Cloudways vs Exoscale: Complete Comparison (2026)
An in-depth comparison of Cloudways and Exoscale to help you choose the right tool for your business.
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.
Exoscale
6.4/10
Swiss-based European cloud provider that offers compute instances, managed Kubernetes, managed databases and S3-compatible object storage, aimed at businesses that need data sovereignty.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7/10 | 6.4/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 5/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Customization | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8/10 | 6/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Reliability | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Scalability | 7/10 | 6/10 |
| Security | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Contact for pricing |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | Free SKS Starter |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Cloud Compute | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| VPS Hosting | ||
| Automatic Backups | Not listed | |
| Content Delivery Network | Not listed | |
| DDoS Protection | Not listed | |
| Free SSL Certificates | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed Databases | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
Cloudways vs Exoscale cost by team size
| Team size | Cloudways | Exoscale |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSKS Starter |
| 5 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSKS Starter |
| 10 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSKS Starter |
| 25 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSKS Starter |
| 50 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSKS Starter |
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 Analytics score (7/10 vs 5/10)
- Higher Ease of Use score (8/10 vs 6/10)
- Better fit for small business (7/10 vs 4/10)
Why choose Exoscale
- Has a free plan (Cloudways does not)
- Better fit for developers (8/10 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.
Exoscale
Pros
- Data stays in Swiss and EU zones, backed by ISO 27001/27017/27018, BSI C5, SOC 2 and HDS certifications.
- Per-second billing with no commitment, plus about 1 TiB of free outbound traffic per instance each month.
- The Kubernetes control plane is free on the SKS Starter tier.
- A broad managed-database lineup includes Kafka, ClickHouse and OpenSearch.
- S3-compatible storage and Terraform support make migration from AWS easier.
Cons
- Its service catalogue is much smaller than AWS, Azure or OVHcloud.
- There is less community documentation than for the major clouds.
- Faster paid support starts at 50 per month and Enterprise support needs a 1,500 monthly minimum.
- There is no shared hosting, managed WordPress or CDN product for simple websites.
- Storage costs per GB are higher than at budget providers such as Contabo.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudways scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7/10 against 6.4/10 for Exoscale. The largest gap is in Analytics: 7/10 for Cloudways and 5/10 for Exoscale.
Exoscale has a free plan; Cloudways does not list one.
Cloudways is the better fit for small business: we rate it 7/10 for them, against 4/10 for Exoscale.
