Cloudways vs Coolify Comparison
Compare Cloudways vs Coolify features, pricing, and more.
Last updated: November 2026
Cloudways
7/10
Managed cloud hosting platform that runs WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, Laravel and PHP apps on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud servers.
Coolify
5.9/10
Coolify is an open-source, self-hostable platform that deploys apps, databases and services onto servers you own. It is aimed at developers who want a self-run alternative to Heroku or Vercel.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7/10 | 5.9/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 4/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 10/10 |
| Customization | 6/10 | 9/10 |
| Security | 8/10 | 5/10 |
| Reliability | 8/10 | 5/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 4/10 |
| Scalability | 7/10 | 4/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $5/mo Cloud |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Free Self-hosted |
| Features | ||
| Content Delivery Network | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Automatic Backups | ||
| Free SSL Certificates | ||
| Git Deployments | ||
| Cloud Compute | Not listed | |
| DDoS Protection | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Multiple Regions | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Cloudways vs Coolify cost by team size
Coolify costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Cloudways | Coolify |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSelf-hosted |
| 5 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSelf-hosted |
| 10 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSelf-hosted |
| 25 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSelf-hosted |
| 50 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSelf-hosted |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Which One Should You Choose?
Why choose Cloudways
- Higher Security score (8/10 vs 5/10)
- Higher Reliability score (8/10 vs 5/10)
- Better fit for agencies (9/10 vs 7/10)
- Includes Content Delivery Network, which Coolify lacks
Why choose Coolify
- Has a free plan (Cloudways does not)
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: Free vs $14/mo
- Higher Cost score (10/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Customization score (9/10 vs 6/10)
- Better fit for developers (9/10 vs 6/10)
Pros & Cons
Cloudways
Pros
- You can choose from five cloud providers and more than 50 locations from one control panel.
- Hourly pay-as-you-go billing, with a 5-day trial that needs no credit card.
- Every server includes free SSL, Layer 3 and 4 DDoS mitigation, a firewall and offsite backups.
- Agencies get one-click staging, cloning and Git auto-deployment for many client sites.
- Ratings are strong, at about 4.7 on G2 and 4.6 on Trustpilot.
Cons
- Email hosting and domain registration are not included.
- Billing gets hard to track once add-ons and bandwidth overages are added, and some reviewers report charges after cancelling.
- Some reviewers say support quality has dropped since the DigitalOcean acquisition.
- Power users report limited low-level control.
- Phone support requires a paid premium support add-on.
Coolify
Pros
- The self-hosted edition is free with no feature limits, so the only cost is the VPS.
- Git push deploys, pull request previews and one-click rollback give a Vercel-like workflow on your own servers.
- A catalog of more than 280 one-click service templates plus managed provisioning for Postgres, MySQL, Redis and MongoDB.
- No vendor lock-in, because apps run as standard Docker containers on servers you control.
- Coolify Cloud is cheap, at $5 per month for two servers, for teams that do not want to host the control panel themselves.
Cons
- You are responsible for OS patching, disk space, security updates and checking that backups restore.
- No auto-scaling, so capacity has to be added by hand.
- No built-in CDN, and application volume backups require manual snapshots.
- Only admin and member roles, which is too coarse for larger or regulated teams.
- Reviewers report thin documentation for advanced setups and occasional proxy problems that need manual fixes.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudways scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7/10 against 5.9/10 for Coolify. The largest gap is in Cost: 6/10 for Cloudways and 10/10 for Coolify.
Coolify costs less for 10 users: free on its Self-hosted plan, against about $14/mo on its Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) plan for Cloudways, billed monthly.
Coolify has a free plan; Cloudways does not list one.
Coolify is the better fit for developers: we rate it 9/10 for them, against 6/10 for Cloudways.
Cloudways has Content Delivery Network, which Coolify lacks.
