Themecloud.io Review [2024]: Is It Worth The Price?

Is Themecloud.io a Wise Investment? 

Themecloud.io is a managed WordPress hosting service with features aimed at developers. This France-based platform prides itself on an excellent customer experience, which is what managed hosting is all about.

The company primarily addresses a French-speaking audience, and only part of its website is translated into English. Not to worry, though: the support team has a good mastery of English.

Themecloud.io relies on Google Cloud Platform’s immense network to deliver excellent page-loading speeds. You get advanced tech support, and most of the backend maintenance is done for you, so you can focus on developing your website or business. The downside is that if you have more than one website, you’ll have to create a separate account for each. 

Themecloud.io is more expensive than established companies like Hostinger, particularly if you need to host more than one website. So why would you go with Themecloud.io in the first place? Well, if you’re a designer who needs help with the technical aspects of hosting, this could be a good service for you. If you’re new to hosting altogether, not so much.

There’s more to what Themecloud.io has to offer, but you’ll have to keep reading for the full story.

Themecloud.io Has Great Features for Developers

Themecloud.io has found success as a managed WordPress hosting service, despite several important drawbacks. The pluses: each of its plans comes with one ready-made WordPress installation, SSL certificates, advanced website security, automatic daily backups, and predefined collaborator roles.

All of Themecloud’s plans, even the entry-level plan, feature a solid foundation of features, support, and security. Although a fair amount of bandwidth and storage are included in all plans, advanced tools like a website testing environment are not available.

Themecloud.io provides one-click website cloning that lets you test new features, but unlike with staging environments, you won’t be able to then push these changes live. Its plans don’t include a website builder or the ability to install more than one WordPress site on one account either.

Some of Themecloud’s unique features make it a competitive managed WordPress solution. Let’s take a closer look.

Managed Cloud Built on GCP

All of the server resources provided by Themecloud.io technically belong to Google, which is great because Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers cutting-edge security, excellent performance, and scalability. The major disadvantage is that there’s only one data center where you can host your websites, and it’s located in Belgium.

Now you might be thinking: why don’t I work directly with GCP? Great question. Google doesn’t offer any managed support, which means that you would have to take care of backups, regular updates, and security yourself. You’d also have to provision and configure the virtual machines that host your websites.

As a managed WordPress service, Themecloud.io takes care of these tasks for you. And if you need additional storage or a dedicated server for emailing, the Themecloud.io team can set them up for you. If you’re looking for more versatility in terms of data center location and fully-managed hosting, Cloudways is a better choice.

Advanced Website Security

Each Themecloud.io account comes with an Astra Security Pro package. What does Astra do? First of all, it puts your website behind a firewall, which minimizes the chances that malware, spam, and hackers will get to it.

Astra includes a daily automatic malware scanner (you can also manually trigger scans) and a tool that tracks file changes.

Astra also lets you scan files uploaded to the server, gives you an out-of-the-box General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) consent tool for visitors from the European Union, and provides website cleanup services to help you remove malware effortlessly.

If your website is mistakenly blacklisted by Google or Norton, Astra’s blacklist monitoring will let you know about it before any of your visitors. This gives you the chance to prevent it from affecting your business.

Performance-Optimized Servers

Cloud computing may be a great alternative to physical, on-premises computers, but the downside is that you need to install and configure the software yourself.

This is where managed WordPress hosting steps in. Themecloud.io’s proprietary web server stack ensures high performance and fast loading times for your WordPress website.

If you think your site’s visitors could use a speed boost, the Pro plans include Redis object caching, which stores your website within the server’s RAM, giving you even better loading times.

Work with Collaborators

If you’re working with others on your website, Themecloud.io has a handy Teams feature. From the dashboard, you can invite members to your project and give them various permissions.

There are three predefined roles (Editor, Developer, and Admin), each with their own authorizations.

With Themecloud’s Teams, working with collaborators is simple and safe because you don’t have to give your account’s credentials to anyone. Instead, you can create a temporary account with limited credentials. When you’re no longer working together, you can simply remove these accounts.

Themecloud.io’s Custom Control Panel Isn’t Beginner-Friendly

Overall, Themecloud.io is geared more toward advanced users.

Although Themecloud’s dashboard is easy to work with, several features are missing, which might pose problems for WordPress beginners. You get the WP dashboard and an interface to easily manage your subscription and services, but that’s about it.

Some portions of the Themecloud.io website haven’t been fully translated into English, so you might have to use Google translate to understand portions of it. It’s not very convenient, but it doesn’t prevent you from using their services.

I’ve interacted with the support team several times, and every time the agent spoke or wrote in flawless English.

Let’s take a look at some of the things Themecloud does right.

Free Migration

Themecloud.io will transfer your website to the platform within two working days, free of charge.

If you’re a beginner, free transfers are a valuable option. Why? Many things can go wrong during the migration. You can lose files, URLs might not work, databases might not connect, and so on. It’s safe to say that the entire process is best handled by experts.

If you’re going to transfer your site, you can request a free performance benchmark beforehand. The Themecloud team will clone your website and temporarily host it on their infrastructure, which lets you evaluate its performance before the migration.

Sleek Turnkey Websites

With a dozen premium themes ready to use, Themecloud.io makes it easy for you to create new websites or showcase your work to potential clients.

Made with Elementor, the attractive pre-designed websites are cross-platform compatible and responsive. You can use the free version of Elementor to get started, but a pro builder license isn’t included. Templates can be modified using the WordPress dashboard or, better yet, with the free version of Elementor All you have to do is install the plugin and use the drag-and-drop editor to build your site.

In addition to reducing your time to market, Themecloud’s WordPress themes are a great source of inspiration for new projects. I just wish there were more of them to choose from. Competitors often feature dozens – if not hundreds – of WP themes.

Responsive WordPress Support

Unlike general support services, Themecloud.io has WordPress experts waiting to help you; all you need to do is hop onto their live chat window to talk to a real person.

Their average response time is three minutes from the first prompt, but in my experience it was faster than that. Many web hosts consider such guided advice to be premium-tier tech support and charge you extra for it, but that’s not the case here.

You can get information about everything from CSS rules to improving the performance of your website to password retrieval and more. If there’s conflicting code or plugins, you can get help with troubleshooting and debugging.

Bespoke Performance in Select Regions Only

Themecloud.io is known for excellent uptime and crisp performance. In addition, its virtual machines are configured according to best practices for WordPress.

The company runs the Nginx web server with the latest version of PHP and the FastCGI process manager. You have access to FastCGI caching by default, but if you already have a WP Rocket license, you can turn that option on in the dashboard.

There is a solid 99.9% uptime guarantee, but Themecloud.io doesn’t offer its own service level agreement (SLA). Instead, you have to rely on Google’s agreement, which is sufficient since GCP actually owns the infrastructure.

But there’s a catch. Unlike other managed services, which give you the option to choose from multiple data center locations, Themecloud.io uses a single server located in Belgium. While this translates to excellent loading times for your European or American audiences, it will likely mean slower speeds for Asian and Australian visitors.

One way to improve speeds for visitors far from your server is through a content delivery network (CDN). Fortunately, all pro plans come with BunnyCDN. I would have expected to get the Google Cloud CDN, which is an industry leader, but Bunny has some good stats too.

Thanks to GCP, it’s highly unlikely that your website will ever go down if you work with Themecloud.io.

Support Is Only Through Email and Live Chat 

You can reach Themecloud.io support through live chat and email. The live chat option seems to be the best way to get in touch, since I tried sending them an email and never got a response.

Consequently, I tested the live chat option on several occasions and found it to be every bit as responsive and helpful as many customers say it is. The representative took the time to answer all of my questions as if I were a paying client, and when something was unclear, they asked for clarifications.

At no point did the agent engage in upselling. The agent requested further information regarding my hosting requirements, a gesture that is always appreciated. Additionally, they extended a discount offer in case I intended to host multiple websites, which was a pleasant bonus.

Themecloud.io’s support is tailor-made to help you with any WordPress-related issue. There is no substantial knowledge base to rely on if you like to DIY, but a few guides are available.

Great Prices for Basic Plans, but the Upgrades Will Cost You

When you compare Themecloud.io’s prices with offers from industry giants like Hostinger, the service will seem quite expensive. What saves Themecloud.io is the combined value from the Astra Pro license, its great support, and its robust performance.

If you’re a developer or agency, there’s a good chance that Themecloud.io will help your business grow. Still, I can’t say that Themecloud.io can compare to the average managed WordPress service. Not many features are included, and webmasters will have to create a separate account for each website.

Pricing is transparent, and you can get a good discount if you pay for a year up-front. All plans come with core features such as automatic updates and daily automatic backups. The downside is that you will have to pay for access to Redis and Themecloud.io’s CDN if you’re on the starter plan.

Although there is no money-back guarantee, you can try the service for two days for free before committing to a purchase. This is actually more annoying than helpful, because it’s too short a timeframe to find out whether Themecloud.io is right for you.