Cloudways is a managed layer on top of cloud providers — pick DigitalOcean, AWS, or Vultr and they manage the server. It's powerful for developers comfortable with no-cPanel workflows, but for most WordPress site owners, NakibVPS delivers the same performance with a far gentler interface and a far smaller bill.
Hosting Invoice · YR 1
You save
~60%
Pricing
Sticker price tells half the story. Renewal price, hidden costs, and value-per-dollar tell the rest.
From $1/mo
Launch promo · regular $12/mo · same price on renewal, every cycle
From $11/mo on the DigitalOcean Standard 1GB tier (no annual discount on lower tiers).
Renewals match initial — Cloudways doesn't do intro discounts. Pricing is honest, but the floor is high.
Watch out for
Cloudways doesn't do bait-and-switch renewal pricing — but the entry plan is 11× our intro price and 1× our regular cPanel price. You're paying for a developer-grade abstraction that most WordPress owners don't need.
At a glance
The five differences that actually move the needle for WordPress hosting in 2026.
| Spec | NakibVPS | Cloudways |
|---|---|---|
| Web server | LiteSpeed Enterprise + LSCache | Apache + Nginx + Varnish (no LiteSpeed) |
| Storage | NVMe SSD across all plans | SSD (provider-dependent) |
| Control panel | Full cPanel + WHM | Custom Cloudways panel — no cPanel |
| Starting price | From $1/mo (intro) · $12/mo regular | From $11/mo (DigitalOcean 1GB tier) |
| Setup complexity | 1-click signup, instant cPanel | Pick provider → pick region → pick size → wait for provisioning |
| Email hosting | Mailboxes included | Email is a paid Rackspace add-on |
Winner
Faster stack (LiteSpeed + NVMe), familiar workflow (full cPanel), included email, Iraqi-Arabic support, and one transparent price — no renewal traps. For most WordPress site owners, the choice over Cloudways is straightforward.
Features & stack
The components that actually serve your pages, secure your data, and shape your day-to-day.
Feature
Web server / cache
NakibVPS
LiteSpeed Enterprise + LSCache (block-level caching, ESI, image optimisation).
Cloudways
Apache + Nginx + Varnish + Memcached / Redis. Solid stack, but not LiteSpeed.
Feature
Storage
NakibVPS
NVMe SSD on every plan.
Cloudways
SSD — type and IOPS depend on the underlying provider you pick.
Feature
Control panel
NakibVPS
Full cPanel + WHM. Familiar, portable, no lock-in.
Cloudways
Custom Cloudways platform; deep but proprietary, no cPanel.
Feature
Backups
NakibVPS
Daily automatic + on-demand JetBackup, 30-day retention.
Cloudways
Off-site backups, schedulable from hourly. Restore is straightforward but adds storage cost.
Feature
Security
NakibVPS
Imunify360 (per-account isolation + active malware scanning), free SSL.
Cloudways
Application + server-level firewalls, free SSL, dedicated environment per app.
Feature
Bundled goodies
NakibVPS
Email mailboxes, free CDN, free migration, WordPress Toolkit.
Cloudways
Free CDN add-on (CloudwaysCDN, paid by usage), staging URLs, Git deployments.
Ease of use
Every NakibVPS plan ships full cPanel + WHM + WordPress Toolkit. File manager, MySQL admin, email accounts, DNS records, FTP users, cron jobs, SSL — all where you expect. If you ever want to move hosts, your knowledge moves with you.
Cloudways's panel
Custom Cloudways platform; deep but proprietary, no cPanel.
The catch: proprietary panels look slick, but the moment you outgrow Cloudways, you're relearning every workflow. cPanel skills transfer to thousands of hosts; their dashboard skills don't.
Support
The single biggest gap between NakibVPS and Cloudways for our region's customers.
NakibVPS support
Cloudways support
Cloudways runs a competent global support team — but it's English-first, with limited or no Arabic coverage. For customers whose teams or clients work in Arabic, that's a daily friction point our team eliminates entirely.
Time-zone-wise, support is responsive but not regionally tuned — you're a ticket in a global queue, not a customer next door.
Performance
LiteSpeed Enterprise with LSCache is the cache layer Google PageSpeed actually rewards. On real-world WordPress workloads — including plugin-heavy WooCommerce stores — LiteSpeed benchmarks consistently faster than Apache + Nginx + Varnish + Memcached / Redis. Solid stack, but not LiteSpeed. for both cached and uncached page renders.
Cached TTFB
< 80ms
LSCache serves cached pages without booting PHP. Cuts time-to-first-byte by 60%+ on plugin-heavy sites.
Uncached
2–4× faster
LiteSpeed's HTTP/3 + brotli + connection multiplexing accelerates every uncached request, not just cached ones.
LCP improvement
up to 50%
Block-level cache invalidation + image optimisation lifts Core Web Vitals scores measurably on real audits.
Use cases
Honest, side-by-side. We'll tell you when to choose them — and when to choose us.
Pick NakibVPS if…
Stay with Cloudways if…
Best for: Developers and agencies who want hourly cloud billing, Git deploys, and don't need cPanel for their clients.
Skip if: Site owners who want familiar cPanel/Webmail workflows, included email, or the cheapest possible monthly bill for a fast WordPress stack.
Final verdict
Cloudways earns its premium for developers who actually need its abstractions. If you're a site owner who wants fast WordPress hosting, included email, cPanel for clients, and one transparent monthly price — NakibVPS wins on every dimension. LiteSpeed is faster than Cloudways' Apache/Nginx/Varnish stack on cached PHP, NVMe is faster than the SSD floors of cheap DO droplets, and our $12/mo regular price beats their $11/mo entry by a wide margin once you add email.
30-day money-back · Free migration · No contract lock-in
Ready when you are
Cloudways earns its premium for developers who actually need its abstractions. If you're a site owner who wants fast WordPress hosting, included email, cPanel for clients, and one transparent monthly price — NakibVPS wins on every dimension. LiteSpeed is faster than Cloudways' Apache/Nginx/Varnish stack on cached PHP, NVMe is faster than the SSD floors of cheap DO droplets, and our $12/mo regular price beats their $11/mo entry by a wide margin once you add email.
Questions
Yes — we'll move your WordPress sites, databases, and (Rackspace) emails for free. Just hand over read-only Cloudways platform credentials.
No. LiteSpeed + LSCache + NVMe outperforms Apache + Varnish on most WordPress workloads. The vast majority of Cloudways customers run on the cheapest DigitalOcean tier; the speed delta moving to NakibVPS is positive.
WHM gives you per-account quotas, isolated cPanels, and reseller-style billing tools. We don't sell reseller hosting commercially, but our VPS plans give you full WHM/cPanel for client work.
cPanel includes WordPress Toolkit (WP Toolkit Premium) which provides 1-click staging, clone, and push-to-live workflows — equivalent to Cloudways' staging.
