A quick run-through of RunCloud’s cloud-panel service.
See what things I liked about it, what things I didn’t. And of course, there’s a beautiful video included for you to appreciate their comprehensive UI.
About RunCloud
RunCloud (started by a small Malaysian company) is my current favorite cloud control panel. It’s fast, stable, and has a really mature interface. The pricing is very fair (cheap) and the product feels truly refined all around. You can have a pure-NGINX stack (better performance IMO), or a hybrid Apache+NGINX stack (for Apache/.htaccess compatibility). Their performance is above average (behind GridPane and SpinupWP). It’s fast but cannot handle high traffic since server-side caching isn’t enabled off the bat. It’s great if your development many sites and don’t need to handle such high traffic.
RunCloud’s strengths and weaknesses
Keep in mind their service is still aimed more at developers rather than typical website owners. Installation requires a very short (but doable) visit to the command line. There’s not much support. And their interface is built more for developers. Lots of dials and things (although very cleanly organized). I think their branding/service is very cute and friendly, but maybe not quite simple enough for basic website owners. For the tech-savvy, I think their UI is heaven…chock full of all the features you’d ever want.
What separates RunCloud from other services:
- Easy access into server settings, security, logs, SSH.
- Multiple stack options: having both hybrid Apache+NGINX or pure-NGINX stack. This is especially helpful as other panels usually only allow one of those.
- Very cheap. Only $6.67/month for 1 server. Pay $12.50/month and you can have unlimited servers. That’s very cheap compared to other panels! Some cost $30/month for 1 server. Others charge per server, and charge depending on the server size.
- Lots of developer integrations (GitHub, Bitbucket, etc)
Who I recommend RunCloud for:
RunCloud is probably perfect for developers. It’s got a comprehensive UI for you to manage servers and server settings, and then also websites and website settings. Everything is really polished and works well. No bugs (that I found). Tons of controls for everything you need to do. Can get in and out quickly and the price is cheap. And having multiple stacks for all the different apps you might want to build.
The only drawback of RunCloud is that while their performance is GOOD, FastCGI caching was not enabled by default. This means while a RunCloud server will be fast, it won’t be able to handle high traffic. I would guess a 2-cpu/4gb-memory would easily handle 100k monthly hits on an average site but not more than that. So if you’re building 50-100 sites and they’re not getting much traffic, RunCloud is great for you. If you need a server with server-side caching, you need another service…or you can try one of those consumer grade cache plugins like Swift Performance or WP Rocket.
Try RunCloud.io today – here’s my affiliate link.
Interesting review but decided against them. Care to share your thoughts on ClusterCS as I see you did cover some similar companies that I have also tried?
I haven’t tried them but they do offer some interesting/unique ideas about cloud-panel management. They seem very much more for sys-admin guys than for typical webhosting users.