Head to head
Hostinger Cloud vs Cloudways
Hostinger Cloud Startup is cheaper for the first four years and gives you far more server for the money. Cloudways is cheaper every month after that and never asks you to prepay. If you will commit 48 months upfront and can live with $25.99/mo from month 49, Hostinger wins on cost. If you want a bill you can stop tomorrow at a price that cannot move, Cloudways wins on principle — and on cost from month 58.
This is not a like-for-like comparison, and pretending otherwise is how most “vs” pages go wrong. Hostinger Cloud Startup is a fixed plan on Hostinger’s own infrastructure sold on a 48-month promotional term. Cloudways is a management layer over a server you rent by the hour from DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS or Google Cloud. What follows compares the cheapest sensible configuration of each, then the specs, then the policies.
The cost table, month by month
| Cumulative cost | Hostinger Cloud Startup | Cloudways DO 1 GB | Cloudways DO 2 GB | Cloudways DO 4 GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 months | $96 | $132 | $288 | $552 |
| 24 months | $192 | $264 | $576 | $1,104 |
| 48 months | $384 | $528 | $1,152 | $2,208 |
| 60 months | $695 | $660 | $1,440 | $2,760 |
| 72 months | $1,007 | $792 | $1,728 | $3,312 |
| 96 months | $1,631 | $1,056 | $2,304 | $4,416 |
Hostinger: $7.99/mo for 48 months paid upfront, then $25.99/mo. Cloudways: list rate throughout, no term. Add-ons excluded on both sides. Verified September 2026.
The Hostinger column is the classic shape: a very low number for four years, then a step. The Cloudways columns are straight lines. Against the 1 GB server the lines cross at month 58; against the 2 GB or 4 GB server they never cross, because $24 and $46 a month are both above Hostinger’s $25.99 renewal rate.
What you get for the money
| Hostinger Cloud Startup | Cloudways DO 1 GB | Cloudways DO 4 GB | |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM / CPU | 4 GB · 4 cores | 1 GB · 1 vCPU | 4 GB · 2 vCPU |
| Storage | 100 GB NVMe | 25 GB SSD | 80 GB SSD |
| Transfer | Unmetered | 1 TB/mo | 4 TB/mo |
| Websites | 100 | Unlimited (resource-bound) | Unlimited (resource-bound) |
| Billing | 48 months upfront | Hourly, monthly in arrears | Hourly, monthly in arrears |
| Refund | 30 days | None (3-day free trial) | None (3-day free trial) |
| Free domain | 1 year | No | No |
| Included | Add-on, from ~$1.50/mailbox | Add-on, from ~$1.50/mailbox | |
| Backups | Daily + on-demand, included | Hourly–weekly; off-site $0.033/GB | Hourly–weekly; off-site $0.033/GB |
| Datacenter choice | Hostinger’s ~10 regions | Per server, 150+ across 5 clouds | Per server, 150+ across 5 clouds |
| Support | 24/7 chat, no phone | 24/7 chat; advanced tier paid | 24/7 chat; advanced tier paid |
On resources alone this is not close. Hostinger’s Cloud Startup gives you 4 GB of RAM and four cores for $7.99 a month; Cloudways’ $11 server has a quarter of each. Hostinger also bundles email, a domain year and daily backups that Cloudways sells separately or not at all. If you are choosing on what the money buys, Hostinger is the plain answer.
What Cloudways sells is control and the absence of a commitment. Every server is yours to size, move between clouds, clone for staging or delete at 3pm on a Tuesday with the bill stopping at 3pm on a Tuesday. There is no 48-month cheque and no month-49 invoice that is three times what you were paying. For a business that budgets monthly, that predictability is a feature that does not show up in a spec table.
The policies that matter later
Refunds
Hostinger: 30 days. Domain registrations, renewals, transfers, privacy protection and paid support services are excluded. VPS refunds require a 180-day gap between requests.
Cloudways: No money-back guarantee. You pay hourly in arrears, so cancelling stops the meter; nothing is refunded because nothing is prepaid. The 3-day free trial (no card required) is the try-before-you-buy.
Backups
Hostinger: Cloud plans include daily and on-demand backups at no extra cost.
Cloudways: Server-level backups configurable from hourly to weekly, retained 1–4 weeks, plus on-demand backups. Off-site backup storage is a paid add-on at $0.033 per GB per month — a 5 GB site costs about 17¢ a month. No restore fee is documented.
Migration
Hostinger: Free and staff-performed, unlimited sites, on every plan. You submit a form and their migration team does the work.
Cloudways: WordPress and WooCommerce migrations are free and staff-performed. Non-WordPress applications: one free, then $99 per application. Unlimited self-service moves via the Cloudways WordPress Migrator plugin.
Support
Hostinger: 24/7 live chat and tickets. No phone support at all — Hostinger states this explicitly.
Cloudways: 24/7 live chat and tickets free. Advanced support is a paid add-on (list $100/mo, discounted at the time of writing) and Premium support starts at $500/mo or 10% of your invoice.
Who should pick which
Pick Hostinger Cloud Startup if…
- You can prepay 48 months and want the most server for the least money
- You want email, a domain and backups bundled rather than bolted on
- You are moving up from Hostinger shared hosting and want to stay in hPanel
Pick Cloudways if…
- You will not prepay years upfront, or you expect the site to change size
- You want to choose the cloud provider and the exact datacenter
- You have been burned by a renewal invoice before and want a price that cannot move quietly
- You need staging, server cloning or SSH access as standard
Hostinger: the 48-month term is pre-selected at checkout, and the plan renews at $25.99/mo — more than three times the intro rate. Set a reminder for month 46.
Cloudways: the honest base price grows once you add email, off-site backups and Cloudflare Enterprise. Budget the $11 server as $15–$19 if you want the lot.
Check Hostinger Cloud pricing Start the Cloudways free trial
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Sources
Every factual claim on this page is checkable on the provider’s own site. Prices and policies were verified September 2026 and change without notice.