Amazon Lightsail vs. Cloudways

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Lightsail
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Lightsail is a virtual private server (VPS) designed to present an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers everything needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan.
$3.50
per month
Cloudways
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Cloudways, by DigitalOcean, offers a range of managed hosting solutions, including managed Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and others, with a choice of infrastructure providers and media delivery via CloudwaysVPN, and CloudwaysBot notification system.
$10
per month
Pricing
Amazon LightsailCloudways
Editions & Modules
512 MB Linux
$3.50
per month
1 GB Linux
$5.00
per month
2 GB Linux
$10.00
per month
Starting Price
$10.00
per month
Maximum Price
$274.33
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon LightsailCloudways
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee$25 per application
Additional DetailsCloudways offers 1 free migration to all customers. For any further migration needs the customer can use our free WordPress migration plugin and do it themselves. Or they can request paid migration services for any PHP based application, which start at $25 per application.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon LightsailCloudways
Features
Amazon LightsailCloudways
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Lightsail
8.8
6 Ratings
7% above category average
Cloudways
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime10.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling5.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.34 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support10.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls10.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation10.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon LightsailCloudways
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
SiteGround
SiteGround
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 7.3 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon LightsailCloudways
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(6 ratings)
9.5
(6 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.4
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.7
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon LightsailCloudways
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
We utilized Amazon Lightsail to get a web application proof of concept up and running. It's easy to set up, requires minimal configuration, and lets us to concentrate on the coding. It's designed to help you get started fast and easily, but it's not designed for corporate applications or workloads.
Read full review
DigitalOcean
When you dont know how to set up a cloud server technically, (The LAMP stack or the PHP settings etc) Cloudways comes handy. You can easily modify the server settings with one click.
Less Appropriate - If you want to save costs, go for direct cloud providers. Setting up technical stuff is a one time job.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Its provide pre configured Apps and operating system
  • Very easy to use interface and the cost is also very low
  • Integration with other AWS services like route53, S3 etc
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • Automatic Daily One Click Restore Backups
  • Integrated CDN
  • Easy & Intuitive Alternate Interface to cPanel and WHM
  • Very Affordable for High Specs
  • 24/7 Customer Support is Extremely Helpful
  • Serve & Application Management is a Breeze
  • Choose from Multiple Server Locations
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • slow
  • complex integration to AWS Cloudwatch - complex setup required
  • No IPv6, a big downside
  • less value compared with Linode or Digital Ocean
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • Their free alternative to WP Rocket could be made more user-friendly and easier to understand
  • Create a function to automatically report heavy usage to specific email IDs
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
My overall experience with Amazon Lightsail is very good, and the online community of Lightsail users is very large and its helps to resolve any kind of issue i faced on my server. I also like the integration of other AWS services with Amazon Lightsail like we can export our Lightsail instance into ec2 server using snapshots.
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DigitalOcean
They are constantly improving their dashboards and interface to make it easier to use and find the things that we use the most. It's a lot of features to pack in to one UI and they have done a great job of making it user friendly. Their layout is intuitive and easy to learn and is extremely granular. We are able to control every aspect of our websites and applications from an individual level from scaling, to cache, to DNS, security, WAF, and everything in between.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
DigitalOcean
Technical support is just 2-3 clicks away and the Cloudways homepage and the operators are available almost 24/7. They also are able to answer any kind of question related to their services, whether economical or technical. I sometimes made mistakes while using their services and they have been keen to help me, and fixed my problems really fast.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Lightsail is a great platform. Before we started using it, we were using AWS EC2 instances as our primary servers after being dissatisfied with other providers. After Amazon Lightsail's introduction, we were able to reduce our operating costs, improve our quality assurance tasks, and provide much more efficient and better apps with our microservices architecture.
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DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean: harder to set up, hands-on maintenance and controll, but needs work-hours of a linux expert. GoDaddy: absolutely worst of all providers, charges stupid people money for nothing-services. Horrible products in my opinion. HostGator: okay-ish hosting, nowhere to the power of Cloudways, the customer support also is much less knowledgeable. I would advise against all managed hostings. Go managed-cloud instead.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Hosting a production application on Lightsail will guarantee you a loss
  • Saved lots of time for our prototyping
  • Other VPS providers are better
Read full review
DigitalOcean
  • We were able to reduce load on our main server.
  • By migrating social sentiment platform to cloudways, we were able to scale and run it effeciently.
  • It saved lot of time as well in terms of server management.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Cloudways Screenshots

Screenshot of Managed ServicesScreenshot of Team Management