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Cloudways vs OVHcloud
This is not a like-for-like contest. OVHcloud sells raw compute and hands you the operating system; Cloudways sells a managed service and charges for the work you no longer do. Compare them only if you genuinely have not decided whether to run the server yourself.
Cloudways
$14.00/mo entry
Freelancers and small agencies hosting several client sites on one managed server.
OVHcloud
$5.35/mo entry
Bandwidth-heavy workloads that would blow through a metered-transfer plan at another provider.
Specification differences
Entry plans compared line by line. Rows marked with a dash are preferences rather than measurable wins, so we do not pick a side on them.
| Attribute | Cloudways | OVHcloud | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan price / month | $14.00 | $5.35 | OVHcloud |
| Entry plan vCPU | 1 | 2 | OVHcloud |
| Entry plan RAM | 1 GB | 4 GB | OVHcloud |
| Entry plan storage | 25 GB | 40 GB | OVHcloud |
| Listed regions | 25 | 15 | Cloudways |
| Management model | Managed | Unmanaged (you run the OS) | |
| Support | 24/7 live chat and tickets; premium support tiers cost extra. | Ticket support included; paid Business and Enterprise support tiers via the OVHcloud Control Panel. | |
| Billing | Hourly metering billed monthly, pay-as-you-go. | Month-to-month on the US VPS range, with lower per-month rates for 6- and 12-month commitments. Public Cloud instances are a separate, hourly-billed product. | |
| Free tier | Free trial available for new accounts; no permanent free tier. | No free tier on the VPS range. |
Same size, side by side
The cheapest plan from each provider that meets each size, so the comparison is between equal servers rather than two entry plans. Prices include a separately-billed IPv4 address where the provider charges for one.
| Size | Cloudways | OVHcloud | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 vCPU / 1 GB | no plan this size | $5.35VPS-1 · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 40 GBTwo vCPUs and 4GB for about five dollars. Unlimited traffic at 500 Mbps public bandwidth. Month-to-month price; a 12-month commitment lowers it to $4.54. | — |
| 2 vCPU / 4 GB | no plan this size | $5.35VPS-1 · 2 vCPU · 4 GB · 40 GBTwo vCPUs and 4GB for about five dollars. Unlimited traffic at 500 Mbps public bandwidth. Month-to-month price; a 12-month commitment lowers it to $4.54. | — |
| 4 vCPU / 8 GB | no plan this size | $10.00VPS-2 · 4 vCPU · 8 GB · 75 GBFour cores and 8GB for ten dollars, at 1 Gbps with unlimited traffic. Month-to-month price; a 12-month commitment lowers it to $8.50. The tier that most directly undercuts DigitalOcean. | — |
| 8 vCPU / 16 GB | no plan this size | $27.50VPS-4 · 8 vCPU · 24 GB · 200 GBEight cores and 24GB of RAM, unlimited traffic at 3 Gbps. Month-to-month price; a 12-month commitment lowers it to $23.37. | — |
Every provider at these sizes, ranked: 1 GB RAM · 4 GB RAM · 8 GB RAM · 16 GB RAM
Where each one wins and loses
Cloudways
Cloudways does not own datacentres. It provisions servers on underlying clouds such as DigitalOcean and Vultr and adds the managed layer on top: stack configuration, caching, staging, automated backups and one-click server maintenance. You pay a premium over the raw instance for not having to be a sysadmin, while keeping the ability to move up in size.
Strengths
- Managed stack, caching and staging without full agency pricing
- Choice of underlying cloud provider and region
- Unlimited sites per server within the resources you buy
- Vertical scaling without rebuilding the server
Weaknesses
- Clear markup over provisioning the same instance yourself
- You are dependent on two vendors rather than one
- Email hosting is a paid add-on, not included
Support: 24/7 live chat and tickets; premium support tiers cost extra.
Billing: Hourly metering billed monthly, pay-as-you-go.
Free tier: Free trial available for new accounts; no permanent free tier.
OVHcloud
OVHcloud runs its own datacentres and its own network, which is why the VPS list price is denominated in USD and includes unmetered traffic rather than a monthly transfer allowance. The 2027 range replaces the older Value/Essential/Comfort/Elite naming with plain VPS-1 through VPS-4 tiers, all on NVMe storage. It is a serious alternative to Hetzner if you want unmetered egress and a wider region map, and it runs its own data centres in North America as well as Europe.
Strengths
- Unlimited traffic at 500 Mbps–3 Gbps depending on tier
- Prices set in USD on the North American site, no FX drift for the invoice
- NVMe storage across the whole VPS range
- Datacentres OVHcloud actually owns, including US and EU footprints
Weaknesses
- Two vCPUs on the cheapest tier is generous, but shared and inconsistent under load
- Support quality has an uneven reputation; documentation is thinner than DigitalOcean’s
- Add-ons like backups are billed separately (from about a dollar per month)
- Historic outage record (Strasbourg fire, 2021) is worth knowing about before you rely on a single region
Support: Ticket support included; paid Business and Enterprise support tiers via the OVHcloud Control Panel.
Billing: Month-to-month on the US VPS range, with lower per-month rates for 6- and 12-month commitments. Public Cloud instances are a separate, hourly-billed product.
Free tier: No free tier on the VPS range.
The full cost stack
What a server costs beyond its sticker price. Only figures read from each provider's own documentation appear; a gap says “not captured yet”.
| Item | Cloudways | OVHcloud |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | n/a | n/a |
| Automatic backups | not captured yet | not captured yet |
| Outbound traffic beyond the allowance | not captured yet | not captured yet |
| Smallest managed load balancer | not captured yet | not captured yet |
Sources: none captured yet for this pair.
Price changes we have logged
No tracked price change for either provider yet.
Full record at the change log.
Every plan
The complete plan ladders, with the date and source of every price, are on each provider's page: Cloudways and OVHcloud.
All figures are the providers' own published list prices in USD, on-demand monthly. The index was last refreshed 2026-10-14, and every row shows the date its own price was read. Nothing here is live or negotiated pricing. Where a provider bills a public IPv4 address on top, it is added to the monthly price, the ranking and every cost per vCPU or per GB, and the row shows the parts: the server, any disk priced apart, and the IPv4 charge. Some prices exclude VAT or need a commitment; the plan notes say which. Check the provider's pricing page before you commit.
Related comparisons
Cloudways vs OVHcloud — frequently asked
Every answer is computed from this pair's own prices and costs.
- How many datacentre locations do Cloudways and OVHcloud have?
- Cloudways lists 25 and OVHcloud lists 15.