Cloudron is a versatile cloud panel like ServerPilot and RunCloud that offers lots of advanced features in one place. But, the limitations with the starter plan, no application-level firewall support, and limited plans/pricing could easily make one look for Cloudron alternatives. So, what are the top Cloudron competitors and similar services? That’s what we will find out today.
For instance, we’ll take you through detailed reviews on cloud panels similar to Cloudron to help you find out a suitable option. We’ll also explain why you actually need a cloud panel like Cloudron.
Ready?
Let’s roll in.
What is Cloudron?
Cloudron is a cloud control panel that makes server administration easy and convenient with the help of automation. It offers easy solutions to run apps on your own cloud servers. The easy installation of apps and usability are the highlights of the company.
The provider has been around for quite a while and now has thousands of users around the world. One of the reasons users love Cloudron is the support for a variety of apps. In fact, an average user may barely experience Cloudron not supporting the application he wants to install.
The support for emails is also a fantastic benefit of Cloudron. It helps you to take care of your emails from the same place you manage your servers. In fact, you can manage the emails of all your sites on the servers from one place.
Some other advantages of Cloudron include the up-to-date fixes for apps. The platform keeps bringing out updated features to make sure everything’s working fine. Even the official users like this part of Cloudron.
Cloudron also brings forth the user management feature that lets you create multiple accounts for your team. The feature is very helpful for agencies and helps them to manage their servers in a convenient way. Moreover, sharing files and ideas becomes easier this way.
Cloudron has many good points, but it also has some drawbacks. First, there have been many complaints regarding inconsistent performance. Another common issue people face is that staging their servers at Cloudron can be exhausting at times, especially if they’re beginners.
Aside from that, Cloudron’s requirement for a default domain and the availability of self-support are some other downsides. To be honest, Cloudron is not a platform for beginners, and some of its policies limit its services.
That said, why do you need to look out for Cloudron’s similar services? Let’s find out.
Why Cloudron Alternatives?
Of course, there’s no all-in-one solution that fits the needs of everyone. Cloudron comes with certain drawbacks and limitations that could urge you to look for a Cloudron alternative service. Below are the major reasons to look out for Cloudron substitutes.
Poor Performance
Our testing reveals that Cloudron’s performance is mediocre and inconsistent. If you’re willing to host crucial business websites or applications on the servers, Cloudron can cause problems.
Firstly, know that Cloudron generally integrates with Vultr unless you connect it to another cloud provider. On combining with Vultr’s SSD cloud servers, Clouron was found to handle 140-150 users smoothly.
In comparison to Cloudron alternatives, the amount of users it handles is pretty low. The page load time of Cloudron is also considerably slower at an average of 3.9 seconds. If you’re willing to perform well in search engine rankings or want to offer a good user experience, it’s recommended to keep the page loading speed below 3 seconds.
Usability is Not That Great
Of course, Cloudron is optimized for user experience. But, on comparing it with other hosting panels, you’ll see that it lacks some powerful features that help to boost productivity.
Most importantly, Cloudron restricts you from managing your servers and applications one by one. Though it offers a breakdown of all your active connected servers, you don’t get the option to manage them at once.
Support Could’ve Been Better
On testing Cloudron’s customer support, our review experts found out that it’s not that reachable. If your business is critical and you cannot bear unresponsive support, Cloudron is a big NO.
However, though it takes a considerable amount of time to reach the support agent, the community forum is pretty great. Every time, there are dozens of (if not hundreds) experts available on the community forum that could help get your issue solved. But overall, Cloudron is not that good in terms of customer assistance.
That said, what are some great cloud panels like Cloudron?
Let’s find out.
Top Cloudron Alternatives and Competitors
1. Kamatera – Overall Best for Cloud Servers and Panel
KamateraExpress is the best alternative to Cloudron, hands down. It offers a much faster speed with more flexibility and lots of additional benefits that Cloudron lacks. Just to back up, Kamatera is a popular cloud hosting provider offering an elegant API, server management tools, and cloud panel. In other words, Kamatera is an all-in-one solution for renting cloud servers and getting a powerful control portal.
What’s extraordinary about Kamatera is the performance, as mentioned before. Firstly, deploying a server is simple and quick. It barely takes 60 seconds to get your cloud instance ready for operation.
Secondly, the company offers powerful Intel Xeon processors paired with SSD storage drives and top-notch networking to boast a smooth performance. And thirdly, the platform lets you choose from 13 server locations around the globe. Selecting the one nearest to your target audience ensures enhanced server performance as it helps to retrieve data faster because of low latency. Kamatera utilizes all these features to provide the fastest cloud hosting servers with unparalleled efficiency.
The cloud server plans at Kamatera start from as low as $4/mo, it offers primary hardware resources of 1GB RAM, 1 vCPU core, 20GB SSD storage, and 1TB bandwidth. Moreover, 1 Public IP and the choice of data center location are standard for all plans. There are nine pre-made plans along with a flexible custom option.
The best part of KamateraExpress is that you can build a custom server, thanks to the customized feature. Unlike other providers that restrict you from getting specific resources depending upon the plan, Kamatera lets you create your own server with desired specifications. It enables you to choose anything from CPU, RAM, storage, and operating systems to add-ons. Furthermore, extra functions like daily backup and managed service are also available.
Another point to be noted is the redundancy of versatile hardware resources offered by the company. From over 104 CPU cores to 4 TB SSD storage, it provides flexible resources choice to entertain businesses of any kind.
The instant scalability is also a highlight of Kamatera. If you think that your website or app will grow and you’ll eventually need a more powerful server, Kamatera has you covered. It lets you upgrade or degrade the server resources at any time with the click of a button.
It’s no secret that customer support is beneficial at times. Thankfully, Kamatera has managed to put together a friendly, knowledgeable, and fast customer support team available 24/7 to help you with queries, issues, and errors.
Are you still confused about whether KamateraExpress is a good service or not? You can sign up for a 30-day free trial account to test if it fulfills your business needs. You should give it a try.
Pros
- Reliable and friendly control panel
- 24/7 Quick customer support
- 13 Datacenters worldwide
- Modern hardware utilization
- On the go scalability
- Redundant top tier network connectivity
- Affordable pricing
- 30-Days free trial
Cons
- You must have some technical know-how
- Expensive managed cloud plans
- Credit card is required for a trial account
- Extra charges for daily backups
2. Vultr – Best Cheap Cloudron Alternative
If affordability is your utmost concern when finding a great alternative to Cloudron, Vultr is your call. The company is primarily defined for its cheap cloud servers backed by enterprise-class hardware. The best part is, this lower price doesn’t bring the drawbacks like long-term commitments or compromise in performance.
The entry SSD cloud plan at Vultr only costs $2.50 per month with an elegant control panel which is absolutely free. It offers 1GB RAM, 10GB SSD storage, 1 CPU core, and 1TB data bandwidth. You can go for up to 1600GB SSD storage, 15TB bandwidth, 96GB RAM, and 24 CPU cores per instance for General Compute.
You also get the option to pay at an hourly rate depending upon the hours you use the server. That means Vultr allows its customers to pay either monthly or hourly for the used resources only. The inclusion of IPv6 addresses with each server is also a notable plus.
The availability of diverse server configurations and types of servers at Vultr is pretty diverse. A wide range of purpose-oriented servers like General Compute, High Frequency Compute, and BareMetal servers are available to suit your needs. Their High Frequency Comput plans come with ultimate CPU clock speed and fastest NVMe storage and range between $6/month to $250/month.
Resources scalability at Vultr is flexible too, thanks to on-the-fly upgrades within minutes. You can always switch between different plans with the click of a button. Plus, instant server deployment in under 60 seconds is also a great feature to help you set up a cloud instance promptly.
Vultr also supports various operating systems and different Linux distros, including Windows, Debian, Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and so on. With full root access, you get the flexibility to upload a custom ISO for OS installation as well. Other than operating systems, the platform also maintains a wide range of one-click apps. Whether you want to install WordPress, cPanel, Magneto, or any other popular application, Vultr has your back.
Each instance is built with 100% SSD drives and Intel CPUs to ensure the fastest cloud servers across the world. SSDs are generally many times faster compared to traditional hard drives. The choice of 19 global data center locations is also a plus to maximize performance by reducing data latency.
Of course, a cloud panel and a server are not all you need to run your business efficiently. Thankfully, Vultr also boasts additional services like load balancers for handling traffic spikes, backups and snapshots to help you protect your data from any incident.
The offering of a web-based firewall and DDoS protection is also an exceptional addition to security. If the best value for your money is your interest, Vultr worth’s considering. With a free trial available and 4.5 million cloud servers launched on Vultr, you certainly cannot go wrong with it.
Pros
- Free intuitive panel
- Affordable SSD-powered servers
- 100% SLA uptime guaranteed
- Intel processors
- 19 Datacenters in 4 continents
- No long term contracts
- Pay hourly or monthly
- Free trial account
Cons
- No live chat, but ticket support is quite fast
3. CloudWays – Best Managed Alternative to Cloudron
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform known best for its simplicity and performance. It’s an innovative and competent cloud service offering lots of excellent benefits you’ll enjoy along the way.
First thing’s first, Cloudways is more of an all-in-one solution that has partnered up with top cloud providers to offer cloud hosting along with a custom-made management control panel. To make it clear, you get the choice to choose from one of the top cloud services, including DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud.
The pricing of the servers, of course, depends upon the cloud provider you pick. But whichever you choose, it includes the console panel price. In other words, Cloudways doesn’t cost you extra for the control panel.
The major benefit of choosing Cloudways is the flexibility to install unlimited applications and support for all PHP apps. Furthermore, the control panel is pretty innovative and makes it easy to manage your account and servers conveniently.
As an experienced cloud platform, Cloudways understands the importance of customer satisfaction and values customers in various ways. Firstly, there’s the 24/7 quick support for a worry-free cloud computing experience.
Other than that, the company boasts managed security and automated backups to get you peace of mind.
Performance-wise, Cloudways easily rules out Cloudron. Though the speed depends upon the cloud platform you choose on Cloudways, it’s generally always good at Cloudways since it has partnered up with the best cloud services only.
Furthermore, Cloudways provides a built-in CDN and support for PHP 7.3+ versions to ensure the best performance. So, if performance is your utmost concern, Cloudways is worth considering. With the free trial that doesn’t even require a credit card, you cannot go wrong with Cloudways.
Another vital point to note is that Cloudways offers managed cloud services. Unlike the traditional unmanaged services, a managed service is much more convenient as many exhausting tasks are managed by the company experts themselves. These particularly include performance optimization, security, and updates.
The cloud instances at Cloudways are the cheapest if you choose any of DigitalOcean, Linode, or Vultr. DigitalOcean’s cloud servers at Cloudways start from as low as $12/mo. Fortunately, there’s no requirement for long-term commitment for benefiting this affordable price (for managed service).
The starter cloud plan yields 1GB of RAM, 1 CPU core, 25GB SSD storage, and 1TB monthly bandwidth. In addition, essential features like SSL certificates, CDN, and SSH access are standard in all plans.
As a value-packed managed cloud provider, Cloudways also extends a variety of premium features. Other than team management, these include auto-healing server technology, advanced-cache, dedicated firewall, and what not?
If you already have a site or server that you want to transfer to Cloudways, you’ll be pleased to know that the company confers free site migrations. Other than that, higher plans are also in place to suit all kinds of mid to large business needs. The hardware resources keep increasing as you go higher.
That said, if you’re looking for a great Cloudron alternative that’s easy-to-use and doesn’t require technical understanding, Cloudways is your call. With a dazzling 4.7 rating on TrustPilot, it’s a trustable platform to consider.
Pros
- Unlimited applications installations
- Intuitive custom control panel with built-in CDN
- 5 Premium cloud services compatibility
- Automatic backups and auto-heal mechanism
- Trustable and authoritative with thousands of third party users reviews
- One-click deployment
- 24/7/365 customer support
Cons
- No root access
- Lots of upsells
- It gets a bit expensive
4. RunCloud
RunCloud is a well known hosting control panel specialized for PHP cloud servers. Its highlights are incredible customer support, simple setup procedure, and hassle-free server management. The provider has been in operation for over seven years and knows what its users want very well.
RunCloud doesn’t offer virtual servers as it has not partnered up with any cloud services like CloudWays. However, similar to Cloudron, it supports DigitalOcean, AWS, and Google Cloud. So, you can use any of these platforms to rent a cloud server and manage with RunCloud.
As an authoritative cloud panel, RunCloud has been featured in the top review websites like Forbes and HostAdvice. Runcloud’s rating on G2 is also pretty good, at 4.4 stars out of 5. That’s how it has reached to managing 246,542 applications around the world.
Besides server management, RunCloud offers additional benefits like backups to assure your data is protected. Additional features like choosing the team management and “zero-downtime guaranteed” deployment are some other advantages of RunCloud.
The platform offers a wide range of frameworks and applications to address almost all kinds of users. All the popular apps like WordPress, CakePHP, Yii Framework, Laravel, PHP, and Joomla are supported can be installed with a 1-click installer right from the dashboard. The custom user interface lets you view daily server data transfer, server health, and system load/RAM/storage for smooth operations. And in case of any emergency, it immediately displays a notification on the dashboard.
Furthermore, the server setup has been made pretty convenient. The host manages all the back-end operations like configurations, optimization, and on-time security updates. RunCloud also performs well in uptime. The application is available nearly always with minimal inaccessibility. If you are fearful regarding the provider’s commitments, consider using its 5-day free trial.
Pros
- Support almost all PHP based applications
- 5-day free trial without requiring a credit card
- Versatile apps compatibility
- Transparent commitments and pricing
- Performance-driven dashboard for quick tweaks
- Instant deployment with full control
- Easy to use panel
Cons
- Not that cheap
- You have to rent a server separately
5. ServerPilot
ServerPilot is a top-rated cloud panel specializing in WordPress hosting. Just like Vultr cloud, it’s also primarily defined for its value-packed services that appeal to agencies, developers, and individual webmasters to build WordPress websites. That’s why it has earned an excellent 4.7 rating on TrustPilot today.
The company supports some of the best cloud providers such as DigitalOcean, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon AWS. Whichever of these cloud platforms you choose to connect, the integration is straightforward with almost all features offered by Cloudron.
ServerPilot scores well in terms of security measures. It concedes automated updates to make sure all the apps are up-to-date and effective against attacks as well as viruses. The availability of a powerful firewall is another plus, enabling you to set rules and keep away from malicious stuff and snoopers.
The company also manages a simultaneous performance for your virtual servers with their blazing-fast stacks. These notably include Nginx, Apache, PHP-FPM, MySQL, HTTP/2, and Brotli.
Moreover, to help you feel comfortable, they house a 24/7 US-based support team. According to the official customer reviews, their support team is friendly and gets back to you in a hurry.
Aside from these nitty-gritty details, the cloud panel also offers some additional bonuses like 1-click SSL deployment for free. Regardless of how many servers you have with sites running on them, you can deploy SSL certificates right away.
The 1-click WordPress installation is also a great feature to start your new WordPress site without waiting another second. All it takes is 5 minutes to set up your server at ServerPilot; it’s quick and easy.
What’s unique about ServerPilot is the pricing structure. They don’t serve anything like unlimited servers management with a single plan, regardless of the plan you choose. Instead, you pay for each server and app at hand separately. However, each upgraded package comes with advanced features. They get better as you go higher, as a rule of thumb.
The Economy package starts from $5/server along with $0.50/app and offers all basic features. For instance, whether it’s about SSL certificates, firewall configuration, multiple PHP versions, or 1-click WordPress install, it has you covered.
If you choose the higher Business package, the pricing doubles at $10/server with $1/app. What sets it apart from the previous subscription is the priority support and a log viewer for easy tracking and resource usage stats.
The First Class package follows the same pricing pattern, it doubles compared to the previous at $20/server with $2/app. The unique features you get with this are top-priority customer support with per-app statuses monitoring.
However, you don’t have to take ServerPilot as an expensive deal if you’re a big player. The provider offers automatic 50% off as soon as you start paying $50/month. Unlike Cloudron, they have a 14-day trial option in place to help you decide if it’s worth your money.
Pros
- Lots of premium features with higher plans
- Fit for WordPress users
- Easy & quick setup
- Diverse support for apps and cloud providers
- A 14-day free trial
Cons
- The pricing policy doesn’t suit all
- Limited features with the starter plan
- No free account like Cloudron
6. Moss
Moss is another server management platform, but not just any other on the market. It’s got some unique features like making server management effortless and automated with loads of premium features offered at cheap rates. The platform is also incredible for its quick customer support, which doesn’t let you down.
Moss works very well with a variety of popular clouds you could be using. Where it maintains many cloud providers integration, installing your applications like WordPress, Laravel, PHP, and Bitbucker is also pretty convenient. Moss takes care of all optimization on their end to deliver the fastest performance for all hosted apps and sites, thanks to HTTP/2 and OCSP stapling optimizations.
But, what sets Moss apart from the competition?
No doubt, it’s their offering of unlimited servers and sites with every subscription. That’s why people are starting to explore this relatively young cloud panel. Another advantage of Moss is the availability of a free package. Yes, you heard it right. They permit you to connect your server for free and then shift to a premium package as you grow and need more resources.
In fact, the FREE plan offers up to 25 Git deployments, 1 integration, and basic assistance. What’s more, is the ability to add as many users as you want. Furthermore, the availability of firewall, cron jobs, and automatic server updates are extra perks.
Apart from this free package, the paid ones start from $9/month and go all the way up to $49/mo. The starter paid account yields 2 integrations along with 50 Git deployments and all free features. These limits keep expanding as you go higher as the Unlimited package concedes infinite integration and Git deploys along with priority support.
You can connect Amazon EC2, DigitalOcean, Slack, Google Cloud, and Vultr cloud servers. Unlike ServerPilot that costs each instance individually, Moss provides unlimited sites and servers deployment for all packages. For enhanced monitoring to keep an eye on your virtual machines, monitoring add-on costs an extra $5/month – it sends instant notifications if something goes wrong with your servers.
Pros
- Quick customer support
- Easy server management
- Free plan with one integration
- Unlimited servers & apps with the starter plan
- Pre-configured HTTP/2 and OSCP stapling
- Robust security with firewalls, SSH/SFTP, and security patches
Cons
- No support with the starter plan
Key Takeaways
The best Cloudron competitor that offers both an intuitive control panel and virtual servers at cheaper rates is Kamatera, with a starting price of as low as $4/month and one month free trial account.
Kamatera is a well-known platform with thousands of customers, 25 years of expertise, and 13 widespread data centers. The highlights of Kamatera are SSD storage, ultimate performance, quick customer support, under 55 seconds instance deployment, redundant network connectivity, and affordable yet transparent pricing.
Our runner-up Cloudron alternatives are Cloudways, RunCloud, and ServerPilot. CloudWays is a fantastic platform offering top-tier server speeds, vertical scaling, and dozens of powerful features. The availability of the free trial and “pay as you go” policy are extra perks. RunCloud is a solid Cloudron substitute if you can afford it.
