The best web hosting providers are keeping me on my toes this year with many updates and new features. One of the most exciting, and one that I've been following since it started public preview in February is Cloudways Copilot. An AI tool that can help you manage web servers.
When I met up with Cloudways in June, at WordCamp, Ali Khan, director of product management at Cloudways told me to expect some more news about Copilot in Q3. So here we are and here is some news about Copilot - it's out of preview and is available for general availability.
To learn more about the latest iteration of this leading AI web hosting tool I caught up with Suhaib Zaheer, SVP of Managed Hosting at Digital Ocean, a second time.
What challenges do you expect to face scaling from 6,000 to 100,000 users and how has the reception been of those already using AI managed hosting?
We’ve rolled Copilot out to about 6,000 customers so far and the response has been really strong. Our users are seeing the difference, especially our power users – agencies running hundreds or thousands of apps. For them, troubleshooting that used to take 40-90 minutes now takes five or six. It’s game changing.
Scaling up to 100,000 users, the biggest challenge is making sure performance holds up. Every investigation adds load, so we’re being mindful of the pressure we’re putting on our internal systems and ensuring that this doesn’t downgrade performance for our customers. The other challenge is trust. AI is still new in hosting and customers want to feel confident in the system they’re using. That’s why we’re scaling gradually and learning through user feedback. We're constantly working with customers to figure out what works, what they like or don’t like, and how we can improve their confidence in the system.
Cloudways has really stood out from the crowd and come up with a product that not many hosting providers are offering. What made you go down this road as opposed to other AI solutions?
A lot of hosts have prioritised using AI for content or website building. We deliberately didn’t. When we went deeper with customers, our main takeaway was that they wanted help with server management. Agencies told us they were wasting hours each month on server-level issues, and it became clear that was where AI could have the largest impact.
So rather than creating another AI page builder, we focused on solving complex infrastructure problems our customers face every day. This is where we can really stand out and deliver real, tangible value.
Which of Cloudways' existing strengths gave you a competitive edge in developing AI management tools?
Cloudways has always sat in that sweet spot between shared hosting and hyperscalers like AWS. Our customers don’t have 100 person teams and what they want is enterprise-grade power without the complexity.
That’s where our infrastructure background really gives us an edge. We understand the pain of managing applications at scale and we’ve built Copilot to make that simpler, cleaner and faster.
What else is coming to Copilot and when can we expect it?
Right now, Copilot has three functions: detecting issues, recommending solutions and providing users with a one-click ‘Smart Fix’. Looking forward, we’re building a conversational user interface so customers can manage servers through natural language. We’re also adding bulk actions, so agencies can apply changes across hundreds of apps in one go.
It’s important to mention that these aren’t add-ons. Copilot will continue evolving and these features will simply become part of it. The roadmap is robust, but our focus right now is to fix the biggest pain points first, prove the value and then continue to move up the stack.
In the AI race Cloudways seem to be more than a few paces ahead. How many more strides to the finish line and what does the end look like for the winner in terms of the product offering for users?
I don’t know if there will ever be a finish line! AI isn’t a one-off product launch but a journey that we’re all on together. Getting Copilot to general availability was the first big milestone. Scaling it across our whole customer base is the next. From there, you’ll see Cloudways expand the use cases, add natural language control and continue moving up the stack.
The end goal is to make managing infrastructure effortless. The AI should handle the heavy lifting so our customers can focus on growth, not problem-solving. That’s the future we’re building towards, and we’re excited to keep pushing in that direction.
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