VETTED SAAS
Head to head · Web Hosting

WP Engine vs Cloudways

WP Engine and Cloudways solve hosting differently. WP Engine is premium managed WordPress with everything handled for you; Cloudways layers managed hosting on top of cloud servers, trading some hand holding for more control and value as you scale. We score both and lay out who each one fits.

Reviewed by M. HALLORAN·Updated JUNE 2026·How we vet
★ Our pick
WP Engine
87 /100
vs
Challenger
Cloudways
87 /100
◂ WP Engine Advantage Cloudways ▸
Effectively a tie on our rubric · WP Engine wins on managed WordPress depth and support; Cloudways wins on value, scale and control.

These are affiliate links marked rel=“sponsored”. We may earn a commission if you buy · it never affects our scores or who wins. Disclosure.

How they score

Criteria WP Engine Cloudways Winner
Ease of use
86
82
WP Engine
Performance and speed
92
90
WP Engine
Support
90
85
WP Engine
Value for money
74
88
Cloudways
Scalability and control
82
90
Cloudways
Managed WordPress depth
93
80
WP Engine

Scores are our editorial assessment against the VettedSaaS rubric · not vendor supplied.

Choose WP Engine if…
+You want managed WordPress with updates, caching and staging handled
+You value expert WordPress support and agency tooling
+You run business or high traffic WordPress sites
+You can budget $25 a month or more per site
Choose Cloudways if…
+You want cloud performance you can scale on demand
+You are comfortable picking a server size and provider
+You want flexible pay as you go billing with no renewal jump
+You run growing sites or stores beyond plain WordPress

Feature by feature

✓ full  ·  ∼ partial  ·  — none
Capability WP Engine Cloudways
Free SSL ✓ ✓Let's Encrypt
Free CDN ✓global edge ∼Cloudflare add on
Daily backups ✓30 day plus ∼paid, on demand
Staging environment ✓dev, stage, prod ✓
Fully managed WordPress ✓platform wide ∼stack level
Choice of cloud provider — ✓
Money back guarantee ✓60 days ∼3 day trial

Feature support verified as of June 2026 · check the vendor for current details.

Pricing, side by side

Intro rate per month · renewals differ
WP Engine Our pick
Startup $25
Professional $50
Growth $96
Cloudways Challenger
DO 1GB $11
DO 2GB $22
DO 4GB $50

Pricing as of June 2026 · WP Engine on annual billing with visit based overages; Cloudways charges per server with no renewal jump (about $8.25/mo on annual for DO 1GB). Check the vendor for current pricing.

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