Cloudways vs Northflank: Complete Comparison (2026)
An in-depth comparison of Cloudways and Northflank 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.
Northflank
7.2/10
Northflank is a Kubernetes-based developer platform for deploying services, jobs, databases and GPU workloads on its managed cloud or on customers' own cloud accounts.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7/10 | 7.2/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Customization | 6/10 | 8/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8/10 | 8/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Reliability | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Scalability | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| 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 Sandbox |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| Automatic Backups | ||
| Cloud Compute | ||
| DDoS Protection | ||
| Free SSL Certificates | ||
| Git Deployments | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Content Delivery Network | Not listed | |
| Managed Databases | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Uptime SLA | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Cloudways vs Northflank cost by team size
Northflank costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Cloudways | Northflank |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSandbox |
| 5 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSandbox |
| 10 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSandbox |
| 25 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSandbox |
| 50 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | FreeSandbox |
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 6/10)
- Higher Reliability score (8/10 vs 7/10)
Why choose Northflank
- Has a free plan (Cloudways does not)
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: Free vs $14/mo
- Higher Customization score (8/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Cost score (7/10 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.
Northflank
Pros
- Per-second usage billing with no seat or workspace fees. Northflank's own comparison prices a 2 vCPU, 4 GB service at $48 a month, against $85 at Render.
- The same platform can run workloads in your own AWS, GCP, Azure or Civo account, or on imported Kubernetes clusters, so moving off the managed cloud does not mean switching tools.
- G2 reviewers praise fast support from engineers who know the product.
- Builds from GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket are built in, and preview environments are created for each pull request.
- GPU options run from L4 to B200, so AI workloads can sit next to ordinary services.
Cons
- SLAs, SSO, SCIM, audit logs and the WAF are only available on Enterprise.
- G2 reviewers mention a limited choice of regions and slow builds because local Docker caching is missing.
- Some Trustpilot reviewers report slow support, and the review base is small overall.
- The vendor's pricing and features pages carry a notice about a security incident and ask users to rotate their credentials.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Northflank scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7.2/10 against 7/10 for Cloudways. The largest gap is in Customization: 6/10 for Cloudways and 8/10 for Northflank.
Northflank costs less for 10 users: free on its Sandbox plan, against about $14/mo on its Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) plan for Cloudways, billed monthly.
Northflank has a free plan; Cloudways does not list one.
Northflank is the better fit for developers: we rate it 9/10 for them, against 6/10 for Cloudways.
