Our Dime - Cloudways Web Hosting Audit

Cloudways

Parent company: Cloudways Ltd

Web Hosting Provider

Type: Managed WordPress

cloudways.com

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True North

Capital: Foreign

Capital: Foreign (profits)

Control: Foreign

Control: Foreign (decisions)

Cloudways is an international managed hosting provider with its primary legal and strategic presence in Malta. The True North score reflects that capital, control, and operations are largely external to the Canadian economy. Most value from Canadian spending likely flows to foreign entities and global infrastructure providers.

Vector Breakdown

Inputs

low

0 /20

Upstream infrastructure and licensing dependencies are global and not verified for Canadian economic retention.

Capital

Capital (profits)

medium

0 /40

Foreign legal entity signal suggests ultimate profit flow and ownership are retained outside of Canada.

Control

Control (decisions)

medium

0 /20

Strategic and governance control appears to reside outside Canada based on the company's international headquarters signal.

Operations

medium

0 /20

Primary operational footprint and corporate presence appear to be international with no verified domestic-specific infrastructure.

Forensic Summary

What We Could Verify

Pricing

✅ Verified

Refunds

⚠️ Partial

Support

✅ Verified

Canada Fit

✅ Verified

Research Snapshot

Checked: 2026-02-08

Provider name (payload): Cloudways
Official domain: cloudways.com
Canonical Canada URL: https://www.cloudways.com/en/hosting-canada/

Corporate Footprint

Parent company: DigitalOcean
Headquarters location: Broomfield, Colorado

Sources

Parent company

"In August 2022, DigitalOcean Holdings Inc. announced its intention to acquire Cloudways for $350 million in cash."
Source
Headquarters

"Where is DigitalOcean's headquarters? The company's HQ is at 105 Edgeview Drive, Suite 425 Broomfield, Colorado 80021."
Source

Pricing Clarity

Intro starting monthly price: $11 USD/mo
Renewal/regular monthly price: $11 USD/mo
Billing term required for intro: monthly
Notes: Cloudways uses a pay-as-you-go model with no long-term contracts or renewal price hikes.

Sources

Intro price

"High Performance Web Hosting for Canadian Websites - Cloudways: Pay only for what you use, starting at just $11."

Source

Renewal price

"Cloudways Services are a “pay as you go” service, meaning you will only pay for the resources that you have actually used."

Source

Billing term

"you will only pay for the resources that you have actually used and for the time that you have actually used them."

Source

Refunds & Cancellation

Money-back guarantee (days): Unknown
Refund exclusions: Refunds only for unused prepaid funds within 3 months.
Auto-renewal stated: Yes

Sources

Money-back policy

"Cloudways does not offer a standard 30-, 60-, or 90-day money-back guarantee, but it's kind of moot anyway thanks to the pay-as-you-go pricing."

Source

Refund exclusions

"we will refund your unused prepaid account funds for Cloudways Services if a valid refund request is submitted within three months of funds addition."

Source

Auto-renewal

"We charge in arrears for Cloudways Services, meaning that you will receive an invoice during the first week of each month."

Source

What They Offer

Hosting types offered

Managed WordPress

VPS Hosting

Cloud Hosting

Control panel

Custom

Cloudways is a managed platform for cloud infrastructure providers.

Cloudways uses a proprietary managed hosting platform instead of cPanel or Plesk.

Sources

Hosting types

"Cloudways provides managed cloud hosting that supports deployment on leading infrastructure providers such as DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud and Linode."

Source

Control panel

"Instead of a traditional cPanel interface, Cloudways offers a custom-built control panel designed for simplicity, speed, and power."

Source

Support

Channels

Live Chat

Ticket

Knowledge Base

Phone

24/7 stated: Yes
Notes: Standard support is 24/7 chat/ticket; phone and Slack support require paid add-ons.

Sources

Support channels

"Get free, 24×7 support via live chat, tickets, and our in-depth knowledge base that solves your infrastructure and platform-level problems promptly."

Source

24/7 support

"24/7/365 priority Live Chat and ticketing support from our Senior Engineers, with improved SLAs."

Source

What’s Included

SSL: Yes

Email: No

Backups: No

Sources

SSL

"Cloudways provides top-tier security with free SSL, firewalls, regular backups, and 24/7 monitoring."

Source

"by default emails aren't actually included in your Cloudways. plans you do have to set up your email separately."

Source

Backups

"Cloudways does not offer free backups. They charge you based on the amount of storage you use"

Source

Canada Fit

Available

Canada servers: Yes

Data location notes: Regions available in Toronto (DigitalOcean), Montreal (AWS/GCP), and Calgary (AWS).

Sources

Canada availability

"High Performance Web Hosting for Canadian Websites - Cloudways: Pay only for what you use, starting at just $11."

Source

Canada server region

"The newly added datacenters are based in... Toronto, Canada (DigitalOcean)"

Source