Cloudways does not sell per site hosting, which is the first thing to understand about its pricing and the reason agency quotes for it vary so wildly. You rent a server. You then put as many client sites on that server as it will carry. The per site number that goes into your care plan is not a price Cloudways publishes. It is a number you construct, and depending on how you pack your servers it can be two dollars a site or twenty five.
This article is the arithmetic. Prices below were checked in August 2026 on Cloudways’ own pricing page. Hosting prices drift, so verify before you quote a client.
Disclosure: some links in this article are affiliate links. If you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It does not change what we recommend, and where a product is the wrong fit we say so.
Two products that price nothing alike
Cloudways now sells two different things, and confusing them is how people arrive at wrong conclusions about the cost.
- Flexible is the original model. You choose a cloud provider, choose a server size, and host unlimited applications on it. Billing is per server, so the cost per site falls as you add sites.
- Autonomous is managed, autoscaling hosting sold per website. Billing is per site, it starts considerably higher, and the number does not fall as your portfolio grows.
For most agencies with a portfolio of ordinary business sites, Flexible is the product and Autonomous is a specific tool for a specific job. The rest of this article treats Flexible as the default and comes back to Autonomous where it earns its price.
What the servers cost
On DigitalOcean, the provider most agencies pick, the ladder runs from an entry server to something genuinely large. Three reference points, taken from the pricing page:
| Tier | RAM | vCPU | Storage | Bandwidth | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Micro | 2GB | 1 | 50GB | 2TB | $11 |
| Medium | 8GB | 4 | 160GB | 5TB | $88 |
| 8XL | 128GB | 24 | 2.56TB | 11TB | $342 |
Intermediate sizes sit between these, and the pricing page uses an interactive selector rather than publishing a flat table, so check the exact tier you want there rather than interpolating. Two other things affect the figure. DigitalOcean offers Standard and Premium droplets, the latter on newer processors with NVMe storage and higher network throughput, at a higher price for the same RAM. And if you choose AWS or Google Cloud instead, expect to pay noticeably more for equivalent memory, with prices varying by region.
Your real per site cost is a density decision
Here is the part that actually determines your margin. Take the same $88 server and vary only how many sites you put on it.
| Sites on one 8GB server | Server cost | Cost per client site |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | $88 | $22.00 |
| 8 | $88 | $11.00 |
| 12 | $88 | $7.33 |
| 20 | $88 | $4.40 |
Nothing about the hosting changed. The only variable is density, and it moves the per site cost by a factor of five. This is why comparing Cloudways to a per site host on list price alone is meaningless: the question is not what a server costs, it is how many of your clients can reasonably share one.
Realistic guidance, from running this setup rather than from a spec sheet. A dozen brochure and small business sites on an 8GB, four vCPU server is comfortable. Somewhere around twenty ordinary sites you are watching CPU during traffic spikes. One busy WooCommerce store deserves its own server, or at least a server with a lot of headroom, because a store that slows down costs the client money and the support conversation is worth more than the twenty dollars you saved. Small brochure sites can live several to a $11 Micro server, which is where the very low per site numbers come from.
For how this compares against hosts that charge per site rather than per server, we ran that comparison in the Pressable pricing for agencies breakdown, and the broader question of metered against fixed billing is covered in pay as you go versus fixed cloud hosting pricing.
The add-ons that quietly move the number
The server price is not the bill. Most agency setups turn on at least two of these, and several are charged per site or per domain, which means they scale with your portfolio in a way the server cost does not.
| Add-on | Price | Charged per |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Enterprise CDN | from $4.99 | domain, monthly |
| Site Manager | from $3 | application, monthly |
| Malware protection | $4 | application, monthly |
| Offsite backup storage | $0.033 per GB | server, monthly |
| Rackspace email | $1 | mailbox, monthly |
| DNS Made Easy | $0.50 | domain, monthly |
| Advance Support | $100, discounted to $25 flat at time of writing | account, monthly |
Work an example. Twelve sites on an 8GB server is $7.33 each. Add Cloudflare Enterprise on every domain and malware protection on every application and you have added $8.99 per site, which more than doubles your real cost to $16.32. That is still competitive, but it is not the number people quote when they say Cloudways works out at seven dollars a site.
The honest way to budget is to decide your standard client stack first, price that per site, and treat the server as the smaller half of the calculation once your portfolio is dense.
Autonomous, and when paying more per site is correct
Autonomous prices per website and starts well above anything in the Flexible range.
| Plan | Per month | Disk | Bandwidth | Visits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial | $0 | 15GB | 100GB | 30,000 |
| Growth | $99 | 20GB | 150GB | Unmetered |
| Scale | $199 | 50GB | 250GB | Unmetered |
| Plus | $399 | 100GB | 1TB | Unmetered |
Overages are metered: $1 per GB of disk and $0.04 per GB of bandwidth beyond the allowance, plus autoscaling charged between $0.07 and $0.12 per server hour depending on plan. Note the bandwidth allowances against the Flexible tiers, where a $11 server includes 2TB. Autonomous Growth includes 150GB. You are not buying bandwidth, you are buying autoscaling and management, and if your traffic is heavy but predictable that is a poor trade.
Where it earns the money is a single site whose traffic is genuinely spiky and whose downtime is expensive: a store running campaigns, a site that gets media coverage, a launch. Paying $99 for one site looks absurd next to $7.33 until the afternoon a spike would have taken a $11 server down. If that describes one client out of thirty, put that one client on Autonomous and leave the rest on Flexible. There is more on the mechanics of that in the piece on autoscaling and load balancing in cloud hosting.
Current offer, valid until 15 September 2026: promo code SUMMER404 takes 40% off for four months, which puts Flexible entry at $6.60 rather than $11 and Autonomous Growth at $59.40 rather than $99, and includes unlimited expert led migrations for WordPress and WooCommerce rather than the usual single free migration. Three conditions: it is for new customers moving from a free trial to a paid plan, it excludes existing Cloudways customers, and standard pricing resumes after four months. Budget on the standard rate and treat the discount as four months of breathing room. Check the current Cloudways offer and plans.
What a year actually costs
Take a twelve site agency portfolio on one 8GB server, with Cloudflare Enterprise and malware protection on every site, at standard pricing.
- Server: $88 a month, $1,056 a year
- Cloudflare Enterprise at $4.99 across 12 domains: $59.88 a month, $718.56 a year
- Malware protection at $4 across 12 applications: $48 a month, $576 a year
- Total: $195.88 a month, $2,350.56 a year, or $16.32 per client site per month
If you bill hosting at $40 a site in a care plan, that portfolio grosses $480 a month against $195.88 of cost. The margin is real, and it improves with density rather than with negotiation. Structuring that into a plan clients accept is a separate problem, covered in pricing WordPress maintenance plans.
Where Cloudways is the wrong answer
Three cases, honestly.
- You have one or two sites. Density is what makes this cheap. With two sites you get none of that benefit and a control panel you have to learn. A straightforward managed WordPress host is a better use of your attention.
- You want to hand each client their own billing. Per server billing means one account holds many clients’ sites. Splitting that per client means one server each, which throws away the entire cost advantage.
- You do not want to make sizing decisions. Cloudways gives you control and expects you to use it. Choosing a provider, a size, and when to scale is your job. If you would rather that were somebody else’s job, that is what per site managed hosting sells, and it is a legitimate thing to buy.
If you are still weighing the underlying platform rather than the price, the Cloudways, Lightsail and DigitalOcean comparison covers what you gain and give up by having the management layer at all. You can also run a single site on the free trial and see the panel before moving anything real.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Cloudways cost per client site?
Between roughly $4 and $22 a month depending entirely on how many sites share a server, before add-ons. An 8GB server at $88 works out at $22 a site across four sites and $4.40 across twenty. Add a typical agency stack of CDN and malware protection and a realistic all in figure for a dense portfolio is $15 to $17 per site per month.
Does Cloudways charge per website or per server?
Both, depending on the product. Flexible charges per server and lets you host unlimited applications on it, so cost per site drops as you add sites. Autonomous charges per website, starting at $99 a month, and does not get cheaper with volume. Most agencies want Flexible.
How many WordPress sites can I put on one Cloudways server?
There is no imposed limit, so it is a resource question. A dozen brochure and small business sites on an 8GB, four vCPU server is comfortable, and around twenty you should be watching CPU under load. Transactional sites are the exception: give a busy WooCommerce store its own server or plenty of headroom, because the cost of it slowing down is not measured in hosting dollars.
Are there hidden costs with Cloudways?
Not hidden, but easy to overlook, and most of them are charged per site or per domain rather than per server. Cloudflare Enterprise from $4.99 a domain, Site Manager from $3 an application, malware protection at $4 an application, offsite backup storage at $0.033 a GB, email at $1 a mailbox. On Autonomous there are metered overages of $1 a GB for disk and $0.04 a GB for bandwidth. Price your standard client stack, not just the server.
Is the 40% discount worth switching for?
Only if the platform suits you at full price. It is four months, after which standard rates apply, so a decision made on the discounted figure is a decision made on the wrong number. What is genuinely valuable in the current offer for an agency is the unlimited expert led migrations, because migration effort rather than monthly cost is usually what stops a portfolio move. It is also restricted to new customers upgrading from a free trial.
Which cloud provider should I choose on Cloudways?
DigitalOcean for most agency work: it is the cheapest per GB of RAM and entirely adequate for business sites. Vultr and Linode are comparable alternatives with different regional coverage. AWS and Google Cloud cost noticeably more for equivalent memory and are worth it only when a client requires that specific platform or a region the others do not serve well. Prices vary by region, so check the selector for the region you actually need.
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