Cloudways Update - Huge Performance Boost

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[@IdeaSpot]

Get a free Cloudways trial ➡ ideaspot.com.au/cloudways Use code: ideaspot for discount if you decide to sign up.

[@warrenpace5291]

Definitely my favourite KZbin channel. Theres not a single video that I don't watch to the end. And the difference Alex has made to my business is great, I should be paying him dividends 😂

[@IdeaSpot]

thanks Warren, glad to know I'm of some use :D

[@DenisMcCaul]

Hi Alex, my concern with your analysis is that Hong Kong was completely skewing the averages. You used three locations, and two of them, Vancouver and London showed almost no improvement in fully loaded page times (0.01 sec Vancouver and 0.072 secs London) from New York when paying for Enterprise over using the Free Cloudflare plan. I do recognise though that there are other benefits than page load time such as security and image file conversion to webp and PCI compliance. I have three questions. My website is already using Cloudflare and the Super Page Cache for Cloudflare plugin. The DNS records are already configured on Cloudflare. The site is already on a DO server via Cloudways. Q. 1 - Do I need to make DNS changes on Cloudflare if I switch to using the Enterprise option through Cloudways? Q. 2 - Will switching to the Enterprise plan mean every request online for my site will be served from Cloudflare, or just a % of them with the remainder still being served directly from DO? Q. 3 - Does activating the Enterprise Plan install a plugin on the website so we have some way to clear the Cloudflare cache from the backend? Thanks for your video's

[@IdeaSpot]

Very good questions! Yes, as you are further from the server location, the benefit increases, so vancover and london are small improvements and hong kong is larger - if I were to add australia and brazil it would likely further increase the benefit % (as cloudways did with their own testing). 1- I'd use whatever nameserver is provided by your domain provider, if cloudways is your domain provider then you can add the dns settings as I did @2:51 - use DNS only rather than proxied for the cname records. 2. some content may still be served from the host server, its not always possible to cache 100% to the edge, there is info on the specifics here: support.cloudways.com/en/articles/6009152-how-to-integrate-cloudflare-with-your-application 3. use the breeze plugin provided by cloudways to handle this.

[@vasiovasio]

Useful Video! Thank you!

[@imaraafricasafaris]

Which is best server control panel to run of Digital Ocean? I want a very light weight panel

[@1ku0k]

How do you get the $4.99 pricing? When I visit Cloudways, the cheapest plan is $11 per month

[@superAweber]

What a useful video!!! Now examining the rest of your channel...

[@andreas_tech]

Hi, how much cloudways cost for a small project?! I think it's quite expensive, right?

[@IdeaSpot]

Cheapest digital ocean is $11, adding CF enterprise (+$5) makes $16, but I can't see many ways to outperform this without spending a lot more. For sure there are other nice choices though if you have a very small budget, have made plenty of other cheap and free options on the channel 👍

[@sahid_parvej]

Hello sir i boughted cloudways of 2 gb premium ram plan .but today i cancelled my cloudways account because cloudways consum 2 mb per second from my ram . My ram reached 1.7 gb out of 2 gb ram in just 1 days how ??? My website daily traffic is 1500 per day and my website monetized with ezoic and my website created with generateprsss and i am using only 5 required plugins for blogging .

[@flaycdesign6540]

Nice video 👍, has considered FastPanel? 🤔

[@gambomaster]

Thanks. Do we still need a caching plugin like WP Rocket after enabling Cloudflare Enterprise? 🤔

[@IdeaSpot]

WPRocket has a lot of other performance optimizations besides caching, so it will likely still give you some extra benefit, but I haven't tested this exact setup with/without wprocket so not sure how much difference it will make exactly.

[@peterwilliams5522]

Thanks for the video Alex! The information you provide as always paint's the perfect picture on whats available out there for us hosting bargain hunters :)

[@tan.sengupta]

As long as Oracle Free Tier is allowing websites for hosting purpose, do we need these paid hosting? Or am I missing something? Btw nice video as always. Your contents are unique.

[@IdeaSpot]

This is really aimed for commercial use - I think running your own small projects on free hosting is ok for a while, but as soon as you have some budget for these extra features and automated management it will free up your time more effectively.

[@tan.sengupta]

@@IdeaSpot yes I understand; especially for security purposes like DDoS/malware protection. Btw, how do you rate cloud servers like Oracle, IBM's paid plans? Are they worth compared to those you mentioned in the video?

[@IdeaSpot]

Oh usually the big names will be more costly than the smaller brands like DO vultr racknerd etc, you can get more performance/$ so I focus the channel more on these solutions generally

[@tan.sengupta]

@@IdeaSpot got your point. And your videos are really helpful. Thanks again.

[@spal9725]

I don't know why my previous comments are showing up 😞. Can you please do a comparison video between this setup and a oci with super page cache CF plugin on a basic WordPress website.?

[@spal9725]

*not showing up

[@spal9725]

And I was also asking you to make a video about cloudflare workers and R2. I have deployed html websites at workers and it is awasome. I used chat gpt to write the skeleton of the codes and modified the html and css to my choice.

[@IdeaSpot]

for a simple html site what about just loading it with cloudflare pages? I tried that a while ago and it was fairly easy. Also Im not sure about comments being hidden, I think if there are certain key words or if you try to post links it may hide the comment

[@garrettstevensen2467]

Wow. This appears to be a game changer. Alex… are you suggesting that Cloudways with Cloudflare Enterprise, now, might be the #1 best solution as far as ease of use? I have plesk and an oracle free tier account… even though it’s cheaper, the oracle free tier using plesk is actually much harder than this solution, and this has cloudflare enterprise for $5 a month. Seems like the best, the fastest, the easiest, for the cheapest price. What’s your thoughts of this vs Oracles free tier (assuming you can even get an instance)?

[@IdeaSpot]

you could use cloudflare wordpress plugin with cloudflare APO (also $5) and get a good performance improvement, but you won't get the enterprise tier network, features & security. I think free tier is fine for personal projects and low risk things, but anything that is business critical should be looking for paid solutions.

[@garrettstevensen2467]

@@IdeaSpot Correct me if I'm wrong... but technically, "Free Tier" can be upgraded to start being "paid" (for instance, if you up the storage, amount of RAM, V CPUS, etc..) Technically, doesn't that become a "Paid" solution? Granted... the equivalent "paid" solution from cloudways is like $150-$200 per month, and from Oracle, it's only about $5 - $10 per month, after you increase past the free tier free hardware... I'm not sure if this makes sense... Argh! (Let's say instead of the FREE TIER 4 CPU's, 24 GB, and 200GB Storage, that you went 5 CPU,s and let's say... 250GB storage..... that now cost's a big whopping $5-$10 per month and is not "free"... It's paid...) There is no equivalent from Digital Ocean or Cloudways (the closest is like $150 - $200 with less bandwidth... Oracle's has way more power for an out the door cost of $5 - $10 per month)... wouldn't that be considered "paid?" I sure wish you were a consultant. I could pick your brain, and of course, I would compensate accordingly... Well, at least I've been a life time subscriber since your channel first started..... Thank you nonetheless Alex!

[@IdeaSpot]

oh sorry, I didn't explain this well. By 'paid' what i really mean is 'managed' - In your example, with oracle you are only paying for infrastructure, so the server maintenance, updates, security responsibly & risk is all yours. In the case of Cloudways and other managed wordpress providers, they are responsible for the server and you only need to manage the front end (wordpress) part of it. So, at some point it becomes good value to outsource that responsibility & risk of server management on to another provider rather than being personally responsible.

[@garrettstevensen2467]

@@IdeaSpot Ahhhh... Yeah. I now completely understand, and I DO agree with you. Unmanaged = significantly cheaper/free/much harder to maintain (although Plesk kinda negates this in my opinion for the minimal cost(s)), compared to Managed = significantly more expensive/easier to use/easier to manage/etc... (I have a Plesk Web Pro license for $10? or so per month about 1/2 of the typical monthly cost when I snagged it on a one day sale. Again, this allows me to use a much cheaper unmanaged solution, and make it almost managed, for a very cheap price.) I think it's when you get past a certain "threshold" of users... say... I dunno... 50,000 or 100,000 users a month, I would consider a managed solution from another provider... Then again, even if an Oracle server went down, you could almost always spin up a new instance, practically instantly (especially if you don't force free tier). For the time being, I think when you are growing your blog, and you don't have ads or any other type of income from the blog, that the unmanaged Free/Cheap solutions are sufficient and more preferred. More risk, yes, but there are less/no users yet and there's no income... so risk doesn't matter when there's little/no users... I think managed does make sense when you get to a certain size and you are generating an income off that... at that point, managed makes more sense since you are negating the costs since you have income, and you can afford it, and it's more reliable and there is less headache involved in managing a server... and... you can focus more on growth/revenue/monetization, rather than server tech.

[@IdeaSpot]

exactly, its mostly about income at the end of the day 👍 a side hustle blog crash isn't the same risk as a 7-figure ecommerce site crash. And I have a feeling you're right about plesk having a similar tier of 'automated management' and support as many budget 'managed' providers too

[@shahbaaz2958]

Great video! However if it comes to pricing I think hetzner is the best.

[@the_adgi]

Bro i can't verify my account on hetzner But I don't know why

[@shraddhasawlani9616]

Yo good video!

[@IdeaSpot]

Thanks for the visit

[@jadens9569]

Digital Ocean has ruined Cloudways. What an awful decision it was to remove Vultr from the list!

[@IdeaSpot]

It’s a bit of a shame because I love vultr too for sure ✅

[@jadens9569]

​@@IdeaSpotYeah, I was fuming with them and still am. Anyway, thanks for the videos. I've been watching loads of your old videos.

[@jnmanor]

What other providers are getting into the cloudflare $5/month deal? They can't only be doing it for cloudways right?

[@IdeaSpot]

Good question, I see rocket net are doing it too but the plans aren’t as generous as cloudways. Kinsta has ‘kinsta cdn’ powered by cloudflare, but again it expensive and not sure if it has all the enterprise features

[@varunaeeriyaulla]

I stopped using Cloudways after they ditched other Cloud hosting platforms. I will take a look at the new feature.

[@IdeaSpot]

Yes certainly they are focused on their digital ocean products, but these are still very good 👍

[@gojiyaravi2]

I hate Poppins 🤯.

[@IdeaSpot]

😄