This is now live:
https://www.cloudways.com/blog/php-fpm-on-cloud/

Cloudways Team

Awesome, Cloudways staff!

Awesome you have this under review now! I'm liking Cloudways willingness to listen to suggestions. Thanks!

I have also tested the ServerPilot stack against Cloudways. ServerPilot definitely uses less resources. PHP-FPM also scales better under load than mod_php.

You said:
"Our stack does include nginx too (so it is nginx -> varnish -> apache (mod-php). Why mod-php? Compatibility. Mod-php directly supports .htaccess and typical rewrite rules that most people is used to"

Agreed. But ServerPilot implemented PHP-FPM, and yet maintains .htaccess and rules...
So it can be done.

I LOVE Cloudways features and Dashboard UI compared to ServerPilot. But performance does not match up. If you came through with mainstream performance items such as PHP-FPM and HTTP/2, you would dominate.

Of course, mod-php will use more resources than php-fpm (with php7 this is not so true anymore) but varnish is an integral part of our stack, so disabling it will have adverse consequences for performance and resource usage.

Our stack does include nginx too (so it is nginx -> varnish -> apache (mod-php). Why mod-php? Compatibility. Mod-php directly supports .htaccess and typical rewrite rules that most people is used to and we minimize (via nginx and varnish the real traffic that gets to apache). So we try to strike a balance between performance and convenience.

Cloudways Team

I just tested the same WP installation on ServerPilot (php-fpm with apache and nginx) and Cloudways (nginx, apache, memcached, varnish off) and Cloudways server eats more resources than ServerPilot (compared by looking at top command on both servers.)

PHP-FPM should be the default, not mod-php.
Please implement PHP-FPM

I understand. I am using a stack php, which does not really enable Varnish (which is another point i'd like to raise). I'm not using magneto or Wordpress. People who are not using them, and who have a simple php stack could be enabled to use PHP-FPM.

Yes, this is what I have tried to say. That we considered it, tested it in our stack, and it didn't provide any obvious performance improvement for the magento and wordpress environments we load tested. This is mainly due to nignx and varnish being in front of apache in our stack and off-loading a lot apache (no matter which module we use).

Cloudways Team

Hello,
Thank you for your reply. Mod-php comes in as default with Apache - it does not need to be placed. PHP-FPM, on the other hand is more efficient because of its pool management strategy. Mod-php arguably can load the server. PHP-FPM is new, and it definitely should be atleast considered as an option, and let the user decide which one he wants to apply.

Prateek, we use nginx as front end for our stack serving static content, then varnish (for apps that support it) and finally apache with mod-php serving dynamic content for its better compatibility with the several applications we deploy, compatibility with htaccess and because on our own tests, replacing mod-php for php-fpm in this stack, didn't provide any substantial performance increase to justify renouncing to the compatibility of mod-php.

Please note that I mention, in our stack with nginx in front, which is key to performance.

Best,

Cloudways Team