Cloudways Flexible vs Autonomous: Bought, Tested & Compared

If you are confused between Cloudways Flexible or Autonomous plan to host your site, our data will help you to make the right choice.

At Hostingstep, we are continuously testing over 20 WordPress hosting providers. When the Autonomous plan was launched, we bought an account, deployed a test site, and started monitoring its performance.

Since we have been monitoring the Cloudways Flexible plans for over a year, we will compare the Cloudways Flexible and Autonomous data and help you choose the best plan for your needs.

The Difference between Cloudways Flexible and Autonomous:

The main difference between Cloudways Flexible and Autonomous is that Autonomous handles loads 26x faster than the Flexible plan. The Autonomous also offers a better TTFB and worry-free CPU scalable architecture, which is an issue with the Flexible plan nowadays.

Reasons to choose Flexible	Reasons to choose Autonomous
Affordable to get started at $7.7/month (post discounts)	Fastest TTFB, load handling performance
Unlimited sites can be hosted on a single application.	Google Kubernetes Auto scalable architecture can handle any number of visitors without any downtime or slowness.
More control over the server settings.	No worry about CPU hitting 100% like on Flexible
Suitable for new to mid-level sites with moderate traffic.	Suitable for resource-hungry sites with high real time traffic.
There is a 30% discount on flexible for 3 months	Get $100 Free Credits

Cloudways Flexible vs Autonomous: Performance

Cloudways Flexible and Autonomous performance is measured by a series of tests, including TTFB, Uptime, Load handling, and Global TTFB test.

Test 1: Load Test

The major difference between these hosting plans is Autonomous’s auto-scalable nature. In contrast, a Flexible hosting plan can’t auto-scale, and a manual upgrade should be performed to handle a high number of visitors. So, we will first test the load handling score for Flexible and Autonomous.

This test was done using a loader tool. We sent 500 constant visitors to both test sites and measured the average response time. The hosting that takes the shortest time to handle the load wins.

In this test results, the Cloudways Flexible took an average response time of 266 ms to handle the load. However, Cloudways Autonomous handled the same load in just 20 ms average response time.

Autonomous scores are super impressive. They offer 26 times faster performance than a Flexible hosting plan. Google Kubernetes and Cloudflare Enterprise CDN are the top reasons for autonomous plans’ speed.

Google Kubernetes is widely known for its reliable auto-scalable architecture. As far as I know, Cloudways is the first company to deploy Google Kubernetes for WordPress hosting. Cloudflare Enterprise is vital in delivering faster pages through its edge caching setup.

So, let’s ask yourself a question. If you are running a great business and don’t want to compromise on speed for fear of losing customers, then Autonomous should be your choice. In another case, flexibility should be more than enough to get started.

Test 2: TTFB and Uptime

In the TTFB test, the Flexible and Autonomous test sites are pinged every 60 seconds once from 22 North American regions, and the average TTFB score is calculated.

Based on six months of data from March to August 2024, the Cloudways Flexible site recorded an average response time of 399 ms.

At the same time, Cloudway’s Autonomous site had an average response time of 342 ms. Again, Autonomous scores are better than Flexible sites.

In the uptime test, Autonomous recorded 100% scores in these six months. Flexible slightly fell short, with 2 minutes of downtime costing its uptime 99.98%. Cloudways had scheduled maintenance on flexible, resulting in 99.98% uptime, which can be ignored.

Uptime is not a big thing to worry about at Cloudways because we have over three years of data, which shows only minimal downtime, like one or two downtimes in the whole year.

Moving on to next, We have included a special Global TTFB test report to see how well the site loads for global visitors. The general TTFB test above is usually measured in North American regions, but some businesses get global visitors, and if you are one of them, watch out for these results.

In the global TTFB test, Flexible and Autonomous sites are pinged from 40 international locations to calculate the overall global TTFB.

Our data shows that Autonomous overtakes Flexible with an average global TTFB of 166 ms, while the Flexible site got an average global TTFB of 445 ms.

Global TTFB	Flexible	Autonomous
America	223 ms	93 ms ✅
Europe	318 ms	110 ms ✅
Asia and Pacifia	742 ms	263 ms ✅
Total Average	445 ms	166 ms ✅

Cloudways Flexible Vs Autonomous: Features

Unlimited PHP Workers

Cloudways Autonomous has unlimited PHP workers, which helps you scale your website to any level. The difference is the limited number of PHP workers on the Flexible plan.

With an unlimited number of PHP workers, the site is guaranteed to work for all visitors regardless of the traffic.

Auto Scaling

Our performance test shows that Autonomous uses Google Kubernetes, offering automatic horizontal and vertical scaling as needed. It also comes with load balancing to keep your website active regardless of traffic.

In the case of flexible, there is no autoscaling, and manual work is required to upgrade your plans from the Cloudways dashboard. Again, if the upgraded plan can’t handle the traffic, you must keep upgrading manually.

This is where Cloudways Autonomous works as a genuinely auto-scalable WordPress host.

Cloudflare Enterprise

Autonomous comes with Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, with edge caching done by default.

The Flexible plan also offers Cloudflare Enterprise CDN as an add-on, but due to the plan’s technical limitation of CPU and Memory resources, we can’t fully enjoy the benefits of Cloudflare.

Multiple PHP Versions

If you are hosting N number sites on a Cloudways flexible, you can’t set different PHP versions for each. You need to go to server settings and select a single PHP version, which will be applied to all the applications hosted on the server.

At Autonomous, you can choose a different PHP version for each application. Just select the application and open the settings, and the required PHP version will be selected.

Automated Backups

My most hated Cloudways flexible feature is the paid backups. It costs $0.33/GB per application to do daily backups. The amount is small, but I hate anything extra besides regular hosting bills. This was fixed in Autonomous, with automated daily backups available for free.

Summarizing

Choosing between Cloudways Flexible and Autonomous should be based on your business requirements.

If you are running an e-commerce site on Flexible, Autonomous will open a lot of new features to satisfy any number of features. Not only e-commerce sites, Autonomous is also highly helpful for event booking sites, LMS sites, and big media sites.

If you are a small blogger or running a hobby site, Cloudways Flexible is more than enough to get started.

Changelog:

September 10, 2024: We removed the three months of performance data (March to May 2024) and added six months data (March to August 2024). Autonomous now comes with $100 free credits to try out. We have updated the post accordingly.