I love cloudways but it is getting expensive to run all of my Vultr high frequency servers. I know there are many options but I do not know what is most comparable to cloudways. I enjoy the convenience and hands off approach that cloudways offers, however their price of this is almost double what the actual host charges for the same specs..
Can you help guide with with some other options that are similar to cloudways service offering?
I have looked into runcloud, but I do not know anything about cli so it makes me nervous that I could end up screwing myself and client websites.
My clients normally have global traffic with 1000k + unique daily visitors. Also I keep my eCommerce clients on their own servers. While it is “affordable” for us, that doesn’t mean it’s not the best I can do.
Thanks in advance.
Answers
The cost above and beyond the base data center fee gets you a great hosting platform / control panel and most importantly, a support capability that scales as you do. I really don’t see how any serious host / agency can say Cloudways is expensive .. a 4gb server at Vultr is $44/month. That has enough capacity to host ~20 basic WP sites with average traffic. Is $2.20 per month per site expensive? I don’t feel that it is. You’re mileage may vary, but if you’re charging a decent monthly fee to your clients, I’d think that cost would be negligible. It’s a bit strange to me that you say you love Cloudways and the ease of use and convenience of the platform, but you’re shopping on price. What’s your time and sanity worth?
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Gridpane is a good option, and I like them. But I can’t imagine their pricing model will persist long term. Do you really think they can provide the same level of service as you scale from 1 server to 10 (or more)? Eventually they’ll either have to roll back the level of support they offer, or charge for support in a way that scales according to the resources you use. With Cloudways I know that I am paying an additional incremental fee for support every time I add a server. I think that’s appropriate and reasonable, and the level of support I receive is worth it. It’s a good value for my business.
Go with runcloud, you will never have to worry about any hosting problem ever again. Think of runcloud is a same as cloudways except you have to buy VPS separately. Actually, now you can even connect your Vultr, DigitalOcean account and it will do that automatically as well.
You can move yourself to CyberPanel which is completely free and has great options including reseller features. If you need any assistance with setup and migration, you can write here and I will guide you in the best possible way.
This is one of the reason for moving to RunCloud or GridPane. I would move towards RC if I need work with WordPress, Mautic, NextCloud, Drupal and so on. You have more options with RC and you hace to pay less. I would move to GP if I only work with WordPress and need the maximum performance in terms of speed and security. The people behind GP are only focus on WordPress and until now they are providing the best solution for it.
I moved to Gridpane for that very reason. Nothing but love for cloudways, but my hosting bill was over 600 a month between all my business accounts and climbing. Gridpane is 100 + retail server cost (so half of cloudways). So the more I grow, the more I save. And the bonus is the speed is comparable or better in all sites. Service is great. Company is great. You really can’t go wrong. As many as you want. $100 is the fee for their developer level account, then you add your own servers from IaaS providers.
Cloudways, for example, is the entity that owns your VPS servers through Vultr. They then charge you roughly 105% more than the retail cost of that server. That’s their margin for providing the server to you. Fantastic deal for people with a couple droplets, honestly.
On gridpane, you pay gridpane for their service. You then add your own API keys for Vultr. So when you create a new server in gridpane, you own it, it’s in your own Vultr account. You can log in to Vultr directly and see it. You get admin access if you somehow need it.
For people with multiple server, the cloudways model starts to add up very fast. The break even point is around $200/m, since cloudways markup is close to double. At $200, $100 is the server cost and $100 is the service cost. At gridpane, the monthly fee is $100. So after 200, you start to save money.
Neither cloudways or gridpane are actual managed hosts. Gridpane has love chat support, and they do have some DevOps for hire like optimisation. Migration you’re on your own.
Gridpane, Runcloud, Cyberpanel — they are all priced in the same range:
Cyberpanel — $ 38 per month
Runcloud — $ 37.50 per month
Gridpane Pro — $ 30 per month
With all these, you need to buy your own web hosting at DigitalOcean, or Linode, or Vultr, or Amazon AWS, or a custom server.
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