Cloudways is already one of the faster managed hosting platforms available, but there is real headroom to push WordPress performance further. For every second your page takes to load you lose roughly 7% of potential conversions, so getting your site as fast as possible has a direct impact on revenue.
Below are practical steps you can take to improve Cloudways WordPress speed, from quick wins like cache activation to longer-term moves like server upgrades. Start by measuring your current speed to have a baseline for comparison after each change.
Measure Your Speed Before You Start
Before making changes, record your current performance numbers. Two free tools cover the most important metrics:
- GTmetrix - Run a test from a server location near your main audience. Record the Time to First Byte (TTFB), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Total Blocking Time. GTmetrix shows a waterfall view that makes it easy to spot which requests are the slowest.
- Google PageSpeed Insights - Tests both mobile and desktop. Provides Core Web Vitals data from real Chrome users if your site gets enough traffic, plus lab data otherwise. Focus on LCP and TTFB under the Diagnostics section.
Write down your TTFB before any changes. A well-configured Cloudways site with Varnish active typically delivers TTFB under 200 ms for cached pages and under 600 ms for uncached PHP requests. Retest with the same tool and location after each step so the comparison is consistent.
Choose a Better Cloud Provider and Server Location
Cloudways lets you deploy servers on DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode (Akamai), AWS, and Google Cloud. Not all of these perform equally for every use case. DigitalOcean and Vultr are consistently fast for most WordPress sites and come at a lower price point. AWS and Google Cloud offer more headroom for high-traffic applications but cost more per gigabyte of bandwidth.
Beyond the provider, server location matters just as much. If most of your visitors are in the UK, a server in London or Amsterdam will cut latency compared to one in New York or Dallas. Log in to Cloudways, check your analytics for where traffic originates, and make sure your server region matches. See our guide on why cloud hosting outperforms shared hosting for more on how infrastructure choices affect speed.
Increase Server Resources
Cloudways makes it straightforward to scale CPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth without any server migration. If your site is growing or you are running WooCommerce, the default starter plan can become a bottleneck.
To scale up, log in to Cloudways and go to Servers, select your server, open Server Management, then click Vertical Scaling. Move the slider to the right to increase resources. You will see the revised monthly cost update in real time. Click Scale Now when you are happy with the selection. The process takes a few minutes and requires a brief restart.
A good rule of thumb: if your server CPU consistently sits above 70% or your site takes more than two seconds to generate the first byte (TTFB), it is time to scale. For a full walkthrough, see our guide on how to scale a Cloudways server.
Update PHP Version
Running WordPress on an outdated PHP version is one of the easiest performance problems to fix. PHP 8.1 and 8.2 are significantly faster than PHP 7.4, and the difference in real-world page generation time is measurable.
To update, go to Servers > Server Management > Settings & Packages > Packages, then select the latest stable PHP version from the dropdown. Before making the change, check your application logs for PHP deprecation warnings. If your theme or plugins use deprecated functions, a PHP upgrade can cause errors. Test on a staging clone first if you are not sure.
Check That OPcache Is Active
Cloudways runs PHP-FPM with OPcache enabled by default, but it is worth confirming OPcache is actually working on your installation. OPcache stores compiled PHP scripts in memory so they do not need to be parsed on every request, which cuts PHP execution time by 30-50% on a typical WordPress site.
To check, install the OPcache Manager plugin by Louis Cuny from the WordPress plugin directory. It shows whether OPcache is active, the hit rate (aim for above 90%), and memory usage. If OPcache is not active or the hit rate is low, contact Cloudways support as any misconfiguration is on the server side rather than something you can fix from the WordPress dashboard.
Update MariaDB Version
Cloudways uses MariaDB rather than MySQL. MariaDB is faster for read-heavy workloads and is generally the better choice for WordPress sites. For compatibility reasons, your server may be running an older version.
You can update it from the same Settings & Packages > Packages screen where PHP versions appear. The MariaDB dropdown sits directly below the PHP selection. Updating to the latest stable version reduces query execution time and improves overall throughput, particularly on sites with large post counts or complex custom queries.
Enable Varnish Cache on Cloudways
Varnish is Cloudways’ built-in full-page cache. When Varnish is active, it stores a complete copy of each rendered page and serves it directly from memory on repeat visits, bypassing PHP and the database entirely. This is the single biggest speed gain available on Cloudways for most WordPress sites.
To enable Varnish, go to Applications, select your WordPress application, then open Application Management > Application Settings. Toggle Varnish Cache to On. You do not need a third-party plugin for this; it runs at the server level.
It is worth understanding how Varnish differs from Redis. Varnish is a page cache: it serves entire HTML pages without touching PHP or the database. Redis is an object cache: it stores the results of database queries in memory so PHP does not have to run the same queries repeatedly. Both can be active at the same time, and they complement each other. Varnish handles anonymous visitors at high speed; Redis speeds up logged-in requests and complex pages that Varnish cannot cache.
Install Redis Object Cache
Redis reduces database load by storing query results in memory. On a busy WordPress site, the same database queries run hundreds of times per minute. Redis means those queries only run once; every subsequent request pulls from memory instead.
To install Redis on Cloudways, go to Servers > Server Management > Packages and enable Redis from the list. Once it is installed at the server level, you need to activate it inside WordPress. Install the Redis Object Cache plugin (by Till Kruss), then go to Settings > Redis in your WordPress dashboard and click Enable Object Cache. The plugin will confirm whether the connection to the Redis server is active.
Redis is reversible. If you notice any unexpected behaviour after enabling it, you can disable the plugin and remove the package from the Cloudways panel.
Install a CDN and the Breeze Caching Plugin
A content delivery network (CDN) stores static assets like images, CSS, and JavaScript files on servers around the world. When a visitor loads your site, those assets are served from the nearest CDN node rather than your origin server, which cuts load times for visitors who are geographically distant from your server.
Cloudways has its own built-in CDN, available from Application Management > CDN. It is powered by StackPath and costs $0.06 per GB of bandwidth. For a low-traffic site, the monthly cost is minimal and it is the easiest option to activate.
If you prefer a free alternative, Cloudflare with Cloudways adds CDN caching and DDoS protection in one step at no cost. The trade-off is that configuration is more involved.
For the caching plugin, Breeze is the right choice for Cloudways users. It is developed by Cloudways, is free, and is designed to work in tandem with Varnish. Breeze handles browser caching, minification of CSS and JavaScript, and Gzip compression. The Breeze + Varnish combination is the recommended default setup for any WordPress site on Cloudways. Install Breeze from the WordPress plugin directory, then go to Settings > Breeze and enable the options that match your setup. If Varnish is active, Breeze will also send cache purge signals to Varnish when you update a post.
If you are on Kinsta rather than Cloudways, see our guide on how Kinsta handles CDN at the hosting level through its built-in Cloudflare integration.
Optimize Images on Cloudways
Images are frequently the largest assets on a page and the biggest contributor to slow Core Web Vitals scores, particularly Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). Unoptimized images on Cloudways will drag down performance regardless of how well everything else is configured.
The most practical approach is to install an image optimization plugin on WordPress. Two well-regarded options are ShortPixel and Imagify. Both can bulk-compress your existing image library and automatically compress new uploads. More importantly, both convert images to WebP format, which is 25-35% smaller than JPEG or PNG at equivalent visual quality. WebP is now supported by all major browsers and is one of the fastest ways to improve your LCP score.
Additional steps that help:
- Set image dimensions in HTML so the browser can reserve space before the image loads (reduces Cumulative Layout Shift)
- Use lazy loading for images below the fold (WordPress handles this natively since version 5.5)
- Avoid uploading images wider than 1200px for standard content areas
Check Your WordPress Theme and Plugins
Server configuration and caching can only do so much. If your WordPress theme loads 15 external scripts or you have 40 active plugins, performance will suffer regardless of your server plan.
Start with your plugin list. Deactivate plugins one at a time and test load time after each deactivation to identify which ones have a measurable impact. Page builder plugins, slider plugins, and some contact form plugins are common culprits. If a plugin is not actively used, remove it.
For database performance, install WP-Optimize. It cleans up post revisions, spam comments, and transient data that accumulate over time and slow down database queries. Running a clean on a site that has been live for a year can remove thousands of stale rows.
For diagnosing slow database queries, Query Monitor is the tool to use. It shows you which queries are running on each page load, how long each takes, and which plugin or theme component triggered it. If a single query is taking more than 100ms, that is worth investigating. Before changing server settings, reviewing your application logs alongside Query Monitor data gives you the full picture.
Common Cloudways Speed Mistakes to Avoid
Even with the right settings in place, a few common mistakes undo the gains:
- Enabling Varnish without configuring Breeze - Varnish and Breeze need to work together. If you run Breeze without telling it Varnish is active, it will not send purge signals and visitors will see stale cached pages after you update content.
- Picking the wrong server region - A server in New York serving mostly European visitors adds 80-120ms of latency per request regardless of how optimised everything else is. Check your traffic's geographic distribution before deploying.
- Scaling RAM but not CPU - On WooCommerce sites, CPU is usually the bottleneck before RAM. Check your CPU usage graph first rather than defaulting to adding RAM.
- Using WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache alongside Varnish - These plugins conflict with Varnish at the server level. Breeze is the correct caching plugin for Cloudways; other caching plugins should be deactivated.
- Not testing on mobile - GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights both test desktop by default. Mobile performance often looks quite different, and Google uses mobile TTFB for Core Web Vitals scoring.
Wrapping Up
Getting a faster Cloudways WordPress site is not about one single fix. It is about stacking the right layers: Varnish for full-page caching, Redis for database query caching, Breeze for browser-level optimization, a CDN for static assets, WebP images for Core Web Vitals, and clean server settings throughout. Measure your TTFB before and after each change so you know which steps are delivering real gains. Running a WordPress website on Cloudways gives you access to all of these tools. For the full overview of how every cache layer fits together, see our Cloudways performance and speed guide. If you have worked through all of these steps and performance is still limited, the next move is to scale your Cloudways server to a higher CPU and RAM plan.
