Staxly

Cloudways vs Shopify

Managed cloud hosting across DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, Google Cloud
vs. Dominant SaaS commerce platform — Online Store + Hydrogen headless

Cloudways website ↗Shopify website ↗

Pricing tiers

Cloudways

Autonomous — Free Trial
3-day free trial. 1 server, 20 GB disk, 150 GB bandwidth.
Free
Flexible — DO Micro
DigitalOcean-backed. 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 50 GB storage, 2 TB bandwidth. Starting tier.
$11/mo
Flexible — DO Medium
4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 160 GB, 5 TB bandwidth.
$88/mo
Autonomous — Growth
WordPress-optimized autoscaling. 1 baseline server, 20 GB disk, 150 GB bandwidth.
$100/mo
Autonomous — Scale
2 baseline servers, 50 GB disk, 250 GB bandwidth.
$200/mo
Flexible — DO 8XL
24 vCPU, 128 GB RAM, 2.56 TB storage, 11 TB bandwidth.
$342/mo
Autonomous — Plus
3 baseline servers, 100 GB disk, 1 TB bandwidth.
$400/mo
Enterprise
Custom autoscale, volume pricing.
Custom
Cloudways website ↗

Shopify

Starter
$5/mo. Sell via social/chat links. No checkout site. Basic.
$5/mo
Basic
$29/mo ($19 annual). Full store. 2.9% + 30¢ online. 2 staff.
$29/mo
Shopify
$79/mo ($49 annual). 2.7% online. 5 staff.
$79/mo
Advanced
$299/mo ($229 annual). 2.5% online. Custom reports. 15 staff.
$299/mo
Plus
$2,300/mo (starting). Enterprise features, checkout customization, unlimited staff.
$2300/mo
Enterprise
Custom. For $1M+ GMV merchants. Dedicated support, Checkout Extensibility.
Custom
Shopify website ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing auto-free-trial on Cloudways vs starter on Shopify.

MetricCloudwaysShopify
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

Cloudways · 17 features

  • Autonomous (WordPress) — Fully managed WordPress with autoscaling.
  • Backups — Automated daily + on-demand. Retention configurable.
  • Bot Protection — Cloudflare Enterprise bot filtering add-on.
  • Bot Scaler — Autonomous: auto-scale based on traffic patterns.
  • Breeze (WP cache plugin) — In-house WordPress caching plugin.
  • CloudwaysCDN — Built-in CDN add-on (StackPath-backed).
  • Flexible Plans — BYO-sized servers on any of 5 providers. Full control over stack.
  • Free Let's Encrypt SSL — 1-click cert install + auto-renewal.
  • Free Migration — 1 free app migration per plan. Cloudways team moves your site.
  • Horizontal Scaling — Auto-scale app servers (Autonomous plans).
  • Malware Protection — Add-on ($4/app/month). Scan + clean.
  • Object Cache Pro — Included on certain plans. Redis-backed object cache for WP.
  • SafeUpdates — Automated WordPress plugin/theme updates with rollback.
  • Staging Environments — 1-click staging clones with push-to-live.
  • Team Collaboration — Invite team members with granular role permissions.
  • Thunderstack (Optimized) — Apache + Nginx + Varnish + Redis + Memcached preconfigured for speed.
  • Vertical Scaling — Resize server specs without migration.

Shopify · 22 features

  • Admin APIs — REST + GraphQL for management.
  • App Store — 8,000+ apps.
  • B2B (Plus) — Company accounts + catalogs.
  • Checkout — Shopify-managed checkout (PCI-compliant).
  • Checkout Extensibility — UI extensions in checkout (Plus).
  • Collections — Manual + smart grouping.
  • Customers — CRM-lite + B2B (Plus).
  • Discounts — Automatic + code-based.
  • Hydrogen — React/Remix headless framework.
  • Inventory — Multi-location stock.
  • Markets — Multi-region selling (currency, language).
  • Online Store — Default Liquid-based storefront.
  • Orders + Fulfillment — Multi-location fulfillment.
  • Oxygen — Edge hosting for Hydrogen (Plus).
  • Products + Variants — Full PIM.
  • Shipping + Rates — Carrier integrations.
  • Shopify Functions — Rust/WASM backend extensions.
  • Shopify Payments — First-party payment processor.
  • Shop Pay — Accelerated checkout with saved payment.
  • Storefront API — GraphQL for custom storefronts.
  • Theme Store — First-party + paid themes.
  • Webhooks — Event subscriptions.

Developer interfaces

KindCloudwaysShopify
CLI—shopify CLI
SDK—@shopify/admin-api-client, @shopify/hydrogen
RESTCloudways APIAdmin REST API
GRAPHQL—Admin GraphQL API, Storefront API
MCP—Shopify MCP (unofficial)
OTHERCloudways Platform (web UI), Server SSH Access, SFTPLiquid Templates, Shopify Admin, Shopify Webhooks
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Cloudways and Shopify are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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