cloudabove
cloudabove (SWBROADBAND Ltd) is a UK SME web hosting provider based in Cornwall offering shared, VPS, managed and reseller hosting plus domain registration on its proprietary Scout platform, serving small businesses, web agencies, ecommerce sites and charities across the United Kingdom.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2011
- HeadquartersTruro, United Kingdom
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B and B2C
- OfferingServices
What cloudabove does
cloudabove (trading as SWBROADBAND Ltd) is a privately-held UK SME web hosting provider headquartered in Newquay, Cornwall and registered in England & Wales as company number 8853775. The company originated as a Cornish telecomms business in 2011 and pivoted into web hosting in 2014, building its business around an in-house proprietary Scout control panel and a custom-built private cloud. Its customer base spans small businesses and personal website owners, web design agencies and freelancers, ecommerce operators running WordPress/WooCommerce/Magento, and UK charities, all served exclusively within the United Kingdom.
The technology stack is the company's principal differentiator. It runs enterprise Dell, HP ProLiant and Supermicro servers with Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors across three UK Tier III+ datacentres in London, Manchester and Maidenhead (ISO27001:2013, ISO9001 and ISO50001 accredited, 100% renewable energy). Storage is delivered via StorPool triple-replicated solid-state arrays capable of at least 250,000 transactions per second, with a 10 Gbps BGP network spanning Manchester and London taking transit from Cogent, NTT and GTT. The in-house Scout control panel replaces generic cPanel/Plesk with bespoke WordPress staging, caching, image optimisation, free Let's Encrypt SSL, Git deployment and Monarx anti-malware. A self-healing cloud architecture, 99.99% network and power SLA, sub-10-minute average support response and 15-minute pro-active managed monitoring underpin the operational positioning.
Commercially, cloudabove operates a subscription recurring model with monthly or annual billing (~8% annual discount), a usage-based reseller channel (cPanel/WHM PAYG), professional services (£30 per 30 minutes) and annual domain registration revenue. Public pricing ranges from £8/month (Starter) to £150/month (Managed M3), with Pro and VPS tiers at £25-£60/month, all-inclusive of migrations, daily backups, SSL and UK-based support. Go-to-market is direct-to-consumer via cloudabove.com and a WHMCS-backed portal (my.cloudabove.com), supported by UK phone, email and Crisp live-chat sales. Marketing is dominated by organic SEO, a 5.0 Google rating across 242 reviews, content marketing on product pages, and an Ecologi sustainability partnership that has planted 17,497 trees and offset 295.52T of CO2 to date.
cloudabove firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- cloudabove
- Legal name
- SWBROADBAND Ltd
- Website
- https://cloudabove.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2011
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- cloudabove (SWBROADBAND Ltd) is a UK SME web hosting provider based in Cornwall offering shared, VPS, managed and reseller hosting plus domain registration on its proprietary Scout platform, serving small businesses, web agencies, ecommerce sites and charities across the United Kingdom.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
cloudabove industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Web Hosting Services
- NAICS
- Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (5182), Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518)
- SIC
- Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Wholesale-Computers & Peripheral Equipment & Software (5045)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Private Cloud Platforms (On‑Prem Cloud Stacks) (HDABABAA)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Private Cloud Observability, Performance & Capacity Management (HDABABAL), Cloud Managed Services (Operations, Monitoring, Patching) (BPAEACAF)
Keywords
Where cloudabove is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Truro
- HQ country
- United Kingdom
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices5 records
Markets served
cloudabove business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B and B2C
- Offering type
- Services
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales
Revenue model
- Web hosting subscriptions: Recurring monthly or annual subscription revenue from Starter, Professional (Scout-powered), Reseller, Cloud Server/VPS and Managed hosting plans. Plans can be monthly or paid annually for an ~8% discount; upgrades between plans supported. Includes cross-sell of optional cPanel/Plesk/DirectAdmin licences (third-party billed through cloudabove).
- Domain name registration and transfer: Annual recurring revenue from registration, transfer and renewal of .uk, .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .com, .net, .org and other TLDs at flat transparent pricing; .uk transfers are free, most other TLDs require a 1-year renewal on transfer.
- Managed hosting services: Higher-tier managed plans (M1/M2/M3) billed monthly in advance where cloudabove takes full operational responsibility for the server: monitoring, hourly backups, server maintenance and pro-active support; includes a £30/month optional "Full management" add-on for VPS customers.
- Reseller / agency hosting (PAYG): Pay-as-you-go cPanel & WHM reseller hosting aimed at agencies and freelancers, enabling them to host multiple clients under a single relationship.
- Professional services & incident remediation: Chargeable support outside standard plans at £30 per 30 minutes for client-caused issues (e.g., OS file deletion, virus infection); Build Room access for colocation clients at £30/hour; storage fees of £35/week for uncollected equipment.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Monthly | Starter Hosting — all-inclusive entry plan from £8/month+ |
| Subscription | Monthly | Professional Hosting (Scout platform) — P1 £25/mo, P2 £30/mo, P3 £60/mo (+VAT) |
| Subscription | Monthly | Cloud Servers & VPS — V1 £25/mo, V2 £30/mo, V3 £60/mo |
| Subscription | Monthly | Managed Hosting — M1 £60/mo, M2 £90/mo, M3 £150/mo |
| Usage-based | Pay-as-you-go | Reseller Hosting — cPanel/WHM PAYG for agencies and freelancers |
| Subscription | Annual | Domain registration/transfer/renewal |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels7 records
cloudabove product offering
Product offeringCore offering
cloudabove operates a private, custom-built UK cloud hosting platform sold via tiered subscription plans — Starter shared hosting, Professional (Scout-powered) hosting, Cloud Servers/VPS, Managed hosting and Reseller hosting — together with domain registration and bundled SSL/email services. The offering is delivered from three UK Tier III+ data centres using StorPool triple-replicated storage, Intel Xeon/AMD EPYC servers and a 10 Gbps BGP network, with 24/7 UK-based support included by default.
Product overview
Cloudabove (trading as SWBROADBAND Ltd) is a single, unified UK web hosting platform rather than a portfolio of separate products: its portfolio is organised as a core platform-plus-modules architecture. The foundation is the cloudabove Private Cloud Infrastructure — a custom-built, fully redundant UK cloud using StorPool storage and Intel Xeon/AMD EPYC servers across Tier III+ data centres in London, Manchester and Maidenhead. Sitting on top of this are the customer-facing plans: Starter Hosting (entry-level shared hosting), Professional Hosting (Pro P1/P2/P3 powered by the in-house Scout control panel), Cloud Servers & VPS (V1/V2/V3, unmanaged with optional cPanel/Plesk/DirectAdmin), Managed Hosting (M1/M2/M3 with full 24/7 management) and Reseller Hosting (cPanel/WHM PAYG). All hosting plans are managed through cloudabove's proprietary Scout Platform control panel, which is included free with Pro and Cloud Server plans. Around the hosting core, cloudabove also offers Domain Registration, SSL / Security Certificates (free Let's Encrypt and cPanel AutoSSL by default, paid EV certificates available), and Email Hosting. Free site migrations, free SSL, free daily backups and 24/7 UK-based support are bundled across the portfolio.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Scout: In-house bespoke hosting and site management control panel built by cloudabove, included free with its hosting plans and designed for WordPress, Laravel, and Magento.
Products and services
- Starter Hosting Entry-level all-inclusive shared web hosting plan from £8/month for small business and personal websites, with free site and email migration, free SSL, free daily backups and unlimited email.
- Professional Hosting (Pro) — P1, P2, P3 High-performance WordPress, WooCommerce and ecommerce hosting on the in-house Scout platform (£25–£60/month), with Intel Xeon CPUs, NVMe storage on P2/P3, Monarx anti-malware, free temporary plan scaling, daily offsite backups, free SSL and UK support.
- Cloud Servers & VPS — V1, V2, V3 4th-generation unmanaged virtual private servers (£25–£60/month) with full root access, free Scout control panel, free daily backups, 99.99% uptime SLA, NVMe storage on V2/V3, 5 GHz Intel Xeon CPUs on premium plans, and Linux/Windows OS options on V3. Optional cPanel, Plesk and DirectAdmin licences.
- Managed Hosting — M1, M2, M3 Fully managed, business-critical hosting on dedicated cloud servers (£60–£150/month) with 24/7 monitoring and pro-active support within 15 minutes, hourly offsite backups, 99.99% uptime SLA, Intel Xeon vCPUs, NVMe storage and PCI-DSS compliance built in.
- Reseller Hosting cPanel & WHM reseller hosting on pay-as-you-go pricing for agencies and freelancers looking to host and manage multiple client websites under a single relationship.
Quantifiable outcome
- StorPool storage handles ≥250,000 transactions/second (≥25× faster than traditional SSD)
- +6 more outcomes
Companies that use cloudabove
Customer profileNamed customers5 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
cloudabove technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration12 records
Feature10 records
cloudabove partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
22 partnerships are on record, tiered flagship sustainability partner, core infrastructure partner for .uk domains, core payment provider, secondary payment provider, core ssl provider, supplementary ssl provider, core support tooling partner, core chat tooling partner, core transactional email provider, supporting fraud-prevention partner, internal collaboration tool, core storage technology partner, core hardware partners, core silicon partners, core networking partners, core transit providers, core security partner, supplementary licensing partners, key supplier partner and minor creative partner.
- Ecologiflagship sustainability partnerEcologi is cloudabove's carbon-offset and tree-planting partner. cloudabove plants trees via Ecologi for every hosting account, domain and order, and embeds the Ecologi badge on the homepage. By April 2022 cloudabove had 11,467 trees planted offsetting 154.4 tonnes of CO2; by the time of the latest scrape the figure is 17,497 trees and 295.52T of carbon reduction.
- Nominet UKcore infrastructure partner for .uk domainsUK domain registry governing body for *.uk domain registrations. SWBROADBAND Ltd is a Nominet registrar; clients registering .uk domains enter a secondary agreement with Nominet UK and must accept Nominet's Terms and Rules of Registration.
- Stripecore payment providerPCI-DSS Level 1 payment processor used by cloudabove for card payments. Contact and card information is transferred to Stripe at the point of payment; cloudabove does not store full card details (only last 4 digits and expiry).
- PayPal Payments Prosecondary payment providerPCI-DSS Level 1 payment processor previously/alternatively used by cloudabove alongside Stripe.
- Let's Encryptcore ssl providerFree SSL certificate provider integrated into cloudabove's hosting plans (no customer data shared).
- cPanel AutoSSL (Comodo)supplementary ssl providerAlternative free SSL provision for cPanel-based services.
- Sirportly (by aTech Media Limited)core support tooling partnerHosted help desk solution used by cloudabove to coordinate and track technical support tickets; customer name and email are shared to correlate correspondence with accounts.
- Crisp Chatcore chat tooling partnerHosted live chat solution used for website live chat support; IP address, and optionally name/email, shared with Crisp during a chat session.
- Mandrill (by Mailchimp / Transactional Email)core transactional email providerCloudabove sends transactional emails (invoices, control-panel notifications) through Mandrill. Mandrill retains sent messages up to 72 hours for reliability and 30 days of delivery logs for troubleshooting.
- MaxMindsupporting fraud-prevention partnerIP intelligence / fraud-prevention provider. Customer name, postal address, email and IP address are shared with MaxMind to protect against fraud.
- FraudRecordsupporting fraud-prevention partnerIndustry fraud-prevention database. Customer name, postal address, email and IP address are shared to protect cloudabove and its network from fraud.
- Slackinternal collaboration toolInternal team collaboration platform used by cloudabove to privately transmit customer service information via encrypted channels; only accessible by staff.
- Google Driveinternal collaboration toolInternal collaboration platform used for sharing customer service information via encrypted channels.
- StorPoolcore storage technology partnerIndustry-leading storage technology underpinning cloudabove's triple-replicated solid-state storage layer. Capable of at least 250,000 transactions per second and at least 25× faster than traditional SSD storage used by most hosts.
- Dell, HP ProLiant and Supermicro (server hardware vendors)core hardware partnersEnterprise-grade server hardware vendors supplying the latest Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC-powered servers for cloudabove's private cloud.
- Intel (Intel Xeon) and AMD (AMD EPYC)core silicon partnersProcessor suppliers for cloudabove's servers. Premium plans use Intel Xeon "Coffee Lake"/"Rocket Lake" 5 GHz CPUs; standard plans use AMD EPYC / Intel Xeon E5 family CPUs.
- Juniper, Cisco and HP (networking vendors)core networking partnersSuppliers of routers and switches used in cloudabove's 10 Gbps BGP network spanning Manchester and London.
- Cogent, NTT and GTT Communications (Tier 1 ISP transit providers)core transit providersTier 1 Internet Service Providers from which cloudabove's core network takes transit, providing redundant connectivity to the wider internet.
- Monarxcore security partnerAnti-malware technology integrated into the Scout platform for always-on protection of hosted websites.
- cPanel / Plesk / DirectAdmin (third-party control panel licences)supplementary licensing partnersCloudabove resells licences for cPanel (from £18/mo +VAT), Plesk (from £8/mo +VAT) and DirectAdmin (£6/mo +VAT) as alternatives to the in-house Scout control panel on cloud servers.
- Freethoughtkey supplier partnerDescribed as one of cloudabove's biggest suppliers, Freethought has a robust ethical policy and a carefully considered approved supplier list. cloudabove is working to assess all suppliers against Freethought-style ethical standards.
- Papertankminor creative partnerWeb design agency credited with designing and building the cloudabove.com website.
Scale indicators9 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights5 records
cloudabove competitors and assessment
Company assessmentEmerging players
- Cloudways: Managed multi-cloud hosting platform (DigitalOcean, AWS, Google, Linode) with proprietary control panel and agency-friendly tooling. Comparable on managed cloud + control-panel approach; broader cloud-backend coverage than cloudabove.
- Kinsta: Premium managed WordPress hosting built on Google Cloud with proprietary MyKinsta dashboard. Comparable on managed hosting performance and control-panel-led UX, though cloud-agnostic only on GCP and premium-priced.
Direct peers
- Tsohost: UK shared, VPS and managed hosting provider serving SMBs and resellers. Comparable on product mix (Starter/VPS/Managed) and UK-centric GTM, though without cloudabove's ESG differentiation.
- UK2 Group: UK hosting brand (sibling of Midphase, HOSTING.com) offering shared, VPS, reseller and managed hosting. Comparable on UK SMB/agency focus and product breadth.
- Krystal Hosting: UK SMB/agency hosting provider with a strong sustainability narrative (100% renewable, tree-planting) and in-house cloud platform. Directly comparable on geography, customer segment and ESG positioning.
- 20i: UK-based hosting provider with a proprietary control panel (My20i) and a similar vertically integrated stack (StorPool-backed). Targets agencies, resellers and SMBs with managed WordPress, VPS and dedicated hosting — the closest direct analogue to cloudabove's Scout-driven model.
Broad incumbents
- GoDaddy: Global hosting and domain registration incumbent with broad SMB product portfolio. Directly comparable on domain registration + shared/VPS/managed hosting bundles, but at hyperscale.
- WP Engine: Specialist managed WordPress hosting incumbent with proprietary platform, agency and ecommerce tooling. Comparable on the Pro/Managed WordPress tier cloudabove targets with Scout, though at significantly larger scale and US-centric.
- SiteGround: Global managed hosting provider with strong WordPress/WooCommerce positioning and proprietary speed/security tooling. Comparable on managed hosting tier and WordPress focus, but at vastly larger scale and broader geographic reach.
Regional players
- Hetzner: Germany-based hosting and dedicated-server provider with strong price/performance reputation across the EU. Comparable on cloud VPS, dedicated and managed products; not directly competing in the UK domestic market but a relevant alternative for price-sensitive UK buyers.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat6 records
Key risks7 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
cloudabove social profiles
Digital presencecloudabove compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance8 records
cloudabove financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
cloudabove leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles1 record
cloudabove funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
cloudabove M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about cloudabove
What does cloudabove do?
cloudabove operates a private, custom-built UK cloud hosting platform sold via tiered subscription plans — Starter shared hosting, Professional (Scout-powered) hosting, Cloud Servers/VPS, Managed hosting and Reseller hosting — together with domain registration and bundled SSL/email services. The offering is delivered from three UK Tier III+ data centres using StorPool triple-replicated storage, Intel Xeon/AMD EPYC servers and a 10 Gbps BGP network, with 24/7 UK-based support included by default.
Is cloudabove a public or private company?
cloudabove is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was cloudabove founded?
cloudabove was founded in 2011. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is cloudabove based?
cloudabove is headquartered in Truro, United Kingdom, in the Europe region.
How does cloudabove make money?
Five revenue lines are on record. Web hosting subscriptions are the primary driver. The others are domain name registration and transfer, managed hosting services, reseller / agency hosting (PAYG) and professional services & incident remediation.
Who are cloudabove's main competitors?
Emerging players on record are Cloudways and Kinsta. Direct peers are Tsohost, UK2 Group, Krystal Hosting and 20i. Broad incumbents are GoDaddy, WP Engine and SiteGround. Hetzner is listed as a regional player.
Does cloudabove have an API?
No public API is recorded for cloudabove.
What industry is cloudabove in?
cloudabove's product category is Web Hosting Services. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HDABABAA, Private Cloud Platforms (On‑Prem Cloud Stacks), with a secondary code of HDABABAL, Private Cloud Observability, Performance & Capacity Management. Its NAICS code is 5182 and its SIC code is 7370.