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As someone who has signed up for the Cloudways free trial account twice, I will give you a step-by-step guide to creating and verifying your trial account.
Also, you will learn the available free trial hosting feature limitations, the customized user dashboard, the migration process, etc.
After reading through this tutorial, you will be ready to create and verify your account, migrate your blog to the Cloudways server, and request help if you’re stuck.
With the Cloudways free trial account, you can test server performance and speed, access essential features, engage support, and several hosting features.
The best part is that it doesn’t require a credit card or payment details to sign up for the free trial account.
You will also discover why upgrading your account after the free trial makes sense because you will get more value.
Let’s walk through it.
Cloudways Free Trial – Getting Started.
First, Cloudways offers 3 days of free access to its cloud hosting plans. After the initial three days are over, you can decide to upgrade or cancel your account.
You’re not tied to any contract or commitment to make payment.
Now let’s walk through the steps of creating your Cloudways hosting trial account together.
Step #1.
Sign up from this link. The link will take you directly to the Cloudways free trial landing page.
On the landing page, click the “Start Free” button.
The page has two buttons; whichever you click takes you to the signup page.
Step #2.
Now that you’re on the signup page, enter your details in the form.
You must enter your email address, first name, last name, and monthly hosting spend limits and select what best describes you from the dropdown menu.
After filling in this information, you must agree to the Cloudways term of service to continue.
Note; you can sign up using your other accounts; Gmail, LinkedIn, Github, and DigitalOcean accounts are available.
Step #3.
After completing the above step, you will get an email notification to verify your identity.
This process is required to verify you’re human and not a bot trying to create an account.
So, log into your inbox and look for an email from Cloudways with a similar subject line like this:
Here’s what is contained in the email.
You must provide a government-issued ID and a link to two social media accounts to verify your identity.
Cloudways says this process helps keep the platform safe and secure for everyone.
So, if you’re not trying to do something shady or fraudulent, this is not an issue to bother you.
Also, you must provide this information within 48 hours to get verified; otherwise, you might need to restart the sign-up process.
Step #4.
If you provide the required document and links to two social media accounts, and your identity is verified, you have one step to complete before using your account.
Log into your Cloudways user dashboard and click the “Verify Your Account” button at the top of the page.
This is a two-step account verification process.
You’ll need to verify your phone number and email address.
You will receive a one-time code via SMS for phone number verification and an email notification to verify your email address.
Once you complete these processes, your 3-day Cloudways free trial account is activated.
Now you can deploy your blogging application, select your cloud server, and start blogging.
Note; Your application will deploy on a staging hosting environment.
And if you want to migrate an existing blog to Cloudways, here is a complete tutorial you can go through.
Free Trial Limitation
Your Cloudways free trial comes with certain limitations. Before signing up for the trial offer, you must know about these hosting feature restrictions.
Here are the Cloudways 3-day free trial hosting features limitations you should know about.
Server Limitation
First, Google Compute Engine and the Amazon web services cloud servers are unavailable for free trials.
You can only select between DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Linode for the trial account.
However, you can deploy multiple applications for a free trial period. You can have more websites in one account for the free trial.
No Access to Astra Pro
Another limitation is the Astra Pro theme.
Astra Pro’s 1-year license is offered for free when you subscribe to the Cloudways hosting plan.
But with the Cloudways 3-day free trial account, you don’t have access to the Astra Pro theme.
Cloudflare Enterprises Locked
The Cloudflare Enterprises add-on is also locked behind upgrades.
You must upgrade your account to gain access to the Cloudflare add-on features, like WAF, mobile and image optimization, DDoS protection, etc.
No Free migration service from support.
You can not request free migration services for a free trial account.
This is a great concern if you want to move your blog to Cloudways without technical knowledge about the migration process.
Cloudways has made the migration process easy and seamless for anyone to walk through.
With its Cloudways Migration plugin, you can safely move your WordPress blog to the Cloudways server in a few steps.
Cloudways offers unbeatable managed WordPress hosting, allowing you to focus on running your online business while you forget about server management and maintenance.
I linked above to a video tutorial on migrating a WordPress blog to Cloudways.
Hosting Features in The Free Trial
Now that we’ve discussed hosting restrictions let’s discuss the features you can access during your free trial.
Backup and Restore.
The automatic backup feature is available to free trial users. It is accessible via your application user dashboard.
These features allow you to back up and restore your application files and database in one click.
You can also perform on-demand backups of your application before making changes to your site.
This is a helpful feature to ensure you don’t lose your data during the free trial if you want to upgrade your account.
Staging Environment.
As a free user, you can test codes, plugins, themes, and applications on staging sites before you deploy them on a live website.
You can also update the staging site with content and data from the live site. This is a feature not commonly found in many web hosts.
Migration Tool
The migration tool allows users to move a WordPress blog database to Cloudways.
You can download the plugin from your Cloudways account or via the WordPress admin area on your current website.
The process is easy, effortless, and well-explained. It takes a few steps to complete.
Breeze – Caching Plugin
Cloudways has its caching plugin, a powerful speed and performance solution for WordPress sites.
I highly recommend you download and test this plugin during your free trial.
Play around with its settings, and see what works for your blog.
Though the plugin is built to work with Cloudways hosting infrastructure, another hosting platform can use it.
Support
If you need help getting around your new hosting environment, the support reps are available 24/7.
Whether you’re running a free trial account or a premium, you have access to support.
Though premium users have higher priority access, getting help when needed is good.
The online live chat is accessible within your user dashboard. If you’re stuck, remember to use it.
Bot Protection
This feature protects your Cloudways sites against harmful requests to your server, such as hackers and malicious bots.
You can enable the security feature and access its data during your free trial.
Cron Job Management
You have unrestricted access to set up cron jobs for your application. And manage their activities during the free trials.
So, even in the 3-day free trial of Cloudways hosting, you can set up an automation that runs at the scheduled time.
SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt
Cloudways provides an SSL certificate from Let’s Encrypt that is freely available to all users.
The installation process is so easy anyone can do it within a few seconds.
Analytics Monitoring
This helpful feature is available to all users, allowing you to monitor several performance and application metrics on your server.
You can monitor and analyze PHP performance, running cron jobs, CPU usage, bandwidth, RAM, storage space, logs, traffic, etc.
Team Member
Cloudways allows account administrators to add additional users to their accounts.
This feature is available to free trial users.
How to Upgrade After Free Trial End
If you decide to upgrade your account, follow the steps.
Click the “Upgrade my Account” button at the top, and enter your address details on the next page.
Complete the form correctly and click the “Proceed to Payment Gateway” button.
Fill out your credit card details on the payment page and click the “Authorize” button.
The only action required is to authorize the payments to go through.
Once the payment is successful, your account will be upgraded to unlock all hosting features and access.
You can now unlock all the Cloudways hosting features and go beyond limits.
Conclusion
Cloudways is a trusted and reliable web host in the industry. Its server infrastructure is built on the latest and fastest responsive hosting technology, ensuring top performance and guaranteed 99.99% uptime.
If you’re new to hosting and want to try a few options before paying, the Cloudways free trial offer is right.
It gives you three days to access and test some of its essential hosting features so you can make informed decisions based on data.
However, if three days of free trial isn’t enough for you, we have published web hosts that offer up to 30 days of free trial hosting.
