RunCloud alternatives
xCloud vs RunCloud: Pricing, Performance, and Features Compared
RunCloud is a strong general-purpose PHP panel with no hosting of its own, ever. xCloud is both: a free panel for a server you own, or a managed plan xCloud provisions for you.
- Free for your first server, or a managed plan from $5/month
- The only one of the two that can sell you the server
- WordPress tooling included free: blueprints, a core update manager, staging push/pull
- A vulnerability scanner and live chat support, neither of which RunCloud publishes
- White-labelling and a reseller programme included
Last updated
- 14-day money-back guarantee
- No migration fee, ever
- 4.8 · 390+ reviews on TrustpilotRated by the people already running WordPress on xCloud
Quick verdict
Choose xCloud if…
- You want a genuinely free self-managed control panel, with no monthly floor before you can connect a server.
- WordPress is most or all of what you run, and you want blueprints, staging push/pull and incremental backups built in.
- You want an MCP endpoint and installable AI agent skills to manage servers and sites from Claude, Cursor or another agent.
- You want live chat support, white-labelling and a reseller programme included rather than gated behind a higher tier.
- You want built-in bulk site and server migration, including a dedicated cPanel migration path.
- You want the option of a managed plan later, without switching panels — RunCloud has none at any price.
14-day money-back guarantee. Cancel any time.
Still comparing providers? See the best RunCloud alternatives
The One Thing RunCloud Can't Sell You
RunCloud is a panel only, at every tier. xCloud is a panel too, but also sells a managed plan where it provisions the server for you.
1Managed by xCloud
| What managed xCloud offers, that RunCloud never does |  xCloud$5/moManaged 1 GB, billed monthly |  RunCloudN/A/moNo managed hosting exists |
|---|---|---|
| Managed plan | ||
| What the price covers | Yes. The panel and the server, one bill, provisioned and managed by xCloud from $5/month. | No. Not offered at any price. RunCloud is a control panel only; there is no plan where it supplies the server. |
| Hosting type | Cloud servers, provisioned for you. | No hosting of its own, at any tier. |
| Migration included | Yes. Bulk site and server migration, at no extra cost. | Yes. Included too, on the panel side, plus a dedicated cPanel path. A genuine tie. |
2Bring your own server
| The panel both products actually sell | xCloudFree/moFree for 1 server, then per-server | RunCloud~$8/moEntry tier, 2024 capture; unverified for 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Bring your own server | ||
| What the price covers | Yes. The panel only, free for your first server. $5/server for 2-5, $4 for 6-10, $3 for 11+. | Limited. The panel only, from around $8/month for its entry tier per the 2024 capture. RunCloud's own pricing page renders client-side and could not be independently re-verified for this page (checked 2026-09-23). |
| Root access | Yes. Full root on every server you connect. | Yes. Full root on every server you connect too. This is a tie. |
| Custom NGINX | Yes. Edit the server's NGINX configuration directly. | Yes. Also full custom NGINX access. A tie. |
| External Database | Yes. Point a site at a managed or remote database. | No. Not offered. A real gap in RunCloud's control panel. |
| Vertical scaling | Yes. Resize at your provider, from inside the panel. | No. Not offered. Resize through your provider directly instead. |
| Blueprints | Yes. Save a site setup and stamp it out repeatedly. | No. No equivalent published. |
3White-Label Reseller Program
| Reselling: xCloud's own captured advantage here | xCloud$25/moStartup tier, 25 servers, billed monthly | RunCloudN/A/moNo white-label option; its own page says so |
|---|---|---|
| Reseller program | ||
| What it is | Yes. A dedicated white-label hosting brand: set your own prices, take payment through your own Stripe account, bill clients under your own name. | No. Not offered. RunCloud's own feature page states no white-label option, and no reseller programme is published. |
| White label | Yes. Available, included in the panel. | No. The captured page's own answer: no. |
| Billing | Yes. Automated, through your own Stripe account. You set the price; the platform takes a fee, not a cut of your invoice. | No. Not applicable, with no white-label or reseller product to bill through. |
WordPress Tooling, and Who Shipped Staging Push/Pull First
Root access, custom NGINX, PHP versions: RunCloud already has the things comparisons on this site usually argue over. Where they diverge is WordPress-specific tooling, security defaults and how you reach a human.
| WordPress tooling and support | xCloud | RunCloud |
|---|---|---|
| Day-to-day WordPress work | ||
| Theme / plugin / core updates | Yes. Managed from the panel across every site. | No. No built-in update manager. |
| Vulnerability scanning | Yes. Built in. | No. Not published. |
| Staging push / pull | Yes. Promote a tested change rather than redoing it by hand. | Yes. RunCloud shipped this before xCloud did. Both now offer it; the 2024 capture's "Upcoming" mark on our own side is out of date. |
| Disable magic login | Yes. Turn it off per site. | No. Not offered. |
| Live chat support | Yes. Included, on every plan including the free tier. | No. Not offered. Ticket-based support only. |
| MCP server (AI agent control) | Yes. Drive servers and sites from Claude, Cursor or any MCP-capable agent. | No. No MCP endpoint published. |
| Beyond WordPress | Yes. Node.js, Laravel and Next.js hosting with queue workers, alongside WordPress. | Yes. Laravel and general PHP application hosting is the product's original focus. A genuine tie on breadth. |
| Downloadable backups | Yes. Download any backup for offsite storage. | No. Not offered on the captured page. |
Moving Off RunCloud Doesn't Need a Rebuild
Both platforms manage servers you already own, and both ship a dedicated cPanel migration path — a genuine tie here, stated as one.
Who runs the migration
xCloud- Yes. Bulk site and server migration, included on every plan
- Yes. cPanel Site Migration path for sites hosted elsewhere
RunCloud- Yes. Bulk site and server migration included too
- Yes. A dedicated cPanel migration path too. A genuine tie
What it costs
xCloud- Yes. Nothing. No migration fee on either route
- Yes. Unlimited number of sites migrated
RunCloud- Yes. Also free, on the panel side
What moves
xCloud- Yes. Files and database together, in one pass, in bulk
- Yes. Migrate Guru, a free WordPress plugin documented as compatible with xCloud
RunCloud- Yes. Sites move onto a server you connect the same way on either platform
Before you start
xCloud- Limited. Disable 2FA on the source site first
- Limited. Disable Cloudflare Bot Fight Mode on the source site first
- Yes. Then migrate, test while DNS still points at your old panel, and cut over
RunCloud- Limited. Confirm current migration tooling with RunCloud support before counting on it
The full table
Every xCloud and RunCloud Feature, Side by Side
Every published feature, side by side. 45 of 83 differ.
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
 xCloud | RunCloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting type | Cloud servers | No Hosting |
| Lowest plan | Starts at $0 | Starts at $8/month |
| Web Server – NGINX & OLS | Yes | Yes |
| Integrate Your Own Provider(Vultr, DigitalOcean, GCP, Hetzner, AWS or any Ubuntu) | Yes | Yes |
| Root access to server | Yes | Yes |
| Vertical Scaling | Yes | No |
| Unlimited websites creation | Yes | Yes |
| External Database | Yes | No |
| WordPress Multisite ( support for sub-domain and sub-folder ) | Yes | Yes |
| Site Disable | Yes | Yes |
| Blueprints | Yes | No |
| Custom NGINX | Yes | Yes |
| Full page & Redis cache | Yes | Yes |
| Transactional email service | Yes | No |
| Easy integration with Mailgun, SendGrid, ElasticEmail, or any SMTP provider | Yes | Yes |
| Fully WordPress focused | Yes | No |
| WordPress theme, plugin, & core update | Yes | No |
| Automatic security updates | Yes | Yes |
| 7G & 8G Firewall | Yes | Yes |
| Fail2Ban Integration | Yes | Yes |
| Firewall Management | Yes | Yes |
| Vulnerability Scanner | Yes | No |
| Accounts & roles management for team | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic FREE Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates | Yes | Yes |
| Custom SSL/TLS certificates | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced Cron job | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple PHP versions in the same server | Yes | Yes |
| Compatibility & easy management for PHP 8.3 | Yes | Yes |
| WP-CLI | Yes | Yes |
| Bulk site & server migration | Yes | Yes |
| cPanel Site Migration | Yes | Yes |
| Full Site Backup | Yes | Yes |
| Incremental Site Backup | Yes | Yes |
| Site Backup download option for remote backups | Yes | No |
| Full Server Backup Management | Yes | Yes |
| Remote Site Backup on any of your own s3 storage | Yes | Yes |
| File Manager | Yes | Yes |
| Reset File & Folder Permissions | Yes | Yes |
| Server & Site monitoring | Yes | Yes |
| Slack Integration | Yes | Yes |
| WhatsApp Integration | Yes | No |
| Server and Site Log | Yes | Yes |
| Add existing database | Yes | Yes |
| Clone site to same & another server | Yes | Yes |
| 1-click staging | Yes | Yes |
| Staging With Pull Push | Upcoming | Yes |
| 1-click magic login | Yes | Yes |
| Magic Login Disable | Yes | No |
| Clone & deploy from GIT | Yes | Yes |
| White label | Yes | No |
| Live chat support | Yes | No |
| Moneyback guarantee | 14 days | 14 days |
| AI and agent control | ||
| MCP server — drive servers and sites from Claude, Cursor or any AI agent | Yes | No |
| Installable AI agent skills (servers, sites, WordPress, SSL, account) | Yes | No |
| AI bot blocker — block AI crawlers and scrapers at the server | Yes | — |
| Public REST API with scoped tokens | Yes | — |
| Security and WordPress integrity | ||
| Virtual patching for known vulnerabilities (Site Security PRO) | Add-on, $2/site | — |
| WordPress integrity monitor — verifies core files against checksums | Yes | — |
| Custom security headers (HSTS, CSP) from the panel | Yes | — |
| HTTP basic auth and per-site IP allow/deny | Yes | — |
| SSH lockdown — restrict SSH to trusted IPs, custom port | Yes | — |
| Performance and caching | ||
| Edge full-page cache on a global PoP network | Yes | — |
| Cloudflare Enterprise (330+ PoPs, Enterprise WAF) | Add-on, $5/domain | — |
| HTTP/3 (QUIC) and Brotli compression, one click | Yes | — |
| Per-site PHP-FPM worker tuning and PHP extension manager | Yes | — |
| Auto-healing — restarts MySQL, NGINX, Redis or PHP if it stops | Yes | — |
| MySQL/MariaDB auto-tuning and OPcache control | Yes | — |
| Monitoring and observability | ||
| Broken link monitoring with one-click 301 redirect | Yes | No |
| Site Insights — PHP, MySQL and traffic analytics per site | Yes | — |
| Scheduled PageSpeed / Core Web Vitals monitoring with history | Yes | — |
| Telegram alerts for site, server and team events | Yes | — |
| Native macOS menu-bar app (xCloud Pulse) | Yes | No |
| Developer and deployment | ||
| Browser SSH terminal and command runner | Yes | — |
| One-click deploy from Git with stack auto-detection | Yes | — |
| Docker and Docker Compose application hosting | Yes | — |
| Node.js, Laravel and Next.js hosting with queue workers | Yes | Yes |
| One-click app library | 317 apps | — |
| Supervisor process management and site snapshots | Yes | — |
| Backups, migration and agency tooling | ||
| Off-site backups to your own S3, R2, Backblaze, Wasabi, Google Drive or pCloud | Yes | — |
| Full server clone and server-to-server migration | Yes | — |
| Branded client maintenance reports (PDF) | Yes | — |
| White-label reseller programme with Stripe billing and your own plans | Yes | — |
| Business mailboxes on your own domain | Add-on, $1/mo | — |
People Who Moved from RunCloud
In their own words, unedited.
I've been with runcloud for the last 3 years. However, after trying xcloud for the last month, I'm switching over. They are on a roll with their setup.
Kevin PinedaCame from runcloud. Tried xcloud and never came back.
Karl FanegaI like xCloud better than RunCloud, but one thing I'll point out is that some years ago RunCloud was hungry for business, the support was outstanding, and the community was active and helped each other. Maybe it was sold, there was a change in management, or they stopped being hungry, but the quality of the RunCloud offering declined and it hasn't been moving forward quickly. My point is that currently the xCloud team has the edge and it is theirs to keep or lose
David McCanKeep comparing
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Ready to add a managed option?
Ready To Try xCloud Instead?
Start free, bring your own server or ours, and move when you are ready. No contract, no migration fee.
- Free for your first server, or managed from $5/month
- The only one of the two that can host the server for you
- WordPress tooling included free, not a separate purchase
- Vulnerability scanning and live chat, built in
- White-label and a reseller programme, included
xCloud vs RunCloud: Frequently Asked Questions
Direct answers to what people ask before moving between xCloud and RunCloud.
Is xCloud better than RunCloud?
For WordPress specifically, yes; for a broad mix of general PHP apps, RunCloud's wider focus may suit you better.
xCloud adds blueprints, a built-in update manager, incremental backups and MCP/AI agent tooling that RunCloud does not publish. If you manage a wide mix of general PHP applications rather than mostly WordPress, RunCloud's broader control-panel focus may suit you better. See the choose-if lists above.
What is the difference between xCloud and RunCloud?
xCloud is WordPress-specific and also sells managed servers; RunCloud is a general PHP panel with no managed-hosting option.
Both are control panels that manage a server you provide, rather than hosting companies themselves. xCloud is built specifically around WordPress, adding tooling like blueprints and staging push/pull, and also offers its own managed servers. RunCloud is a general-purpose PHP server panel with no WordPress-specific tooling and no managed-hosting option — the server is always a separate purchase.
Is xCloud a hosting provider or a control panel?
Both. RunCloud is control-panel-only, with no managed-hosting option at any price.
xCloud is primarily a control panel that connects to a server you own — Vultr, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS, GCP or any Ubuntu host — for $0 on the self-managed tier. It also sells its own managed servers if you would rather not hold a provider account. RunCloud has no managed-hosting option at all.
Can I use my own VPS with xCloud?
Yes, for free. RunCloud works the same way but with no free tier.
xCloud connects to Vultr, DigitalOcean, GCP, Hetzner, AWS or any Ubuntu server over SSH, with a free self-managed tier. RunCloud works the same way — connect your own server — but has no free tier; its lowest published plan starts around $8/month per the original captured comparison, though confirm the current figure directly since it could not be independently re-verified for this page.
How much does RunCloud actually cost in 2026?
We can't state a verified number: RunCloud's own pricing page renders client-side, and third-party trackers disagree with each other.
Re-checked 2026-09-23. RunCloud's pricing page could not be read by a static fetch, and two independent third-party pricing trackers, checked as a cross-reference, gave different figures for every tier — one even disagreed with itself between two sections of the same page. Rather than publish either set as fact, this page states the 2024-captured figure (around $8/month) and asks you to confirm the current price on runcloud.io/pricing directly.
Can I migrate from RunCloud to xCloud?
Yes. xCloud includes bulk site and server migration plus a dedicated cPanel migration path, at no extra cost.
RunCloud NGINX and OpenLiteSpeed servers are supported by xCloud's full server migration: connect the server over root SSH, select the WordPress sites, and move them in one run. The usual approach is to migrate as demo copies while DNS still points at the RunCloud-managed server, test on xCloud, then cut over once everything checks out.
Does RunCloud support WordPress?
Yes, but with no WordPress-specific tooling built in.
RunCloud can host and manage WordPress sites, but it has no blueprints, no built-in theme/plugin/core update manager, no built-in transactional email service. It manages WordPress the same way it manages any other PHP application.
Which is better for agencies?
xCloud, for white-labelling and reselling: RunCloud's own captured page states it does not offer white-label.
xCloud includes account and role management plus white-labelling and a reseller programme with your own billing, at no separate tier. RunCloud offers account and role management but its own page states no white-label, and no reseller programme is published, so an agency reselling under its own brand has fewer built-in options with RunCloud.
Which one provides better backups?
xCloud, on one point: downloadable remote backups, which the captured comparison shows RunCloud does not offer.
Otherwise both offer full and incremental site backups plus full server backups on your own S3-compatible storage — a genuine tie on everything else.
Which one is easier for beginners?
xCloud, mainly because of its WordPress-specific tooling and included live chat support.
Blueprints and guided updates remove steps a WordPress-only beginner would otherwise have to decide for themselves. RunCloud's broader, application-agnostic interface is powerful for someone managing varied PHP stacks, but it asks more of a WordPress-only beginner.
Can I switch from RunCloud without rebuilding my sites?
Yes. Both run standard WordPress installs on a Linux server, so switching moves the files and database, not a rebuild.
xCloud's bulk site and server migration tools, plus its cPanel migration path, are built for exactly this move.