Verpex Hosting vs Cloudways vs A2 Hosting

For the last couple of years, I have used Cloudways hosting and A2 Hosting  as my primary hosting providers, but today I cancelled both of them and moved to Verpex hosting. In this post, I’m going to describe what led me to this decision and how Verpex beat both Cloudways and A2. So, this is my Verpex vs. Cloudways vs. A2 hosting review.

PS! Yeah, I know it’s not your regular comparison and therefore be warned: I just compared those features and details that were important to my setup. Your need may be different and you have to consider this while making your decision.

VIDEO: Verpex Hosting vs Cloudways vs A2 Hosting

If you would like to see my video overview (with speed tests), take a look at the video, below.

Cloudways and A2 hosting cons

I have 5 websites that need to be hosted somewhere. Some of those sites are small (1000-5000 page views per month) and some are quite a bit bigger (ca 20K page views per month). So, nothing really heavy and resource consuming.

Also, I’m a freelancer, and my daily job is to develop websites for my customers. This means that, at any given time, I have ca 5-10 projects going on, which also means that, at any given time, I need to host at least 10 websites.

Price

So, two years ago, I decided to test cloud hosting options and started with Cloudways for my main sites. I chose the VULTR 1GB plan for 13USD/month, but since the 1GB plan isn’t suitable for more than a couple of sites, for my customer production sites, I also had to choose the A2 hosting Turbo MAX plan for 16.99USD/month.

Total price: ca 30USD per month.

Quite pricey, isn’t it?

Resource limits

After installing my fourth site in Cloudways, I discovered that every time I published or updated a post on this site, I received the message “Error establishing a database connection” and my site was down for a couple of minutes.

After contacting Cloudways support (which was always fast to respond), I was told that the 1GB plan was not suitable for production sites, and I would need to scale up to the 2GB plan (26USD/month).

Total price: 26USD for Clouways + 16.99 for A2 = ca 43USD per month

That would be even pricier than before.

A2 hosting has inode limits

Somewhere around the same time, I received an email from my A2 hosting, which mentioned that, “Your inode limit has been exceeded.”

Now, If you didn’t know, all shared hosting providers have a inode limit. Basically, inode limit is the amount of files you are allowed to keep on your server. Every time you install a theme, plugin or upload images, the inode limit is used.

My A2 plan had a limit of 600 000 inodes, which is basically ca 20 WordPress sites. Of course, it depends on the site size and the amount of plugins you have installed, but for me, the limit was reached with ca 20 sites – which meant I needed to delete some sites from the server.

PS! Verpex Hosting has no inode limits.

Cloudways doesn’t provide email hosting

For example, if my domain is wpsimplehacks.com, and it’s hosted with Cloudways, in order to get admin@wpsimplehacks.com email, I would be obliged to either:

• Purchase a separate email hosting add on (ca 1-2USD per month)

or

• Host my emails elsewhere (in A2 hosting, for example)

Either way, you need to mess with DNS records and MX/SPF records, which can be a difficult task for a beginner.

Total price: 26USD for Cloudways + 16.99USD for A2 hosting + time spent messing with emails.

PS! Verpex hosting and A2 hosting use cPanel; hence, email setup is really easy.

Cloudways isn’t beginner-friendly

However, A2 hosting is simple:

• Add your domain or subdomain
• SSL certificate is automatically generated
• Use WordPress auto installer
• Log in
• Repeat if you need to add another site (because it takes only a couple of minutes)

Cloudways isn’t as simple, because if you create a site (add application), you end up with an address that looks like https://wordpress-908876-cloudwaysapps.com.

If you would like to display your own domain or subdomain instead of this, then again you would need to go to your domain registrar and add correct nameservers, etc. It’s tedious and not especially beginner-friendly.

PS! Verpex hosting and A2 hosting use cPanel, which is much more beginner-friendly.

Verpex hosting pros

All I described, above, led me to the decision that I would have to find a better hosting solution. Preferably cloud hosting because:

• Shared hosting means your resources are divided among other servers, meaning you will share your resources with others
• A server that’s being used by multiple users can sometimes end up hosting thousands of sites, which also means slower site speeds
• Cloud hosting allows you to use the resources of multiple servers, which means faster sites

So, I started Googling and stumbled on Verpex hosting. Here is a brief overview of what they offer.

Fully managed cloud hosting

Now, you may ask, “What is managed hosting?” Basically, managed hosting is a solution where your hosting company does all the heavy lifting, ensuring that everything works as smoothly as possible. For example, they take care of the:

• Automatic backups
• OS updates
• Cybersecurity threat
• Fully managed hardware
• Fast and reliable support
• Uptime
• Virus and spam protections
• Free migration from your old server
• Recovery
• Etc.

Verpex runs their servers on top of well known providers:

• Linode
• DigitalOcean
• LeaseWeb
• Vultr
• OVH

Trustworthy service

Prior to Googling it, I had no knowledge of Verpex hosting. What I found out was:

• Launched in 2018, they currently have 50+ employees in 3 countries
• They have data centers all over the world
• Their office is in London
• Truspilot gives them a 4.6 average rating (based on 96 reviews).
• Hostadvice gives them a 4.9 average rating (based on 107 reviews).

Reasonable pricing plans

Verpex has four pricing plans, and their lowest hosting plan starts at 5USD/month (for 1 website). These are their regular web hosting prices at the moment of writing this post.

Website hosting plans

Iron	Bronze	Silver	Gold
5 USD/month 1 websites 10 GB Bandwidth 1 GB SSD Disk space 1 GB LVE memory limit	5.99 USD/month 1 Websites Unlimited bandwidth 50 GB SSD Disk space 1 GB LVE memory limit	9.99 USD/month 5 websites Unlimited bandwidth 100 GB SSD Disk space 2 GB LVE memory limit	14.99 USD/month 10 websites Unlimited bandwidth Unlimited SSD Disk space 2 GB LVE memory limit

As you can see, even the Silver package offers more for the money than the Cloudways 13 USD/month package. Also, if you pay biennially or triennially, you can save up to 20%.

Reseller hosting plans

Although the Verpex hosting regular plans are priced reasonably, I need to host more than 10 websites at a time. Hence, I took a look at their reseller hosting plans.

PS! If you pay biennially or triennially, you can save up to 20%.

Start-up reseller	Bronze	Silver
18 USD/month 15 cPanel Accounts Unlimited bandwidth 50 GB SSD Disk space 2 GB LVE memory limit per cPanel	29.99 USD/month 50 cPanel Accounts Unlimited bandwidth 250 GB SSD Disk space 2 GB LVE memory limit per cPanel	59.99 USD/month 50 cPanel Accounts Unlimited bandwidth Unlimited SSD Disk space 4 GB LVE memory limit per cPanel

Please note that every cPanel can have unlimited websites, and every cPanel has 2GB of guaranteed LVE memory. That’s much more than Cloudways and A2 offer with their pricing plans. For example, the cheapest A2 hosting reseller plan costs 24.99 USD and offers 100GB of SSD and 600GB of bandwidth.

For me, the Star-up reseller package was more than I hoped for; therefore, I signed up for that.

Verpex Hosting is beginner-friendly

It took me ca 6 minutes from signing-up to installing my first WordPress site. No hassle, no issues whatsoever. I didn’t have to mess with generating SSL certificates or hassle with name servers in order to set up my emails.

Also, if you have previously used cPanel, there’s no learning curve. If you’re not familiar with cPanel, it’s easy to use and Verpex has good documentation that covers every aspect.

Verpex has 24/7 support system

One of the most important aspects of every service I use is the support system – I need it to be fast and reliable. Before signing up, I tested Verpex’ live chat. I started a chat two times on different days. Both times, I was answered quickly and to the point.

After signing up, I tested their support ticketing system by opening two random tickets (at different times). For the first ticket, I got my answer within 7 minutes(!!!). For the second ticket, I got my answer within 90 minutes, which is also really fast.

Free migration

It doesn’t matter how many sites you have. The Verpex team will help you migrate all of your existing websites (regardless of how many sites you currently have) over to your Verpex without any extra cost.

Daily backups

One of the worst things that could happen is that something weird happens to your site and you have no backup to use to restore your site. Fortunately, Verpex offers daily backups (two per day), which you can use if anything happens.

Worldwide data centers

Verpex has a network of servers, which means you deliver a speedier website wherever your customers are located. Currently, they offer the opportunity to host your website in more than 12 locations around the world:

• London
• US – East
• Canada
• India
• Australia
• Singapore
• South America
• US – West
• Central Europe

Verpex has 45 day, money-back guarantee

That means if you’re not satisfied with the service, you can cancel your account during the first 45 days and Verpex will refund your money.

Verpex hosting offers fast loading speed

One of the things I liked best about the A2 and Cloudways was that they offered fast loading speeds. Therefore, right after migrating my sites to Verpex, I started with the speed tests. Long story short: Verpex shows better results in the tests than Cloudways. See the results in the next chapter.

Verpex loading speed vs Cloudways loading speed

First things first: Since my A2 used shared hosting, I did not compare my Verpex setup with it. I wanted to compare cloud vs cloud setup; hence, I compared Verpex loading speed vs Cloudways loading speed.

In order to make the test as fair as possible:

• I created 100% cloned versions of my sites
• I deactivated all cache and other speed-up plugins
• I deactivated all ads and analytics scripts

I used GTMetrix for front-end tests and Performance-Analyser Chrome extension for backend tests.

Speed test #1: Verpex vs Cloudways

First, I tested my own site (wpsimplehacks.com.). Here are the results.

Cloudways frontend loading time:

• Time to first byte: 625ms
• Largest contenful paint: 1.2s
• Performance: 95%
• Structure: 94%

Cloudways backend loading time:

• Loading time: 2.0s
• Requests: 77
• Time to first byte: 1.3s

Verpex hosting results:

• Time to first byte: 474ms
• Largest contenful paint: 1.0s
• Performance: 97%
• Structure: 94%

Verpex hosting backend loading time:

• Loading time: 1.4s
• Requests: 76
• Time to first byte: 481ms

Speed test #2: Verpex vs Cloudways

Next, I tested my other site speakandconquer.com

Cloudways frontend loading time:

• Time to first byte: 491ms
• Largest contenful paint: 1.0s
• Performance: 97%
• Structure: 96%

Cloudways backend loading time:

• Loading time: 2.0s
• Requests: 77
• Time to first byte: 1.3s

Verpex hosting frontend loading time:

• Time to first byte:389ms
• Largest contenful paint: 1.1s
• Performance: 97%
• Structure: 92%

Verpex hosting backend loading time:

• Loading time: 1.0s
• Requests: 70
• Time to first byte: 407ms

So, as you see, if we compare Verpex loading time with Cloudways loading time, Verpex seems to be a bit faster. Once again, all this may differ based on the plugins and other stuff you have on your site but, at least for me, these results were satisfiying.

To sum it up: Verpex Hosting vs Cloudways vs A2 Hosting

Choose a web host that best suits your needs. I chose Verpex hosting’s reseller package because – compared to Cloudways or A2 hosting – it offers me more and the value I can get for my money is larger.

Long story short: since using Verpex:

• Instead of paying 43 USD/month for two separate web hosts, I’ll pay 18 USD/month
• I have a fast server with fast loading times
• cPanel is user-friendly, which means I don’t have to mess with name servers, etc.
• I have a fully managed cloud host
• There are no inode limits
• All my sites have guaranteed 2GB LVE memory and fast SSD discs
• Support is fast and to the point
• If needed, I can scale up with reasonable price