For nearly three years, I paid $4,600 a year for “premium” WordPress hosting.
My site was fast. It felt polished. And it was also completely unnecessary for my business. For context, this was for my drumming gear website, DrumSpy.com, a site that once, prior to one of Google’s recent updates, averaged almost 200k pageviews a month.
In early 2026, I cancelled my dedicated environment with WP Engine and moved my sites to Cloudways. My hosting bill dropped to $58 a month, my workflow improved, and nothing broke.
Looking back, I wish I had made the switch sooner.
This is my firsthand account from a amatuer who believed expensive hosting would solve problems that were actually self-inflicted.
The Short Answer (If You’re Busy)
If you want zero responsibility and don’t care about cost, WP Engine is still a solid option.
If you want great performance, far more flexibility, and thousands of dollars back in your pocket, Cloudways is the better choice, as long as you’re willing to learn just a little.
The real difference isn’t speed. It’s learning how to properly setup your site and avoid pitfalls, and that’s exactly what I’ll explain below.
Why I Ended Up on WP Engine in the First Place
WP Engine used to be touted as a good host. In Facebook groups, people always raved about having a good experience, but that doesn’t seem to be the case as of late.
Before switching to them, I had been with Host Gator, Host Color, and Siteground, and probably others I cannot remember. I wasn’t happy with any of them, so I made the switch to WPEngine’s lowest tier plan around 2019.
When my site started growing, traffic climbed past 100,000 pageviews per month. That’s when WP Engine told me I’d reached the ceiling of their largest shared plan. I could either pay overage fees, or take their recommendation and move to a dedicated environment.
You can find numerous threads all over social media of users talking about how the company bills their clients as they grow. One user on Reddit vented about how their experience with WP Engine slowly went off the rails. What started as a $70/month plan with great, human support had quietly grown into a $440/month bill after years of price hikes and add-ons.
At the time, it felt like the responsible decision to take WPEngine’s advice and move to a dedicated environment. In my head, they offered the best WordPress hosting, so I should trust them. The site was growing, performance mattered, and I didn’t want to cut corners.
And to be fair, it was fast. So there I was, now locked into paying $4,600 a year for web hosting.
I didn’t realize it yet, but the dedicated server didn’t save me from my bad web practices.
My site was slow because it was poorly built; some generic theme I bought off of Themeforest. And I had zero clue that any of my problems were my own doing.
The Real Cost of “Premium” Hosting
My situation is a little different than most, but for one site only on WP Engine, you can pay $25 a month. This plan limits you to 25,000 visitors a month, 10GB of storage and 75GB of bandwidth. Their next step up is three sites for $50 a month with 75,000 visitors.
It’s not a bad plan for starters, but given the dangers, as I’ll put it, if your site grows over time, it may be worth considering other options for the long term.
WP Engine (3-site plan)
- $50 per month
- ~$590 per year
- 15GB storage
- Hard traffic limits
- Forced plan upgrades or overage fees
- Little flexibility once you’re locked in
Cloudways (Unlimited sites)
- $28 per month
- ~$336 per year
- 50GB storage
- Scale when you actually need to
- Pay only for what you use
- Unlimited websites (you may run into issues if all of your sites on a server have large volumes of traffic, so at that point you have to scale up)
For someone who is willing to watch a walkthrough video tutorial on setting up Cloudways, it’s a way better value to use Cloudways since you are paying less, can create unlimited environments (within reason), and have much more storage.
When I finally cancelled WP Engine, I felt relieved. That annual bill was massive. I was also annoyed I hadn’t done it sooner. When I spoke with their sales team about downgrading, the best alternative they could offer was still $3,000 per year. That was the moment it really clicked: I was paying a premium for something I simply didn’t need.
Performance: The Truth No One Likes Admitting
I was nervous about performance when switching.
WP Engine had always felt fast, and I assumed moving to a cheaper platform would mean a noticeable downgrade. What actually happened surprised me.
Once my Cloudways server was set up correctly, performance was essentially the same.
The difference wasn’t the platform. It was my understanding of what actually matters. I had recently done a big redeisn of my website before the move, and most of the issues I had from before were gone. The setup performed just as well, at a fraction of the cost.
That was a hard pill to swallow, but an important lesson.
Comparing Speed on Fresh Installs
Both web hosts are pretty much identical. It’s worth noting that the default themes each host installs are different, so the things that load aren’t consistent. But it’s clear that both web hosts are more than capable, and that website speed issues are not a result of the host in most cases.
Control vs Convenience (Where These Hosts Really Differ)
This is where WP Engine and Cloudways truly separate.
WP Engine is extremely polished. The dashboard looks great, and many things are handled for you. The downside is that almost everything is locked down. Even with my dedicated environment, I couldn’t tell you how much RAM I had, how many CPUs were running, etc. Changes require going through support.
Spinning up a new WordPress install takes around three to four minutes. In my test, the install was complete in 2 minutes and 56 seconds.
Cloudways is exceedingly faster, coming in at 1 minute at 36 seconds.
Both are quick to setup new environments, but that extra minute could be worth a lot over the long term.
There are a lot of controls and configurations you can make yourself, but the reality is, you rarely need to touch most of them. What matters is that everything is visible: database info, SFTP access, monitoring, backups. It’s all right there.
The Password Reset Problem That Broke My Patience
I don’t know if this is a bug to me, or something I have been consistently doing wrong, but on WP Engine, I had problems on multiple occasions with new WordPress environments, specifically related to logging in.
By default, WordPress auto-generates a password for you. Typically you will get an email when the install is completed and be prompted to reset your password.
That’s fine and all, until the password reset email never arrives. When that happened, there was no simple UI option to change the password manually.
More than once, I ended up contacting support or reading up on how to change a WordPress password via phpMyAdmin.
I lost hours over something that should take 30 seconds. It happened multiple times, and every time it pulled me out of momentum. And of course, today of all days, I spin up a new environment in WPEngine, reset the password, and this time it works.
Maybe it was a bug or something with my email service, but it seems to be fixed.
On Cloudways, this hasn’t been an issue. I can manage access without jumping through hoops, and that alone has made a noticeable difference in how quickly I can get to work.
I shouldn’t have to edit a database just to log into a fresh install of WordPress.
Support: Honestly, Both Are Pretty Good
To be fair, WP Engine support was excellent early on. Many of their engineers went out of their way to help me with issues that were technically outside their scope. Over time, though, response times got longer and the overall experience felt less consistent.
Cloudways support has been surprisingly strong so far. I’ve mostly reached out for DNS-related questions, something I avoid whenever possible, and the responses have been fast and competent.
Also, the Cloudways’ AI chatbot is surprisingly useful. Much better than any I’ve used on other websites. I didn’t expect much from it, but it ended up being genuinely helpful more than once.
If a non-technical founder asked which support team would save them in a panic, I’d say both are capable, but Cloudways did surprise me.
Backups, Staging, and Not Breaking Your Site
WP Engine’s backups are reliable, and I like their system a lot more. With a fresh install of WordPress, my timed backup took 13 seconds.
On a fresh install with Cloudways, my timed backup took 20 seconds.
Backups with Cloudways are slightly slower, but I haven’t had any issues or stress yet. They use a dropdown list for your backups, and it appears you cannot label them, which is a downside.
I usually attach a note to my backup name so I have a reference of what that specific backup was for. (Cloudways, please add this feature).
As for staging environments, WP Engine offers a more formal structure (both dev and staging), but I’ve found Cloudways’ cloning process to be better suited to how I actually work. The only thing I miss from WPEngine is the ability to rename the environment the moment you clone it, not after.
Who Should Use What
This is where I’ll be very direct.
WP Engine Makes Sense If:
- You never want to think about hosting
- You value guardrails over flexibility
- Cost genuinely doesn’t matter to you
Cloudways Is a Better Fit If:
- You care about cost efficiency
- You manage multiple sites
- You want to scale on your own terms
- You’re willing to learn a little
- You want to build an agency
My Final Verdict
Picking a web host is a challenge. I’ll say in closing that Cloudways is a bit more suited for a technical person, but it’s not as intimidating as it sounds once you understand the basics.
In practice, Cloudways offers more control over your environment than most fully managed hosts, without requiring you to manage a server entirely on your own. You’re responsible for a bit more setup, but in return you get clearer visibility into how your site is actually running.
WP Engine isn’t bad hosting. It’s simply optimized for a different type of user. If you want a highly abstracted, hands-off experience and don’t mind paying a premium for it, it makes sense. If you prefer flexibility, performance tuning, and cost efficiency, Cloudways is often a better fit.
Ultimately, the right host depends on how involved you want to be. Cloudways rewards curiosity and a willingness to learn, but it doesn’t demand deep infrastructure expertise to be successful. Support us and use our link if you’re considering using Cloudways.