How to Use The Cloudways Free Trial

Learning how to use the Cloudways Free Trial — the right way — can mean the difference between aimless drifting and taking it out on a spin (in style).

To take advantage of the Cloudways free trial, don’t start without a plan.

The Cloudways free trial is only for 3-days. What this means is that you have no time to drift, whatsoever.

TL;DR Plan:

  • Be sure to map out exactly what you’ll build on the test run: A WordPress site? A Laravel or PHP project? A WooCommerce buildup? Think long. Think hard. Don’t drift.
  • Be sure to test out things like spinning up a server (choosing from options like AWS, Google Cloud, Linode, etc.), launch a project (like WordPress), and so on — this is critical. This is also where Cloudways really stands out.
  • Take advantage of the any of the Cloudways freebies they offer (see below).

Now, on to the good stuff.

Take Cloudways out for a spin. Then, follow along.


It’s good to note that Cloudways does have plenty of freebies though. Cloudways is a fantastic way to host your websites — be it WordPress (+ WooCommerce), PHP projects, Laravel, and even Magento.

Is Cloudways Worth It?


You already know modular kitchens; now it’s time for Modular hosting. 
Cloudways is all about “modular” hosting — be it the server providers you pick, the applications (including WordPress) that you’ll host, the resources your applications use, add-ons (if any). 


What you choose is what you get. 


Note: You are essentially paying for “servers” when it comes to Cloudways (and not “applications” on a server). 

Cloudways promises you transparent pricing, loads of features (support, security, performance, and more) — along with a healthy choice (and completely free rein to choose the provider for your servers such as a choice between the following: 


AWS
Google Cloud
Vultr
Linode, and 
DigitalOcean.

How Cloudways Works

Cloudways Free Trial: Look For These. Pick On These


I wouldn’t be doing justice to Cloudways at all if I didn’t include some of the juicy features, freebies, and so much more that you’d get for each of the websites and other applications you’d host with Cloudways


First, How long is the Cloudways free trial?

Cloudways has a 3-day free trial (and WPEngine doesn’t). While you have at least 3-days to power up a server and see how it looks and feels like. 


Cloudways gives you great support, free SSL certificates, Firewalls, Monitoring, backups, and blazing-fast hosting (at scale, if needed).

Try Cloudways out for free, and see if you like what it has to offer.

Free Cloudways Migration 


Nah, you don’t have to do heroic things I had to do (like almost kill myself trying to move this site from one host to another).

Instead, just pick the free migration assistance that Cloudways provides and move from your existing host. 


Just talk to the folks at Cloudways, let them assess the needs of your application (again, not limited to just WordPress and it can include laravel, magento, PHP, and others), and they’ll do it for you.


The super easy cloud management console makes it easy for you to take a look at your newly migrated site, preview it, approve it, and it’s done.  


Built-in Free Website Optimisation


Slow web apps (and slow websites) are absolute business destroyers. 


You don’t want that, no matter what. 


Cloudways is made for delivering speedy load times for web apps. The hosting stack—aka “ThunderStack”—is a combination of Apache, Nginx, Varnish, and Memcached with optional Redis (now Cloudways also comes with Object Pro) . This way, websites use less resources, including time, to load up for visitors.

Free Cloudways CDN


Cloudways also includes Cloudways CDN for each of the plans you choose along with a “real-time” billing feature so that you get charged for the resources you use (and not a flat-rate for billing each month).

For enterprise customers, there’s also the new Cloudways Enterprise Add-on powered by Cloudflare that you should take note of — this gives you enterprise-level DDoS protection (attacks against layers 3,4,and 7) — you won’t find this anywhere (not even on Cloudflare).

For Cloudways enterprise customers, you also get enterprise-grade CDN (cloudflare’s enterprise version of CDN) with dedicated IPs.

Of course, you always get the existing Cloudways CDN.

Learn more about the enterprise offerings (available from $4.99 per domain) — cheaper than cheap web hosting, eh?


Ready.Set.Go Launch with Divi and Brizy 


Divi, by elegant themes, has a ready-to-go partnership with Cloudways.

Divi users fast Divi Hosting that works perfectly out of the box! Plus Divi and WordPress come pre-installed and configured with your license key on your first new website.

Skip the setup process and jump right into the builder! Cloudways’s hosting platform is configured to meet all of Divi’s requirements and is supported by a team of WordPress professionals.

Likewise, Cloudways also plays really well with Brizy — a drag-and-drop WordPress builder. 

You can launch WordPress websites built with Brizy and quickly host on Cloudways. 

For people like me, who use Divi, this is awesome news.  Brizy users and agencies obviously also stand to benefit from these partnerships. 

Save Money With Object Cache

If you run mission-critical, revenue-generating, high-value WordPress/WooCommerce websites, you’d be delighted to know that Cloudways offers “Object Cache Pro” — which is now a part of Cloudways core offering.

What is Object Cache Pro, you ask? It’s a Redis-powered caching technology that makes your already fast websites even faster by easing the load on your database and server hardware (Hello WordPress, I am Looking at Ya!) to deliver website and server queries faster.

Object Cache Pro also helps you seamless host large eCommerce and mission-critical sites while simultaneously nullify challenges like CPU overheads and network saturation.

Learn more about Object Cache Pro, The Cache Mechanism, and how it helps.

The Free “Breeze” WordPress Cache Plugin 


Ever felt that WordPress Cache plugins were a little too complex for your sanity?

Armed with a simple interface, the Breeze WordPress Cache plugin by Cloudways comes included if you use deploy, host, use, and manage WordPress on Cloudways. 

Breeze Free WordPress Cache performance plugin


The Breeze WordPress Cache plugin comes with Internal and static caching features to help boost page load performance of WordPress sites. 


The Breeze plugin also comes with Varnish — to help improve your WordPress page load speeds  again along with CDN (to help process content and image-heavy websites).

Of course, The Breeze WordPress Cache plugin automatically optimises and cleans up WordPress databases while reducing the size and response time of these databases. 


Plus, there are features such as: 


File Exclusion: helps you exclude file types and URLs, manage your Caching rules (regardless of how complex your WordPress site is). The plugin is engineered to perform complex tasks (with just a few clicks) along with 24×7 support to assist you, in case you hit roadblocks of any kind. 

Gzip Compression: Thankfully,Breeze by Cloudways includes Gzip compression (compresses file sizes, reduces overall file sizes, and reduces download times). 

Minification & Grouping: I know that a lot of WordPress site owners (the regular ones, like me and maybe you) struggle with things like Minification of CSS files, grouping JavaScript, and other technical aspects of site speed management.  The Breeze WordPress Cache plugin helps you easily accomplish this by combining and minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This helps reduce the size and the number of queries to the server. 


This is all part of the work you need to do for better search rankings, healthy page speeds, and to manage your website better.


The WP Breeze Cache plugin is also compatible with WooCommerce and supports WordPress  multisite applications (without extra configuration). 

More Cloudways Freebies [Forever Free]

Even without the Cloudways free trial, you get the following that you can always get access to:

Cloudways Free Resources

Loaded with webinars, case studies, and free eBooks, the Cloudways Resources section — along with the blog — is filled with resources to help you learn everything you need to. For freelancers, agencies, and also business owners, it’s a good place to wet your feet.

The eCommerce Starter Bundle

Want to take your eCommerce game to the next level or are you looking for the best possible start for your eCommerce business?

You should be taking action, instead of reading.

Here’s a pre-configured setup you need in the form of a free eCommerce starter bundle

You obviously can’t get Cloudways for free, but you can test the platform out and see how it works for you.

What do you think? Join our community and tell me how Cloudways worked out for you. Or Join me on Twitter or LinkedIn and speak up.

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