Cloud86 Review: Excellent Hosting… With Some Caveats [2024]

Fast Service Centered on the European Market

Cloud86 is an independent, Netherlands-based web host with a single data center in Amsterdam. From the start, I was impressed with Cloud86’s affordable rates. On top of that, my testing gave excellent performance results. Between various performance optimizations and a week’s worth of daily backups, I appreciated the value and quality of Cloud86’s services.

That said, I did find a catch. You can only lock in this price with a 3-year plan and there are harsh site number and resource limitations. Even the most expensive shared hosting plan only supports 10 sites. While Cloud86 is a fast and affordable web host, you’ll have to keep an eye on resource limits.

Besides shared hosting, Cloud86 also offers managed e-commerce and VPS services. While the e-commerce hosting brings plenty of value with extra resources and extensive support, the VPS services are a weak link. Other managed VPS providers offer greater resources for less than half of Cloud86’s prices.

While Cloud86 offers basic and premium support, I was disappointed to find that neither includes live chat. That said, the email/ticket support (available in English and Dutch) left me more than satisfied with fast, thorough, and professional responses.

While the company only has a single data center (in the Netherlands), my Cloud86 site achieved surprisingly fast speeds worldwide. All plans include complimentary QUIC.cloud CDN, which helps deliver good performance beyond Europe.

In all, I found Cloud86 to be an excellent host, especially for EU-based site owners. While the managed VPS didn’t impress me, the shared hosting is where Cloud86 shines. Despite the resource limits, the host’s speed, uptime, and features are among the best for its price.

Strong Speed and Security Features, but Restrictive Resource Limits

I found Cloud86’s rich set of features to be its strongest point. All plans come with caching, a CDN, security features, and more. On this front, the host’s affordable Start plan can compete with the very best budget hosts. The main drawbacks are the resource limits: 5 databases, 5 GB storage, 10 email accounts, and 250 GB traffic.

Upgrading to a modestly more expensive plan eliminates the traffic limit and gives you ten times the storage while also alleviating other resource limits. While you’ll never get fully unlimited resources like some budget hosts offer, I find that Cloud86’s suite of features more than makes up for it.

Impressive Speeds with LiteSpeed Cache and QUIC.cloud CDN

According to Cloud86’s website, it’s a premium partner of LiteSpeed. This carries several benefits, such as the LiteSpeed Web Server. While any WordPress site can use the LiteSpeed Cache plugin, it offers the biggest boost in loading speed when used in conjunction with LiteSpeed’s premium server software.

On top of that, you have access to LiteSpeed’s QUIC.cloud CDN. This loads cached, static versions of your web pages to servers around the world, reducing load times for users in faraway locations. Setting up a CDN can be a bit complicated depending on your web hosting knowledge, but Cloud86’s support can help you through the process.

Industry-Leading 99.98% Uptime Guarantee

Respectable web hosts offer an uptime guarantee of at least 99.9%. Typically, this entitles you to compensation for any downtime exceeding around 44 minutes a month. Cloud86 goes even further with an impressive 99.98% uptime guarantee, which promises less than 10 minutes of downtime each month. My testing revealed that Cloud86 meets this lofty promise; read more about the results here.

Daily Backups as a Standard Feature

While automatic backups are an increasingly common feature, many hosts only offer them with more expensive plans. On the other hand, Cloud86 offers a week’s worth of automatic daily backups for all of its plans. If something breaks or you experience a cyber attack, you can load a healthy version of your site and get it running quickly.

Anti-Spam and Antivirus Features

Cloud86 offers a customizable anti-spam and antivirus system to scan your emails for suspicious behavior and block messages accordingly. Email is the most common vector for cyberattacks, so this tool goes a long way to keep your site secure. While these are fairly common security features, not all hosts include them in basic plans.

Cloud86 Features at a Glance

A Straightforward Signup Process

Signing up with Cloud86 and running your account is quite straightforward. After selecting your plan on the host’s website, it’ll direct you to a page to choose a domain name. From there, input your personal and billing information and your account is ready to go.

Once you’ve set up your account, you’ll run your sites with Plesk and WordPress. While web hosting beginners will experience the usual learning curve, more experienced site owners will find the process straightforward.

Creating a New Account with Cloud86

Once I decided to use Cloud86’s Start plan, I went to a screen asking me to select my domain name. You can transfer a domain you already own or register a new one. Unfortunately, domain registration through Cloud86 isn’t free with a hosting plan. That said, I appreciated that there were no upsells or hidden fees in the process.

From there, creating your account requires the usual slate of personal information. I had to provide my name, email, and phone number, as well as a billing address and my credit card info to purchase the plan.

After purchasing the plan, I received a confirmation email within minutes. Once I received and approved it, I was immediately able to access my account and get to installing WordPress.

Connecting a Domain and Installing WordPress

My first sight upon loading up my Cloud86 account was the company’s dashboard, which is fairly simple. After selecting my linked domain, I reached the following page with options to manage my services and log in to Plesk.

After I logged in, setting up WordPress was as simple as selecting WordPress from the dashboard and installing the software. After these simple steps, I was able to access my new test site. Cloud86 handles virtually all of the basic WordPress setup for you.

That said, Cloud86 also includes other features, optimizations, and services that make it a beginner-friendly host. These include automation features to help with setting up WordPress, as well as industry-standard site management tools like Plesk.

Free Site Migrations (With Some Plans)

Site migration can be a difficult process if you aren’t technically inclined, so it’s good that most Cloud86 plans include free migration. Unfortunately, the one exception is the host’s basic Start plan. If you use Cloud86’s cheapest plan, site migration carries a hefty fee. This is unfortunate since you don’t have to look far to find competitors that offer free migrations with entry-level plans.

Managed WordPress

All of Cloud86’s plans except Start also include the host’s Premium support. Premium support promises about a half hour of hands-on assistance to resolve complex, technical problems. I also want to mention that even though I only had Basic support, the team still fixed a broken WordPress plugin for me.

Reliable Plesk Control Panel

All Cloud86 plans include a free Plesk control panel. It’s one of the most popular control panels in the world, thanks to its clear and intuitive interface. Those who’ve used it before will be right at home, and resources like Cloud86’s knowledge base can help beginners get started.

Excellent Speed, Uptime, and Worldwide Performance

Throughout my testing, I consistently found Cloud86 offers much better performance than you’d expect from its modest price and lack of name recognition. The host may only have a single, Netherlands-based data center, but it achieves outstanding speeds in Europe and reasonable results elsewhere.

To conduct my testing, I built a website with high-quality images, plenty of text, and interactive elements to get realistic results. I didn’t conduct these tests with any additional optimizations, plugins, or features besides what the plan starts with.

I didn’t activate Cloud86’s QUIC.cloud CDN, because the setup process is somewhat complex and I wanted to test the service out of the box. However, setting up the CDN will go a long way to boost worldwide performance.

GTMetrix

With GTMetrix, I was able to track Cloud86’s performance every hour for over a week. I selected a data center within Europe but outside the Netherlands, then reviewed the results after the week ended.

The most important figure in these tests is Fully Loaded Time. On this metric, Cloud86’s 0.75 seconds to fully load compares well to some of the best budget hosts in the industry. In fact, it’s one of the fastest affordable hosts my team and I have tested.

That said, this is only a single performance test. Across the week that I ran these tests, my site sometimes performed even faster. While there were several dips in performance, even the worst reports were still quite good.

The worst period on October 7th saw my site fully load in just under 1.25 seconds. This is a speed that many budget hosts can’t achieve at their best. The consistent, sub-0.2 seconds Time to First Byte is not just impressive but also contributes greatly to Cloud86’s consistency.

Sucuri Load Time Tester

While GTMetrix paints an excellent picture of Cloud86’s performance within Europe, it’s still necessary to get an idea of the host’s worldwide performance. This is especially important for potential users abroad since Cloud86 only has a single EU-based data center.

I was surprised to find that even without using QUIC.cloud CDN, the results were impressive. As far away as the American West Coast, total load time remained well under 1.5 seconds. Even in Singapore and Australia, the load time of 2.3-2.6 seconds is acceptable and shouldn’t result in users leaving due to slow load times.

UptimeRobot

My final test consisted of using UptimeRobot to constantly monitor my site’s availability. This would record any instances of downtime so that I could get an accurate picture of Cloud86’s reliability.

After about 10 days of testing, my test site didn’t suffer from any downtime. This backs up Cloud86’s claim of being able to guarantee 99.98% uptime. If you do end up experiencing more downtime than that, however, you’ll receive credits on your next bill in line with the amount of downtime you experienced.

Limited Options and Hours, but Quality Support

While many budget hosts claim to offer 24/7 support, they often fall short with long wait times after hours. Cloud86 is transparent about only offering support at certain times, but my inquiries revealed they’re fast and helpful within these windows.

Cloud86 unfortunately doesn’t offer live chat, but the host responds to email/ticket inquiries from 09:00–21:00 CET Monday through Friday. The window for phone support is shorter, from 10:00–16:00 CET during the work week. Outside these hours, you have a robust knowledge base for self-help as well.

Email and ticket support are functionally the same service. You can use it by emailing Cloud86’s support email address, or by opening a ticket in your account dashboard. I tested the service by sending two inquiries during business hours. I received excellent responses to both of my inquiries in under three hours.

While I was looking into the QUIC.cloud CDN setup process, I ran into an error in my site code that prevented me from activating LSCache. Instead of fixing it myself, I decided to ask Cloud86’s support how I could fix my site and get the plugin running.

 However, the host’s staff simply fixed the issue altogether, and I was able to activate LSCache a few minutes later. It came as a pleasant surprise since my Start plan doesn’t include this sort of technical support, but the agent fixed it for me anyway.

From there, I asked how I can update my WordPress PHP version as well as what PHP is. While many hosts’ support would link me to a knowledge base article, Cloud86’s team gave me an in-depth, human response.

The agent went on to give me a thorough explanation of what PHP is, why I should update it, and even checked my account to see my current installation. Even a web hosting novice would understand perfectly thanks to the multiple screenshots in the response.

It was disappointing to see Cloud86 doesn’t have 24/7 support or live chat, as common as these features are today. I could see potential customers in far-off time zones having trouble with the schedule, as well. However, my experience makes me think the speed and quality of the email responses more than make up for the lack of live chat.

Great Discounts for Web Hosting, but Expensive Managed WordPress and VPS

Cloud86’s web hosting plans offer low prices and good value for what you pay. You can choose either one-year or three-year terms, with an extra discount on the three-year plan. If you find that Cloud86 is a poor fit for you, you can fall back on the host’s 30-day money-back guarantee.

That said, there are some caveats to Cloud86’s competitive pricing. No plans include a free domain name, and the money-back guarantee doesn’t include the price of domain registration. Site migration is free with most plans, but it incurs a fee on the Start web hosting plan.

The Managed WordPress/WooCommerce plans are also several times more expensive than their corresponding web hosting plan. While there are some slight increases in resources, the main justification for the cost is managed WordPress support. This seems targeted at newcomers to hosting, who will get a lot of value from the assistance.

However, it’s hard to see how Cloud86 justifies the price of its Managed VPS. You can only pay by the month and there are no discounts. But even the post-discount prices of other VPS providers offer much greater resources at lower prices.