Cloudways vs Liquid Web: Complete Comparison (2026)
An in-depth comparison of Cloudways and Liquid Web 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.
Liquid Web
6.2/10
Liquid Web is a US managed hosting provider. It sells VPS, cloud VPS, dedicated servers and managed WordPress hosting to businesses that need hands-on server management.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7/10 | 6.2/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 4/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 4/10 |
| Customization | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8/10 | 5/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 5/10 |
| Reliability | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Scalability | 7/10 | 6/10 |
| Security | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 8/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $11/mo Cloud VPS Compute 2 GB |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $11/mo Cloud VPS Compute 2 GB |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Automatic Backups | ||
| Cloud Compute | ||
| DDoS Protection | ||
| Free SSL Certificates | ||
| Managed WordPress | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| VPS Hosting | ||
| Content Delivery Network | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
Cloudways vs Liquid Web cost by team size
Liquid Web costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Cloudways | Liquid Web |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $11/moCloud VPS Compute 2 GB |
| 5 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $11/moCloud VPS Compute 2 GB |
| 10 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $11/moCloud VPS Compute 2 GB |
| 25 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $11/moCloud VPS Compute 2 GB |
| 50 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $11/moCloud VPS Compute 2 GB |
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 4/10)
- Higher Ease of Use score (8/10 vs 5/10)
- Better fit for agencies (9/10 vs 7/10)
Why choose Liquid Web
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: $11/mo vs $14/mo
- Higher Support score (8/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Customization score (7/10 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.
Liquid Web
Pros
- Fully managed VPS and dedicated plans cover monitoring, updates and ServerSecure hardening.
- The SLA promises 99.99 percent uptime, and the dedicated page adds a 30-minute hardware replacement guarantee.
- Cloud VPS comes in compute, memory and CPU-optimized sizes, with hourly billing.
- Managed dedicated plans include 500 GB of Acronis backups and DDoS protection.
- Data centers are in the US, Europe and Australia and are assessed for HIPAA and PCI-DSS.
Cons
- Reviewers repeatedly call it more expensive than budget hosts such as Hostinger and InterServer.
- There is no built-in CDN, and it offers no managed Kubernetes or serverless products.
- The InterWorx and SiteWorx control panels can confuse beginners.
- Some recent user reviews say support has slowed since the ownership change.
- Windows servers and cPanel or Plesk licences cost extra.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudways scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7/10 against 6.2/10 for Liquid Web. The largest gap is in Analytics: 7/10 for Cloudways and 4/10 for Liquid Web.
Liquid Web costs less for 10 users: about $11/mo on its Cloud VPS Compute 2 GB plan, against about $14/mo on its Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) plan for Cloudways, billed monthly.
No, neither Cloudways nor Liquid Web lists a free plan.
Cloudways is the better fit for agencies: we rate it 9/10 for them, against 7/10 for Liquid Web.
