Cloudways Autonomous Review 2024: Kubernetes + Cloudflare Enterprise

Cloudways Autonomous is the new autoscaling WordPress hosting, launched this year, to handle traffic spikes more effectively than ever before. Now, Cloudways has auto-scalable hosting solutions like WP Engine and Kinsta. Interestingly, Cloudways Autonomous has the same pricing as WP Engine and Kinsta auto-scalable hosting solutions.

Here’s a quick overview of Cloudways’ Autonomous salient features:

• Unlimited PHP Workers for optimal website performance.
• Kubernetes-based auto-scaling and load balancing.
• Cloudflare’s edge cache and global CDN deliver the fastest experience.
• Integrated Object Cache Pro allows cart pages to load fast.
• Enable different PHP versions for different applications.
• Automated backups and staging for enhanced reliability.
• SSL, WAF, and Unmetered DDoS mitigation to block attackers and threats.

To give you some clarity on our testing methodology, I hosted a website with Cloudways Autonomous and monitored its performance, including speed, uptime, and load handling. I then compared the data with that of the Cloudways regular website and the WP Engine website.

Cloudways Autonomous Summary:

Cloudways Autonomous is certainly a great option for hosting high-traffic WordPress websites. I can say this based on my testing results. I tested my Cloudways Autonomous website by sending 500 constant client loads. The website handled the traffic really well without any errors maintaining an average response time of 20 ms.

Besides, I measured the TTFB of my Cloudways Autonomous website from 22 North American locations every 1-minute interval with a total of 43800 tests in one month. The website scored an average TTFB of 348 ms, which is certainly a good score.

Cloudways Autonomous Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• The setup is simple and takes just a few clicks.
• Load handling is exceptionally good.
• Free Cloudflare Enterprise CDN
• Free Object Cache Pro
• No extra fees are charged for backups

Cons:

• A limited number of data centers.
• The same solution is available for the same price with WP Engine and Kinsta.

Cloudways Autonomous Pricing:

Cloudways Autonomous pricing is very similar to that of WP Engine, and Kinsta. Cloudways Autonomous has seven different plans and you can start for as low as $35, available at an introductory price of $24 with 1 WordPress Application, 15 GB Disk Space, 30K Unique Visits, and 100 GB Bandwidth.

However, if you want to host more than 1 website, you can consider going with Plan 2 for $90, available for $63 with 3 WordPress Applications, 25 GB Disk Space, 70K Unique Visits, and 200 GB Bandwidth.

Cloudways Autonomous Performance:

I have analyzed the Cloudways Autonomous Performance through some important tests including Speed (TTFB), Uptime, Load Handling, and Core Web Vitals.

Speed (TTFB):

I measured the TTFB of my Cloudways Autonomous website from 22 North American locations for every 1-minute interval for a total of 43,800 tests a month. The website recorded a TTFB of 335 ms, which is comparatively better than Cloudways Flexible TTFB results. Hence, Cloudways Autonomous is ideal for high-speed web hosting.

Uptime:

Next, it’s important to discuss the Uptime of Cloudways Autonomous Solutions. I tested the uptime of my Cloudways Autonomous website for two consecutive months this year, starting from April and the website maintained a constant uptime of 100%.

Load Handling:

The Load Handling test gives a lot of clarity on web hosting performance. I tested my Cloudways Autonomous website by sending 500 constant client loads per minute to my website.

The website performed exceptionally well, with an average response time of 20 ms and no errors or timeouts. The maximum response time was 490 ms, while the minimum response time was 9 ms. Hence, Cloudways Autonomous has excellent load-handling ability and is ideal for high-traffic WordPress websites.

Core Web Vitals:

The Core Web Vitals test is another important performance test for any website. When I conducted the Core Web Vitals test on my Cloudways Autonomous website, the results were impressive, with the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) of 568 ms, a Total Blocking Time of 0 ms, and a Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) of 0.08.

Cloudways Autonomous Features:

Autoscaling and High-Availability:

Cloudways Autonomous uses Kubernetes-based autoscaling and load-balancing to seamlessly adjust the resources according to websites’ requirements, especially during traffic spikes.

With resources being automatically scaled up and down, it ensures high availability for websites.

Integrated Cloudflare Enterprise:

With Integrated Cloudflare Enterprise, websites can capitalize on Cloudflare’s edge cache and global CDN to ensure exceptionally fast content delivery regardless of geo-location.

Integrated Object Cache Pro:

The Integrated Object Cache Pro keeps your WordPress admin environment fast and responsive. Besides, the feature helps your Checkout and Cart pages load faster for an enhanced user experience.

Automated Backups & Staging:

Automated Backups have become an essential feature for all websites these days. Cloudways Autonomous comes with an easy-to-use Automated Backup option. Besides, it has a user-friendly Staging feature with a 1-click push and pull.

Security (SSL, WAF, DDoS):

Cloudways Autonomous offers rock-solid security, characterized by SSL, Cloudflare’s WAF, and Unmetered DDoS mitigation at layers 3, 4, and 7 to keep websites safe from attackers and other online threats.

Cloudways Autonomous has an Advantage Over WP Engine:

While I was closely studying the Cloudways Autonomous solution, comparing it with WP Engine and Kinsta, I came across one Cloudways Autonomous advantage, which I must mention. Cloudways Autonomous offers a better performance than WPEngine for the same price.

It’s the Cloudflare setup with full-page caching in Cloudways Autonomous that actually makes this big difference. Now, you have to understand that WP Engine doesn’t come with this feature for free and rather has the feature as an add-on called Global Edge Security. To use the add-on, you have to pay an additional fee of $30 per month. Hence, you can see that Cloudways Autonomous has a leading edge over WP Engine.

Conclusion

As you have seen in this post, Cloudways Autonomous has addressed many of the issues that existed in Cloudways Flexible solutions. For example, autoscaling was missing in Cloudways Flexible solutions but now, it’s seamless with Cloudways Autonomous.

Further, Cloudways Autonomous has put a lot of emphasis on making the setup way easier and quicker than before such as the CDN integration, which is just a lot simpler now than the manual CDN integration in Cloudways Flexible. Cloudways Autonomous certainly makes a good alternative to WP Engine and Kinsta.