How to Cancel Cloudways in 2026

Cloudways (now owned by DigitalOcean) uses pay-as-you-go hourly billing starting at $14/month. The good news: delete your servers and billing stops immediately. No contracts, no cancellation fees, no retention games. But back up your sites first — deletion is permanent.

Option 1: Delete Servers (Stop Billing, Keep Account)

If you just want to stop paying, delete your servers. You don't need to close your entire account:

1. Log in at platform.cloudways.com
2. Go to Servers
3. Back up your sites first (see backup section below)
4. Click the server you want to remove
5. Go to the server's settings and click Delete Server
6. Confirm the deletion
7. Repeat for all servers

Billing stops immediately when the server is deleted. Since Cloudways bills hourly, you only pay for the hours your server was running.

Option 2: Close Your Entire Account

1. Delete all servers first (see above)
2. Go to platform.cloudways.com/account
3. Scroll to Close Account
4. Confirm closure

Account closure is permanent — you'll lose your account settings, team members, and any remaining credit balance.

Back Up Your Sites Before Deleting

Before deleting anything:

• Create a full backup: Cloudways Platform → Server → Backups → Take Backup Now
• Download the backup: SFTP into your server and download the backup files
• Export databases: Use phpMyAdmin or SSH to export your MySQL/MariaDB databases as .sql files
• Save SSL certificates: If you have custom SSL certs, save them. Let's Encrypt certs will need to be reissued on your new host
• Document your server config: PHP version, server size, custom Nginx/Apache rules, cron jobs, environment variables

Cheaper Alternatives to Cloudways

Cloudways is managed hosting built on top of cloud providers. You're paying a premium for their management layer. Here's what it costs to go direct:

• DigitalOcean (direct): $4-6/month for basic droplets — same infrastructure Cloudways uses, minus the management markup
• Vultr: $2.50-6/month — competitive performance, global locations
• Hetzner: $3.29-4.15/month — excellent value, EU and US data centers
• Vercel/Netlify: Free tier for static sites and JAMstack — if your site doesn't need a traditional server
• Shared hosting (Hostinger, etc.): $2-4/month — fine for small WordPress sites with low traffic

Migrating Away from Cloudways

The migration process depends on your CMS:

• WordPress: Use a migration plugin (All-in-One WP Migration, Duplicator, or UpdraftPlus). Export on Cloudways, import on new host. Takes minutes
• Laravel/PHP apps: Clone via Git, export database, set up environment variables on new server
• Static sites: Just copy your build output. Consider moving to Vercel or Netlify for free hosting
• DNS: Update your domain's A record to point to your new server's IP. Keep your old server running until DNS propagates (24-48 hours)

What Happens to Your Credit Balance

If you have promotional credit or prepaid balance, it's lost when you close your account. Use it up before closing, or just delete servers and keep the account open (it costs nothing with no servers running).