MemberHost vs Cloudways (Flexible and Autonomous) for Membership Sites
Cloudways Flexible, Cloudways Autonomous and MemberHost compared for membership, course and community sites: infrastructure, scaling, support scope and what the uptime terms cover.
Cloudways is a DigitalOcean company that sells two different products. Flexible lets you pick a cloud provider and server size and host WordPress or other PHP apps on it. Autonomous is a managed WordPress and WooCommerce platform on Kubernetes that adds servers when traffic rises. MemberHost is neither: it is bespoke WordPress hosting for membership, course and community sites, built around one client’s plugin stack, with WordPress troubleshooting included.
This comparison was prepared by MemberHost from each company’s public documentation, checked on 15 September 2026. MemberHost is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cloudways or DigitalOcean, and both names are trademarks of their owners. Contract-specific terms may differ from what is published. If something here has changed, tell us and we will correct it.
At a glance
| Cloudways Flexible | Cloudways Autonomous | MemberHost | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | “Customizable managed hosting for WordPress, Magento, Laravel & PHP apps” | “Autonomous currently supports WordPress & Woocommerce applications” | Bespoke WordPress hosting for membership, course and community sites (about us) |
| Infrastructure | Your choice of “AWS, GCP, DigitalOcean, Linode, or Vultr” | Kubernetes pods, “each with its own CPU, RAM, and PHP workers” | Each client gets its own node or cluster with dedicated resources, running as virtual machines on bare metal servers from data centre partners, on hardware we specify (performance) |
| Scaling | You resize the server | Adds pods under load and “When traffic drops, the extra pods are removed automatically”, within a budget cap you set | Sized per site, single node or clustered (uptime) |
| PHP workers | Depends on server size and PHP-FPM settings | “PHP Workers: 100/server” on each plan | Sized to the site’s traffic pattern (concurrent users) |
| Plugin and theme problems | Out of scope on every Cloudways support plan | Out of scope on every Cloudways support plan | Part of the hosting work, with changes made at the server and application level (performance) |
| Support hours | 24/7 chat, email and tickets | 24/7 chat, email and tickets | Not 24/7 |
| Uptime | Marketing says “ensuring 99.99% uptime” | FAQ says “99.9% uptime SLA” | 99.9% with a published credit schedule (our SLA) |
| Pricing model | Hourly, by server size | Plans from one to three baseline servers, plus hourly autoscaling | No fixed tiers. Priced per site |
Sources: Flexible, Autonomous, how autoscaling works, support scope, all checked 15 September 2026.
Flexible or Autonomous: which one are you comparing?
They answer different problems. Flexible is closest to renting a server with a managed layer on top: you pick the provider and size, and you move up a size when the site outgrows it. Autonomous takes those decisions away. Your site runs in pods, and Cloudways adds pods when traffic climbs and removes them afterwards, billed per hour beyond your plan’s baseline (Cloudways).
If you are on Cloudways today and your membership site slows down at launch time, start by checking which of the two you are on, because the questions differ. On Flexible, ask whether the server size and PHP-FPM settings match your logged-in traffic. On Autonomous, check the budget cap: once it is reached, “autoscaling pauses once the cap is hit until you increase it or the next billing period starts” (Cloudways).
One detail worth checking before you buy Autonomous: Cloudways’ pricing page advertises “Unlimited PHP Workers” (Cloudways pricing), while each Autonomous plan lists “PHP Workers: 100/server” (Cloudways Autonomous). Ask which applies to the plan you are choosing. What those workers mean for logged-in traffic is covered in our guide to membership site speed.
Support: what happens when a plugin breaks
Picture launch day, and checkout hangs because a membership plugin’s payment webhook is timing out. That is a plugin problem, not a server problem, and membership sites run a lot of plugins that can cause one. So the support boundary matters more than the chat hours.
Cloudways publishes its boundary clearly. “No matter which support plan you are on”, these are out of scope: “Changes to the functionality of plugins/themes/modules”, “Debugging custom code”, “Application level security issues”, and “In general, anything that implies code editing.” Its paid support add-ons are priced as a flat fee “or 10% of your invoice (Whichever is Higher)” (Cloudways support). That is a reasonable boundary for a platform, and it means a plugin problem goes to your own developer.
At MemberHost, the team that runs your server also looks at the WordPress side of the same request. Our sister agency, MemberFix, has built membership sites since 2011, and that team is who you reach when a course page is slow (about us).
Where Cloudways wins is hours: its chat runs around the clock, and ours doesn’t.
Uptime terms
Cloudways advertises 99.99% uptime for Flexible and a “99.9% uptime SLA” for Autonomous. The public legal SLA we found is a support SLA: it defines availability as “the Cloudways Services Support platform console only and in no case does it apply to the service availability of our third party Cloud Providers”, and its credits apply to missed support standards (Cloudways support SLA). There may be other terms in your agreement, so ask Cloudways which written uptime remedy applies to the product and cloud provider you choose.
Our SLA covers the services your site needs to stay reachable, at 99.9%. Credits go on future invoices, are capped at the month’s value and are never paid in cash. It excludes third-party services, maintenance windows, outages caused by external providers, client code and configuration, traffic beyond the plan, and WordPress or plugin downtime while the server stays up, which we handle as support work rather than as an SLA event (our SLA). An uptime credit won’t refund a launch that stalled, whichever host you pick. Our reliability guide covers what does help.
Cloudways may fit better when
- You host more than WordPress. Flexible runs Laravel, Magento and other PHP apps; MemberHost only hosts WordPress.
- You want to choose the cloud and region yourself from AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Linode or Vultr.
- You want 24/7 chat and a self-serve dashboard where you can launch a server tonight.
- You have a developer who owns plugin and custom code problems, so the host only needs to keep the server healthy.
- Your WooCommerce traffic is spiky and paying per hour for extra pods suits you better than sizing for the peak.
- The site is small and an hourly entry-level server covers it.
MemberHost may fit better when
- Plugin issues are what keep you up at night, and you want the host to dig into them rather than hand them back to your developer.
- You run a logged-in stack such as MemberPress, LearnDash or BuddyBoss and want caching configured for it, including testing before object caching goes live, since MemberPress lists the Redis Object Cache plugin as a known incompatibility.
- You would rather size once for your launch calendar than manage a scaling budget cap.
- You want failover sync, which runs on our clustered setups (uptime).
We are the wrong pick if you need round-the-clock chat, want published fixed prices, host non-WordPress apps, or want to set everything up yourself.
What switching looks like
Coming from Cloudways, we start by reviewing the plugin setup on your current server, then carry out the migration during onboarding without charging for it. If you want evidence before you move, we can copy the site to staging and load test the paths your members actually use, like logging in, finishing a lesson or checking out, so you can weigh the results against how the site behaves for you today. We grant all reasonable refund requests, and if MemberHost turns out not to suit you, we will fully assist with moving your site to another host.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Cloudways good for membership sites?
It can be, especially with a developer on hand. Cloudways Autonomous is marketed for “dynamic high traffic eCom and LMS sites” (Cloudways). The main thing to plan for: plugin and theme issues are outside Cloudways support on every plan, and on a membership site those issues can matter as much as the server.
Is Cloudways Flexible or Autonomous closer to MemberHost?
Neither is a close match. Flexible is a server you choose and manage through Cloudways’ dashboard, and Autonomous automates scaling with pods billed by the hour. What sets MemberHost apart from both is that we tune the server to your plugins and handle WordPress-level issues as part of hosting.
Does Cloudways fix plugin problems?
Not as standard. Cloudways lists “Changes to the functionality of plugins/themes/modules” and “Debugging custom code” as out of scope on every support plan, though it says it can help with troubleshooting issues around plugin upgrades (Cloudways support).
Does MemberHost offer 24/7 support?
No. If round-the-clock chat is a must-have, Cloudways offers it and we don’t.