Cloudways vs DigitalOcean: pricing, quotas & features (2026)
Managed cloud hosting across DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, Google Cloud
vs. The developer cloud — Droplets, Kubernetes, Managed DBs, App Platform
Data sourced from vendor documentation · Last updated June 2026
Summary
Cloudways and DigitalOcean are both hosting platforms, addressing the same core use case with different implementation philosophies and trade-offs. Both offer a free tier, making it easy to prototype without a credit card. DigitalOcean's paid plans start at $4/month, lower than Cloudways's entry point at $11/month. Cloudways has a broader documented feature set (17 vs 14 features). Budget-sensitive teams will find DigitalOcean easier to justify early on. All pricing and quota data below is sourced from Cloudways and DigitalOcean's official documentation — not generated by AI or estimated.
Cloudways vs DigitalOcean: Comparativa de precios, cuotas y características (2026)
En esta comparativa analizamos Cloudways y DigitalOcean lado a lado — incluyendo precios mensuales, límites del tier gratuito, características técnicas, cuotas de uso (almacenamiento, transferencia, usuarios activos mensuales) y los interfaces de desarrollo disponibles. Todos los datos proceden de la documentación oficial de cada proveedor, no de respuestas generadas por IA.
Cloudways es una plataforma de la categoría hosting — Managed cloud hosting across DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, Google Cloud. Ofrece 8 tiers de precio: Autonomous — Free Trial gratuito, Flexible — DO Micro desde $11/mes, Flexible — DO Medium desde $88/mes, Autonomous — Growth desde $100/mes. Su catálogo en Staxly documenta 17 características y 4 interfazes para desarrolladores.
DigitalOcean pertenece a la categoría hosting — The developer cloud — Droplets, Kubernetes, Managed DBs, App Platform. Ofrece 12 tiers de precio: Functions (Serverless) gratuito, App Platform — Free gratuito, Droplet — Basic 512MB desde $4/mes, Spaces Object Storage desde $5/mes. Su catálogo documenta 14 características y 6 interfazes para desarrolladores.
A continuación encontrarás los tiers de precio completos de ambas plataformas, una matriz de cuotas del tier gratuito (transferencia, almacenamiento, MAU, llamadas a la API y otros límites), el listado completo de características y los interfaces (CLI, SDKs, REST, GraphQL, MCP) disponibles para integrar cada servicio.
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Pricing tiers
Cloudways
DigitalOcean
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing auto-free-trial on Cloudways vs functions on DigitalOcean.
| Metric | Cloudways | DigitalOcean |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Cloudways · 17 features
- Autonomous (WordPress) — Fully managed WordPress with autoscaling.
- Backups — Automated daily + on-demand. Retention configurable.
- Bot Protection — Cloudflare Enterprise bot filtering add-on.
- Bot Scaler — Autonomous: auto-scale based on traffic patterns.
- Breeze (WP cache plugin) — In-house WordPress caching plugin.
- CloudwaysCDN — Built-in CDN add-on (StackPath-backed).
- Flexible Plans — BYO-sized servers on any of 5 providers. Full control over stack.
- Free Let's Encrypt SSL — 1-click cert install + auto-renewal.
- Free Migration — 1 free app migration per plan. Cloudways team moves your site.
- Horizontal Scaling — Auto-scale app servers (Autonomous plans).
- Malware Protection — Add-on ($4/app/month). Scan + clean.
- Object Cache Pro — Included on certain plans. Redis-backed object cache for WP.
- SafeUpdates — Automated WordPress plugin/theme updates with rollback.
- Staging Environments — 1-click staging clones with push-to-live.
- Team Collaboration — Invite team members with granular role permissions.
- Thunderstack (Optimized) — Apache + Nginx + Varnish + Redis + Memcached preconfigured for speed.
- Vertical Scaling — Resize server specs without migration.
DigitalOcean · 14 features
- App Platform — Heroku-style PaaS. Deploy from Git. Auto-HTTPS, auto-scale, zero-downtime deploy…
- Backups — Weekly automated backups (20% of Droplet cost). Manual snapshots.
- Block Storage Volumes — SSD block storage attachable to Droplets. Snapshot support.
- DNS — Free DNS hosting for your domains.
- DOKS (Kubernetes) — Managed Kubernetes. Free control plane. Node auto-repair.
- DigitalOcean GenAI Platform — Managed AI agents, model-as-a-service (Llama, Mistral), knowledge bases.
- Droplets — Virtual machines with shared or dedicated CPU. 20+ one-click Marketplace images.
- Functions — Serverless functions. Node, Python, Go, PHP, Ruby. Pay-per-execution.
- Load Balancers — Layer 4/7 load balancing with HTTP/3 + Let's Encrypt.
- Managed Databases — Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, OpenSearch, Valkey. Automated backups + …
- Marketplace — 300+ one-click Droplet + Kubernetes apps.
- Monitoring — Built-in metrics + alerts for Droplets, DBs, Load Balancers.
- Spaces — S3-compatible object storage with built-in CDN.
- VPC — Private networking. Free. Automatic default VPC per region.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Cloudways | DigitalOcean |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | doctl CLI |
| SDK | — | godo (Go), pydo (official py), python-digitalocean |
| REST | Cloudways API | DigitalOcean REST API |
| MCP | — | DigitalOcean MCP |
| OTHER | Cloudways Platform (web UI), SFTP, Server SSH Access | — |
Key takeaways
- Both Cloudways and DigitalOcean offer a free tier — Cloudways ("Autonomous — Free Trial") and DigitalOcean ("Functions (Serverless)") — with no credit card required to start.
- The entry-level paid plan is $11/month for Cloudways (Flexible — DO Micro) vs. $4/month for DigitalOcean (Droplet — Basic 512MB).
- Cloudways has a broader documented feature set (17 features) vs. DigitalOcean (14 features) in Staxly's catalog.
- Developer integrations differ: only Cloudways offers OTHER; only DigitalOcean offers MCP/CLI/SDK.
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