13 Best Cloud VPS Hosting Providers (Feb. 2024)

The more I learn about cloud VPS hosting, the more it intrigues me. It’s the elusive middle ground between shared and dedicated hosting. It’s affordable, reliable, and without limitations in terms of server control.

I’m not saying there aren’t times when shared or dedicated hosting makes sense, but VPS hosting, particularly when paired with cloud features, presents a mighty argument for being perhaps the most versatile, high-value hosting solution of them all.

Keep in mind, however, that VPS hosting differs from cloud hosting. I’ll outline the best cloud VPS hosting providers — those with both cloud and VPS features — and include some options with only VPS offerings.

Kamatera specializes in VPS cloud hosting with advanced tools like load balancers, block storage, and diagonal scaling. For the average website, Kamatera serves as a wonderful way to gain root access to your server while maintaining a scalable environment for growth in the future.

When selecting a VPS cloud hosting plan from Kamatera, you have options of simple, preset pricing plans (with a generous 30-day free VPS trial) or fully customized virtual private servers. Choose everything from the processing levels to the location of your data center, and customize elements like SSD storage, RAM, and the operating system.

Kamatera provides options for daily backups, a managed hosting service, and public IPs, all for more affordable pricing than a traditional dedicated server. In fact, its sub-$5 pricing plans often end up cheaper than lower-quality shared hosting plans.

With Kamatera, you can safeguard your website with a cloud firewall while gaining the resources to configure an email server. Kamatera comes highly recommended as a managed WordPress hosting solution or for using any content management system of that nature.

With a starting price of $2 per month, you can’t go wrong with the highly scalable and reliable VPS cloud hosting from IONOS. Its cloud servers have automated backups, live scaling, load balancing, and options to sign up for managed WordPress hosting.

With 10 data centers to choose from, IONOS lets you tap into your website files using virtualized VMware. You also receive unlimited traffic for your websites and access to the REST API for advanced integrations.

In terms of security, IONOS includes firewall management, backups, and a wildcard SSL to ensure safety across the board.

I recommend IONOS for smaller organizations that want a VPS but on a lower budget or for scaling projects that plan to start at the lowest price possible and increase from there. With its high-performance servers and integrations with hundreds of apps, IONOS is one of the best cloud VPS hosting providers available.

Though A2 Hosting lacks traditional cloud hosting, its VPS hosting solutions provide a solid alternative to dedicated servers. You get access to a private server under a fixed-cost model, and with root access, you control everything from security to dashboard customization.

A2 Hosting offers a unique form of scaling, allowing you to increase server resources automatically. You can also opt to upgrade manually. Either way, you always get faster Turbo servers, which, according to A2 Hosting, are 20 times faster than most cloud servers.

One major advantage of A2 Hosting is its separation of unmanaged and managed hosting plans. Some users may enjoy the unmanaged experience and save big since those plans start at less than $3 monthly.

Otherwise, managed VPS hosting plans from A2 Hosting — starting at around $35 per month — come pre-installed with a CloudLinux operating system. You also receive server backups, automated security configurations, and easy control through cPanel.

If you’d like to choose between Windows and Linux VPS operating systems, InterServer’s cloud VPS hosting plans give you that and more. Typically cheaper, the Linux OS cloud VPS plans come with significant SSD storage, memory, and transfer speeds.

The Windows server costs a little more but offers the same server features with a different interface. This way, you can choose the operating system that matches what you’re used to or integrate with certain programs.

You can install many apps through one-click buttons after signing up for the VPS hosting company. Add programs like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal in seconds.

For eCommerce stores, InterServer supports one-click installations for programs like PrestaShop, Magento, and WooCommerce. And with self-healing hardware and dedicated resources, you get the best performance for any type of website.

As my favorite cloud VPS hosting company for WordPress, Cloudways offers a managed cloud hosting experience to minimize work on your end. Cloudways handles everything from WordPress updates to website backups for you.

The WordPress-specific hosting from Cloudways includes free object caching, one-click staging, and auto-scaling. You also get load balancers and your choice of cloud VPS hosting provider: DigitalOcean, Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Google Cloud Platform.

WordPress, although handled beautifully on Cloudways, isn’t the only app you can run on the VPS hosting provider. Pick apps like WooCommerce, Drupal, or Magento, and use the developer-friendly experience with PHP.

Heavy customization comes standard with Cloudways. You pick the amount of RAM, processing, bandwidth, and storage, and data center location. Along with team management, a staging environment, and a Cloudflare add-on, Cloudways is definitely one of the best cloud VPS hosting providers for your money.

Bluehost may not offer a cloud hosting solution, but its VPS packages cater to users who want their own virtual server and performance closer to that of dedicated hosting. It stands out when compared to other VPS and cloud hosting options because users receive three dedicated IPs for unique identification of their server address.

Bluehost VPS plans have shared servers. But users of the Bluehost VPS are unaffected by the RAM, CPU core, and disk space others use. The space is entirely yours, thanks to virtualization software. You get root access and your own operating system.

Furthermore, Bluehost welcomes users seeking unlimited bandwidth, domains, and websites. A VPS from Bluehost runs everything on one simple dashboard, allowing you to manage multiple apps and websites.

The solid-state drives and the dedicated VPS power make Bluehost an excellent choice when picking a VPS. That’s particularly true if you want multi-server management capabilities or advanced access control.

Hostinger sells both cloud and VPS hosting separately. With its cloud hosting, you receive an instant setup for your website and maximum flexibility with a dedicated IP address and content delivery network. The Hostinger cloud hosting plans also have top-level data backups to keep everything secure.

When you sign up for a Hostinger cloud hosting plan, you can pick the data center location, and the VPS hosting service has integrated caching to keep your site fast. Pair that with a free domain and SSL for one of the business’s best cloud VPS hosting providers.

If you go for Hostinger’s VPS hosting without cloud features, you still receive a server with high-performance hardware, full root access, and a malware scanner.

On top of all that, the Hostinger VPS has an AI assistant to guide you through the interface and site-building process. The preset plans from Hostinger allow for cheap VPS hosting, yet Hostinger still delivers NVMe SSD disk space, weekly backups, and easy scaling.

Built with some of the fastest NVMe SSDs around, InMotion’s cloud VPS offerings boast impressive reliability and scalability. The web host sells a myriad of plans for scaling quickly. You can always find a pricing package with the right RAM, vCPU, transfer rates, and storage for your website.

In terms of security, InMotion includes a DDoS protection service and a dedicated IP address. Its high-performance cloud infrastructure ensures redundancy to keep your site active, while its operating system flexibility allows for anything from Linux to CentOS.

I consider InMotion one of the best cloud VPS hosting providers due to its ability to scale your cloud server with NVMe storage disks. You also get to choose your data center for improved speeds.

Another element that comes in handy with InMotion involves its server snapshots. InMotion takes live and scheduled snapshots of your server to make quick rollbacks if necessary.

The managed cloud VPS hosting from HostArmada features an onslaught of interesting features to boost your website’s speed, reliability, and security. To start, it comes with a free SSL certificate. You also get free backups and customer support.

The free firewall pairs with automated malware protection, and HostArmada’s cloud SSD enables quick storage and transfer rates. Of course, the cloud VPS from HostArmada grants full root access for complete control of your operating system.

All HostArmada VPS plans allow support for unlimited websites. They also include enhanced caching and free cPanel accounts. These cPanel accounts allow for streamlined DNS and file management while providing an FTP connection.

Known for its developer-friendly nature, HostArmada can handle languages such as Perl, Python, and Node.js. It even supports Git and PHP frameworks like Zend, Laravel, and Symfony. And if you don’t like the experience, HostArmada has a generous 45-day money-back guarantee.

Liquid Web’s 100% uptime guarantee rivals every cloud VPS host on this list. Its cloud VPS plans start less than $5 per month and include options for general computing, memory optimization, or CPU core optimization.

Choose from dozens of plans, and know you can always scale up elements like memory, storage, and transfer rates. Liquid Web also allows access to its API to integrate with various tools and automate your processes.

For even more flexibility, Liquid Web sells different versions of VPS and cloud hosting. For instance, you might consider the VMware Private Cloud for an enterprise-friendly experience.

It also offers cloud dedicated servers and standalone VPS hosting without the cloud. Alternatively, consider using the Liquid Web private VPS parent to deploy individual VPS instances on a dedicated cloud server.

Considered one of the most environmentally friendly hosts on the market, GreenGeeks chooses eco-friendly data center locations and actively puts power back into the grid as renewable energy.

Although GreenGeeks lacks cloud web hosting, its VPS offerings provide fast and scalable solutions for all types of websites. With SSD disks and at least two gigabytes of RAM per plan, the GreenGeeks VPS plans offer everything from free website transfers to a free cPanel dashboard.

This is a fully managed experience from GreenGeeks. You pick the data centers and sit back to enjoy automated server monitoring, DDoS protection, and managed customer support.

GreenGeeks also has a knack for speed and user-friendliness. Its AlmaLinux OS makes for an intuitive interface and the RAID-10 SSD storage pairs with Intel Xeon processors for excellent performance.

HostGator offers both cloud and VPS hosting, but its cloud hosting actually uses virtualized servers, making it similar to what you’d get from a cloud VPS provider. Its pricing, competitive with other cheap VPS hosting on the market, includes a free SSL certificate and free domain.

The HostGator cloud hosting packages support one domain on its lowest plan, or you can opt for any other pricing package for unlimited websites. You also get automated failover features so your site gets switched to another server when an issue arises.

I consider HostGator one of the best VPS cloud hosting providers to grow with, considering it lets you upgrade server resources on demand with its resource management portal. There are also several cloud VPS plans for upgrading, along with alternatives like regular VPS hosting and dedicated hosting.

This fully charged cloud hosting comes with a cPanel for seeing everything from website statistics to your file management center. It provides email domain control and FTP connections and lets you create custom domains with unlimited aliases.

GoDaddy is known for its shared hosting and domain name offerings, yet it’s a rather impressive option for self-managed or managed VPS plans. Keep in mind, however, that cloud functionality doesn’t come with the GoDaddy VPS.

GoDaddy, of course, makes domain name purchasing and management simple. You save when buying a domain name from GoDaddy, and every VPS plan has domain name and server uptime monitoring included.

Each GoDaddy VPS plan provides root access to configure your server. In addition, you gain access to high-performance NVMe SSD storage, which supports unlimited traffic and three times the usual server speeds. As a bonus, you get a website builder.

Site backups and recoveries come standard with a GoDaddy VPS. The security measures stand out, too, considering GoDaddy VPS plans provide 24/7 DDoS protection and an SSL certificate.

Cloud VPS hosting uses virtual private servers to offer an environment where apps and websites receive their own segment of customizable server space while still sharing the physical server with other websites.

This configuration provides a setup similar to a dedicated server with server space where you can customize everything from RAM to the operating system without the high cost of dedicated hosting.

The “cloud” portion of cloud VPS hosting spreads the server resources across a network, allowing faster speeds and lower potential for failure. Since it eliminates the downsides of having one point of failure, when one server fails, another picks up where it left off. This setup offers superb redundancy.

Although cloud VPS hosting delivers the benefits of a dedicated server, it keeps costs low, closer to standard VPS hosting or shared hosting. That’s because the server space gets split between multiple users.

The partition between those websites improves security and control, allowing smaller organizations to place projects on higher-performance, more configurable servers than shared hosting servers.

The cost of cloud VPS hosting varies based on the web host and the resources needed to run your project efficiently. You can, however, find cloud VPS plans that start at less than $5 per month. As an example, IONOS sells cloud VPS plans starting around $2 or $3 per month, and the plans from Kamatera begin at $4 per month.

Keep in mind, however, that many hosting providers use low pricing tactics to attract users. After a promotional period of usually a year, that pricing increases. Unmanaged VPS hosting plans from A2Hosting, for instance, start as low as $2.99 per month, but the renewal price goes to $8.99 per month.

In addition, those lower, unmanaged VPS hosting plans only offer basic resources suitable for smaller business websites. For more CPU cores, bandwidth, and disk space, you must upgrade to more expensive cloud VPS plans, which cost $80 or more monthly from web host options like Kamatera.

Neither VPS nor cloud hosting is inherently better unless your needs specifically demand one over the other. VPS hosting works well if your website has non-enterprise traffic levels but still needs to handle decent traffic loads.

A VPS server also helps decrease costs without sacrificing server resources. You might opt for a VPS if you lack the skill set to manage a dedicated server or if you crave similar features as a dedicated server but without a high price tag.

It’s also ideal for gaining more control over the server compared to shared hosting. Cloud hosting, on the other hand, makes sense for scaling rapidly and decreasing server issues. I like it for larger projects because of its improved control and server redundancy.

Cloud hosting often gets merged into one type of hosting called cloud VPS hosting. Other times, web hosts sell it as a standalone VPS or cloud server. On its own, the “cloud” aspect of cloud hosting uses multiple servers, often spread around the globe, to ensure the server resources function correctly. If one server struggles or fails, another one hops in.

A cloud hosting setup doesn’t totally prevent servers from crashing; rather, the network of servers makes server issues less of a problem. In choosing a favorite, I’m partial toward cloud hosting due to its data distribution across a broader range of servers.

The most secure VPS providers offer specific server protection measures to look for. You’ll want to identify hosts implementing industry-accepted security measures to thwart the usual attacks.

I recommend looking for web hosts with features like automated brute force detection, firewalls, and perpetual security scans. Tools like SiteLock and HackScan come free with some hosting accounts, allowing your server to monitor itself for malware and hacks.

All the cloud VPS hosting providers on this list include the features I’ve mentioned — or at least some sort of comparable tool. For instance, Kamatera has a cloud firewall, a distributed cloud hosting network, and monitoring for hacks, code injections, and malware. A host like Cloudways offers DDoS mitigation, vulnerability scanning, an SSL certificate, and brute force protection.

Yes, in fact, VPS hosting has become a middle ground for those who want control and performance closer to that of a dedicated server but without the high price and server maintenance.

Most VPS hosting has pricing closer to shared hosting, yet you’re not stuck sharing server resources with other apps and websites. Hosting a website on a virtual private server also helps websites grow in the future. That’s because a VPS web host typically provides multiple pricing plans where you can upgrade your RAM, SSD space, and CPU.

With its increasingly cheap hosting plans, I would argue that VPS hosting makes for a suitable alternative to shared hosting in most cases. You get improved reliability and performance, along with a server partition to control website files without conflicts from other sites.

A VPS lets you pick a server operating system and tap into the server through remote access. Not to mention, you can host just about any type of site on a VPS, including eCommerce stores and WordPress sites.

Several VPS hosts would serve you well to host a WordPress site, but I’d lean toward the managed WordPress hosting plans from Cloudways. Its plans start for less than $10 per month, and you get to pick from cloud hosting providers like DigitalOcean, AWS (Amazon Web Services), and Google Cloud Platform.

Cloudways also has essential hosting features like automated backups, advanced caching, and team management. You get a free SSL certificate, regular security patching, and 24/7 customer support when you sign up for WordPress VPS hosting from Cloudways.

I also enjoy Cloudways for WordPress because of its free migration and one-click WordPress installation. That allows you to move a WordPress site from another host or install one from scratch in seconds.

Not to mention, everything about your WordPress installation gets automated and managed by Cloudways; that includes caching, WordPress and plugin updates, website and database backups, and its auto-healing servers.

Choosing the right virtual private server requires you to evaluate what your website needs regarding bandwidth, SSD storage, RAM, and CPU. Consider a more expensive plan if you expect lots of traffic or the site holds heavyweight resources for a database or content library.

The goal is to ensure that the current server resources provide a comfortable amount of RAM, SSD storage, and CPU so your website never struggles.

Remember, it’s wise to choose a VPS host with a range of plans to upgrade if needed.

Going with a cloud VPS means your site will run smoother and faster without you having to worry about downtime. The best cloud VPS providers often vary in how they market their offerings.

Sometimes, they only sell separate VPS or cloud hosting packages without the two combined. That’s alright; standalone VPS and cloud services work very well for hosting websites.

More often than not, website owners simply want higher performance, better scalability, and to know that another website on the server won’t slow their site down. All the cloud VPS providers on this list should do the trick. Enjoy your new VPS cloud server; you’ll probably never return to shared hosting again.