | 2, 200 workers | 50 / 250 GB | $0.10/hr |
| Plus | $399/mo | 3, 300 workers | 100 / 1,000 GB | $0.12/hr |
Every plan supports one application. Disk overage is $1/GB/month and bandwidth $0.04/GB; visits are unmetered. The old $35 Small plan is legacy and must not be used for new-account comparisons.
Entry monthly cost comparison
WPX five-year pricing is shown separately because it requires $719.60 upfront.
Beyond base priceTotal Ownership Cost
One WordPress site
WPX Starter bundles XDN, daily backups, malware removal and migration for $17.99 monthly or $179.90 annually. Cloudways begins at $132 yearly but adds backup storage and potentially CDN, email and application help.
Five-site portfolio
WPX Business is $29.99 monthly with 20 GB and 15 workers. Cloudways has no per-app fee on Flexible, but all five sites share the server and may require more than the $11 configuration.
WPX Business and above include mailboxes, though mail shares storage and sending is capped at 50 messages per 30 minutes across the plan. Cloudways Rackspace costs $1.50 per mailbox.
Operational labor
WPX may cost more but includes broader WordPress help. Cloudways provides greater control; budget developer time for application-level problems outside platform scope.
Entry resource comparison
Different hosting models: WPX resources apply to one site; Cloudways resources belong to a server and its apps.
Want maximum infrastructure flexibility? Cloudways Flexible is the stronger starting point for technical owners and mixed application portfolios.
Check Cloudways Configurations →No invented benchmarksPerformance Architecture Compared
A universal “faster host” claim is misleading. WPX performance varies by origin, plan resources, XDN coverage, theme and dynamic work. Cloudways varies by provider, region, server family, sizing and optional edge service. Test the exact configuration with your real site.
| Factor | WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|---|
| Web stack | LiteSpeed, OpCache, full-page cache | NGINX-based Lightning Stack |
| Edge network | XDN, Anycast DNS, 40+ listed edges | Optional Cloudflare Enterprise; included Autonomous |
| Origins | Chicago, London, Sydney | Provider-dependent global regions |
| Object cache | Redis on WooCommerce hosting, not standard plans | Object Cache Pro on eligible 4 GB+ Flexible; included Autonomous |
| Resources | Per-plan RAM, CPU, workers | Server CPU/RAM shared by apps |
| Scaling | Upgrade fixed plan | Vertical Flexible; automatic Autonomous |
Clone a representative production site, align origin/edge conditions, and test cached pages, admin, search, checkout and uncached requests. Monitor PHP workers, CPU, memory and real-user experience using Google’s Core Web Vitals guidance.
Platform capabilitiesFeature Comparison
| Feature | WPX | Cloudways Flexible |
|---|---|---|
| Applications | WordPress only | WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Laravel, PHP |
| SSL | Included | Let’s Encrypt |
| Staging | Uses a website slot | Staging and cloning; resources apply |
| Access | File manager, SFTP, phpMyAdmin, logs | SSH/SFTP, Git, cron, logs |
| Updates | WordPress update management | Site Manager; Pro adds SafeUpdates/testing |
| Teams | Account/support workflow | Teams and projects |
| Visitors | Unlimited, resource constrained | Unmetered, resource constrained |
| Trial/refund | 30-day eligible refund | 3-day no-card trial |
WPX’s curated stack is optimized around WordPress requirements. Cloudways supports broader frameworks and gives developers more control, but that flexibility increases configuration responsibility.
Recovery and protectionBackups and Security
WPX backups
Automatic backups run daily, live on a separate server and remain for 28 days. They are restoration-only. A personal downloadable backup lasts 24 hours, consumes storage and is limited to one per site. Some archive formats and backup-plugin archives are skipped.
Cloudways backups
Flexible supports scheduled/on-demand backups and restores; required offsite storage costs $0.033/GB. Autonomous advertises unlimited offsite backups and retains deleted-app backups 14 days. Maintain an independent export either way.
| Security | WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|---|
| Network | WAF, hybrid DDoS, bad-bot throttling | Firewall, IP blocking; Cloudflare option |
| Malware | Scanning and removal included | WordPress vulnerability scanning; Autonomous malware protection |
| Brute force | Included protection | Platform controls plus app responsibility |
| Recovery | 28 daily restore points | Configurable Flexible; Autonomous app-level |
Help and movingSupport and Migration
WPX includes 24/7 live chat, tickets and Fixed For You. Its advertised under-30-second chat and 15-minute resolution figures are vendor-reported, not independent tests. Fixed For You covers many outages and normal-operation failures, but excludes design, custom CSS/PHP, third-party plugin recoding and user connectivity.
Cloudways supplies 24/7 chat/tickets for its platform and supported server services. Standard support does not promise custom development, design or unlimited plugin debugging. Advanced Support lists at $100 per month or 10% of the invoice.
WPX standard migration requires an active account, available slot and enough storage. Domain-change migration costs $98 excluding VAT, Express Migration $100, and customer-caused re-migration $98. Cloudways offers migration tooling; Autonomous includes one managed migration. Always test DNS, forms, scheduled jobs, email and rollback.
Often overlookedEmail, Regions and Important Limits
WPX email
Business, Professional and Elite include mailboxes, migration and filtering. Starter does not list business email. Mail shares storage, bulk marketing is prohibited, and sending is limited to 50 messages per 30 minutes across the plan.
Cloudways email
Ordinary mailboxes are separate; Rackspace is $1.50/mailbox where available. Use a dedicated SMTP provider for transactional messages rather than relying on the web server.
WPX regions
Choose Chicago, London or Sydney. Separate plans are needed for sites across different origins, though account moves can be requested.
Cloudways regions
Provider choice creates a much broader region map. Price, transfer and scaling behavior differ across DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS and Google Cloud.
Growth pathsScaling and High-Traffic Sites
| Scenario | WPX | Cloudways |
|---|---|---|
| More WordPress sites | Upgrade from 1 to 5/15/35 slots | Add apps until server capacity is reached |
| More dynamic traffic | Upgrade for RAM/CPU/workers | Resize Flexible or use Autonomous |
| Short spikes | Provision plan headroom | Autonomous adds billed server-hours |
| Multiple frameworks | Not supported | Flexible supports several PHP stacks |
| High availability | Managed within WPX service design | Built into Autonomous; Flexible architecture varies |
TradeoffsWPX and Cloudways Pros and Cons
WPX
Pros
- XDN included
- Daily 28-day backups
- Malware removal
- Fixed For You support
- Free standard migrations
- Business+ email
Cons
- WordPress only
- One site at entry
- Staging uses a slot
- Only three origins
- Best rate needs five years prepaid
- Starter lacks email
Cloudways
Pros
- $11 starting price
- Five cloud providers
- Multiple apps
- Hourly billing
- Broad PHP support
- Flexible scaling
Cons
- More technical decisions
- Backup storage costs extra
- CDN/mailboxes are add-ons
- Apps share server resources
- Support scope is narrower
- Disk downscaling friction
Decision guideWhich Host Should You Choose?
| Need | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One WordPress business site | WPX | Bundled CDN, backups, security and support |
| Developer with mixed PHP apps | Cloudways Flexible | Broader application support |
| Several light client sites | Cloudways Flexible | No per-app fee; size server correctly |
| Hands-off malware help | WPX | Scanning/removal and Fixed For You |
| Global origin choice | Cloudways | Five providers and more regions |
| Included business email | WPX Business+ | Mailboxes included within limits |
| Autoscaling WooCommerce app | Cloudways Autonomous | Kubernetes and hourly burst servers |
Prefer bundled WordPress care? WPX includes services that are separate costs or outside standard support at Cloudways.
Check WPX Plans →Transparent assessmentHow We Compared WPX and Cloudways
Our editorial model weights value/transparency 25%, performance architecture 20%, backups/security 20%, support/migration 20% and scaling flexibility 15%. The chart represents documented fit—not synthetic speed tests or customer-review sentiment.
Editorial fit profile
WPX leads on bundled care; Cloudways leads on value, provider choice and scaling options.
Common questionsWPX vs Cloudways FAQ
Is WPX better than Cloudways?
Which is cheaper?
Which is faster?
Do both allow unlimited visitors?
Which has better backups?
Does WPX include email?
Can Cloudways host multiple websites?
Which is better for WooCommerce?
Do both offer free migrations?
Choose WPX for WordPress Care; Cloudways for Cloud Flexibility
WPX wins for owners who value an integrated managed WordPress service. XDN, 28-day backups, malware removal, migrations and Fixed For You reduce the number of vendors and operational tasks, although entry capacity is limited and the cheapest advertised equivalent demands a very long prepayment.
Cloudways wins for technical value and growth options. Flexible starts lower, supports multiple application types and provides far more infrastructure choice. Autonomous offers a distinct autoscaling path for high-demand WordPress/WooCommerce, but begins at $99 per application.
Sources & comparison methodology
Research checked September 20, 2026. We compared current provider carts, product pages, plan allocations and support documentation. Prices exclude tax and can change; checkout controls.
- WPX: WordPress cart and plan pages plus refund, backup, XDN, region, email, migration, support and security documentation.
- Cloudways: Flexible/Autonomous pricing plus billing, provider, transfer, backup, scaling, Cloudflare, email, migration and support documentation.
- Technical context: Google Core Web Vitals and official WordPress requirements.
Method: value 25%; architecture 20%; backups/security 20%; support/migration 20%; scaling 15%. Vendor statistics were labeled and no fabricated benchmark or review score was used.
Affiliate disclosure: Some buttons are affiliate links. JoshWP may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. This does not change the comparison criteria or prices shown.
