Cloudways has launched Managed AI Agents, making OpenClaw and Hermes generally available. It is the company's first product line focused on the managed deployment of AI agents.
The launch brings two open-source AI agents to the Cloudways platform, allowing customers to deploy them through the same interface used for application hosting. Cloudways manages the underlying setup, including servers, Docker environments and SSL certificates.
The move addresses a practical problem for developers and businesses experimenting with AI agents. Interest in agent-based tools has grown, but moving them into production often requires teams to provision infrastructure, configure containers, secure environments and handle maintenance before any application work begins.
The service is designed to remove much of that operational work. Customers can deploy OpenClaw and Hermes without renting a virtual private server or configuring ports, gateways and other runtime elements themselves.
Each deployment runs in an isolated environment, according to Cloudways. The company added that runtime updates for agents are validated before rollout to reduce the risk of problematic releases affecting customers.
Another feature connects the managed agents with servers and applications already running on Cloudways through one-click Cloudways MCP integration.
Open-source focus
Cloudways is starting the service with two established open-source projects. OpenClaw has more than 386,000 GitHub stars, while Hermes has more than 228,000. Cloudways cited those figures as evidence of existing developer interest in both tools.
The choice of open-source agents reflects a broader pattern in the AI market, where businesses are testing community-built models and tools but often struggle to support them in live environments. Managed hosting providers have increasingly tried to address that gap by packaging infrastructure, maintenance and security into simpler services for smaller teams and agencies.
Cloudways is part of DigitalOcean, which focuses on cloud services for developers, startups and smaller digital businesses. For Cloudways, the launch extends its existing hosting model into AI-related workloads rather than requiring customers to assemble the pieces themselves on general-purpose cloud infrastructure.
That matters because many potential users of AI agents are not large companies with dedicated platform engineering teams. Agencies, software developers and online businesses may want to test automated workflows or AI-driven services, but often face a steep setup process when trying to run those systems reliably.
Broader expansion
OpenClaw and Hermes are the first agents in what Cloudways plans to build into a broader managed portfolio. More open-source AI agents are expected to be added over time.
The launch also reflects how hosting providers are looking beyond websites and standard applications as AI tools become more common in production settings. Instead of selling raw infrastructure alone, providers are trying to offer pre-managed environments for specific classes of software that customers may find difficult to run on their own.
For customers already using Cloudways for application hosting, the new service is positioned as an extension of an existing workflow. Familiar billing, support and infrastructure management remain part of the same platform, which may reduce friction for teams adding AI agents to current systems.
Suhaib Zaheer, SVP & General Manager at Cloudways, outlined the reasoning behind the launch.
"The general availability of OpenClaw and Hermes on Cloudways represents an important milestone in our vision of making AI infrastructure simpler and more accessible. As AI agents become an increasingly important part of how the customer builds and deploys applications, we believe running them should be just as simple and reliable as deploying any other workload. Today's announcement lays the foundation for our broader vision, bringing the simplicity, reliability and support customers already expect from managed hosting to the next generation of AI applications," said Suhaib Zaheer, SVP & General Manager at Cloudways.