Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform founded in 2012, enabling users to deploy web applications on servers from providers like DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, Linode and Vultr.^[2][3][4][5]

Cloudways

Trade name	Cloudways
Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Cloud computing Web hosting
Founded	August 1, 2012; 13 years ago (2012-08-01)
Founders	Aaqib Gadit Pere Hospital
Headquarters	New York , United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Paddy Srinivasan (CEO) Suhaib Zaheer (SVP)[1]
Products	ThunderStack server stack
Brands	Cloudways
Services	Managed cloud hosting
Parent	DigitalOcean

History

Cloudways was founded in 2012 by Aaqib Gadit and Pere Hospital in Malta.^[6][7][8] It was designed to simplify cloud hosting with automation, managed services, and an easy-to-use interface.^[9][10] It grew by serving small and medium-sized businesses, digital agencies and e-commerce platforms needing cloud solutions without direct server management.^[5][11][12]

Acquisition by DigitalOcean

In August 2022, DigitalOcean Holdings Inc. announced its intention to acquire Cloudways for $350 million in cash.^[13][14][15] The acquisition was completed in September 2022 and aligned with DigitalOcean's^[16][17][18] strategy to enhance its offerings for small and medium-sized enterprises through integrated managed hosting services.^[19][20][21]

Services and features

Cloudways provides managed cloud hosting that supports deployment on leading infrastructure providers such as DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud and Linode.^[22][23][24] Its proprietary Thunder Stack includes Nginx, Apache, Memcached, Varnish, Redis, and PHP-FPM to optimize application performance.^[25] The platform manages server setup, maintenance, security patches, backups, and performance monitoring.^[7][21][26]

In 2022, Cloudways integrated Cloudflare services to offer advanced features such as CDN, DDoS protection, and a Web Application Firewall (WAF).^[27][28][29]