Cloud hosting plans compared: every host, every real price.
The complete hosting table with managed WordPress, agency, and developer-cloud tiers. Prices checked monthly against each host’s own pricing page. Not sponsored, not paid placement.
Answer, first
Managed WordPress hosting starts around $30 a month at Kinsta and WP Engine. Cloudways runs the same managed layer on top of your choice of DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, or Google Cloud, often for less. Developer clouds start at $4 (DigitalOcean Basic) or $2.50 (Vultr) but you run the stack yourself.
✓ Prices checked August 27, 2026
| Host | What it is | Entry tier | Mid tier | Team/Agency | The catch | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudways | Managed WP on DO/Vultr/Linode/AWS/GCP | $14/mo (DO 1 GB tier) | Unmetered scaling to larger droplets | Agency add-on | Multi-cloud, pay-monthly, no long contracts | See current price → |
| Kinsta | Managed WP on Google Cloud | $30/mo (Starter, annual) | $70/mo (Business 1, 100k visits) | Agency plans available | Premium tier; strict resource limits per plan | See current price → |
| WP Engine | Managed WP | $30/mo (Startup, annual, 25k visits, 10 GB) | $109/mo (Growth, 100k visits) | Scale from $276/mo | Enterprise-heavy; overage fees on traffic spikes | See current price → |
| Rocket.net | Managed WP on Cloudflare Enterprise | $30/mo (Starter, unmetered visits) | $60/mo (Pro) to $200/mo (Enterprise) | Agency tiers | Cloudflare Enterprise included; small provider | See current price → |
| DigitalOcean | Developer cloud (Droplets) | $4/mo (Basic 512 MB / 10 GB SSD) | $24/mo (4 GB / 80 GB SSD) | Team accounts | Self-managed; you run the stack | See current price → |
| Vultr | Developer cloud | See current price ($2.50/mo starter, verify) | See current price | Team accounts | Cheapest developer cloud; support tier is basic | See current price → |
| Linode (Akamai) | Developer cloud | See current price ($5/mo Nanode, verify) | See current price | Team accounts | Now part of Akamai; strong DNS + CDN bundle | See current price → |
| Hetzner | Developer cloud (EU + US) | See current price (~$4/mo CX22, EU-billed) | See current price | Team accounts | Best price/performance for EU workloads; ID verification at signup | See current price → |
Managed WordPress hosting: Cloudways, Kinsta, WP Engine, Rocket.net
If your site is WordPress and you want someone else to handle the operating system, PHP updates, caching, backups, and support, you are shopping managed WP hosting. All four hosts in this lane are opinionated about WordPress and optimize for it specifically. Where they differ:
- Cloudways is a managed layer on top of DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, or Google Cloud droplets. You pick the underlying cloud, Cloudways runs the stack. Pay-monthly, no long contracts. The site you are reading now runs on Cloudways.
- Kinsta runs on Google Cloud’s premium tier network. Starter plans at $30 a month cap at 25,000 visits and 10 GB storage. Excellent support tier, strict resource limits per plan.
- WP Engine starts at $30 a month for the Startup plan on annual billing (25,000 visits, 10 GB, 75 GB bandwidth). Larger tiers add sites and visitor allowances. Enterprise-heavy sales motion.
- Rocket.net bundles Cloudflare Enterprise on every plan, which changes the performance ceiling. Smaller provider, opinionated feature set.
Agency and multi-site tiers
If you’re running client sites, you want one bill, staging environments, white-labelling, and the ability to hand a site off to the client account cleanly. Cloudways has agency add-ons that layer on top of any droplet. Kinsta’s agency tier starts higher but adds team roles and shared billing. WP Engine’s Growth and Scale plans include multiple sites per plan (10 and 30 respectively) which functions similarly.
Developer cloud: DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Hetzner
Developer cloud is different. You get a virtual machine, an IP address, and a control panel. You install the operating system, web server, database, and stack yourself. In exchange you pay much less: $4 a month at DigitalOcean, $2.50 at Vultr, $5 at Linode, roughly $4 at Hetzner. If you know what you’re doing and value hourly billing + fast provisioning + broad regional coverage over managed support, this is the tier. Cloudways sits on top of these providers for a reason: same infrastructure, plus the managed layer, for a monthly premium.
Which one wins
There is no single winner because the three lanes shop for different buyers. If you run WordPress and want it managed, look at Cloudways first (multi-cloud flexibility, no lock-in) and Kinsta or WP Engine second (opinionated but premium). If you run an agency, Cloudways’ pay-per-droplet model usually costs less per client site than Kinsta or WP Engine’s per-site fees. If you’re a developer running your own app, DigitalOcean is the default and Hetzner beats it on price if you can live with EU billing and ID verification.
Common questions
What is the cheapest cloud hosting plan?
Vultr’s basic tier at $2.50 a month is the cheapest verified developer-cloud droplet. DigitalOcean’s $4 a month Basic Droplet is next. These are unmanaged; you run the stack. For managed WordPress hosting, Cloudways runs the lowest starting price of the four managed hosts by pairing its managed layer with a $4 DigitalOcean droplet underneath.
Managed WordPress or developer cloud?
If you value your time over $20 a month, go managed. Support alone pays for the difference if your site ever breaks at a bad moment. If you like living at the command line, or your site is high-traffic enough that a developer cloud at scale beats a managed plan on price, go developer cloud.
Is Cloudways the same as DigitalOcean?
Not quite. Cloudways is a managed hosting layer that sits on top of DigitalOcean (or Vultr, Linode, AWS, Google Cloud). If you buy Cloudways, you get someone else to manage the operating system and caching stack. If you buy DigitalOcean direct, you get the machine and run everything yourself. Same underlying hardware, different level of babysitting.
Do these hosts have free trials?
Cloudways offers a 3-day free trial with no credit card. DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, and Hetzner start pay-as-you-go with no free trial but often have signup credits (DigitalOcean’s $200 credit for new accounts is the most generous of the four). Kinsta and WP Engine do not offer free trials on their standard plans.
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