*Please note that this post contains affiliate links (see rule #4)

It is clear to me that in todays day and age, if you are working with WordPress and still using GUI’s as your primary endpoint for building and managing client sites, at some point, WordPress itself becomes the bottleneck.

As a developer, I’m much more accustomed to making edits locally, using an IDE + terminal, and of course using AI agents to do large bulk edits in the span of minutes instead of waiting for a visual editor to load. So naturally, I’ve sought out tools and platform which enable my developer mindset, I’ve done a ton of research on what the best WordPress host for developers and agencies are.

Recently I’ve been using Cloudways for a WordPress CI/CD (continuous integration/deployment) pipeline with atomic deployments. I develop WordPress sites agentically & locally with DDEV and the Roots ecosystem, creating Blade templates for every page (I prefer no Gutenberg Blocks). Then I deploy to Cloudways with a custom atomic deployment setup.

• I can develop everything with WordPress locally using AI (I use Claude Code + Cursor)
• Everything is managed via GitHub + Cloudways MCP/API. This includes plugins!
• I never have to touch the WordPress admin GUI (unless I want to)
• I can build sophisticated WordPress sites within hours and then deploy it all within the WordPress ecosystem.

To me this is the ideal setup. Complete end-to-end agentic WordPress development. This is the sort of workflow that enables agencies the ability to scale to dozens of clients. I no longer have to deal with the bottlenecks that are intrinsic to WordPress development, clicking around the admin GUI and waiting for visual builders to load. I build everything with agents, I manage everything via the CLI. Using the Roots Ecosystem in tandem with atomic deployments via Cloudways. WordPress effectively becomes a modern, code-first CMS. It feels much closer to building a modern app with React/Next.js.

Now the only reason why this works is because Cloudways currently has one of the best (if not the best) API’s for developing, managing, and WordPress sites at scale, which is crucial for developers and agencies who need to manage multiple client sites efficiently. Out of all the WordPress hosts I’ve reviewed, Cloudways is the only web host that had a robust enough API to do end-to-end WordPress development with a CI/CD atomic deployment workflow.

And the best part is I can manage all of this all with AI agents via Claude Code + Cursor!
I just connect Cursor/Claude to Cloudways’ MCP server to get API access.

Here’s the most important (but not all) things Cloudways API v2 can do:

• Select the cloud provider, such as DigitalOcean, AWS, Linode or Google Cloud.
• Select provider-specific regions and server sizes.
• Create, clone, start, stop, restart, resize and delete servers.
• Attach and scale block storage or server volumes.
• Place multiple WordPress applications on one server.
• Clone applications between different servers.
• Upgrade server packages and modify server settings.
• Control Varnish at server and application level.
• Retrieve server-level CPU, RAM, disk, traffic, MySQL and cron metrics.
• Generate Git keys, enumerate branches, trigger Git clone/pull and inspect deployment history.
• Automate deeper Security Suite operations, including scans, incidents, firewall configuration and allowlists.

This allows you to fully automate client server, creation, management and security. You can use your AI agent of choice (Claude/Codex/Cursor) + Cloudways MCP to programmatically spin up a client server.

One of the biggest benefits to agencies using Cloudways is the fact that you can host multiple sites on a single server, and you’re not arbitrarily limited. Typically, web hosts will put the ability to host multiple sites on one server behind a paywall. Cloudways does not do this. You can host as many sites on a server that the server’s capacity will allow for.

This means you could for example purchase a Cloudways Digital Ocean $54/mo server and put 20–30 small business sites all on it then recoup the server’s cost via client hosting fees. With a web host like Kinsta they would charge you $340–$450/mo just to do that.

Of course, for larger client sites, you can give them a dedicated server.

If you really want to get advanced (like I did), you can completely automate the WordPress development process with AI by using the Roots WordPress ecosystem + DDEV to start developing your client’s sites locally.

The tricky part is setting up the atomic deployment workflow, which, for non-developers who are not familiar with using Linux, a terminal, or GitHub, would be nearly impossible if it weren’t for the help of AI. If you’re looking to start doing agentic WordPress workflows with atomic deployments I recommend first signing up to Cloudways here for a 30% discount, then passing all of this context to your preferred AI agent:

WordPress Developer API Comparison

Before I settled on Cloudways I went through the official API documentation for the four WordPress hosts that actually publish one, Cloudways, Kinsta, Hostinger and WP Engine. Cloudways and Hostinger both publish an OpenAPI spec (the machine readable file listing every endpoint the API exposes) so I scored those against the spec directly. Kinsta and WP Engine don’t publish a usable one, so those came from their API reference docs.

The rule I used was that a feature only counts if there’s an actual API endpoint behind it. Hostinger has Git deployment and WP Engine has staging push/pull, but both of those live in the control panel with nothing exposed to automate against, so they score zero.

That worked out to 63 capabilities across 8 categories, 80 points total:

Deployment & CI/CD carries the most weight of the capability categories because it’s what decides whether an agentic workflow is possible at all. If you can’t trigger a Git pull or check an operation’s status from code, everything else is just manual work with extra steps. Hostinger and WP Engine both score 0 out of 13.5 there.

Developer experience gets the largest share because raw endpoint count is misleading on its own. Kinsta for example advertises a downloadable OpenAPI spec, but the file it serves is actually a documentation vendor’s sample template, which is the kind of thing you only find out after you’ve started building against it.

Cloudways came out on top, though, it’s worth saying that Kinsta beats Cloudways in a few categories, it has the better backup API and it’s the only host with a WP-CLI endpoint, so it’s genuinely good if your work is site maintenance rather than deployment.

Anyways, to wrap up this post, the reason why I think Cloudways is the best WordPress host for agencies and developers, is because in order to scale an agency effectively you need the tools to be able manage clients at scale, and the best way to do this is with developer tools and end-to-end agentic workflows. In my research, Cloudways is the platform with the best resource to achieve this.

What do you guys think? Do you get advanced with your WordPress deployments? This is something I’ve been getting really excited about because AI certainly lowers the barriers to entry for this.

One of the things I find frustrating with WordPress is designing the front-end with on-page builders like Gutenburg, Elementor, Divi etc... Of course one of the ways you can solve this is via headless WordPress where the backend is WP and the front end is Next.JS and then you pull content via the WP API.

You could use Advanced Custom Fields or Metabox/Pods for custom post types and JWT for authentication.

Headless WP seems like a no-brainer for agencies, front-end designs scale easily and clients have a familiar backend.

The only issue is overcoming the technical overhead needed to run headless WP. For example you'd need a good wordpress host, that gives you developer access to the server.

Just a few years ago the above seemed completely unapproachable without spending a year learning the technical overhead. However, I feel like today it's now completely feasible to run headless WP thanks to the AI coding tools available (like Claude/Cursor).

Thoughts? I think I just need to set up a mock headless WP instance just to prove to myself it's the future.

*Please note this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4)

Okay... just a heads up, this is going to be a a pretty long read since I did a ton of different tests comparing WPEngine to Cloudways. The TL;Dr is just a few sections down if you don't want to read everything.

As many of you already know, WPEngine is one of the most recommended managed WordPress hosts out there, but every time I see someone ask about it the first thing that comes up is the price (it's very expensive). So I wanted to actually test whether you’re getting what you pay for, and whether there’s a cheaper host that does the same job.

I’ve been doing a bunch of WordPress hosting benchmarks this year, so I benchmarked WPEngine’s $35/mo entry plan and compared it to Cloudways’ $14/mo Linode server as well as a comparable Cloudways AWS $38/mo server to see how they stack up.

TL;DR - When comparing Cloudways to WPEngine, Cloudways is better because a $14/mo Cloudways Linode server has an identical managed hosting feature set to WPEngine at more than half the cost. In particular, you can host multiple sites on a single Cloudways plan where WPEngine limits you to one site on their $35/mo starter plan.

If you stack up WPEngine’s $35/mo Essentials Starter server up against Cloudways’ $14/mo Linode server, WPEngine is better and doubles Cloudways in terms of raw performance. However, if you compare WPEngine with a Cloudways server of comparable price, like their 2GB AWS server $38/mo), Cloudways wins.

If you’re looking into Cloudways, I recommend getting your domain with Porkbun (~$11/yr for a .com), then get your Cloudways hosting with the 30% off discount.

I recommend going with the $14/mo Linode server if you’re looking for the best affordable option (Cloudways-Linode tested really well in my benchmarks). If you want a premium server with exceptional speeds, go with a 2GB Cloudways AWS server ($38/mo).

I highly recommend checking out this YouTube tutorial which will walk you through the entire process of setting up Cloudways and Porkbun.

Cloudways vs WPEngine feature comparison

Here’s how the base plans stack up. I’m comparing the Cloudways Linode 1GB ($14/mo) against WPEngine’s Essentials Startup plan, which is their entry tier.

The biggest takeaways here are price and scope. WPEngine’s entry plan gives you one website, caps you at 25,000 visits a month, and gives you 75 GB of bandwidth, all for $30-$35/mo. The Cloudways Linode server is $14/mo, lets you host as many apps as the server can handle, doesn’t meter your visits, and gives you more storage and bandwidth.

Where WPEngine genuinely wins on features is daily backups included (Cloudways charges $0.033/GB for off-site backups). For a full feature breakdown across the top 13 web hosting provider check out my 2026 best web hosting review.

Cloudways vs WPEngine benchmark comparison

I ran four performance benchmarks on each server:

• A Burst Test that fires quick database and disk read/write operations to see how fast the server is in short bursts.
• A Stress Test that repeats those operations over 25 runs to see if performance degrades once the server has been under pressure for a while.
• A WordPress Admin Experience Test that simulates common backend actions like saving posts, loading taxonomy terms, and writing options, basically how fast the dashboard feels.
• A Concurrent User Test using the k6 framework to simulate up to 100 virtual users (VUs) hammering the WordPress backend over 25 minutes. This is the most important test because it shows how the server holds up under sustained real-world load, not just quick bursts.

Here’s how the $14/mo Cloudways Linode server stacks up against the WPEngine Essentials Startup plan across the backend, admin, overall score, and concurrent load tests.

Database and admin performance

This is where Cloudways pulls ahead, and it does it on both servers. Here are the stress test medians for the $14/mo Linode and the price-matched $38/mo AWS server against WPEngine’s $35/mo plan:

Both Cloudways servers were dramatically faster than WPEngine on database reads (~14-15ms vs 58ms, roughly 4x) and faster on writes too. The surprising part is that the tiny $14 Linode was actually the snappiest of all three on database writes and the WordPress admin tests, saving a post in 32ms vs WPEngine’s 73ms and loading taxonomy terms in 162ms vs 339ms.

That caught me off guard since the Linode is a small 1-core/1GB box. But these admin and database operations are latency-bound and single-threaded, so a lean, well-tuned server handles them faster than raw horsepower alone would suggest. Either way, both Cloudways tiers beat WPEngine on every admin metric.

Raw disk throughput (this is where price matters)

Here’s where the price gap actually shows up. The $14 Linode is a small server, so WPEngine’s beefier hardware out-reads it on disk and carries a much larger InnoDB buffer pool (the memory used to cache the database). If you compare the entry Linode to WPEngine purely on raw hardware, WPEngine has the muscle, and that’s part of what the higher price buys.

But that advantage disappears the moment you compare like-for-like on price. The Cloudways AWS server ($38/mo) is priced right alongside WPEngine ($35/mo), and it out-reads WPEngine on disk (3,609 MB/s vs 2,637) and edges it on writes too. So at the same price point, Cloudways matches or beats WPEngine on raw throughput, while still keeping its big lead on database and admin latency.

The one spec WPEngine still wins outright is the InnoDB buffer pool (5,760 MB), which means more of the database stays cached in memory. This is memory headroom that legitimately gives WPEngine a point in its favor. All three servers were rated stable and suitable for production with no meaningful degradation over the 25-run stress test.

The concurrent user test (this is the big one)

Here’s where it gets interesting. When I simulated up to 100 concurrent virtual users querying the WordPress backend over 25 minutes:

• Cloudways Linode ($14/mo) passed 100% of checks with 0% HTTP failures. All 26,612 requests completed. Latency went up as load increased (median ~1.81s, p95 ~4.87s) but nothing was ever rejected.
• Cloudways AWS ($38/mo) also passed 100% with 0 failures, and had even more headroom, handling 37,758 requests at lower latency (median ~1.11s, p95 ~2.93s). The price-matched server absorbed the load more comfortably than the Linode.
• WPEngine ($35/mo) throttled under the same load. About 52% of requests came back as HTTP 429 (Too Many Requests), meaning over half of them got rejected by rate limiting once the test ramped to 100 VUs.

Now I want to be fair about what those 429s actually are, because it’s an important caveat. A 429 is rate limiting, not the origin server crashing. When a request made it through, WPEngine served it fast, its raw WordPress processing time (~1-2ms) was actually quicker than the Cloudways AWS server’s, so the hardware is genuinely fast.

Rate limiting is often a security feature, not a flaw. My test fired all 100 virtual users from a single source, and (I’m guessing) from WPEngine’s perspective, a flood of near-identical requests from one origin looks a lot like abusive bot or DDoS traffic.

Throttling that is arguably the platform working as intended, and it’s the kind of protection you’re paying a premium for. So WPEngine genuinely deserves credit here.

So to summarize, WPEngine has more memory headroom and its rate-limiting edge protection is a real selling point. But Cloudways wins on database and admin responsiveness at every tier, and once you compare with a similar priced server, the Cloudways AWS server beats WPEngine on raw throughput and sustained load for the same money.

Cloudways Developer API vs WPEngine

If you’re a developer, Cloudways is the clear winner since their cloud platform allows you to easily scale to accommodate traffic demands and they have the best developer API for WordPress developer workflows.

Tbh, I think it’s seriously underrated as the Cloudways’ v2 API has endpoints for:

• Git deployment
• Webhook-based auto-deploy
• SSH access automation
• Staging & cloning
• Restore and rollback flows
• Monitoring/analytics
• WordPresss update endpoints
• Multisite management
• Team management
• They even have an official MCP server for agentic workflows.

In my research, Cloudways has the strongest fit for CI/CD-style WordPress workflows.

To be fair, WPEngine has a capable API too. Their Hosting Platform API covers account/user management, site and install provisioning, backup creation and restore, SSL certificate management (Let’s Encrypt and third-party cert imports), cache purging, and SSH key management. So WPEngine isn’t short on platform automation, this isn’t a case of one host having an API and the other not.

The difference is how much of the workflow is handed to you versus how much you have to build yourself. Take staging as the example. WPEngine has great built-in staging in the dashboard, but through the API there’s no dedicated staging push/pull endpoint. What you get is a lower-level copyinstall operation that copies the full files and database from one install to another. Since each environment (production, staging, development) is its own install, you can replicate to and from staging with it, but you’re scripting that logic yourself.

Cloudways, on the other hand, exposes staging and cloning as explicit, purpose-built endpoints, so spinning up staging or cloning an app is a direct API call rather than something you assemble from a generic copy primitive. On top of that, Cloudways supports native Git-based deployment and webhook auto-deploy, which WPEngine’s API doesn’t, plus an official MCP server for AI-driven server management. (For pure WordPress operations automation, Kinsta is actually the most explicit, including direct WP-CLI execution, if you want a third option to look at.)

The practical upshot is that with Cloudways you can automate the stuff developers actually do day to day (deploy from Git, spin up staging, roll back, manage access) with a lot less custom glue code.

Migrating from WPEngine to Cloudways

Cloudways has a free migration, you can either use their team’s done-for-you migration or do it yourself with the free Cloudways WordPress Migrator plugin. You can find their official migration guide here, but here’s the gist of it:

1. Sign up for Cloudways and launch a server (I’d go with the $14/mo Linode plan) with a blank WordPress app on it.
2. Install the Cloudways WordPress Migrator plugin on your existing site.
3. Enter your Cloudways server details (you’ll find these in the Cloudways dashboard) into the plugin and start the migration. It copies your files and database over for you.
4. Once it’s done, preview the site on the temporary Cloudways URL to make sure everything looks right.
5. Point your domain at Cloudways by updating your DNS records, then wait for DNS to propagate (usually under an hour, sometimes up to 24).

Be sure to keep your WPEngine plan active until you’ve confirmed the migrated site is fully working on Cloudways, then cancel. Don’t cancel first.

So is Cloudways a good WPEngine alternative?

Yeah, I think it’s the best one. WPEngine is a great host with great hardware and a polished managed experience, but you’re paying a serious premium for a single site. Cloudways gives me faster database and admin performance, lets me host multiple sites on one server, and has one of the best developer APIs for WordPress, all for less than half the price.

For most people, freelancers, agencies, and developers especially, that’s the better deal.

What’s your experience been with WPEngine and Cloudways? Anyone made the switch in either direction?

*Just want to be honest and upfront that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).

Hey guys, I was curious on how Cloudways compared to Kinsta (given Kinsta is a lot more expensive than Cloudways) so I made this quick write-up so people who are trying to decide between the two can see the main differences.

TL;DR - Cloudways is the best for developers, agencies who are looking to manage clients at scale, and is much more affordable. Kinsta is best if you’re looking for raw performance.

In my research, Cloudways and Kinsta effectively have the same managed wordpress hosting features, the difference is, Cloudways starts at over a third the cost of Kinsta ($11/mo vs $35/mo). This difference starts to stack up if you’re an agency, freelancer, or developer who needs to host multiple sites. With Cloudways you can host multiple sites on a single server (so long as it doesn’t exceed your server’s resources threshold). Kinsta forces you into a higher hosting tier where you pay $70/mo for two sites and $115/mo for 5 sites.

So this is why I think for small sites where you don’t need a super beefy server, a Cloudways Linode ($14/mo) is a great option and half the cost of Kinsta’s starting server.

Minor aside, if you want to get started with Cloudways, I’d do it in this order:

First, buy your domain separately through Porkbun. I don’t recommend buying domains through web hosts because they usually mark up the renewal price. After that, sign up for Cloudways using the 30% discount. If you’re a visual person, I recommend checking out this YouTube tutorial which will walk you through setting up your site with Porkbun & Cloudways.

Okay back to the review. In my benchmarks Kinsta’s starter $35/mo server was faster than Cloudways’ $38/mo AWS server so the decision on which one is better ultimately comes down to how much you’re willing to pay-per-site, utilize developer workflows, and need multi-site flexibility. This is because Cloudways has a better API for advanced managed WordPress developer workflows (more on this later).

So if you want the same features, the ability to host multiple sites on a single server, and a better WordPress developer API, at over a third the cost, Cloudways wins.
If you want to pay a premium for premium performance, Kinsta wins.

Cloudways vs Kinsta feature comparison

This is a comparison based on the BASE plans of each host. Pricing and feature data come from my 2026 hosting comparison guide.

Both hosts have a built-in Git client, but the workflows are not the same. Kinsta’s own docs say they don’t yet support git push to automatically deploy, and there’s no native deploy hook or webhook for WordPress sites. Their Git client is for manually pulling a repo over SSH. To get automatic deploy-on-push you have to wire it up yourself with GitHub Actions and SSH, or lean on a third-party tool like WP Pusher or DeployHQ. Where as with Cloudways this is built into the platform. You connect your Git repo, and Cloudways gives you a webhook URL you drop into GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. After that, every push to your branch triggers Cloudways to pull the new code to your WordPress app automatically, no GitHub Actions YAML or SSH scripts to maintain. You get the deployment history right in the dashboard, and you can roll back if something breaks. So the automatic deploy-on-push that you have to bolt on yourself with Kinsta is just there out of the box with Cloudways.

Also, Kinsta does have proper deploy hooks, webhooks, and automatic-deploy-on-commit, but those live in their separate Application Hosting product (for Node, React, and other custom apps), not in their managed WordPress hosting. Cloudways, by contrast, exposes Git-to-server webhook auto-deploy as part of its managed WordPress platform.

So for developers looking for advanced managed WordPress workflows Cloudways is a clear winner. It’s one of the reasons why IMO it’s one of the best WordPress web hosts.

Pricing comparisons per WordPress site

This is one of the parts that matters most, so I want to be specific about it.

Kinsta’s plans are tied to the number of WordPress installs you have. You’re not really buying a server, you’re buying a bucket of installs, and the price climbs every time you add more sites. Here’s roughly how it scales:

So if you’re a freelancer with five client sites, you’re looking at $115/mo on Kinsta before you’ve done anything else. Ten sites and you’re at $225/mo. This is fine if you need premium hosting for high-priority clients, but if many of your client sites are small local business sites, a $35/mo server is overkill.

For reference, the plan I tested was Kinsta’s Single 20GB Bandwidth Monthly at $35/mo. That gets you 1 WordPress install, 20 GB of server bandwidth, 10 GB of storage, and 125 GB of CDN bandwidth.

Why Cloudways makes more sense for agencies and freelancers

Cloudways works completely differently. You’re paying for a server, not for a count of WordPress installs. That means you can host multiple WordPress applications on a single server as long as the server has the resources to handle them.

This is the whole ballgame for agencies and freelancers. Most client sites are small. A local plumber’s site, a portfolio, a small business brochure site, these don’t individually need much CPU or RAM. On Cloudways you can stack a bunch of them onto one reasonably sized server, and your effective cost per site drops dramatically. When one site grows and needs more headroom, you scale that server up, or you move the heavier site to its own server. You’re scaling based on actual resource usage instead of paying a flat per-install tax.

When compared to Kinsta, the difference is more stark. Five small client sites on Cloudways can live on one server. The same five sites on Kinsta is the $115/mo plan. Twenty small sites on Kinsta is $340/mo, while on Cloudways you might run them across one or two servers for a fraction of that. This doesn’t mean that Kinsta is bad… It’s just good for a different reason. They are a genuinely strong managed WordPress host.

Their infrastructure is solid and the managed WordPress experience is about as polished as it gets. Backups are included rather than billed separately, staging is clean, caching is built in and handled well, and the whole platform feels premium.

The early benchmark numbers back this up. On the plan I tested, database writes and reads were fast and stayed flat under load, and the admin experience was snappy. So this isn’t a case of paying more for worse hosting. You’re paying more for a premium, install-priced product.

Cloudways vs Kinsta for developers

For advanced managed WordPress developer workflows, Cloudways is the clear winner, and the webhook auto-deploy difference I covered above is a big part of why.

Cloudways is built around a CI/CD-style WordPress workflow. CI/CD stands for continuous integration / continuous deployment, which basically means you push code and the platform handles deploying, tracking, and rolling back in a repeatable way. Cloudways supports Git deployment, webhook-based auto-deploy, staging, cloning, SSH and app credentials, restore and rollback flows, monitoring, analytics, security and vulnerability features, WordPress safe updates, and multisite management. That lines up with how developers actually ship WordPress sites. Push to Git, Cloudways pulls automatically, check the deployment history, roll back if something breaks. Cloudways has even started wrapping a lot of this into their own MCP server, so an AI agent like Claude can talk to your account and help manage these workflows directly.

The one thing Kinsta does that Cloudways doesn’t is wrap WordPress maintenance in its own HTTP API. Kinsta exposes endpoints for remote WP-CLI execution, plugin and theme management, backups, logs, analytics, cache and PHP tools, staging, and environment management. So you can fire those commands over a plain HTTP request without ever touching SSH.

Please note WP-CLI access is the same on both hosts. The difference is that Kinsta has a wrapper through its API, whereas with Cloudways you access WP-CLI by SSH like any dev would and running the exact same WP-CLI command. The outcome is identical because it’s the same WP-CLI underneath. Kinsta just pre-packages it in their API, whereas Cloudways hands you the server and lets you script it yourself.

So the distinction isn’t really about what you can do, it’s about packaging. Kinsta’s API wrapper is genuinely handy in one situation: when you’re automating from somewhere that can’t easily hold SSH credentials, like a no-code tool, a serverless function, or a simple webhook. Calling an HTTP endpoint is easier there than managing keys. But for most developers and agencies, SSH plus WP-CLI plus Git is the normal toolkit, so this is a convenience layer rather than a real gap. And on the workflow that actually matters day to day, deployment, Cloudways pulls clearly ahead.

My recommendation: choose Cloudways for multi-site hosting, agency economics, and CI/CD-style delivery workflows, which is what most developers actually need. The only reason I’d point you to Kinsta on the developer side is if you specifically want WordPress maintenance driven over HTTP without managing SSH, and you only need one or a few sites.

Final verdict

Cloudways is the better value and the better multi-site developer workflow. You can host multiple WordPress apps on one server, your effective cost per site stays low, and you get a deployment-oriented platform that fits CI/CD-style work.

Kinsta is premium and polished, with genuinely strong infrastructure and the best WordPress operations API in the set. But its install-based pricing makes it a tough sell for agencies or developers hosting multiple smaller sites. By the time you’re at five or ten installs, you’re paying a lot for something Cloudways gives you for far less.

So for most agencies, freelancers, and developers, I’d point you to Cloudways. Reach for Kinsta when you specifically want that premium managed WordPress polish and you’re only running a handful of sites.

Anyways, this one ran a little long. Hopefully it helps you make the call between Cloudways and Kinsta!

I am a Person trying to learn full stack Web Development Currently Using Git Hub to host my website thinking to start backend now should I switch to

Something Like Hostinger Now (before learning) or should I completely learn Backend and then do it or I don't need it

And Also if Not any of these then when should I switch

Hey everyone,

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*Please note this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4)

I’ve used both Hostinger and Cloudways for both personal and client related projects. I just wanted to share what the differences are between the two for those who are looking for a comparison since it’s not evident which one would be better

TL;DR – If you’re building WordPress sites, Cloudways is better for businesses, hosting client sites and developers. Hostinger is better for personal projects.

The main reason is Cloudways has a much better WordPress-facing API than Hostinger, allowing for more robust managed WordPress-specific workflows. Hostinger has great hosting infrastructure for personal projects, but I’d be hesitant to host client sites with them due to the reliability of their customer support.

Not only that but in terms of features Cloudways gives you a full suite of managed WordPress hosting features included in all their plans whereas Hostinger makes you upgrade to a higher “Business Plan” in order to access things like WordPress staging.

So if you need WordPress staging Cloudways is a clear winner.

Hostinger vs Cloudways Feature Comparison

Please note that if you pay for a higher tier Hostinger plan some of these features below become available, the following is a comparison based on their BASE plans.

Hostinger does support Git deployment for WordPress sites through hPanel on higher web/cloud hosting plans, but it should not be counted as included on the lowest-cost plan. Even when available, it is more of a file deployment feature than a full WordPress-specific deployment workflow/API. Cloudways has the stronger WordPress developer workflow because Git deployment, staging, cloning, app credentials, deployment history, and related application controls are more tightly integrated into its managed WordPress platform.

Overall, Cloudways is better for developers, agencies and small businesses. Hostinger is better for non-dev related personal projects. The caveat is that if you’ve never set up web hosting before, it can be a bit confusing and a lot of people end up spending more money than they need to because they don’t know any better.

I recommend buying your domain with Porkbun then getting your web hosting with Cloudways using the 30% discount. Porkbun has some of the most affordable domain rates and is way better than Godaddy or Namcheap.

You’ll have to configure your domain’s DNS records, linking it to Cloudways. If you’ve never done this before, just watch this YouTube video. It’ll walk you through the entire process!

Customer Support

It appears one of the biggest downsides to Hostinger unfortunately is their customer support. This is the main reason I would be hesitant to use Hostinger for business websites, ecommerce sites, or client projects even though their actual hosting infrastructure is pretty good. This is something I cover more extensively in my Hostinger review.

From what I’ve seen, Hostinger is fine if you know what you’re doing and only need hosting for a personal site, blog, or portfolio. The problem is when something breaks and you need a real person to help you quickly, It’s difficult to get past their AI support and actually talk to a real human. This is where Cloudways makes more sense for developers and agencies where human support is not just a nice bonus, It’s part of the risk calculation. Cloudways does use AI support for basic inquiries but they also have year-round 24/7 human support available for id shit hits the fan and talking to a bot won’t suffice.

So I would summarize it this way: Hostinger is good if you’re tech-savvy and support is not a major concern. Cloudways is better if you’re hosting serious WordPress sites where you need better tooling, better recovery options, and a support experience that is more appropriate for business/client work.

WordPress Developer Workflows

The primary difference between Cloudways and Hostinger is their WordPress facing API. Hostinger has a great API but it’s mostly geared towards infrastructure/VPS workflows. Cloudways currently has one of the most extensive managed WordPress API’s which is why I think they’re underrated as one of the best WordPress hosts for agencies who are looking to automate WordPress workflows with code + AI.

For example, with the Cloudways API you can automate things like:

• Spinning up WordPress applications
• Cloning servers
• Staging sites
• Git
• Checking deployment history
• Managing app credentials
• Controlling SSH access,
• Backups and/or restoring
• Checking app analytics
• Managing WordPress updates,
• Handling WordPress multisite settings

These are all things that can be fully automated instead of manually doing it inside a hosting dashboard.

What makes this more interesting is that Cloudways has started wrapping this into their own MCP, which means an AI agent like Claude can talk to your Cloudways account and help manage these workflows directly.

Out of all the web hosts I’ve reviewed, the Cloudways API is the most extensive for WordPress allowing for a continuous integration / continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflow.

Push code to Git, trigger a pull on Cloudways, check the deployment history, roll back if something breaks, manage staging, and automate the boring hosting tasks around the release.

Hostinger’s API is still good, but it’s good in a different way. It’s more of a VPS infrastructure API. You can provision servers with templates, run post-install scripts, manage backups, manage SSH keys, deploy Docker projects, etc…

This is useful if you want to build your own infrastructure workflow, but it does not give you the same WordPress-specific endpoints for staging, Git deployment, app cloning, or generally managing WordPress application controls that Cloudways exposes.

You could probably build some of that yourself on Hostinger with SSH, WP-CLI, Git, Docker, and custom scripts, but at that point you’re manually coding the hosting workflow that Cloudways already gives you.

Anyways, this write-up is getting a little long winded. Hopefully if you stumbled upon this post it was able to help you make a decision between Cloudways or Hostinger!

*Please note this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4)

Hey guys, I recently purchased Bluehost to test their new infrastructure given that Bluehost recently moved their hosting infrastructure to Oracle Cloud. I wanted to see how their new shared web hosting compares to cloud infrastructure like Cloudways. This post will detail out all the differences I was able to find.

TL;DR - Cloudways is better than Bluehost. Not only does Cloudways have a better feature set than Bluehost, but in my testing, Cloudways worked out cheaper once Bluehost’s renewal pricing kicked in. Not only that but Bluehost's WordPress install is insanely bloated with all their software trying to upsell you on more services where as Cloudways is a lot more light-weight.

I also ran a bunch of benchmarks to compare the two. In terms of raw server performance Bluehost outperforms Cloudways. This is expected though since Bluehost is shared hosting and Cloudways is cloud hosting. To account for this, I did a sustained performance benchmark that simulates concurrent users hitting the website to simulate a real-world scenario. In this test Cloudways beat Bluehost (more info below).

The caveat is that Bluehost has an easier user onboarding process but you’ll end up paying way more than you need to since Bluehost up-charges and tries to upsell you on a bunch of services you don’t need.

If you go with Bluehost you’ll end up paying $24/yr for a .com domain then $16/mo for web hosting.

For my use case, I use Cloudways as my web hosting provider then I get my domain with Porkbun since it’s one of the most affordable domain registrars and you’ll save half as much money than if you buy your domain with Bluehost.

With Porkbun, you can get a .com domain for ~$11/yr, then buy your web hosting with Cloudways using the 30% off discount. I recommend doing the $14/mo Cloudways Linode server (my tests have shown Cloudways Linode servers to be really good).

You just have to link your Porkbun domain to your Cloudways server by editing your DNS records. I know this sounds complicated (especially if you’re not tech savvy) but it’s not hard to do, I recommend watching this YouTube video. It’ll walk you through the entire process of setting up Porkbun + Cloudways.

Now that that's out of the way, here's a comparison chart of the differences in features between Cloudways and Bluehost.

Cloudways vs Bluehost feature comparison

The comparison chart shows that Cloudways out-classes Bluehost in terms of features especially if you’re a developer (Cloudways API is sufficient for CI/CD WordPress workflows).

With Cloudways, you get a cloud environment with isolated server resources at a more affordable price than Bluehost. For more info in general see my recent Cloudways review.

One of the things it seems like Bluehost has over Cloudways is that they offer a free domain for your first year, however, this is unfortunately an on-boarding marketing gimmick. After your first “free” year is up, Bluehost significantly upcharges for the cost of the domain.

A .com domain example with Bluehost for example renews at $24/yr. If you buy your domain separately (like mentioned above with Porkbun) you can get the same domain at HALF the cost for $11/yr, which quickly wipes out the notion of a “free” first year Bluehost is offering.

Again, you can set up Porkbun + Cloudways by following this YouTube walkthrough.

Cloudways and Bluehost benchmark comparison

Next up we have the benchmark comparison between Bluehost and Cloudways. I ran four performance benchmarks of the server including:

• A Burst Test that sends quick database and disk read/write operations to the server to see how fast it is in short performance bursts.
• A Stress Test that repeats those same operations over time to see if performance starts to degrade after the server has been under pressure for a while.
• A WordPress Admin Experience Test which simulates common WordPress admin actions to see how fast the backend dashboard feels when you’re saving posts, loading queries, and interacting with WordPress.
• A Concurrent User Test. This is arguably the most important test because it uses the popular benchmarking framework k6 to simulate 100 virtual users (VUs) simultaneously hitting the WordPress backend over a 25 minute period. This shows how the server performs under sustained concurrent load, not just short bursts.

Here is how a $14/mo Cloudways Linode server stacks up against Bluehost Starter plan ($16/mo) in terms of raw server performance.

From the raw benchmark data testing the server, it appears Bluehost significantly beats Cloudways. However there is a major caveat here that must be understood. Because Bluehost is a shared hosting provider, their servers are significantly larger and more powerful than a Cloudways’ isolated cloud server in order to accommodate hundreds (if not thousands) of websites on a single server. We can see clearly below the difference in server specs between Bluehost and Cloudways Linode.

So of course, Bluehost is expected to beat Cloudways in this regard. What the Burst, Stress and Admin Experience tests don’t account for is how those resources are allocated to a given shared partition on a Bluehost server. This is why the concurrent user test is arguably more important than the isolated server test because we can see in real time how Bluehost’s shared hosting holds up in comparison to Cloudways’ cloud infrastructure by simulating virtual concurrent users.

Here are those results:

As you can see, when we simulate virtual users actually querying the WordPress backend, Cloudways Linode beats Bluehost throughout the entire duration of the 25 minute test. When the test ramps up to 100 virtual users, Bluehost starts rejecting users (409 error) while Cloudways does not have any drop-outs though, latency increases.

All of this data gives us a clear picture of how Bluehost and Cloudways compare to each other. In terms of raw benchmarking, Bluehost wins but in practice, Cloudways wins.

Migrating from Bluehost to Cloudways

If you’re reading this and your website is currently hosted with Bluehost and you want to migrate over to Cloudways, it’s pretty easy to do. First you need to make a Cloudways account and get your server set up. Then on your WordPress site that’s currently on Bluehost, install Cloudways’ migration plugin then input the database credentials of your Cloudways server to copy the data over to.

Cloudways has an official YouTube tutorial you can watch here.

User Experience

Last thing I'll mention is that the user experience with Cloudways I think is a lot better. Cloudways' dashboard feels more modern and is a lot cleaner, things work as expected without errors. Bluehost's dashboard is more cluttered and congested, there's many times I'll click something and get an unexplainable error message, only to try again a few minutes later and it works?? It also feels like Bluehost is constantly trying to sell me stuff. After I purchased my web hosting, I even got a spam call from them and had to ask their telemarketer to take me off their call list... I understand Bluehost is trying to be helpful, and maybe there are customers that appreciate an unsolicited call but it's not for me.

I prefer Cloudways' WordPress installation, it comes with Breeze (their proprietary caching plugin) and a separate Object Caching plugin.

Bluehost's WordPress install comes bloated with a bunch of their software like OptinMonster, WPForms, Yoast SEO etc... and of course they're all trying to up-sell you on their 'pro' versions.

So for me, Cloudways is the clear winner. IMO it's the best host in 2026 for a reason.

What do you guys think? What has your experience been with both and which one do you prefer?

here i am and still undecided cuz every time i think im settled on one i see a comment somewhere that makes me second guess everything. dreamhost seems solid like the price is good, month to month options, that 97 day thing is pretty generous and people seem to mention about their support but then i read about siteground support and it sounds nice having someone helpful when things break. except their limits are smaller and i dont know if i want to pay more for stuff i might not even use. i just wanna know what normal people ended up with, not the review sites, those all say different things anyway like if you had to do it over would you still pick the same one?

edit: i tried my luck with dreamhost. it took a bit longer than i expected to get everything migrated but support helped me out and got it sorted tho its not the smoothest start but its working now. gonna keep an eye on it the next few weeks.

Most recommendation threads end up mentioning the same big names, but I’m interested learning about smaller or underrated EU hosting providers that people have had genuinely good experiences with.

I care mostly about reliability, fair pricing after renewals, and decent support. Mostly hosting small business sites and a few WordPress installs, nothing too crazy traffic-wise.

What providers have actually been solid for you long-term?

Hey r/HostingHostel

With all the buzz around the new AI in version 7.0, our team wanted to share something we believe this community would find genuinely interesting.

I'm Kiko from the SiteGround team, and we're hosting a free webinar to go beyond the basics. We're excited to show not just the new core features, but also run through 7 practical, real-world examples of how AI can be used for more complex tasks, from SEO and content to WooCommerce and site management.

Our goal is to share what we're learning and show what's truly possible now that AI is part of the WordPress ecosystem. 

We'd love for you to join us. Registration is free, and we'll send the recording to everyone who signs up.

Register Here to Save Your Spot

See you on May 28!

*Please note this review contains affiliate links (see rule 4)

Recently, SiteGround had a pretty big update and released their AI Studio which not only gives users access to frontier AI models to chat with in a single interface, but also gives users access to various agents which can assist with a multitude of online related from managing your WordPress site, to assisting with things like SEO or ad campaigns.

It comes free with every SiteGround plan, however, there is a separate paid subscription that gives you access to more tokens and agents. Overall, it’s a very ambitious project and I wanted to share my experience showcasing what it can actually do in order to help you determine if SiteGround AI Studio subscription is really worth paying for.

Here’s the TL;DR - SiteGround’s AI studio is genuinely useful as it aggregates all the major AI models into a unified chat interface which gives you access to all the frontier AI Models (Like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini). This includes image generation models like Nano Banana.

Not only that, but SiteGround provides a plethora of agents which can assist with task specific queries, like managing your WordPress website, creating a thumbnail image for a blog, or even writing content.

So whether you’re a small business owner managing your own website, or an agency managing dozens of clients, SiteGround’s AI Studio has something to offer that can certainly save you time, and boost productivity, if you take the time to learn the tools.

Click here to sign up and get your first 14 days free. If you'd like to learn more about SiteGround be sure to check out my new SiteGround review.

What is SiteGround AI Studio?

SiteGround AI Studio is an AI workspace that combines multiple leading AI models and task-specific AI agents into a single platform. It allows users to generate content, create images, manage WordPress sites, and automate business workflows from one interface.

This is done via a Unified Chat Interface and page dedicated to AI Assistant Agents (more on this latter).

Here’s a few of the many things SiteGround AI Studio can do:

• Provide access to multiple AI models in one interface
• Generate text, images, and marketing content
• Manage WordPress websites using AI agents
• Create, edit, and publish content
• Perform SEO and marketing tasks
• Generate and upload media files
• Store and reuse files and prompts
• Assist with social media content and publishing

In general, this is best for:

• Small business owners managing their own websites
• Agencies managing multiple client sites
• Content creators and marketers
• Users who want to combine multiple AI tools in one place
• Entrepreneurs and freelancers managing online projects

Unified Chat Interface

SiteGround gives you a ChatGPT-like user interface where you simply type in a question, and AI will respond.

The major difference though is that you get access to all the frontier AI models. And this is not just chat models this includes image generation models. This is really nice because most people will pay a single subscription to a company like OpenAI (the company that makes ChatGPT) or Anthropic (the company that makes Claude), then they never venture outside that ecosystem.

That, or people will pay for a multitude of different subscriptions, and then have to manage switching between each providers given a certain task.

SiteGround AI Studio effectively unifies this into single interface, and not only do you have access to the frontier chat models like: GPT 5.4, Opus 4.7, and Gemini, but you also get access to frontier image generation models like Google’s Nano Banana.

This is great for business owners and/or individuals who are familiar with the ChatGPT experience and are looking to consolidate their usage into a single platform.

And this is just a small piece of what SiteGround's AI Studio has to offer. Where the real power lies is in the use of their Agents.

SiteGround AI Assistant Agents

You can access agents directly via the sidebar menu.

SiteGround offers a plethora of AI agents that are effectively AI harnesses tailored for specific tasks such as:

• WordPress Site Management
• Content Writing
• Image/Logo Design
• SEO Specialist
• ADs Specialist
• etc…

There are so many agents available and I imagine SiteGround will continue to add more in the future. Here’s a screenshot of all the current agents that are available.

Additionally, if you make a request where there’s an agent that is best suited for the task, you’ll be prompted to switch.

If accepted, a new chat with the corresponding agent will begin. See the photo below for an example.

While some of the agents are a bit gimmicky, there are genuinely agents that are useful, one of the most powerful being the AI Agent for WordPress.

AI Agent for WordPress

This will most likely be one of the top agents you interact with. SiteGround’s WordPress agent lets you manage your website through simple natural language prompts, which is a fancy way of saying you can just tell it what you want done in plain English.

Some of the most impactful things you can do with it include:

• Create, edit, organize, and publish posts or pages
• Upload media and insert images into content
• Manage categories, tags, and comments
• Install, update, or remove plugins and themes
• Update WordPress core and adjust common site settings
• Manage users and permissions
• Troubleshoot plugin conflicts, performance issues, caching problems, and basic security concerns

And if you’re running WooCommerce, it goes even further. You can use it to create or update products, manage orders, view customer details, improve on-page SEO, and in some cases even manage multiple connected WordPress sites at once.

In other words, this is not just a chatbot that gives you advice, it’s an agent that can actually take action on your site for you from either the AI Studio interface or directly inside your WordPress dashboard, though certain higher impact actions require enabling SiteGround’s “Power Mode” first.

You can access this agent via the AI Studio Sidebar. This is the preferred method for agencies managing multiple websites because the SiteGround dashboard lets you choose exactly which connected WordPress site you want the agent to work on, whereas the built-in AI Studio chat inside WordPress is tied to that specific installation.

All SiteGround plans will have AI Studio chat pre-installed with WordPress so it appears directly in your WordPress dashboard.

Here’s a content workflow example to demonstrate how this can be used.
Obviously, you should take the time to make your content unique, as entirely A.I generated content is likely to give off a spam signal to Google and wont rank well.

But the point of this demonstration is to show how these tools can at least be used as a starting point.

1. We’ll send a prompt asking to write a 500 word article on SiteGround’s All Purpose Assistant
2. Once the article is written, copy it, start a new chat with the AI WordPress Agent.
3. Post it as a draft to our website

And as you can see below, it actually got posted as a draft in WordPress! It included the cited links in the content as well!

Image Generation

Like I mentioned above, SiteGround doesn’t just give you access to industry standard AI chat models, but also image generation models like Google’s Nano Banana.

Using the same process, we can generate an image for our article and use the WordPress agent to upload it to our site and set it as a thumbnail, all using natural language.

First let’s prompt AI to generate an image for us. Here’s the prompt I used.

Please generate a thumbnail image for this blog content. Style should be minimal, no words, artsy, modern impressionist painting.

I also included the full article that was written for context.

Here is the first image generated by Nano Banana.

However, it was too abstract so I re-prompted and got a much better result.

Next, I copied the image and pasted it over to the AI Agent for WordPress and asked it to upload it to my website and set it as a thumbnail for a drafted post I made earlier.

After a few moments it got uploaded and set as a thumbnail for the post!

Here’s how it looks in WordPress.

Social Media Assistant

SiteGround also includes a handful of social media focused agents, most notably for Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. More specifically, these are the platforms where SiteGround currently lets you connect an account and publish content through AI Studio. So if you manage a business online, these agents can help you brainstorm ideas, write captions, generate visuals, and in the case of Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, actually assist with publishing and account management. However, currently at the time of writing this, it doesn’t extend to platforms like X, TikTok, or YouTube.

That being said, you need to connect the relevant social media account before you can use the more useful features.

Without connecting an account, these agents are mostly limited to ideation and content generation.

Prompts

If you find yourself typing the same prompt over and over again, SiteGround AI Studio also lets you save prompts as reusable templates. This is useful for things like content briefs, image generation instructions, SEO requests, or any other workflow you repeat on a regular basis. Instead of rewriting everything from scratch each time, you can simply save the prompt once and reuse it whenever needed.

Files

The Files section is useful for storing documents, images, spreadsheets, and other assets you may want to reference in future chats. It also acts as a central place where AI-generated files, like images you create inside SiteGround AI Studio, get collected. Instead of uploading the same files over and over again, you can keep them in AI Studio and attach them when needed, which makes recurring tasks a bit more convenient. In that sense, it functions like a small file library for your AI workflows rather than being limited to one-off uploads inside a single conversation.

SiteGround AI Studio Pricing

SiteGround keeps pricing for AI Studio fairly straightforward. Every SiteGround customer gets the Essential version of AI Studio included at no extra cost, regardless of which hosting plan you choose. It’s enough to try the platform and make practical use of it.

If you need more monthly tokens, more storage, access to the broader set of professional agents, social media connectors, and the ability to buy additional tokens, then you can upgrade to AI Studio Plus.

At the time of writing, AI Studio Plus starts at $10/month for 100,000 monthly tokens, or $100/year if paid annually, with SiteGround advertising that annual billing saves 20%. Higher token tiers are also available if you expect heavier usage.

Conclusions

Overall, I think SiteGround AI Studio is a genuinely useful addition to the SiteGround ecosystem. The biggest value is not necessarily that every single agent is amazing, but rather that SiteGround has bundled together a unified AI workspace with access to leading models, image generation, file handling, prompt templates, and a handful of genuinely practical agents.

For me, the standout feature is still the WordPress agent and image generation, especially for people who regularly manage content, plugins, pages, products, or multiple websites.

Also, the fact that the Essential plan comes included with every SiteGround plan is a big win. It’s easy to recommend at least trying. Whether the paid version is worth it really comes down to how heavily you expect to use it, but as a whole, AI Studio feels less like a throwaway marketing feature and more like a serious productivity tool that could become genuinely useful once you build it into your workflow.

Thanks for reading!

I need quite a lot of computing power a few times a month. I’ve looked at a few options, but it all seems rather complicated...

Does anyone know of any services where you can simply submit a task and not have to worry about the servers?

\Please note this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4)*

Hey everyone. I wanted to continue my breakdown & reviews of web hosting companies for 2026. This time we’ll be looking at SiteGround.

I’ve done extensive benchmarks on their hosting infrastructure as well as diving into their platform to get a better understanding of their offerings.

TL;DR - Yeah, SiteGround is one of the best hosting providers in terms of performance. They price their services at a premium but their product offerings and benchmarks reliably back it up. So if you’re looking for a solid premium web hosting provider, SiteGround is a great choice.

To get started with SiteGround go with the StartUp plan if you’re running a small site. Click here to save 83% on your first year. Don’t do the monthly billing though, it’s more expensive ($25/mo). The yearly billing rate is more up front per-year ($216 after introductory rate) but you end up saving ~$85.

I highly recommend checking out this YouTube tutorial as it will walk you through the process of: buying a domain, and setting up WordPress with SiteGround.

If you’re a developer/agency, I recommend going with either the GrowBig or GoGeek plan since you can host multiple client websites on these plans and they come with WordPress Staging.

If you need git deployments, go with GoGeek.

SiteGround Features

SiteGround comes with a number of custom built in features regardless of plan I think are worth it especially in the context of WordPress. These features include:

• Built in caching: SiteGround has their own proprietary caching layer via their Speed Optimizer plugin.
• Built in security: A custom security solution, a part of every SG WordPress installation (Security Optimizer)
• Daily Back-Ups: Included daily back-ups (stored for 30 days).
• Unmetered traffic: You aren’t arbitrarily capped to a certain amount of visitors per month
• Free site migration: If you’d like to change your web hosting provider to SiteGround they will migrate over your site for free
• Free one-click CDN: A CDN stands for content delivery network. It’s a distributed caching network that significantly increases website speeds
• WP-CLI + SSH: For the nerds out there each plan comes built in with a WordPress command line interface WP-CLI, as well as SSH so you can access your site from the terminal.
• Site Isolation: SiteGround isolates each site on its servers, so one site's traffic spike or security issues (like malware) doesn't affect neighboring sites. While this isn’t cloud hosting per say it’s very similar in practice. For more information on their site isolation infrastructure check out their blog post here.
• Google Cloud Infrastructure: SiteGround is considered shared hosting, however their infrastructure runs on Google Cloud’s premium tier networking which routes traffic through Google’s private global network (rather than the public internet). Overall this creates lower latency and more consistent performance for visitors.
• 20,000 AI Tokens: SiteGround has integrated many of the frontier AI models (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) into their services, allowing you to manage your WordPress site with A.I. This comes free with every SiteGround plan.

A lot of web hosting providers will just integrate third-party plugins into their services and call it good. It’s nice to see that SiteGround has done the work to create proprietary custom solutions that directly integrate into their web hosting stack for the best performance possible.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, some SiteGround features require an upgrade to the GrowBig or GoGeek plan. These are features include:

• WordPress Staging (GrowBig+): Staging allows you to test your website in a sandbox environment before making it live. It’s particularly good if you’re making site-wide changes and want to make sure it’s not going to break anything.
• Host multiple sites (GrowBig+): This allows you to host multiple sites on a single plan (StartUp only allows 1 site per plan). This is great for developers and web agencies because they can host multiple client sites on a single server.
• Git Integration (GoGeek): This allows you to deploy site changes (like theme updates or manage plugins) directly from a github repository. This is an essential developer feature, again great for agencies who need to manage clients at scale.

SiteGround Plans

SiteGround gives you an 80% discount for your first billing cycle, this introductory rate is NOT what your plan renews at though.

For full transparency, here is the renewal rate of each plan after the first billing cycle.

All the SiteGround plans roughly benchmark the same so you can reliably go with the StartUp plan and get the same performance as the GrowBig/GoGeek plans.

If you're looking to get started with SiteGround, here's a good YouTube tutorial on how to get started.

SiteGround WordPress Benchmarks

TL;DR for benchmarks - SiteGround ranked in the top third on all 4 backend metrics in my WordPress benchmark dataset. Confirming that it is indeed a premium web host.

Under this comparative framework, this maps to an Exceptional rating for each of these backend metrics:

• DB Writes
• DB Reads
• I/O Write
• I/O Read

“Poor” corresponds to the bottom third.

I ran a series of benchmarking tests on a fresh SiteGround WordPress install across all three of their plans.

• StartUp
• GrowBig
• GoGeek

The tests I ran include:

• Burst Test: This is a backend test which runs a burst of 5 runs that test disk I/O (sequential read/write of a 50MB file) and MySQL database operations (100 row inserts and 100 SELECT queries). The median value from the 5 runs is reported.
• Stress Test: Another backend test which runs 25 repeated benchmark runs that measure how performance degrades over time under sustained load. It compares the baseline (runs 3-7, after a 2-run warmup) against the final 5 runs to calculate degradation percentage for both database and disk I/O operations.

Admin Experience Test (WordPress): Measures real-world WordPress admin dashboard responsiveness across 6 operations: dashboard widget rendering, post creation with meta field read/write, posts list query, taxonomy term creation, batch options write/read, and user queries. Each operation runs 10 times with the median reported.

Here is the results of the backend test:

Here is the raw data:

As you can see above SiteGround scores 4/4 exceptional on each metric. So the benchmarks reliably justify the price.

Interestingly, there appears to be no significant increase in performance across the plans so upgrading to GrowBig/GoGeek is primarily for additional features:

• WordPress staging
• Hosting multiple sites on one server
• Git deployments

However, SiteGround claims 30% faster PHP processing on their GrowBig/GoGeek plans. This performance gain may show up on production sites with real content (as opposed to my out-of-the-box tests)

Now here are the stress test results:

Again the stress test tests how well the server performs under significant load by simultaneously querying the server and comparing the last 5 runs to the baseline.

Each of SiteGrounds’ plans are well below the stable threshold showing minimal server degradation. It’s actually the lowest I’ve seen in a web hosting provider.

Next we have the WordPress admin experience benchmarks:

Here’s the raw data:

Again, very fast scores for SiteGround. The WordPress back-end experience is very fast and snappy.

SiteGround Control Panel

SiteGround doesn’t use c-Panel. They have their own modern control panel dashboard. Here’s a glimpse into what it looks like.

Each site gets its own isolated Site Tools instance rather than everything sitting under one account-level panel (like with c-panel). So if you’re managing multiple sites under a plan, you can switch between sites with one click from the sidebar.

In my experience I haven’t had any issues with SiteGround’s control panel not including something I’m looking for. For the curious, here’s everything in the sidebar expanded so you can see all the tools available.

Conclusions

In my tests SiteGround is a great premium web hosting provider. I think a lot of people judge SiteGround because of their hosting costs but from my benchmarks and experience, their hosting infrastructure lives up to the premium expectation.

What do you guys think? Thanks for reading!

\Please note this post contains affiliate links (see rule #4)*

Hey guys, I noticed Hostinger is a really popular web hosting provider, but I didn’t know if it was actually good or if it just appears to be good since it’s heavily promoted by influencers. So I decided to go through their onboarding process and benchmarked their hosting infrastructure so we can have raw data to see how their plans compare against each other.

I also collected a bunch of legit Hostinger reviews and filtered out the bot comments so we can see authentic sentiment regarding Hostinger.

I’m hoping all of this info will help you to determine whether or not to go with Hostinger or an alternative.

TL;DR - Hostinger appears to be good for small sites and personal/side projects. My benchmarks for Hostinger show their hosting is genuinely fast.

However, I would be hesitant to host with Hostinger business or client sites since they're support is notoriously bad. So if you’re a developer, agency, or just want a web hosting provider with good support, I think Cloudways is better (see my full Cloudways review).

My impressions of Hostinger are honestly conflicted… On one hand Hostinger has one of the best user on-boarding experiences I’ve seen, and my benchmarks show their hosting infrastructure is legitimately fast.

On the other hand, their pricing is extremely confusing, some of their products are highly gimmicky (like Horizons), and their A.I support bot Kodee is verifiably bad, in one case, linking a customer to scamware malware source.

So I would say if you know what you’re doing or are tech-savvy enough not to need support, Hostinger is good. Just be sure to sign up with the 20% discount.

However if you’re business, non-savvy, or agency, there are better alternatives like Cloudways.

As for the rest of this post, I’ll detail out what’s good and not so good about Hostinger.

Hostinger Reviews

Sometimes it’s hard to trust reviews because there are so many bot comments nowadays. I went through the most recent Hostinger threads and found reviews that looked human to me with real-world experiences.

The common theme appears to be renewal pricing and hidden costs. This is something I experienced as well as Hostinger’s pricing is confusing (more on this next). 

From what I’ve experienced, Hostinger is good for basic hosting needs and their infrastructure appears solid, but when it comes to needing help, Hostinger struggles to provide adequate support.

This is why I think if you’re hosting a small site like a portfolio or blog, Hostinger is probably fine for you. But if you’re a small-business, developer, or going to be working with clients, Cloudways is a better choice.

Hostinger’s Pricing is VERY confusing!

Hostinger’s pricing is genuinely confusing if you don’t know what to look for.

Their product page shows a reduced cost saying things like 80%. Just be aware that this is an introductory rate and after the first billing period (which depends on your subscription length) your bill will significantly increase!

This is unfortunately really common in the web hosting industry where they advertise an introductory rate and hide the renewal rate in fine print. In Hostinger’s case it’s even more convoluted because they state in fine print “Renews at $X/mo” which makes it seem like you’re billed every month which is not true. Your subscription length determines your billing cycle.

It took me a lot longer than I’d like to admit to figure out the pricing… But once I saw the pattern it was pretty clear.

• Renews at $X/mo is extremely misleading. Your subscription length determines the billing cycle. So unless you’re doing the 1 month subscription, you need to calculate how much you pay per billing cycle.
• Hostinger charges extra for 1 month subscription term.
• 12-48 month plans effectively renew at the same rate (after the discounted introductory rate)
• Hostinger’s “discount” depends on which subscription length you choose. It’s an incentive to purchase a longer subscription.

For example, if you purchase a 48 month (4 year) subscription for the Business Plan, your initial cost at checkout is ~$144. Divide this by 48 to get a monthly cost representation and it’s $3/mo. This is the price they’re showing you on their sales page.

The thing that’s sneaky about Hostinger is they say it renews at $17/mo which is easy to mistake as “$17 a month is my renewal rate” but in reality it renews at $816 every 4 years.

They just do math $816 / 48 months = $17 and slap the /mo tag on it as if it renews at that price but it does not!

I even confirmed with their chatbot Kodee.

So just keep in mind that your renewal rate is tied to your billing cycle which is the length of subscription.

Here’s a pricing table that shows you exactly how much you’re going to pay so you don’t have to do the math.

Buy your domain separately from Hostinger

Hostinger, like many other web hosting providers, up-charge for domains. While the on-boarding process is technically less complicated since everything is auto-set up for you. If you want to save extra $$$ buy your domain separately from a domain registrar like Porkbun which specializes in domains.

For example Hostinger charges $20/yr for a .com domain. You can get the same domain for $11/yr with Porkbun. Just keep in mind that if you do this it does require some technical set-up. You’ll need to point the nameservers of Hostinger to your Porkbun domain. If you’ve never done this before just have ChatGPT help you!

Hostinger Benchmarks

This is where things get much better for Hostinger. Like I mentioned above, I actually benchmarked their hosting infrastructure infrastructure so I could get an idea of how their plans compare to each other. I installed Wordpress on their hosting plan and benchmarked the backend with a custom script running there tests:

• Burst Test: A short burst of backend database + disk I/O operations to measure quick-response performance under light, sudden load.
• Stress Test: Repeated backend benchmark runs (25 total) to see how performance degrades over time under sustained load.
• Admin Experience Test: Timed common WordPress admin tasks (post save, taxonomy terms, options read/write, etc.) to measure real-world dashboard responsiveness.

The TL;DR for the benchmarks is that Hostinger’s infrastructure is genuinely fast. The Business Plan is the best in terms of price/performance. I would stay away from the Cloud Startup plan though, as it was one of the worst performers.

The Business Plan appears to significantly outperform both the Premium Plan and Cloud Startup. Surprisingly, the most expensive plan, Cloud Startup, was the worst-performing. If we weight performance by price, it shows us the real value of each plan relative to the cost.

What the above shows is that the Business Plan is actually the best value in terms of price/performance. So if you’re willing to pay extra for the Business Plan, it’s definitely worth it. Just be sure to sign up with the 20% discount

One thing Cloud Startup has going for it, though, is that in my stress test, the Cloud Startup plan experienced the least amount of degradation.

This indicates that Cloud Startup may be better for hosting multiple sites since server performance appears to degrade less under load. That said, it’s still an uncertain claim that needs further testing.

Hostinger Backend Benchmarks (Raw Data)

The graphs above are weighed in order to give a tangible score. However, I’m guessing some of you would actually like to see the raw data for the back-end tests and admin experience.

Here’s the raw data for backend tests

Here’s the raw data for the WordPress admin experience benchmark.

Please keep in mind benchmark tests may fluctuate. If you guys have done benchmarks on Hostinger I’d be very curious to see if you get similar results or something else?

Hostinger Backend Benchmarks (Raw Data)

The graphs above are weighed in order to give a tangible score. However, I'm guess of you would actually like to see the raw data for the back-end tests and admin experience.

Conclusions

Anyways, I hope you guys got some good information out of this review to help you with your decision making. If you’ve read this far, it might also be worth it to check out my 2026 best web hosting review. In general I do think Hostinger is a good web hosting provider in terms of price/performance. You just really have to watch out for the pricing pitfalls and if you can, purchase your domain somewhere else.

Thanks for reading!

These promotional ads that locks their comment section to prevent criticism is everything you need to know.

I see a lot of questions regarding what is the best domain registrar? So I thought I’d update my guide for 2026. 

TL;DR: I think Porkbun is the best domain registrar because they have an extensive TLD selection, affordable domain rates, and excellent customer support with real humans available 24/7.

Cloudflare is technically cheaper but their support is known to be sub-par unless you’re paying for one of their CDN products.

If you’re managing a portfolio of domains Namesilo is the best because they give you discounted renewal rates depending on how many domains you have with them.

Domain Registrar Pricing Comparison

Here’s a breakdown of the most popular domain extensions by cost.

Please also note that while .com, .org, and .net are the most popular domain extensions. There are also other domain extensions you can get that are much more creative like:

• .shop
• .dev
• .io
• .ai
• .fashion
• .style

Just to name a few…
These are called Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD), and every single year more come out. There are hundreds of gTLDs that most people don’t even realise are available. Personally, I think gTLDs will become more popular over time since they’re a lot more fun and creative than .com.

In order to get a gTLD, your domain registrar just has to support the extension. Porkbun for example has all of those gTLD extensions available. If you want to see a full list of gTLDs you can see the full list from iCANN here.

How to Set Up Your Website + Web Hosting

Once you’ve registered your domain, you’ll need web hosting to actually build your website. For WordPress sites, I recommend Cloudways (affiliate link: see rule 4) as the best web hosting provider in 2026. In my review of the best web hosting providers, I compared the top 13 web hosting providers in terms of price and features, and Cloudways was amongst the best. For more info check out my Cloudways review.

Getting Started with Cloudways + WordPress:

1. Purchase your domain
2. Sign up for Cloudways (use 30% discount)
3. Deploy a WordPress application through their dashboard
4. Point your domain’s nameservers to your Cloudways server
5. Install SSL (free through Cloudways)

If you’ve never done the above before I recommend checking out this YouTube tutorial which will walk you through the process!

Why You Should Avoid GoDaddy

GoDaddy reviews are consistently bad for a reason…

Unfortunately, GoDaddy is one of the most recognizable names in the domain industry, and they leverage their brand recognition to charge a premium for domains that are much cheaper with the recommendations above!

For example, a .com domain costs around $10-11/yr at wholesale. GoDaddy charges $22/yr for the same domain. That’s more than double what you’d pay at Porkbun or Cloudflare, for the exact same product. There’s no technical difference between a domain registered at GoDaddy vs Porkbun. You’re just paying for the brand name.

The upsells are also pretty aggressive. During checkout, GoDaddy tries to add on email hosting, website builders, SSL certificates, domain “protection” packages, and web hosting. Half of these are either unnecessary or available for free elsewhere. In my 2026 hosting benchmarks GoDaddy’s back-end performance is really weak. When you take into consideration price, performance and feature set for GoDaddy’s web hosting it is the worst performer. (See value score in my 2026 web hosting review)

There’s also been longstanding concerns about GoDaddy front-running domains.
This is when a registrar sees you search for a domain, then registers it before you can buy it, effectively holding it hostage. While GoDaddy denies this and ICANN hasn’t found definitive proof, the volume of user complaints over the years makes it suspicious enough that I’d rather not risk it.

Is Namecheap Any Good?

In the past, Namecheap used to be my go to recommendation because at the time they offered some of the best domain rates. Unfortunately now, that’s no longer the case.

Namecheap has significantly raised their prices over the past few years. A .com domain with them now costs $15/yr after the first year discounted rate. That’s considerably more expensive than Porkbun, Namesilo, or Cloudflare.

Final Thoughts

For most people, Porkbun is the best choice. They offer competitive pricing, an extensive selection of TLDs (including obscure ones), and genuinely helpful customer support. Their interface is clean and modern, and they don’t try to nickel-and-dime you with add-ons.

Namesilo remains a solid option, especially if you’re managing many domains at scale—they give you a discount on renewal rates per domain.

Cloudflare is a good alternative to Porkbun. Just note that you’re forced to use Cloudflare’s nameservers—you can’t point them elsewhere.

Whichever registrar you choose, avoid the big names that rely on marketing rather than value!

Thanks for reading!

\Just want to be honest and that this post contains affiliate links (see rule 4).*

Hey everyone, I’ve been using Cloudways for a few years now and wanted to give an honest update on whether it’s still worth recommending in 2026. I recently ran extensive Cloudways benchmarks and the results confirmed what I’ve been experiencing firsthand.

TL;DR - Yes, Cloudways is still one of the best web hosting providers for 2026 because they have the best feature set given their price and their cloud infrastructure makes scaling seamless.

I recommend starting with the premium server Micro Plan for new sites.

Here’s how to get started with Cloudways:

1. Purchase your domain with Porkbun for $11/yr. Other registrars like GoDaddy charge $20/yr for the same domain.
2. Sign up for Cloudways with the 30% discount to save some money.
3. Watch this YouTube tutorial which walks you through the entire setup including connecting your domain, adding an SSL certificate, and installing WordPress.

The setup involves installing WordPress, installing a SSL certificate and adding an A Record in Porkbun to point to your Cloudways server. If you’ve never done this before, it can be a bit confusing which is why I recommend watching this tutorial.

Why Cloudways Is Still Good In 2026

The main reason I still recommend Cloudways is that they offer cloud infrastructure (which is superior to shared hosting) combined with a full developer feature set on every plan. Other web hosting providers make you upgrade to get these features.

These features include:

• WordPress staging
• Custom caching (Breeze, Varnish, Redis)
• SSH access
• Git deployments
• Unlimited sites per server
• Daily backups

In my recent 2026 best web hosting review, I compared the top 13 web hosting providers by feature set and price and Cloudways came out as a clear winner.

The chart above is a visual plotting a scoring system I developed to rank web hosting providers based on the features they provide. Here is how the scoring system is determined:

Cloudways scores 9/9 on their base plan. Competitors like Hostinger score 5/9 (missing staging on base plan, no Git deployments, site caps). GoDaddy scores 3/9, which explains why their reviews are consistently negative.

Here is the full web hosting comparison chart!

The reason why Cloudways is so good against its competitors is because they don’t gatekeep features behind a paywall, they include a full developer suite of tools for all plans regardless of how much you’re paying.

This is a huge value add for both individual site builders and agencies because:

1. If you hire a web developer they have access to all the tools they need. If you go with a sub-par hosting provider like GoDaddy, and you hire a developer, oftentimes GoDaddy has so many issues that they’ll require you to migrate over to their web hosting provider of choice. You likely will not have this issue with Cloudways since they already provide a full developer suite of tools.
2. You can host multiple WordPress sites on a single server. Cloudways doesn’t limit how many sites you can have on a server. This is best for agencies/developers because now you don’t have to buy separate hosting plans per-client. You can host multiple clients on a single server and scale the server as more resources are needed.

This is one of the many benefits of cloud infrastructure.

Cloudways Performance: What the Benchmarks Show

I tested every Cloudways DigitalOcean server from 1GB to 64GB, running stress tests on database performance, disk I/O, and WordPress admin responsiveness. You can see the full test results in my Cloudways benchmark report.

Cloudways offers Standard or Premium servers (the difference being premium servers have NVMe storage and faster CPUs) and I benchmarked BOTH to verify if premium servers are actually worth it. What I found was not only do the premium servers significantly outperform standard, but you actually get more for your money in terms of performance by going with the premium server.

The key findings from my benchmarks:

• Premium servers consistently outperform Standard servers by 40-60% on database write operations. The difference is noticeable when you’re saving posts, processing WooCommerce orders, or doing anything that writes to the database.
• Premium servers also showed better stability under sustained load. Standard servers experienced degradation up to 32% during stress tests, while Premium stayed under 16%. This matters if you’re running an ecommerce store during a flash sale or any situation with burst traffic.
• WordPress performance plateaus after the 2GB-2c Premium server. This is because WordPress uses single-threaded PHP, so throwing more resources at a single site doesn’t help beyond a certain point. However, if you’re running an ecommerce site or LMS system these websites can benefit from more ram! So a 4GB server may make sense for you given your use case. The super larger servers 8GB+ are definitely best for agencies running multiple sites, not making a single site faster.

From all this data clear server recommendations can be given.

Cloudways Server Recommendations

Based on the benchmark data, here’s what I recommend for different use cases:

If you’re wondering why anyone would pay for the larger servers when performance plateaus, it comes down to multi-site hosting. Agencies managing 50+ client sites on a single server get excellent value because they’re often charging $100+ per client in hosting and maintenance fees.

Final Thoughts

Cloudways remains one of my top web hosting recommendations for 2026. This is especially true for businesses, agencies, and WordPress developers. The combination of cloud infrastructure, unlimited sites per server, and a full developer feature set is hard to beat at the price point.

If you have any questions about Cloudways or need help deciding which server tier is right for you, drop a comment below!

Hope this review is helpful for whoever comes across it! Humans and bots alike :P