Moving from shared hosting to a VPS feels like a promotion right up until you log in and stare at a blank Ubuntu prompt. A fresh server is not a website. You still need nginx, PHP or Node, a database, SSL, a firewall, and backups, plus some way to do all of it again next month without relearning a dozen commands.

That gap is what server control panels fill. In 2026 the names you keep running into are RunCloud, Ploi, Cloudways, and Cloudnan. People talk about them as if they're the same thing. They aren't, and picking the wrong type quietly costs you money. So before the feature tables, figure out which kind of product each one actually is.

Two different products wearing the same label

There are really two categories here.

The first is a control panel for a server you already rent. RunCloud, Ploi, and Cloudnan sit here. You buy a box from DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr, AWS, or a local provider, and the panel manages it for you. You pay the panel a subscription, and you pay the server bill separately. The box stays yours.

The second is managed hosting, where the server comes included. That's Cloudways. You don't bring your own VPS. Cloudways spins one up for you on a provider it supports and folds the server cost into one bill. You give up some control and in return you don't have to think about the infrastructure.

Neither category wins on principle. They answer different questions. If you already have servers, or you want to keep ownership of them, you want a panel. If you'd rather get one invoice and never log into a server account, you want managed hosting.

Cloudnan is the one that sits in both camps. Point it at a server you already rent, or have it provision and bill a managed VM for you. You don't have to decide up front, and you can mix the two across projects. More on that below.

At a glance

	RunCloud	Ploi	Cloudways	Cloudnan
Category	BYO-VPS panel	BYO-VPS panel	Managed hosting	BYO-VPS panel (plus optional managed VMs)
Bring your own server?	Yes	Yes	No, it provisions one	Either way: yours, or one you rent from us
Server cost	Separate	Separate	Included	BYO (separate), or a managed VM we bill by the hour
Chat-driven AI management	No	No	No	Yes, built in
Entry price	$8/mo (1 server)	€8/mo (free tier €0)	$11/mo, server included	$9/mo
Agent security	panel on the server	panel plus worker	fully managed	outbound-only agent, mutual TLS, no inbound ports

Pricing was checked in June 2026. SaaS prices move, so always confirm the current rate on each provider's own page before you buy.

RunCloud

RunCloud is one of the older, more established panels, and it leans hard into the PHP world: WordPress and Laravel especially. It connects to your server, sets up an nginx and PHP-FPM stack, and runs your sites, SSL, and deploys from there. It has been around for years and it feels like it.

Pricing runs in three tiers, checked June 2026:

Plan	Price/mo	Servers	Notable
Basic	$8	1	core stack, SSL, git deploys
Pro	$15	unlimited	staging, monitoring, team roles
Business	$45	unlimited	atomic deploys, advanced team and client management

The server bill is separate, since RunCloud is a panel and not a host. The entry tier is capped to a single server, which is worth knowing if you plan to manage more than one box. There's a 5-day free trial to kick the tires.

Good fit: PHP and WordPress shops that want a focused, well-worn panel.

Ploi

Ploi is the developer favorite here, with a free tier that's genuinely useful and pricing it publishes in the open. These numbers are from ploi.io/pricing, checked June 2026:

Plan	Price/mo	Servers	Notable
Free	€0	1	5 deploys per month
Basic	€8	5	site isolation, firewall, API
Pro	€13	10	backups, monitoring, zero-downtime deploys
Unlimited	€30	unlimited	teams, status pages

The server bill is on its own, since Ploi is a panel and not a host. If you're comfortable on the command line and want a clean tool without much ceremony, Ploi is hard to argue with.

Good fit: developers and small agencies who want a tidy panel and a free way to start. Server cost is separate.

Cloudways

Cloudways is the odd one out, because it's managed hosting rather than a panel you point at your own box. You pick a provider and a size, Cloudways provisions and runs the server, and you get one bundled bill for hosting plus management. That's great if you never want to see a server account and just want the thing to stay up. It's a worse fit if you want to own the machine, or run it somewhere Cloudways doesn't offer.

On pricing (checked June 2026), the pay-as-you-go Flexible plans start at $11/mo for the smallest DigitalOcean instance, with the server cost already folded in, and climb from there based on the provider (DigitalOcean, Vultr, Akamai, AWS, Google Cloud) and the size you pick. Their fully managed WordPress option, Autonomous, starts at $35/mo. The number to remember is that $11 entry point, because unlike a BYO panel there is no second server invoice underneath it.

Good fit: people who want managed hosting, one bill, and no infrastructure to own.

Cloudnan

Cloudnan is a control panel for your own VPS, built around two things the others weren't designed for. You run it by talking to it, and it's locked down by the way it connects rather than by configuration you have to get right.

Talk to it. Most panels hand you screens and buttons. Cloudnan hands you a chat box. You say what you want ("deploy this GitHub repo", "add an A record for staging", "the database container keeps restarting, what's going on"), and the assistant runs the same operations the dashboard would. If you're not a server person, that's the entire point. There's no terminal to learn and no twelve-click path to memorize.

Locked down by design. The agent on your server makes an outbound connection to Cloudnan over mutual TLS. It opens no inbound ports. Nothing is listening on your box for the internet to find, which is a very different starting point from a panel that has to expose a port to do its job.

DNS without a second account. Buy a domain through Cloudnan and you manage its DNS records right in the panel, with no separate Cloudflare login. App installs, GitHub deploys, one-click site cloning, databases, Docker, monitoring, drift detection, backups, WAF, fail2ban, and WireGuard or OpenVPN are all built in.

Your server, or ours. Point Cloudnan at a VPS you already own, or rent a managed VM through us. We provision it on a supported cloud provider and bill it by the hour from your prepaid balance, so there's no second server account and no separate invoice. That makes Cloudnan the only option in this list that works as a bring-your-own panel and as managed hosting, whichever you want for a given project. RunCloud and Ploi only do the first; Cloudways only does the second.

Straightforward plans. Straight from our pricing:

Plan	Price/mo	Servers	Team	Support
Starter	$9	3	1	Email
Pro	$29	10	3	Priority
Business	$79	30	10	Priority chat

When you bring your own server the hosting is billed separately, same as RunCloud and Ploi. When you'd rather not, the managed VM rolls into the same bill, billed by the hour from your prepaid balance.

Good fit: teams and owners, especially non-technical ones, who want to keep their own servers but would rather manage them by asking than by clicking.

Which one is for you

Short version:

Want managed hosting, one bill, and to never touch infrastructure? Go with Cloudways.

Running mostly PHP and after a proven, focused panel? RunCloud.

A hands-on developer who wants a clean tool and a free tier? Ploi.

Want to keep your own servers (or have us provision them), run everything by chatting, with DNS and security already handled? That's where Cloudnan fits.

RunCloud and Ploi are both good panels, and Cloudways is a solid host. Cloudnan is making a different bet: that the next step up isn't one more dashboard with more buttons, it's not needing the dashboard much at all because you can just ask for what you want.