The Cloudways 3-day free trial: no card, what you can test, and the one cloud it does not cover

We pay for the servers and plans we use. Links marked as affiliate links earn us a commission at no cost to you; it never changes what we recommend. Details.

Managed hosting is hard to judge from a pricing page. You are paying for things you only notice while using them: the control panel, how fast a server launches, how a migration goes, how support answers. Cloudways lets you find out for three days without a card. Here is what its own pages say about the trial, and a checklist for using the 72 hours well.

What the pages say

The trial is of the platform, so it is worth trying on the cloud you would actually pay for. For most small sites that is DigitalOcean, where Cloudways is cheapest: $11 a month for 1 GB on Standard, $14 on Premium. The full price list is in Cloudways pricing explained.

When the trial ends

Cloudways bills by the hour and charges "in arrears": invoices are issued in the first week of each month for the previous month's use. There is no contract and no minimum term, so keeping a server for a week costs a week.

Taxes are added where they apply. Cloudways says it collects VAT, GST or sales tax for some countries and US states, as a separate invoice line.

Eight checks for 72 hours

1. Time the launch. Note when you press Launch and when the server is ready in the panel. It is the first thing you will wait for on every new client.

2. Migrate one real site. Cloudways advertises free migration. Use a copy of a site you know, so you can compare page speed before and after.

3. Measure the page from outside. Load the migrated site from your own browser with the cache cleared, and from a speed test near your visitors. Note the time to first byte.

4. Open a support chat. Ask a real question, for example how to add a staging copy, and time the first useful answer. Support is a large part of what the price pays for.

5. Make a staging copy and push it back. It is one of the features in every plan; it is also where things go wrong on other hosts.

6. Take a backup and restore it. Start a manual backup, delete a test page, restore, and check the page is back. A backup you have not restored is a guess. Note that offsite backup storage is billed at $0.033 per GB per server after the trial.

7. Scale the server up and back down. Cloudways bills hourly and lists vertical scaling; check how long the server is unavailable while it resizes.

8. Read the bandwidth graph. On DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode the plan includes terabytes. On AWS it is 2 GB a month; extra is $0.12 per GB. If you trialled on AWS, check how much a day of your traffic used.

Write the numbers down while the trial runs. They are what you will compare with the $6 server you can run yourself.

Who should start a trial

Agencies and freelancers who host client WordPress or WooCommerce sites, and anyone who wants a managed server without learning server administration. If you would rather manage the server yourself, our Coolify install on a $6 server shows what that involves.

Start the Cloudways trial: no card, three days.

FAQ

How long is the Cloudways free trial?

Three days. Cloudways' pricing page says "Start Your 3-Day Trial".

Does the Cloudways trial need a credit card?

No. Cloudways says the trial needs no credit card and has no obligation, and you can cancel at any time.

Can I use Google Cloud in the Cloudways trial?

No. Cloudways says the free trial is not available for Google Compute Engine; you need to upgrade your account to launch Google Cloud servers. DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode and AWS can be used.

What happens after the Cloudways trial?

If you keep a server, you pay by the hour for the time it runs. Cloudways invoices in the first week of each month for the previous month's use. There is no contract.

How much does Cloudways cost after the trial?

On 3 Oct 2026 the smallest server cost $11 a month on DigitalOcean, $14 on Vultr or Linode, $20.56 on AWS and $37.33 on Google Cloud, before tax.