Add 7 Best Cloudways Alternatives post

[fatin-xCloud]

Adds a Guide-category listicle covering 7 Cloudways alternatives in xCloud house style.

What's in this PR

File
src/content/blog/7-best-cloudways-alternatives.md	The post, ~3,100 words, 363 lines
public/_landing/blog/7-best-cloudways-alternatives-cover.png	1200x630 cover
public/_landing/blog/7-best-cloudways-alternatives-cover.webp	WebP derivative

Platforms covered: xCloud, RunCloud, SpinupWP, Ploi, ServerAvatar, GridPane, Kinsta.

Structure

• Hook intro with the Cloudways cost/root-access tension, plus an internal link to the xCloud vs Cloudways comparison
• TL;DR decision table (If you want to / Use this / Best for / Setup time)
• Master comparison table ranking all 7, with xCloud listed alongside honest cons
• A numbered ### section per alternative, each with a ✅/❌ pros-cons table
• Cost breakdown including a "your time" column
• xCloud tie-in with a bold CTA, action-titled conclusion, standard outro
• 7 FAQ pairs, meta description (156 chars) and focus keyword in frontmatter
• 4 IMAGE: placeholders for assets still to be designed

draft: false, pubDate: 2026-09-15.

Sourcing

All pricing was verified against vendor pricing pages in September 2026. Internal links (16) were verified against the live search index. One authoritative external source (DigitalOcean investor relations, for the $350M Cloudways acquisition) plus vendor pricing pages.

Reviewer notes — please check these before merging

1. Internal links were verified by search index, not by loading the pages. xcloud.host is blocked by this environment's network egress proxy, so anchor-text-to-page-content accuracy is unconfirmed.
2. A post on this exact topic already exists at xcloud.host/best-cloudways-alternatives/. This is a fresh piece, not a refresh of that one. Confirm whether this should replace it, and whether the slug should differ.
3. The cover image is a generated typographic card, not a branded asset. Colors are approximated because brand assets were not reachable.
4. Pricing conflicts worth a second look: RunCloud's entry plan is quoted as both $8 and $9/mo across sources (used $9); ServerAvatar's $2.36 floor appears to be a discounted annual rate (used "from $2.36").
5. No build or SEO check was run. The repository had no package.json or tooling when this branch was created, so blog:seo, gen-blog-webp and npm run dev could not run. The WebP was generated directly instead, and the post was audited manually against the house-style checklist. The post has not been seen rendered.

Repository setup

This PR also introduces main as the base branch, with a README documenting the frontmatter schema and the blog/<slug> branch workflow. Note that the repository's default branch is still claude/wizardly-galileo-ya4nr4 (an artifact of the first push into an empty repo) and should be switched to main in repository settings; that stale branch can then be deleted.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01JojEhzVTwm4VPNtZ5KtGKf

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