Cloudways Tutorial for Beginners: All You Need To Know in 2026

Want to use Cloudways to build a website but don’t know where to start?

In this Cloudways tutorial, I’ll teach you how to set up a WordPress and WooCommerce website on Cloudways from scratch.

I’ll also show you how to set up the Cloudways email add-on and explain how to point your domain to Cloudways.

Let’s start with the basics.

Editor’s note: This Cloudways tutorial was originally published on October 24, 2023. It was updated on January 5, 2026 to reflect the latest changes to Cloudways’ UI and services.

Cloudways hosting overview

Cloudways is a managed hosting service that lets you host websites and web applications with leading cloud hosting providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, and DigitalOcean.

Cloudways isn’t a traditional hosting provider. They don’t own their servers. Instead, they provide a software solution for hosting websites with third-party hosting providers.

Cloudways manages everything from the server setup and application upgrades to security and backups. They make it so easy to host a website that you don’t need to access the command line if you don’t want to.

You can select your preferred cloud hosting provider, server location, server size, and application stack and even configure PHP and Nginx settings from a user-friendly control panel.

The best part? Cloudways does it all at an incredibly cost-effective price.

Cloudways’ margin is extremely low. You only pay a few dollars on top of the price you would pay if you hosted directly with any of their supported hosting providers.

If you want to build an online store on a budget, I recommend using Cloudways. It gives you low cost hosting and free SSL certificates which lower your online store costs.

Why I use Cloudways to host my WordPress websites

I’ve used Cloudways for over four years now. I’ve had an amazing experience hosting my websites with them, and I usually recommend them to everyone for a few reasons.

First, Cloudways is incredibly easy to use. Yes, if this is your first time using it, there’s a slight learning curve. But you don’t have to be a tech-savvy person or need any experience with hosting websites to use it.

You’ll see that for yourself when you follow the steps in this Cloudways tutorial to set up your website.

Second, Cloudways provides the best value for money hosting of any company. While there are some good hosting options on the market, none of those can compete with Cloudways’ range of services and pricing.

And finally, Cloudways offers incredible performance. Their managed VPS hosting service and powerful caching tools ensure your website loads in seconds right out of the box.

Couple that with a good WordPress theme, and you’ll easily score 90+ on Google PageSpeed and GTmetrix.

When you put it all together, Cloudways gives you ease of use, value for money, and excellent performance. That’s everything you need from a good ecommerce hosting service.

For a deeper dive into Cloudways, consider reading my Cloudways review which shares my unbiased opinions about Cloudways’ platform, features, support, pricing, and trial.

How to setup WooCommerce on Cloudways: Step-by-step tutorial

Think Cloudways might be a good fit for you? Or are you still on the fence about using it?

Don’t worry. You can try Cloudways for free and figure it out.

Cloudways offers a free 3-day trial that lets you explore everything they offer before committing to a paid subscription.

I’ll explain how you can sign up for the free trial and upgrade to a paid plan once you’re ready in this Cloudways guide. Let’s get into it.

1. Sign up for Cloudways hosting

Go to the Cloudways signup page.

If you use this link, you’ll get a flat 25% discount on the first two months of hosting when you upgrade to a paid account after the 3-day trial.

Cloudways lets you sign up for an account in multiple ways. You can use your existing DigitalOcean, LinkedIn, GitHub, and Google account, or sign up with your email.

I’ll show you how to sign up for Cloudways using an email address.

Enter your first and last name, email address, and password, and use the dropdowns to provide additional information about yourself and your monthly hosting spend.

If you’ve used my link from above, you’ll have the promo code auto-applied to the sign up form.

If it’s not applied, then click the I have a promo code hyperlink and enter LAUNCH25 in the promo code field to get a flat 25% discount for the first two months.

Next, select the checkbox to agree to Cloudways’ terms and conditions.

Choose Sign up to start your 3-day free trial.

After this, you need to verify your email before accessing your Cloudways account and free trial.

Sometimes, you may see a page like the one below where Cloudways asks you to provide some more information before activating your account.

Don’t worry. This is a small step by Cloudways to protect themselves from people who set up fake accounts to abuse their free trial period.

If you see that screen, click Enter Details and fill in their verification form.

Cloudways asks you for basic information like your website URL, contact number, the size of your organization, your role, a link to one of your social media profiles, and a short description of what you’ll use Cloudways for.

Fill in the information and select Submit details.

Cloudways’ account verification team will review your information and approve your account. I’ve found that it usually takes them up to 1 business day to verify and approve accounts. In some cases, they’ve approved my test accounts in as little as 3 hours.

Once your account signup request has been processed, you’ll receive an email asking you to activate your Cloudways account.

Select Activate Account Now to activate your Cloudways account. Cloudways will direct you to the login page and you’ll have access to your account after that.

2. Create a new server

Once inside the Cloudways dashboard, you should be redirected to the server creation dashboard.

If not, hover over the Servers icon in the left-hand menu and choose Add Server under Quick Actions.

Next, on the server creation page, select the application you want to install using the dropdowns in the Application & Server Details section.

Select WordPress to create a new server with a WordPress installation or WooCommerce to create a new server with WordPress and WooCommerce pre-installed.

There are other options, such as a clean WordPress installation without any caching plugins installed. So feel free to choose whichever suits your needs.

Enter an Application Name, Server Name, and add it to a Project. Those details are only used to organize the servers and applications, and you can always change them from your Cloudways dashboard at a later date.

Next, you need to choose a hosting provider for your server.

You can only access DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode during the trial period. Once you upgrade to a paid account, you’ll have access to AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

After that, choose your server size using the slider tool.

1GB RAM is usually enough for a low traffic WordPress site, but I recommend selecting a server with at least 2GB RAM for a WooCommerce store.

In case you’re wondering what those little speedometer-like icons are, those represent high-performance DigitalOcean servers with better storage, memory, and processors.

Those are excellent for high-traffic websites. But you don’t need those when you’re building an online store for the first time.

So feel free to choose a regular server for now. You can always upgrade your server in the future.

Choose your server location using the Location dropdown. I recommend selecting a location closest to your target audience to minimize latency.

Finally, select Launch Now to complete the server creation process.

You’ll be redirected to your Server Management page as Cloudways sets up your server. You’ll notice a new notification bar in your dashboard with a helpful countdown timer of the remaining time for your free trial.

The server setup time usually varies depending on the server size. In most cases, you can expect your server to be ready in about 10 minutes.

Once the server is ready, Cloudways will notify you on your registered email address, and your new server will display in the Server Management dashboard.

3. Explore Cloudways and manage your server

Take a minute to familiarize yourself with the Cloudways dashboard before setting up WordPress and WooCommerce on Cloudways.

The left-hand menu in the Cloudways dashboard gives you quick access to important things like your server, application, and add-on management dashboards.

You can hover over each of the icons to view the options available for that category.

Hover over the Cloudways Flexible icon and select My Servers to access your server management dashboard.

You’ll see your newly created server listed there.

Once your server is ready, click on the server to access its management dashboard.

The server management panel contains the following settings:

• Master Credentials: SFTP and SSH details to access the server.
• Monitoring: Overview of server resource utilization.
• Manage Services: Controls for core services like Apache, Nginx, Redis, and Varnish.
• Settings & Packages: Tools to manage and configure server-level settings like PHP execution limit, installed software packages, and maintenance.
• Security: IP settings for SSH/SFTP and MySQL access.
• Vertical Scaling: Tool to upgrade server size.
• Backups: Automated backup and on-demand backup settings.
• SMTP: SMTP service configuration for email delivery from your server.

You can use the Quick Actions drop down for generalized tasks like stopping, restarting, or adding applications to your server.

You can also switch to the applications management area by selecting the Applications icon from the top right-hand corner and selecting an application from the available list.

The application management dashboard containing the following setting options:

• Access Details: Access details like your application URL, admin panel credentials, application credentials, and MySQL access information.
• Staging Management: Cloudways’ free staging application creation and management utility.
• Monitoring: Analytics for traffic, PHP, MySQL, cron, and disk usage.
• Bot Protection: Cloudways’ free bot protection tool.
• Domain Management: Domain management tool to manage one or more domains pointing to your site.
• Cron Job Management: Cron job manager for your web application.
• SSL Certificate: Free SSL certificate generation utility.
• Backup And Restore: Application-level backup management tool.
• Deployment Via Git: SSH key generation for Git deployment.
• Application Settings: Application-level settings like folder, webroot, email sender, PHP-FPM, and Varnish settings.
• Migration Tools: Quick access to Cloudways’ WordPress migration plugin.
• Cloudflare: Cloudflare Enterprise configuration tool.
• SafeUpdates: Website and plugin update management tool.

The Application management dashboard also has a Quick Actions menu in the top-right corner that lets you do things like creating staging environments of the application and deleting an application.

You can also install open source ecommerce platforms like Magento, WooCommerce, and Drupal to an existing server using the Add Application option.

These two areas are the most important parts of your Cloudways hosting account. Most Server and Application management settings are the kind you can set and forget. You don’t have to deal with them every day.

With the basics of Cloudways out of the way, let’s set up WordPress and WooCommerce.

4. Setup WordPress & WooCommerce

By default, all new Cloudways sites are assigned a default Cloudways subdomain.

You can find that by looking at the Application URL in the Access Details section. Your website URL might be something like woocommerce-1XXXXX4-3XXXXX7.cloudwaysapps.com.

Clicking on that link will take you to the frontend or customer-facing part of your site.

To configure your site, you’ll need to access its admin panel.

You can do that by going to the application management dashboard and selecting the Admin panel URL in the Access Details section.

Clicking on that link will take you to your WordPress admin login page.

Copy the username and password from the application management page and log in to your website’s admin account.

This is how your WordPress admin panel will look when you first log in to your site. You may notice that WooCommerce is pre-installed if you select the Cloudways WooCommerce installation option while setting up the server.

If you still need to install WooCommerce, you can do that in a few simple steps. Go to Plugins > Add New.

Search for “WooCommerce” and select Install Now. Once the plugin installs, choose Activate. That’s it!

If you already have WooCommerce installed on your server, select WooCommerce from the left-hand menu.

If this is your first time launching WooCommerce, you’ll see a setup wizard that helps you configure basic settings for your store in four easy steps.

First, enter your store details so WooCommerce can help you automatically configure your currency, shipping, and taxes. Add your store address and other details and select Continue.

You may be prompted to allow WooCommerce to track non-sensitive data from your store. This is totally optional, and your selection will not affect how WooCommerce works.

Choose Yes, count me in! to allow data sharing, or No thanks to deny it.

Next, choose your industry from the available options. If you can’t find a matching industry, select Other and then choose Continue.

Now, you need to select the types of products you’ll sell. Choose Physical products and Downloads. Feel free to ignore the other options. Your selection won’t change the supported WooCommerce product types on your store.

Select Continue to go to the final step of the WooCommerce setup process.

The Business Details section lets you share some basic information about your online business and lets you add some free features to your store automatically.

Select the number of products you plan to sell and if you sell elsewhere. Then, select the Free features tab.

Click the downward arrow to expand the free features selection list, and select which free features you want installed on your store.

WooCommerce checks all boxes by default. Uncheck the ones you don’t want to use on your store or uncheck all boxes by deselecting the Add recommended business features to my site checkbox.

Then, choose Continue.

You’ll be redirected to your WooCommerce dashboard, where you’ll see a quick checklist of tasks you need to complete to set up your store.

Follow WooCommerce’s guided wizard to add products, set up payments, add tax rates, etc.

If you need help setting up your WooCommerce store, consider reading my guide on building a WooCommerce store. I explain the entire process from start to finish, including adding plugins, themes, and website analytics for your store.

5. Set up caching for WordPress

Caching is a method of storing frequently used data in a temporary memory location to speed up access times. Instead of fetching the same data repeatedly from the server, caching stores a copy of it in a faster-to-reach place.

Cloudways gives you the best caching mechanisms, like Redis and Varnish, with your WordPress installation.

The best part? You don’t need technical skills to set them up or manage them.

Cloudways preinstalls a caching plugin called Breeze on your site. You can access it from the WordPress admin panel from Settings > Breeze.

Most setting options are preconfigured to work with Cloudways hosting right out of the box.

If your site is hosted on a server with 2GB RAM or higher, Cloudways will also include a free installation of the Object Cache Pro plugin to optimize your WordPress database usage.

Object caching is a method of saving database query results in cache. It reduces the load on the database, which is helpful with a database-dependent application like WordPress.

Again, Cloudways preconfigures the Object Cache Pro plugin for you, so you don’t need to set it up manually.

The only plugin I suggest you install on your site is Proxy Cache Purge.

Proxy Cache Purge selectively purges your website’s Varnish cache storage each time there’s an update or change to your site content. That ensures your visitors get the latest content when you make changes.

Plus, installing the plugin is very easy.

Go to Plugins > Add New, search for “Proxy Cache Purge”, and select Install Now.

Once the plugin installs, select Activate.

Then, select Proxy Cache from the admin panel menu, enter localhost in the Set Custom IP field, and select Save IP Settings.

That’s it! Your Cloudways caching setup is configured and ready to deliver lightning-fast page load speeds for your site.

6. Point your domain to your Cloudways server

Now that you’ve set up Cloudways and WordPress let’s update our WordPress website to use our domain name instead of the temporary subdomain given by Cloudways.

You’ll need to buy a domain name first from a domain name registrar like Namecheap or Cloudflare. If you need help choosing a domain name, read my article sharing 10 helpful tips for picking a domain name.

Once you’ve purchased your domain name, let’s see how you can set up Cloudways to use it.

For this Cloudways tutorial, I’ll show you how to update your Domain Name Server (DNS) settings using Cloudflare. Don’t worry if you’re using any other DNS registrar, as the steps will generally be the same for other domain registrars.

Before you update the DNS record, copy your server’s IP address from your Cloudways account. Your server’s IP address is on the Application Management page under Access Details > Application Credentials.

Scroll down and copy the series of numbers marked as Public IP, log in to your domain name account. Then, head to your DNS management dashboard.

In Cloudflare, the DNS management page is located under DNS > Records.

Your DNS records page may or may not contain any records. That’s okay, though. I’ll show you how to add a DNS record now.

Click on Add record.

You can create DNS records like A, CNAME, TXT, and MX here. We need to create an A record because that’s the record that points to your domain name to your server’s IP address.

Select the Type as A, enter your domain name without “https” or other special characters in the Name field, and paste your Cloudways server’s IP address in the IPv4 address field. Click Save to update your DNS record.

After that, head back to your Cloudways account dashboard and go to Applications > Application Management > Domain Management.

Select Add Domain and enter your site’s fully qualified domain name in the Add Domain Name popup.

A fully qualified domain name is the exact address at which you want your website to load. It’s the value you entered in the Name field of the DNS record.

Enter your domain name and select Add Domain. The domain name will appear in the Domains list as an Alias.

Select the three dots icon next to your domain and choose Make Primary. Confirm the action by selecting Set As Primary in the confirmation popup.

Cloudways will then run a search and replace operation on your WordPress database and replace the previous temporary subdomain with your new domain name.

Depending on your website size, the operation can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to complete. Once it completes, your website will load at your custom domain name in the web browser.

7. Add an SSL certificate

Cloudways automatically installs an SSL certificate for your website when you first set up your server and even after you update your domain name.

However, you can manually install a free Let’s Encrypt SSL if you’re having trouble accessing your website or want a new certificate. Here’s how.

Go to Applications > Application Management > SSL Certificate in your Cloudways hosting dashboard.

Select Let’s Encrypt as your certificate issuer, and enter your email address and fully qualified domain name. Make sure the domain name value is the same as your DNS record without “https” or special characters. Then, click Install Certificate.

Once Cloudways generates and installs your new SSL certificate, you’ll see a confirmation message and an auto-renewal option in the SSL Management area.

Activate the Auto Renewal toggle to ensure the certificate is automatically renewed before it expires every three months.

That’s it! Your Cloudways website SSL is set up and working correctly. Verify the frontend and admin load using https by opening both links from the Access Details page.

It should work like a charm if you’ve followed everything correctly so far. In case of any issues, use the Need a hand option to contact Cloudways support for help.

8. Upgrade your account and set up Cloudways email add-on

Your Cloudways website is set up and ready to use. But it can’t send out emails yet.

Emails are important for sending out password reset links, automatic order confirmations, and other store updates. Luckily, Cloudways gives you affordable access to email add-ons from popular providers like Elastic Email, Rackspace, and Sendgrid.

You can also use custom SMTP settings if you’re hosting an email mailbox with any other provider.

I’ll show you how to add the Elastic Email add-on because it lets you send up to 1,000 emails a month for just $0.10. 

If you want an email mailbox that lets you receive emails, you can add Rackspace instead for $1 per email mailbox per month. Cloudways has a detailed guide for setting up the Rackspace add-on. Make sure you give that a read for step-by-step instructions.

Before you enable Elastic Email, you’ll need to upgrade your account.

You can wait until the 3-day trial period expires or upgrade your Cloudways account immediately using the upgrade button on the top of your Cloudways dashboard.

Clicking Upgrade My Account will take you to the Payment & Address section of your account settings. Enter your payment and billing address, and select Proceed To Payment Gateway.

On the next page, enter your card details and select Authorize to authorize a small charge on your card.

Don’t worry. Cloudways will refund the initial charge in 1-3 business days. You’ll get your actual hosting bill at the end of the month. And if you signed up using my referral link at the top of this post, you’ll get $25 in hosting credits as soon as you upgrade your account.

You can refer to Cloudways’ billing support guide for more information on how billing works with Cloudways.

After that, follow these steps to enable the Cloudways Elastic Email add-on.

Click the Add-ons icon in the left-hand menu.

Scroll down and click on Elastic Email. Select a plan based on the number of emails you expect to send each month, for instance, 1000 Emails ($0.10/month), and then click Subscribe.

Select the Home icon in the left-hand menu to return to your Cloudways dashboard and select View all Servers.

On the Servers page, select your server, and on the server management page, choose SMTP.

Select Elastic Email from the dropdown and click Enable.

That’s it. Cloudways will perform its magic behind the scenes and set everything up for you. You don’t need to worry about anything.

You can even send a test email to your personal email address by clicking Send Test Email on the SMTP page, entering the sender email, such as [email protected], and entering your email address in the Receiver field.

Click Send Test Email and check your inbox for the email.

If your email ends up in the spam folder, you’ll need to verify your domain name by setting up SPF, DKIM, Tracking, MX records, and DMARC.

Cloudways has a detailed guide explaining the exact steps to verify your domain for Elastic Email. Feel free to read that as you set it up, and reach out to Cloudways support if you need any help.

9. Configure backups for your Cloudways website

Cloudways lets you create two types of backups: server backups and application backups.

Server backups save everything on your server, including all applications and databases, whereas application backups save all the contents of the public_html and private_html files of that specific application.

What I like about Cloudways’s backup functionality is that it stores backup files off-site as an added security measure. That way, even if your server goes down or you lose access to all the backups on it, you still have an off-site copy that you can use to restore your website.

Let’s look at how to set up backups in Cloudways.

Inside your server management dashboard, select Backups and configure backup settings like schedule time, frequency, retention time, and whether you want to save backups locally.

Click Save Changes to update your backup settings.

That’s it. Cloudways will automatically create and save a backup based on your selected settings. You can return to the same place to restore the backup anytime.

You can also take an application-level backup when you need to make a major change to your website, like adding a new theme or custom code. Here’s how to do it.

Go to the application management dashboard using the Applications icon in the top right corner or select View all Applications from the Cloudways dashboard home.

Then, select Backup and Restore and click Take Backup Now in the Backup section.

Once the backup is complete, it’ll display in a dropdown menu in the Restore section of your application management dashboard.

To restore your backup, select the backup from the Restore menu and click Restore Application Now.

That’s how easy it is to work with backups in Cloudways. You don’t have to be a technical genius or use the command line. How cool is that?

10. Test your website and go live

With your website up and running, you’re almost ready to go live. But before you do, it helps to run a few performance tests to make sure everything works smoothly.

There are a few different ways to test your Cloudways website. The easiest way is to use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to test your website performance and look for recommendations for improvement. Here’s how you can do it.

Open PageSpeed Insights, paste your website URL in the URL field, and click Analyze.

Wait a few seconds as Google tests your page using a simulated mobile and desktop device.

Scroll down to the Diagnostics section and click the downward arrow to expand the description of each recommendation to learn how you can improve your website performance.

With your website ready and performance tested, you’re ready to go live!

2026 Cloudways tutorial for beginners: Next steps

I’ve explained everything you need to know about setting up a website with Cloudways and shared tips and tricks to help you get the most out of hosting your website on Cloudways.

Now, it’s your turn to act.

Sign up for Cloudways hosting and use the code LAUNCH25 to get 25% off on your first two months.

Remember, Cloudways offers a free migration for every new account. So take advantage of that offer if you have an existing site that you want to migrate to Cloudways.

If this is your first time setting up a WordPress or WooCommerce site, consider reading these tutorials I’ve written:

1. How to use Kadence AI
2. How to use Kadence Theme as a beginner
3. How to use Kadence Blocks as a beginner
4. How to use Kadence Shop Kit with WooCommerce

And if you have questions about Cloudways or need help setting up your site, reach out to me using our contact form. I’m here to help!