Cloudways for Agencies in 2026: Managing Multiple Client Sites

Cloudways has become the default infrastructure choice for many WordPress agencies. The combination of cloud performance, developer tools, and economics that improve with scale makes it well-suited for agency use. Here is how agencies actually use Cloudways and whether the platform delivers on its promises at scale.

The agency economics

The most compelling aspect of Cloudways for agencies is how the economics scale. A single $22 per month DigitalOcean 2GB server comfortably handles 8-12 small WordPress sites. At $2-3 per site per month for cloud hosting with staging, SSH, and Git, the margins are significantly better than reselling shared hosting or paying for individual managed WordPress plans.

Client management features

Cloudways allows you to add team members with different permission levels. Developers get server and application access. Clients can be given read-only access to their specific application. You can transfer application ownership to clients when projects complete. The team management is functional if not as polished as dedicated agency tools.

Staging environments

Every Cloudways application gets a one-click staging environment. This is the feature agencies use most heavily. Develop and test on staging, verify with the client, push to production with a single click. The staging-to-production workflow is reliable and significantly reduces deployment risk compared to developing directly on live sites.

Performance for client sites

Client expectations around performance have increased. Google Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor and clients increasingly notice and care about page speed. Cloudways on DigitalOcean or Vultr delivers consistent sub-100ms response times for typical WordPress sites without additional optimisation. Combining Cloudways with Cloudflare free tier for CDN and additional caching gives client sites performance metrics that justify the hosting cost in client conversations.

Migration tools

Cloudways includes a WordPress migrator plugin that handles most site migrations automatically. For complex migrations with custom server configurations, the Cloudways team will migrate the first site free of charge. Subsequent migrations are a paid service or can be handled with tools like All-in-One WP Migration.

The honest limitations

Cloudways support, while good, is not as white-glove as WP Engine or Kinsta. Very complex server issues occasionally require engaging the underlying cloud provider. Cloudways does not manage the WordPress software itself, only the server infrastructure. You are responsible for WordPress core updates, plugin updates, and security hardening at the application level.

Is Cloudways right for your agency?

Cloudways is the right choice for agencies managing five or more WordPress sites that need staging environments and developer tools, and whose developers have basic server comfort. For agencies primarily serving non-technical clients who want fully managed WordPress including WordPress management, WP Engine or Kinsta managed WordPress provides more complete handholding at a higher price. For technically capable teams, Cloudways offers the best performance-to-price ratio at agency scale.