Quick answer
Compare agency hosts by portfolio operations: how sites are isolated, who owns accounts, how staging works, how clients are handed off, and how costs scale with site count.
Agency requirements that matter
- Repeatable staging and cloning
- Granular team and client access
- Central backup and monitoring
- Predictable multi-site economics
- A clean handoff process
Server-based vs per-site pricing
Server-based models can be efficient across many modest sites; per-site managed platforms can simplify isolation and client-specific resource boundaries.
Do not ignore support scope
The value of hosting support rises when an agency is accountable to many clients. Compare what the host will actually investigate, not only chat availability.
Where Cloudways enters the decision
Cloudways is strongest for agencies that like server-based resource economics and want more infrastructure control. Kinsta and WP Engine may fit agencies that prefer more WordPress-specific per-site platform behavior.