Cloudways vs. Google Domains

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cloudways
Score 9.6 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
Google Domains
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$12
per year
Pricing
CloudwaysGoogle Domains
Editions & Modules
Starting Price
$10.00
per month
Maximum Price
$274.33
per month
.com
$12.00
per year
.net
$12.00
per year
.org
$12.00
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CloudwaysGoogle Domains
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup Fee$25 per applicationNo setup fee
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
Best Alternatives
CloudwaysGoogle Domains
Small Businesses
Flywheel
Flywheel
Score 9.9 out of 10
Shopify
Shopify
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 9.2 out of 10
Shopify
Shopify
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.5 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CloudwaysGoogle Domains
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(5 ratings)
9.0
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(2 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
CloudwaysGoogle Domains
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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Google
[Google Domains is] very simplistic and easy to use, so it's very straightforward to register a new domain but it doesn't have some features that other services provide. Also, the integration with other Google Services and domain search tool is amazing.
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Pros
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
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Google
  • Process of buying a domain with Google Domains is easy
  • Payment was simple - can use Google Wallet and other forms of payment.
  • After purchase, you can quickly build a website with one of their partners.
  • Email forwarding add-on for free.
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Cons
DigitalOcean
  • More flexible notifications
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Google
  • Google Domains is pretty good at pre-solving email faux pas such as reply all mishaps. Perhaps a built-in email monitoring tool such as knowing when a customer opens up an email would be good. You can get these features with integrations, but what if it was an internal Google product? Might be nice
  • Email masking was a bit difficult to figure out, but nothing you can't discover with a few Google sessions.
  • I wish I could see more insight into time zones that my customers are in, or scheduling calls on Gcal with timezone awareness. I know this is super hard to code around though.
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Likelihood to Renew
DigitalOcean
No answers on this topic
Google
Unless the product goes away, I'll continue using it.
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Usability
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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Google
When on desktop or mobile, the minimalist design and functionality of Google Domains is welcome. Because we use Google Workplace, the integration is simple. Management is fast and easy, and it offers on-the-go ease. Google is very consistent in its user interfaces and usability, so there’s no wasted time in a new learning curve. And the price is right
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Support Rating
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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Google
I've never actually had to use support because everything has been very straightforward and I have not had a glitch. I have used Google's support for other items so I can only imagine that it's probably the same support which is decent. They do take a while to get back to you.
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Alternatives Considered
DigitalOcean
Whilst all the top hosting companies have good customer service. Hostinger is the winner here for me. SiteGround has fast servers, but fees increase significantly in year two. CloudWays has excellent support at a lower price than SiteGround. They win over the other two companies because they make it very simple to manage site hosting, specifically for VPS/cloud hosting. You do not need to be as technical as you would if you're a customer of Hostinger and SiteGround. So, in short, for a fast-growing website with 6k+ sessions per month (low WP maintenance experience), I'd choose Cloudways.
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Google
GoDaddy is great, but what I really like about Google Domains when compared to GoDaddy is the ease of centralization. Our email, calendar, accounts, domain, etc was all handled in one place and that made things really easy. You could also access domains easily and quickly by being logged into your email, instead of worrying about yet another log in.
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Return on Investment
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.
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Google
  • Being able to host my URL with Google Domains is one less thing I have to worry about in my writing career.
  • I'm sure having my URL, which is my name, with Google Domains also helps people find me via Google's search engine.
  • Its ease of integration with other Google products, especially Google Apps for Business, is a huge plus for marketing and day-to-day work.
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ScreenShots

Cloudways Screenshots

Screenshot of Managed ServicesScreenshot of Team Management