Pick Cloudways if…
You want the DigitalOcean price-performance without SSH, patching, firewall rules or backups being your job. $14 a month buys the 1 GB droplet with the server managed, 24/7 chat support, a caching stack and one-click staging. You still look after WordPress itself.
Pick DigitalOcean if…
You are comfortable on a command line, you will keep the OS and WordPress updated yourself, and you want the cheapest serious WordPress server there is: $6 a month for 1 GB in London with the WordPress 1-Click image, plus 20–30% for backups. Our setup guide takes you through it.
Same server, two very different products
Both options start from the same hardware: a DigitalOcean "Basic" droplet in the London region. On DigitalOcean's own pricing page the 1 GB droplet is $6 a month, the 2 GB droplet is $12 and the 4 GB droplet is $24. Cloudways charges $14, $28 and $54 for the same three sizes under its Micro, Small and Medium names. The difference, roughly $8 to $30 a month, is what you pay for Cloudways to be the sysadmin.
What Cloudways does for the difference
- Installs and tunes the stack (web server, PHP, MySQL, object cache) and keeps the operating system patched.
- Runs a firewall, monitors the server and restarts services that fall over.
- Gives you a control panel with one-click staging, cloning, SSL and vertical scaling (move to a bigger droplet in a few clicks).
- Answers 24/7 chat support about the server. It does not debug your plugins.
- Sells backups, a CDN and email as add-ons rather than including them.
What DigitalOcean leaves to you
The WordPress 1-Click image does the first-boot work well: Ubuntu 24.04, Caddy with automatic HTTPS, PHP 8.3, MySQL 8.0, WP-CLI, WP-Fail2Ban and a pre-configured firewall, with a setup script that asks for your admin details and takes two or three minutes. After that there is no one else. Operating-system updates, PHP upgrades, WordPress core and plugin updates, backup configuration and recovering from a broken update are all yours. DigitalOcean's support covers the platform, not WordPress.
The real monthly cost
| Item | Cloudways Micro | DigitalOcean 1 GB (DIY) |
|---|---|---|
| Server | $14 | $6 |
| Daily backups | Add-on, billed per GB | +30% of droplet price ($1.80), or weekly at +20% |
| Server management | Included | Your time, or an AI assistant subscription (ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro cost roughly £15–£20 a month in the UK) that most first-time DIY admins now lean on |
| Support | 24/7 chat, server only | Tickets, platform only |
| Add-on | None, use a separate provider |
Put the assistant subscription in and the DIY route is no longer cheaper for a single site; it is cheaper only if you already have the skills or already pay for the assistant for other reasons. That is the honest arithmetic, and it is why Cloudways exists.
Where DigitalOcean wins outright
Experiments, staging boxes and anything you will destroy in a week: DigitalOcean bills per second, so a test server costs pennies. Developers who want root access, their own stack choices (Nginx instead of Caddy, a different PHP version, Redis) and no managed layer in the way. And multi-site developers who are happy to run one well-tuned 4 GB box for several small sites at $24 a month.
Where Cloudways wins outright
Agencies that bill clients for hosting and cannot afford a 2 a.m. outage to be their problem. Owners who want DigitalOcean's performance and London region without ever opening a terminal. Anyone who wants to scale a server up for a sale week and back down afterwards without re-provisioning.
Cloudways in brief
Cloudways is for agencies and consultants who want VPS performance without doing the sysadmin work themselves. If you have three or more sites, one $28 server beats three managed plans. If you have one site and no technical confidence, HostPresto or SiteGround will be less work. Compare it directly with a raw DigitalOcean droplet in our Cloudways vs DigitalOcean page.
Read the full Cloudways review.
DigitalOcean in brief
DigitalOcean is the honest answer to "how cheap can WordPress hosting get?", $6 a month for a London server that outperforms most shared hosting. It is only a good answer if you are comfortable with SSH and updates, or willing to pay an AI assistant to be your sysadmin. Our setup guide walks through the 1-Click image step by step; if it reads like work, pick Cloudways, which runs the same droplet for you.
Read the full DigitalOcean review, or see all our head-to-head comparisons and the full ranking.