Web hosting · Comparison
Cloudways vs SiteGround
Cloudways starts at $11/mo billed monthly; SiteGround starts at $2.99/mo billed yearly and renews at $17.99/mo. Prices checked 9 Oct 2026.
Managed WordPress hosting
Managed cloud servers on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud, billed hourly, with unlimited sites per server.
$11/mobilled monthly
Checked Screenshot of the pricing page (opens in a new tab)Visit Cloudways (no commission) (opens in a new tab)Shared and budget hosting
Premium-leaning shared host on Google Cloud with daily backups and its own Site Tools panel, with a large jump at renewal.
$2.99/mobilled yearly, renews $17.99/mo
Checked Screenshot of the pricing page (opens in a new tab)Visit SiteGround (no commission) (opens in a new tab)Starting price against renewal price
Side by side
| Cloudways | SiteGround | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $11.00/mo (term: monthly). Price checked . | From $2.99/mo (term: 1 year, renews at $17.99/mo). Price checked . |
| Storage | DigitalOcean Premium: Micro 25 GB, Small 50 GB, Medium 80 GB, Large 160 GB NVMe. Standard: same sizes on SSD | StartUp 10 GB, GrowBig 50 GB, GoGeek 100 GB |
| Monthly visit limit | Unlimited visits on every plan (limited by server resources and bandwidth: 1 TB to 5 TB; extra DigitalOcean bandwidth $0.02/GB) | Unlimited traffic stated on every plan |
| Sites allowed | Unlimited websites per server | StartUp 1, GrowBig and GoGeek unlimited |
| Free SSL | Yes, Let's Encrypt | Yes |
| Free domain (first year) | Not captured | Free domain listed on all plans (duration not stated on the page) |
| Backups | Automated and on-demand backups; offsite backup storage billed at $0.033/GB per server | Free daily backups on all plans; on-demand backups on GrowBig and GoGeek |
| Staging site | Yes, free staging environments | GrowBig (Staging) and GoGeek (Staging + Git); not StartUp |
| Data centers | 50+ data centres across the cloud providers | Not captured |
| Managed WordPress | Yes, managed hosting for WordPress and other PHP apps; Cloudways Autonomous is a separate fully managed WordPress product | Not captured |
Both are Researched from public pricing and specifications; neither has been hands-on tested.
Cheaper in year one, dearer after renewal
On 9 October 2026 SiteGround StartUp cost $2.99 a month prepaid for 12 months, then renewed at $17.99 a month. Cloudways' smallest DigitalOcean Standard server cost $11 a month with no intro discount and no renewal jump.
Over three years that works out at about $468 for SiteGround StartUp against $396 for the Cloudways server. StartUp hosts 1 website, while a Cloudways server can hold as many sites as it has room for. SiteGround GrowBig, which allows unlimited sites, renews at $29.99 a month.
Read the full reviews: Cloudways review and SiteGround review.