Cloudzy review | usagoldmines.com

Cloudzy isn’t your run-of-the-mill web hosting provider. It specializes in cloud infrastructure and fairly bare-bones Virtual Private Server (VPS) plans. That means you get reasonably priced access to excellent hardware and resources, provided you have the technical skills to handle them.

The good news is that many things can be pre-configured, and you have a broad choice of options in everything from the choice of operating system (OS) to web apps. We’re not just talking about WordPress, but also advanced options like Forex platforms.

You also have an excellent range of server location options, though perhaps not as comprehensive as Google Cloud or AWS, which are on a different pricing tier altogether. What we didn’t like, though, was the discounts Cloudzy offers based on your location choice, which we felt was a bit unfair to customers who might require specific regions for efficiency and localization.

Be warned, though – Cloudzy is not really aimed at casual users building their first website. While you can technically host anything here, the core audience appears to be users who need virtual servers for web apps, trading bots, VPN setups, and the like.

Plans and pricing

Cloudzy primarily focuses on VPS hosting rather than traditional shared hosting packages. At the bottom of its offerings are Cloud VPS plans similar to those offered by hosts like DigitalOcean, Linode, and VULTR.

At Cloudzy, though, you get a broader range of pre-deployment options. For example, you can decide to go with a pure OS-only deployment, or get your server started with a full LAMP-stack supported web app, or almost anything else.

Cloud VPS plans start at 1 vCPU with 512MB RAM, 20GB of NVMe storage, and 1TB bandwidth/mo. This scales up to a whopping 16 vCPU, 64GB RAM, 1.5TB NVMe storage, and 16TB of bandwidth for $199.97/mo.

While there is no additional charge for pre-deployment options, your final price may be adjusted depending on server location. It’s likely that Cloudzy does this to help balance their location loads, but it’s unfortunate for customers who may be penalized because of their requirements for where their servers are located.

Aside from Cloud VPS, Cloudzy also offers more specialized solutions like high-performance GPUs, GPU-optimized servers, AI servers, and dedicated servers. Again, all of these options are fairly technical, especially their dedicated bare-metal servers.

Ease of use

The Cloudzy dashboard is a straightforward way to manage your servers. However, it’s more practical than informational. You can use it to deploy, rebuild, or configure instances. Server monitoring isn’t in the cards, though, and you’ll have to deploy any of those solutions on your individual servers if you need them.

When we initially discussed the pre-deployment option, it might have been misconstrued as saying Cloudzy is easy to use. That isn’t really the case. Once the deployment is made, you’ll still have to manage the stack on your own. For example, you have to keep your server OS and applications up to date and security-hardened, not just manage your web app.

This is typically done via SSH into the server (root access is provided). If you know what you’re doing, it’s easy-peasy. If not, you’re probably going to face an oncoming disaster.

Again, we don’t recommend Cloudzy as a first hosting provider for someone completely unfamiliar with VPS environments. If you’re looking for a first entry to the Cloud, try something with more management features like Cloudways. That, however, will cost a bit more, so be mentally prepared.

Speed and reliability

Cloud providers are always thought to be all-powerful, but keep in mind that much of it still depends on the hardware and configuration. For example, on the surface, Cloudzy offers some pretty good standard cloud VPS plans. However, the processing power on these compared to their high-performance options is very different. For example, the 2GB standard cloud VPS plan we tested includes a 2.25GHz AMD processor, while a comparable high-performance plan includes 4.2GHz processors.

The biggest surprise, though, is that Cloudzy is using AMD Ryzen 9 processors for their Cloud VPS plans. Servers typically run AMD EPYC chips, which are the dedicated server versions commonly used in web hosting. The Ryzen family is intended more for regular consumers or enthusiasts.

It’s possible that this led to the slightly disappointing test results below.

WordPress benchmark test

The standard WordPress benchmark test was run on our prebuilt WordPress site to maintain consistency. Results at Cloudzy were a letdown, with initial results showing worse performance than some budget shared hosting alternatives we’ve seen.

Siege test

On our load test, Cloudzy performed like a champ, acing results with increasing loads of 5, 9, and 15 concurrent users. It ran rock-solid and completed all transactions quickly. If we were to use this as a comparative factor against the easier benchmark test, Siege results should take priority as a more realistic indicator.

Customer support

Cloudzy offers customer support via tickets (for existing customers), a knowledge base, and, more interestingly, WhatsApp. Don’t be fooled by the WhatsApp chat support option, though. You don’t get an instant response.

Their knowledge base is also quite Spartan, with only 73 guides available. These articles are very straightforward and relatively technical, so you may have to know what you’re doing just to follow the language. It can be a challenge, but those are the preconditions for this type of hosting anyway.

Overall, the vibe you get from customer support is very corporate. We felt a notable disappointment here, especially coming off our recent Freehostia review. That was a free hosting plan, yet it came with near-instant customer support that was both polite and effective.

The competition

DigitalOcean is one of the most popular cloud infrastructure providers for developers and startups, and is similar in product offerings to Cloudzy. Compared to Cloudzy, DigitalOcean has a more mature ecosystem and a more professional customer dashboard. However, Cloudzy may appeal more to users looking for simpler pricing and lower-cost VPS deployments.

Linode has built a strong reputation among developers for reliability and straightforward cloud hosting services. Compared to Cloudzy, Linode offers more enterprise-level polish and documentation, though pricing can sometimes be higher for equivalent resources.

For those who want a fully hands-off approach, Hostinger is a beginner-friendly choice. Although primarily cheap for shared hosting, you can also get VPS hosting and other plans. Hosting is priced aggressively and offers strong localization expertise for ideal customer support.

Final verdict

To be honest, Cloudzy is a fairly run-of-the-mill cloud hosting provider. We don’t feel that it excels in any particular area, even though the host itself seems professional enough. What really turned us off was their slow customer support, even for sales queries.

Performance-wise, Cloudzy runs fine, even with Ryzen chips instead of enterprise-grade EPYC chips. It’s just that the choice left us feeling disappointed that they would cut corners in that way. We recommend considering one of the many cloud alternatives if you’re in the market for a budget, hands-on hosting plan.