The convenience you get at Cloudways of instantly launching servers (instead of taking 5 minutes to provision a Vultr High Frequency server on xCloud or RunCloud) comes at a price:
- Slower performance.
- ~2.2x price markups on servers.
- Only 23 of Vultr’s 32 data centers.
- No coupons, like $300 in Vultr credits.
- Higher resource usage (vs. lightweight control panels).
- Restrictive integration of Cloudflare Enterprise & Object Cache Pro. Your better off setting up Cloudflare directly so you have full access to your dashboard + features.
Ah, no wonder people are moving from Cloudways to xCloud.
A lightweight control panel means better performance and lower resource usage. You’ll get OpenLiteSpeed, Redis, access to all 32 Vultr data centers, then use QUIC.cloud (or Cloudflare with APO) so you have full access to your CDN. Between the $300 free Vultr credits and retail priced servers, you’ll save quite a bit of money while getting significantly better performance.
The same $60/mo Vultr HF server on Cloudways (2vCPU + 4GB RAM) costs $24/mo on xCloud, even less when including the $300 in free Vultr credits.
SiteGround’s $100/mo “Jump Start” cloud hosting plan has 4 CPU cores + 8GB RAM + 40GB SSD Space + 5TB data transfer. A $48/mo Vultr HF server on xCloud has 3vCPU + 8GB + 256GB (faster NVMe) space + 4TB bandwidth.
Vultr High Frequency is a solid choice for most WordPress sites and both xCloud/RunCloud are lightweight control panels. I like xCloud’s interface and they allow 1 free server or 10 free sites. They’re also consistently adding new features in the changelog, but I ain’t hating on RunCloud.
Ready?
1. Launch A Vultr High Frequency Server (At Retail Price)
Step 1: Sign up for Vultr, enable your API, and allow all IPv4 + IPv6. Now copy your API key.
Step 2: Sign up for xCloud, add a new server, and add your Vultr API key.
Step 3: Create a Vultr High Frequency server on MySQL or MariaDB, Nginx or OpenLiteSpeed (usually better for dynamic or high traffic websites) with access to all of Vultr’s 32 data centers.
That’s it! You’ve successfully provisioned a Vultr High Frequency server (that wasn’t so bad, right)? The rest of this tutorial covers setting everything else up.
2. Migrating Sites To xCloud
You can migrate up to 10 sites for free since their free plan includes 1 server + 10 sites.
xCloud has a nice tutorial on migrating sites, so I won’t reinvent the wheel, but I added some important details/screenshots below which can help speed up the migration process for you.
Summary
- Click “add new site” in xCloud.
- Choose “migrate an existing WordPress site.”
- Select your destination (the new Vultr server you created).
- Choose from a demo site vs. new domain (demo site is recommended).
- Configuring settings like PHP 8.4 and enable full page caching + Redis.
- Download xCloud’s plugin and upload to your WordPress site.
- Copy the Authentication Token from xCloud and paste it into the plugin.
- Confirm you added the Token and click “next.”
- Migrate your database (e.g. all database tables & corresponding file system).
- Confirm your details and start the migration.
3. Navigating Your xCloud Dashboard (Shortcuts)
Just like Cloudways, you have settings for “Servers” and “Sites” at the top.
They have other features in the dashboard not listed here, many of which you can find in their docs. One thing I noticed is you have to add a payment method to access some features in the dashboard (you don’t actually have to pay for anything, but I thought this was a little strange).
Backups
CDN
As always, I recommend QUIC.cloud’s standard plan if you’re using OpenLiteSpeed, or Cloudflare with APO on Nginx. Both have solid performance on CDN performance trackers.
Site Monitoring
7G Firewall
Cron Jobs
Firewall Rules
Blueprints
Whitelabel
Go Live
Con: Support
As with most control panels, you’re saving money, but you’re not going to get as instant (or helpful) support as some hosts. Control panels seems to heavily rely on you using their docs and YouTube videos (which xCloud has done a great job with), but their support is still lacking. Support costs money, so you’re not going to get much of it on hardly any self-managed hosting.
About The $300 Free Vultr Credits
These expire after 30 days. You can use this link (or any of my Vultr affiliate links ending in ?ref=9666487-9J) to get this credit. Thanks for your support in helping me write honest reviews.
Still Not Sure? Keep Researching…
There are lot of control panels to choose from. Regardless, I found most people are using Cloudways aren’t aware of the markups, performance, and Cloudflare/Object Cache Pro integration problems. At the least, I want to make you aware of them and list some options.
Cheers,
Tom
