Cloudways Alternative

Fundamentals

Let's learn how ServerAvatar and Cloudways are fundamentally different while both ultimately allows you to host your apps on cloud.

Self-Managed Hosting

With ServerAvatar, You technically manage your own servers considering you directly pay bills for your servers to cloud company and pay us monthly fixed cost for server management panel.

Control Access and Cost of Servers

Because ServerAvatar allows you to connect your own servers, You can buy your servers from thousands of server providers and control the cost as well as root access to your servers.

Flexible

As you have the "root" access to your servers, You can modify your servers to support broad range of applications and tune your servers for your applications more efficiently in comparison with any managed hosting service.

Fully Managed Hosting

With Cloudways, You get fully managed hosting considering you don't have to create a server in cloud platform and then connect it to Cloudways. Cloudways provides you bundle of server + management panel.

Limited Access to Servers

Due to "managed" nature of the hosting solution, You will not get root access to the server. This limits what you can do and can't do on your servers. You also have to buy servers via Cloudways limited to 5 cloud platforms only.

Rigid

In case of Cloudways, You do not "own" your servers. Hence, You cannot make modifications to your servers. Technically, You don't have "root" access and hence, permissions on your server to make modifications required to support some code.

Pricing & Plans

Let's learn how ServerAvatar and Cloudways are fundamentally different while both ultimately allows you to host your apps on cloud.

Fixed Management Cost

For Management System, You pay a predictable monthly subscription price to ServerAvatar and manage servers and sites in your account.

Flexible Server Cost

As you can get your servers from 5000+ locations in 130+ countries, You can decide the server provider and the cost you pay for your servers.

Affordable Premium Support Add-on

Just like Cloudways, ServerAvatar also provides premium support add-ons with features like direct support channel on slack, custom server config management and application level troubleshooting.

Overall, Affordable Solution.

With ServerAvatar or any other self-managed solution, You will at least save 40% of your cloud/web hosting cost compared to Cloudways or other managed hosting services.

Growing Management Cost

Cloudways usually charges 2x of the original server cost. The additional half is the management cost for Cloudwayys. Hence, The management cost grow along with your infrastructure requirements.

Fixed Server Cost

Cloudways allows you to create servers in 5 cloud platforms only. And, You cannot connect your own server. Hence, You cannot control the cost of servers.

Expensive Premium Support Add-on

Cloudways also provides premium support addon and provides all the features that ServerAvatar provides. However, It is at 4-5x expensive if we estimate conservatively.

Tech Stacks

Different tech stacks allow you to host different types of applications on your servers. Let's see the tech stack options we have in both the control panels.

Optimised LAMP (Apache) Stack

A tech stack built with Apache, PHP and MySQL/MariaDB along with Redis, Git, and other required services.

Optimised LEMP (Nginx) Stack

A tech stack built with Nginx, PHP and MySQL/MariaDB along with Redis, Git, and other required services.

Optimised OpenLitespeed Stack

OpenLiteSpeed stack in ServerAvatar is specifically good to host super fast WordPress sites.

MERN Stack

A tech stack built for Node.js, MongoDB, Express.js and React. You can host Node.js based apps on this tech stack.

Apache-Nginx Hybrid Stack

Cloudways provides Apache-Nginx Hybrid stack where Apache works as a web server and Nginx acts as a reverse proxy.

No other tech stacks available

Other than Apache-Nginx Hybrid stack, Cloudways does not provide support for any other tech stacks. Hence, it also limits the variety of applications you can host on Cloudways.

Server Management

In this section, we will compare the core server management features in both the panels.

Database management

ServerAvatar provides comprehensive Database and user management with fundamentally secure setup and secured remote access out-of-the-box.

System User Management

ServerAvatar provides complete system user management. You can control access to SSH/SFTP as well as provide isolated environments for each site.

Cronjob management

ServerAvatar provides cronjob management with all the required features.

Automatic Disk Cleaning

One-Click or Automatic disk cleaning in ServerAvatar allows you to clean selected log files and temporary files to free up space for sites.

One-Click Server Troubleshooting

ServerAvatar control panel provides one unique feature that helps you find issues in any part of the server very quickly.

Ioncube Support

ServerAvatar provides one-click Ioncube installation to help you deploy sites that require Ioncube support.

Service Management

You can easily monitor (CPU and RAM) used by various services and also restart, stop or reload any service.

Automatic Site Cloning

The automatic site migration feature allows you to migrate your sites between servers with a few clicks.

Advanced Log Viewer

ServerAvatar provides an in-built log viewer that allows you to search and filter through logs to help you debug quickly.

Automatic Backups

ServerAvatar provides automatic backups for whole applications, databases or files.

Control Panel Access

Provide control panel access to user with URL, username and password. ServerAvatar account is not required to access the server.

Custom Vhost Configuration

In ServerAvatar, You can add additional configuration to your virtual host files using the file manager.

Limited Database Management

Cloudways does not provide database management options compared to ServerAvatar. It also does not provide remote database access out-of-the-box.

Limited System User Management

Cloudways does create seperate system user for each application and provide SSH/SFTP credentials for each app, but it is not as comprehensive compared with ServerAvatar.

Cronjob management

Cloudways provides cronjob management to execute scheduled tasks for your applications.

Automatic Disk Cleaner

Cloudways provide one-click as well as automatic disk cleaner as good as ServerAvatar with all the required features.

One-Click Server Troubleshooting

Cloudways does not provide any similar feature to one-click troubleshoot and find issues on the server.

Ioncube support

Cloudways provides Ioncube support and allows you to host applications that require Ioncube to function.

Service Management

Cloudways provides service management to perform restart/stop and reload any service.

Automatic Site Cloning

Cloudways allows you to quickly and easily clone PHP sites on same of different server.

Advanced Log Viewer

Cloudways provides advanced log viewer in sense that you can filter through logs. However, It only supports 1000 entries on web.

Automatic Backups

Cloudways provides a complete automatic and instant backup solution for your WordPress sites.

Control Panel Access

Control panel access or similar feature is not provided by Cloudways.

Custom vhost configuration

Cloudways does not allow you to add custom config to your virtual host file.

Application Management

Application management is equally important to manage and maintain your applications after deployment. Let's see different application management features provided by both the control panels.

Application Auto-installers

ServerAvatar provides 12+ Auto-installers for various popular applications built in PHP and Node.js.

Deploy From Git

You can deploy your custom PHP/Node.js applications from Github, Gitlab as well as BitBucket.

Push to Deploy

ServerAvatar provides push-to-deploy functionality along with deployment logs.

Automatic SSL Certificates

The SSL certificates for your sites can be installed with one-click and renewed automatically, for free!

Automatic Staging Area

ServerAvatar provides an automatic staging area for your applications to test or integrate new features.

File manager

You can quickly access your application files from the web based file manager. Edit, create, extract, anything is possible.

Per Site PHP Version and Settings

You can manage PHP versions and various PHP.ini settings from the control panel for your apps, individually.

Node.js Support

Install and configure your server to host Node.js based applications with one-click.

Supervisord/Queue Management

ServerAvatar allows you to create and manage processes with Supervisor, very efficient and easy for Laravel.

Cloudflare Integration

Cloudflare integration allows you to manage the SSL levels, forced SSL, and many other settings directly from ServerAvatar.

One-click Fix File permissions

Facing an irritating file permission error? One-Click fix all file permission issues in ServerAvatar.

Create temporary/staging websites

ServerAvatar allows you to quickly deploy staging/temporary sites on ServerAvatar provided temporary domains.

WP-CLI Support

ServerAvatar provides support for wp-cli. You can manage your WordPress sites using wp-cli.

Redis Object Caching

ServerAvatar automatically installs and configures Redis on your server, ready to be used for caching.

WordPress magic Login

ServerAvatar provides magic login to wp-admin of WordPress sites.

Limited Auto-installers

Cloudways only provides you very essential auto-installers. In total, it provides 8 auto-installers, only PHP based apps.

Deploy from Git

Cloudways provides deployment from different Git platforms for WordPress.

Push to Deploy

Cloudways does not provide push to deploy functionality out-of-the-box. However, there suggest complex workaround.

Automatic SSL Certificates

The SSL certificates for your sites can be installed with one-click and renewed automatically, for free!

Automatic Staging Area

Cloudways provides exceptional staging area and providers better features than ServerAvatar when it comes to staging area.

File Manager

Cloudways does not provide file manager on the panel. You have to use FileZilla to access the files on your server.

Per Site PHP Version and Settings

You can manage PHP versions and various PHP.ini settings from the control panel for your apps, individually.

Node.js Support

Being a PHP specific hosting solution, It does not provide support for Node.js out of the box.

Supervisord/Queue Management

While Cloudways provides Supervisord service installation, it does not provide management options.

Cloudflare Integration

Cloudways provides Cloudflare integration for easy DNS management.

One-Click Fix file permissions

Facing an irritating file permission error? One-Click fix all file permission issues in ServerAvatar.

Create Temporary/Staging websites

Cloudways provides temporary domains that you can use to quickly spin up staging/temporary sites.

WP-CLI Support

Cloudways provides support for wp-cli. You can manage your WordPress sites using wp-cli.

Redis Object Caching

Cloudways automatically installs and configures Redis on your server, ready to be used for caching.

WordPress magic Login

Cloudways does not provide magic login to WordPress admin areas directly from the control panel.

Security & Monitoring

Monitoring and Security is must for any cloud hosting setup. Both the control panels provide different level of features in this section. Let's see them in detail.

UFW Firewall Management

ServerAvatar's easy to use firewall management allows you to manage ufw status as well as firewall rules.

Isolated Environments

Each application deployed on ServerAvatar has isolated environment to avoid speading infections on server.

Manage SSH Credentials

Manage SSH access as well as credentials for your system users and control access on your infrastructure.

IP WhiteListing and 2FA

Allow log in to your account from white-listed IP addresses only. Further secure your account with 2FA.

Automatic Security Updates

ServerAvatar performs regular security updates on all your servers. You can also set the frequency.

Fail2Ban Management

ServerAvatar provides Fail2Ban management to secure login forms on your applications.

Basic Authentication

Basic authentication allows you to temporarily/permanently enable additional authentication layer on your app.

Server Health Monitoring

Server Health Monitoring in ServerAvatar includes CPU, RAM and Disk usage along with 5 min and 15 min load average.

MySQL/mariadb query monitoring

ServerAvatar allows you to monitor the number of queries executed every 5 minutes on your database server.

Log analysis

Explore Request, Error, Bot Traffic, User agent and bandwidth usage information with Insighthub in ServerAvatar.

Malware protection

ServerAvatar does not provide in-built malware protection however you can manually manage it on your servers.

UFW Firewall Management

Cloudways allows you to manage firewall rules on your servers on the control panel.

Isolated Environments

Each application deployed on Cloudways has isolated environment to avoid speading infections on server.

Manage SSH Credentials

Cloudways provides SSH management with all the features that ServerAvatar provides, except enabling and disabling SSH access on your sites.

IP Whitelisting and 2Fa

Cloudways provides IP whitelisting as well as two factor authentication to protect your data.

Automatic Security Updates

Cloudways provides automatic security updates to keep your servers secure form known vullnerabilities.

Fail2Ban Management

Cloudways does not provide Fail2Ban management to protect login forms on your site.

Basic Authentication

Cloudways does not provide basic authentication to add an additional layer of authentication on site.

Server Health Monitoring

Server Health Monitoring in FlyWP includes CPU, RAM and Disk usage only.

MySQL/mariadb query monitoring

Cloudways does not provide direct query count monitoring however helps you track slow queries.

Log analysis

Explore Request, Error, Bot Traffic, Status Codes and bandwidth usage information with Cloudways.

Malware protection

Cloudways provides malware protection for your applications but it is a paid addon.

Team Management & Sharing

Team management features allow you to share access to your infrastructure with your team or clients. Let's see how both the control panels differ in this case.

Manage Multiple Teams

In ServerAvatar, You can create multiple organisations to manage multiple teams.

Roles and Permissions

ServerAvatar provides detailed permission management to ensure controlled access to the servers.

White-Labelled Control Panels for Clients

In addition, ServerAvatar also allows you to white-label the server control panels and share them with clients.

Manage Multiple Teams

In Cloudways, You can manage multiple teams to provide access to colleagues.

Control Access with Permissions

Cloudways offers limited roles and does not provide permission management. Roles are very specific and rigid.

White-Labelled Control Panels for clients

Cloudways does not offer you any white-label option as of now.

Fundamentals

Self-Managed Hosting

Pricing & Plans

Fixed Management Cost

Overall, Affordable Solution.

Tech Stacks

Optimised LAMP (Apache) Stack

Server Management

Database management

Application Management

Application Auto-installers

Security & Monitoring

UFW Firewall Management

Team Management & Sharing

Manage Multiple Teams

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