Catalyst2 vs Cloudways
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Catalyst2 and Cloudways.
Quick Verdict
3.5/5
Catalyst2
0 reviews
3.9/5
Cloudways
0 reviews
Cloudways is rated higher (3.9 vs 3.5). Catalyst2 is a UK managed hosting company offering carbon-neutral shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting. London datacenter, ISO 27001, and specialist WordPress hosting for UK businesses. Managed hosting layer that sits on top of DigitalOcean, AWS, GCP, Vultr, or Linode. You get managed control with one-click staging, Breeze caching, and 24/7 support.
Catalyst2 UK managed hosting with carbon-neutral operations | Cloudways Managed cloud hosting on your choice of provider | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.5 (0 reviews) | 3.9 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | paid |
| Starting price | From $1.92/mo✓ | From $11/mo |
| Best for | UK businesses that want hosting fully managed and supported by UK engineers, with data, contract, and support all in one jurisdiction | Agencies, freelancers and SMBs running WordPress/WooCommerce/Magento/Laravel who want managed cloud hosting with provider choice and no ops staff |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | 1 vCPU | 1 vCPU |
| RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB |
| Storage | 20 GB | 25 GB✓ |
| Bandwidth | 0.3 TB/mo | 1 TB/mo✓ |
| SLA uptime | 99.9% | 99.99%✓ |
| Data-center count | 1 | — |
| €/vCPU/mo | €1.92✓ | €11.00 |
| €/GB RAM/mo | €1.92✓ | €11.00 |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | ["London, UK (Telehouse)"] | United StatesUnited KingdomGermanyNetherlandsSingaporeAustralia+1 |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | managed optionbackups includedeu datacentergdpr compliant | managed optionddos protectionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter |
| Visit Catalyst2 → | Visit Cloudways → | |
Catalyst2
Pros
- + Fully managed with 24/7 UK-based phone support and dedicated account managers
- + Backups (7-day rolling offsite), security updates, firewalling, and migrations included
- + Telehouse London platform: VMware on Dell/SSD, duplicated 10G network, ISO 27001, IPv6 since 2006
- + Written SLAs: 99.9% on VPS, 100% network uptime agreement on dedicated servers
- + Operating since January 2000 with a long track record and UK-only data chain
Cons
- - Premium pricing — 1 vCPU/1GB managed VPS at £74.99/mo versus unmanaged providers at a fraction of that
- - Single London datacentre; no US or APAC regions
- - Traditional tooling: cPanel/Plesk, no hourly billing, no API-first or IaC workflow
- - Entry plans are small (20 GB disk, 300 GB bandwidth) and prices have risen sharply since 2022
Cloudways
Pros
- + Choose the underlying cloud (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, GCP) and region per server
- + Entry pricing from $11/month on DigitalOcean with hourly billing and no contract
- + Managed stack with free migration, staging/cloning, automated backups, caching and 24/7 human support
- + Unlimited sites and visits per server on Flexible plans
- + Autonomous line adds real autoscaling, Cloudflare Enterprise CDN and a no-credit-card 3-day trial
Cons
- - Management markup of roughly $5-$35/month over buying the same server direct
- - No formal uptime SLA on the Flexible line
- - AWS/GCP plans include only 1-2 GB transfer; overage at $0.12/GB (AWS) adds up fast
- - Root-level control is limited — no custom kernels, bare metal, GPUs or own object storage
- - Owned by DigitalOcean since 2022 while reselling competing clouds — a roadmap consideration
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