Cloudways vs Hostinger
Both are WordPress hosts aimed at agencies, freelancers and growing sites. They differ most on staging environments, performance and scalability.
At a glance
| Cloudways | Hostinger | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall score | 78/100 Higher | 65/100 |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Paid from | $14/mo monthly cap; $0.0208/hr | $2.99/mo 48 months upfront, $143.52 total; renews at $10.99/mo |
| Positioning | managed cloud | budget |
| Launched | 2011 | 2004 |
| Best for | Anyone hosting several sites who is comfortable taking on a little more responsibility. | A first site, or a low-traffic site where cost matters more than headroom. |
Where each one leads
| Dimension | Cloudways | Hostinger | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staging environments | 4/5 | 2/5 | Cloudways |
| Multi-site management | 5/5 | 4/5 | Cloudways |
| Support | 3/5 | 3/5 | Tie |
| Performance | 4/5 | 3/5 | Cloudways |
| Value for money | 5/5 | 5/5 | Tie |
| Ease of use | 3/5 | 4/5 | Hostinger |
| Scalability | 4/5 | 2/5 | Cloudways |
Scores are 1–5 per dimension. Cloudways leads on 4 dimensions, Hostinger on 1. The overall figure weights these for WordPress hosting generally — see methodology.
Pricing
Plans are listed per tool rather than paired row by row — tiers rarely line up, and putting one vendor's second plan beside another's implies an equivalence that is not there.
| Tool | Plan | Per month | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | Micro (1GB) | $14 | monthly cap; $0.0208/hr |
| Small (2GB) | $28 | monthly cap; $0.0417/hr | |
| Medium (4GB) | $54 | monthly cap; $0.0804/hr | |
| Large (8GB) | $99 | monthly cap; $0.1473/hr | |
| Hostinger | Premium | $2.99 | 48 months upfront, $143.52 total; renews at $10.99/mo |
| Unlimited | $3.99 | 48 months upfront, $191.52 total; renews at $16.99/mo | |
| Cloud Startup | $7.99 | 48 months upfront, $383.52 total; renews at $25.99/mo |
Pricing checked 23 September 2026 against each vendor's own pricing page. Cloudways: Billed in USD by the hour against a monthly cap, excluding tax. Prices shown are DigitalOcean Basic servers. Hostinger: Headline prices need a 48-month term paid upfront; the monthly figure is the total divided by 48. Renewal rates are much higher.
Verdict
Cloudways
- +Unlimited sites and unlimited visits per server — far cheaper than per-site pricing once you run several sites.
- +Choice of cloud provider: DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud.
- +Free staging, free migration, and Object Cache Pro included on 4GB servers and above.
- −You are choosing and sizing a server yourself, even if the panel hides most of the work.
- −Offsite backup storage is billed separately, per gigabyte.
Hostinger
- +By far the cheapest entry point in this comparison.
- +Email mailboxes are included (free for the first year) — neither Kinsta nor WP Engine offers email at all.
- +The Unlimited plan hosts unlimited sites, with daily backups, for under $4 a month on a long term.
- −The advertised price needs 48 months paid upfront, and renews at $10.99–$25.99 a month depending on plan.
- −The entry Premium plan runs on SSD storage with weekly, not daily, backups.
Common questions
Is Cloudways cheaper than Hostinger?
Cloudways starts at $14/mo (monthly cap; $0.0208/hr), and Hostinger starts at $2.99/mo (48 months upfront, $143.52 total; renews at $10.99/mo) — so Hostinger is the cheaper entry point. Compare what each includes at that tier, and what it renews at, rather than the headline figure alone.
Which is better, Cloudways or Hostinger?
On our weighted scoring across the use cases in this category, Cloudways comes out ahead overall. The honest answer is that it depends on the use case — the tables above break the score down by dimension so you can weight it to your own priorities.
Other comparisons
Sources & verification
- cloudways.com — checked 23 September 2026No free plan; a 3-day free trial without card details.
- hostinger.com — checked 23 September 2026No free plan; a 30-day money-back guarantee instead.