The staging area is useless for us at the moment as our client gets quite a few orders so by the time we have finished work on the staging site (including updating products and pages) there have been sales, this means we cannot merge the staging site with live as it overwrites the orders in the database.

For Magento applications (and any other shopping cart) there should be an option to exclude ALL order, customer, invoice tables etc from the migration process. So just an 'exclude customer data' option.

This would then exclude all tables relating to customers including the marketing section (newsletter signups for example).

The actual staging feature was a big step forward to deal with business related WordPress sites.

But for now only the entire database could be pushed/pulled between staging <> live environment.

For more complex WordPress sites with WooCommerce or membership systems the actual staging feature is not enough. While in staging mode the live site changes permantly and new orders/users are created. When pushing back the entire datebase all changes would be overwritten!

A selective database sync (select which tables should be copied) would really improve the staging feature. With that in place Cloudways would be a very good host even for these complex WordPress sites.

PS: A similar feedback was already posted but with bad explanation:
http://feedback.cloudways.com/forums/203824-service-improvement/suggestions/34850656-ecommerce-staging-enviroment-enhanchment

I would like to suggest that Cloudways publishes an article or other document that describes how Cloudways maintains, patches, updates servers and secures them.

The intent is not to disclose details that puts security at risk but instead demonstrates the value Cloudways is providing in the area of helping its customers maintain a secure server and application environment.

Information should include frequency of update / patch deployment, frequency of security scans for malware / unauthorized access, firewall ports and services that are open especially those for inbound traffic from the Internet, intrusion protection mechanisms, transparency reports for government information requests and legal processes, etc..

This kind of information will help Cloudways demonstrate value being provided. And, it would be helpful for devs, webmasters, and agencies too ... especially when evaluating Cloudways or building solutions / offerings on servers managed via the Cloudways service.

It will also be helpful to those who strive to document our own security practices.

I am a Cloudways customer, and right now what Cloudways provides and does in the realm of security is a big "black box" that offers no details or documentation of such to its customers or prospective customers.

Like I said, a suggestion ... which I believe is a good one.