Cloudways vs phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud: Complete Comparison (2026)
An in-depth comparison of Cloudways and phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud 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.
phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud
6.6/10
API-driven single-tenant bare metal servers that deploy in minutes, billed hourly or reserved, for developers and IT teams that need dedicated hardware with cloud-style automation.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | P phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 7/10 | 6.6/10 |
| Analytics | 7/10 | 4/10 |
| Cost | 6/10 | 5/10 |
| Customization | 6/10 | 8/10 |
| Ease of Use | 8/10 | 6/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Reliability | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Scalability | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Security | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | No | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $39/mo General Purpose (from s0.d1.small) |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $14/mo Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $39/mo General Purpose (from s0.d1.small) |
| Features | ||
| API and CLI | ||
| DDoS Protection | ||
| Multiple Regions | ||
| Automatic Backups | Not listed | |
| Cloud Compute | Not listed | |
| Content Delivery Network | Not listed | |
| Dedicated Servers | Not listed | |
| Free SSL Certificates | Not listed | |
| Git Deployments | Not listed | |
| Managed Kubernetes | Not listed | |
| Managed WordPress | Not listed | |
| Object Storage | Not listed | |
| VPS Hosting | Not listed | |
Cloudways vs phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud cost by team size
Cloudways costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Cloudways | phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $39/moGeneral Purpose (from s0.d1.small) |
| 5 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $39/moGeneral Purpose (from s0.d1.small) |
| 10 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $39/moGeneral Purpose (from s0.d1.small) |
| 25 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $39/moGeneral Purpose (from s0.d1.small) |
| 50 users | $14/moFlexible Micro (DigitalOcean) | $39/moGeneral Purpose (from s0.d1.small) |
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
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: $14/mo vs $39/mo
- Higher Analytics score (7/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Ease of Use score (8/10 vs 6/10)
- Better fit for small business (7/10 vs 4/10)
PWhy choose phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud
- Higher Customization score (8/10 vs 6/10)
- Higher Integration score (8/10 vs 7/10)
- 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.
PphoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud
Pros
- Servers can be deployed in minutes through the web portal, the REST API, the pnapctl CLI, or Terraform, according to vendor pages and ServeTheHome's hands-on test.
- Hourly billing lets you tear servers down at any time, and reservations cut costs by up to 30 percent.
- A broad catalog includes Xeon 6, ARM, GPU, and Pliops database instances.
- A first deployment includes 15 TB of bandwidth, which servers in the same location can share.
- The portal gives direct iKVM console access for recovering servers that stop responding.
Cons
- Servers are unmanaged by default, so you handle the OS, patches, and security.
- Only six locations are listed, fewer than at the large hyperscalers.
- Pricing is higher than at budget dedicated hosts, because you pay for the automation layer.
- There are few user reviews on G2 and similar sites, and one user reported that billing setup took several attempts.
- No SLA terms were found for Bare Metal Cloud. Third-party listings cite both a 100 percent and a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Cloudways scores higher on our Hosting & Infrastructure criteria: 7/10 against 6.6/10 for phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud. The largest gap is in Analytics: 7/10 for Cloudways and 4/10 for phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud.
Cloudways costs less for 10 users: about $14/mo on its Flexible Micro (DigitalOcean) plan, against about $39/mo on its General Purpose (from s0.d1.small) plan for phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud, billed monthly.
No, neither Cloudways nor phoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud lists a free plan.
PhoenixNAP Bare Metal Cloud is the better fit for developers: we rate it 9/10 for them, against 6/10 for Cloudways.
