This article explains how pricing works for Cloudways Autonomous if you are a legacy user. It covers how billing is calculated, how plan upgrades and downgrades work, and how usage overages are charged.
The goal is to help you clearly understand what you are billed for and why—without any technical complexity.
Table of Contents:
How Cloudways Autonomous Pricing Works
Cloudways Autonomous follows an hourly pricing model, which gives you flexibility and full control over your plan.
You are charged only for the hours your plan remains active
You can activate, upgrade, downgrade, or deactivate your plan at any time
Once a plan is deactivated, billing stops immediately
Instead of charging a fixed monthly fee upfront, Cloudways breaks the monthly price into an hourly rate and bills you based on actual usage.
Example: Hourly Billing Explained
If your plan costs $35 per month, Cloudways calculates the hourly cost by dividing the monthly price by the total number of hours in that month.
If you activate the plan and use it for only one hour, you are charged for just that one hour, not the full month.
This ensures you only pay for what you actually use.
Important:
For customers using older legacy plans, removing all applications does not automatically remove the plan. The plan must be deleted manually to stop billing.
Monthly Invoicing and Payments
Invoices are generated monthly, usually between the 1st and 6th of the following month
If you have account credits, they are applied automatically
Any remaining balance is charged to your registered credit card
You can also pay invoices using PayPal
Plan Upgrades and Downgrades
You can upgrade or downgrade your Cloudways Autonomous plan at any time.
Billing is calculated pro-rata, based on how long each plan was used.
For example:
If you use a lower-priced plan for part of the month and then upgrade
You are charged separately for each plan, based on the hours used
Upgrades take effect immediately, giving you instant access to additional resources.
Understanding Plan Limits and Overages
Each Cloudways Autonomous plan includes a fixed allowance for:
Applications
Monthly visits
Disk space
Bandwidth
If you exceed certain limits, overages are billed automatically in your next invoice.
Note:
Your applications continue running without interruption
There is no downtime due to overages
Extra usage is simply added to your next bill
Monthly Visit Overages
If you exceed your plan’s monthly visit limit:
You are charged $1 per 1,000 visits
How visits are counted:
One unique IP address equals one visit per day
Visit count resets daily at 00:00 UTC
Bot traffic is filtered out
Requests for static files (images, CSS, JavaScript) are excluded
Google Analytics may show fewer visits due to ad blockers, while Cloudways counts visits directly at the server level for accuracy.
Disk Space Overages
If your disk usage exceeds your plan’s limit:
You are charged $2 per GB per month
Disk overages are billed hourly, just like your plan
Disk space includes:
Website files
Application data
Databases
Bandwidth Overages
If you exceed your bandwidth allowance:
You are charged $0.04 per GB per month
Charges appear in your next invoice
If overages become frequent, upgrading your plan can help avoid additional charges. Any overages incurred before upgrading will still be billed.
Key Takeaways
Cloudways Autonomous uses hourly, pay-as-you-go pricing
You pay only for active usage
Upgrades apply instantly
Overages never interrupt your service
All charges are transparent and usage-based
This pricing model is designed to give legacy users maximum flexibility, predictability, and control over costs.
That's it! We hope this article was helpful.
Need Help?
If you need assistance, feel free to:
Visit the Cloudways Support Center
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Or create a support ticket anytime.
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