Should You Host with Liquid Web’s Nexcess? Review of Features & Performance

Liquid Web is an industry leader when it comes to managed WordPress and managed WooCommerce hosting. Though not designed for website owners on tight budgets, this is a web host that offers guaranteed reliability, speed, and uptime at all times.

If you’re on the lookout for a powerful managed WordPress or WooCommerce hosting solution for an affordable price hat never falls short on performance, reliability, or uptime, then Liquid Web’s Nexcess is the host for you.

Nexcess is a great web host for website owners that are growing exponentially and need guaranteed reliability, performance, and uptime, fast load times (see my page speed test ⇣ ) all the time – 24/7/365.

To help you make that decision before you start investing your hard-earned cash, in this Nexcess WordPress hosting review, we look at everything they have to offer large-scale WordPress websites.

Nexcess doesn’t rely on caching to ensure speed, instead, they focus on auto-scaling PHP workers which are responsible for executing your website’s PHP code. Every plan has at least 10 dedicated PHP workers and some of their managed WooCommerce plans ⇣ come with up to 300 PHP workers.

All managed WordPress hosting plans come with pre-installed plugins, automatic updates, website staging, nightly backups, iThemes sync, iThemes Security Pro, free SSL, and all the essential features.

They must be doing something right (around speed and customer support):

I reached out and asked them about the three S’s of hosting, speed, security, and support:

About Liquid Web

The Liquid Web brand has been around for 24 years of experience and provides a comprehensive suite of services and products for businesses and nonprofits.

Liquid Web’s family of brands are:

1. Liquid Web: Specializes in high-performance managed hosting solutions. It offers dedicated servers, VPS, VMware Private Cloud, and multi-server solutions, focusing on speed, security, and reliability.
2. Nexcess: This brand offers a fully managed Digital Commerce Cloud solution, optimizing sites, stores, and applications. It provides managed hosting for WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, and more, with a focus on ease of use and speed with its WPQuickStart bundles.
3. StellarWP: Under this brand, Liquid Web houses a collection of premium WordPress plugins. These include:
   • Give: A highly-rated WordPress donation plugin.
   • Iconic: Plugins for eCommerce essentials, including security and backup.
   • KadenceWP: Tools for building fast and beautiful websites.
   • Restrict Content Pro: A complete membership solution for WordPress sites.
   • Events Calendar: A leading calendar and ticketing plugin for WordPress.
   • LearnDash: A premier solution for creating courses on WordPress.
   • Modern Tribe: An enterprise WordPress agency providing digital solutions.

The Liquid Web Family promises easy access to a broad portfolio of managed hosting, cloud services, plugins, and software. It has over 500,000+ sites under management, supporting over 175,000 paying customers and is backed by over 600 skilled employees, offering support, security, speed, and reliability.

Liquid Web’s commitment includes ongoing investment in new and existing services to support business growth and adapt to changing needs. This commitment has positioned the brands among the world’s most loved, with a strong focus on customer loyalty and trust.

Standout Features

1. Fully Managed Hosting

Offering fully managed web hosting means Liquid Web does it all for you. This includes all software updates and security patches, so your website always runs fast and is never compromised.

For example, they will update any WordPress plugins you run on your website every single night. What’s better, it’s done in a specialized testing environment to protect your website from plugin vulnerabilities and to prevent downtime. Once the team gets the all-clear, then your updates are pushed live.

They also do a great job offering website owners the opportunity to create customized hosting solutions that meet their growing needs.

For instance, help with PCI and HIPAA compliance, reseller hosting, ecommerce site protection, and so much more are available for site owners looking for something specific.

And to top it off, every custom hosting solution comes with a dedicated account manager that knows everything about your website and collaborates with your IT team to ensure a seamless hosting experience.

2. Impressive Performance & Speed

If you want to keep your site visitors happy (and convert), and get to the first page of Google and stay there, you need your website to load fast.

A study from Google found that a 1-second delay in mobile page load times can impact conversion rates by up to 20%.

When it comes to fast load times, Liquid Web does not disappoint!

I have created a test site hosted on LiquidWeb.com to monitor uptime and server response time:

The above screenshot only shows the past 30 days, you can view historical uptime data and server response time at this uptime monitor page.

Here below is the result of the page speed test I did.

Before:

An “out-of-the-box” WordPress demo site was hosted on Liquid Web, using autogenerated content and with the built-in caching enabled:

In GTmetrix the site loaded in 0.9 seconds. Not bad, at all!

After:

Just by simple activating and configuring Liquid Web’s suggested speed plugins (Async JavaScript, Autoptimize, BJ Lazy Load, Compress JPEG & PNG images & Lazy Load for Comments – already installed but not activated):

Resulted in a huge impact on page speed load times:

In GTmetrix now the site loaded in 0.6 seconds. That’s 0.3 seconds faster, that’s impressive – and FAST!

3. Premium Performance

Liquid Web has averaged a below 1 second load time, which is pretty good for the hosting industry. But when you break things down into datacenters (3 of them to be exact), you’ll find that based on your geographic location, the web speeds are much better:

• US Central Region: 615ms
• US-West Region: 330ms
• EU-Central Region: 867ms

Liquid Web doesn’t stop there though. After all, there’s a lot more to a fast-performing website than loading speeds.

Take a look:

• Liquid Web has over 25,000 servers in privately owned operated core datacenters
• Data centers have redundant cooling, networks, and power to ensure uptime and speed
• The Tier-1 bandwidth connection minimizes latency and fast connections to all points of the global internet
• Experts monitor network performance 24/7/365
• You’ll get a built-in image optimization solution with your hosting package to use on your site
• HTTP/2 is available, which not only increases site speed and performance but helps with site security

4. Fastest WordPress Hosting

Liquid Web has engineered one of the best WordPress hosting platforms out there to make hosting simple so you can focus on growing your site. Their fully managed WordPress hosting is a complete solution and is the best choice for mission-critical WordPress sites.

Every plan comes with pre-installed plugins, automatic updates, website staging, nightly backups, iThemes sync, iThemes Security Pro, free SSL certificate, and additional features to fit every type of website.

Their managed WordPress platform has been custom-built from the ground up to deliver speed and reliability. Their platform doesn’t rely on caching to ensure top speeds, instead, it’s focused on concurrent requests and a high number of PHP workers to ensure you have the fastest, most stable, and most secure service for your WordPress powered site.

• No over-usage fees, traffic limits, or metered page views

• Automatic plugin updates with visual comparisons

• No restrictions on plugins that can be used (unlike WP Engine and Kinsta)

• Free image optimization plugin that improves page-speed

• Nightly plugin updates tested in a staging environment (why aren’t more web hosts doing this?)

• iThemes sync and iThemes Security Pro

• Free site migrations where an entire team is dedicated to helping you migrate your data from your current host.

• Industry-leading guarantees backed by a 100% uptime worry-free guarantee. 100% uptime or they will credit you 10X the amount.

• Full server access and Developer tools (SSH, Git, and WP-CLI)

• Free SSL certificates

• Staging sites

• 24/7/365 phone, email, and live chat support

The managed WordPress dashboard, has all the essential features and configurations:

Managed WP hosting comes included with free iThemes Security Pro:

WordPress hosting plans start at $19 per month with no hidden fees and you’re never locked into any contracts.

5. Specialized WooCommerce Hosting

WooCommerce is the most used ecommerce platform and Liquid Web claims they have built the first-ever all-in-one solution for WooCommerce, which rivals solutions like Shopify.

It’s more than just WordPress + the WooCommerce plugin. Their managed WooCommerce hosting is extremely fast and reliable as the platform has been optimized to reduce query loads by 95%.

Liquid Web’s managed WooCommerce hosting comes with the following features:

• Tables to store order data to reduce query loads by as much as 95%

• Jilt abandoned cart email services, emails are customizable with a one-click link back to the abandoned cart and scheduling control.

• 20+ performance tests you can run to prepare for traffic increases

• Support for physical, digital, drop shipping, and marketplace shops

• Free “White Glove” site migrations

• Built-in page builder (Beaver Builder) for easy site creation

• Pre-packaged Astra theme, which is optimized for online stores

• Mobile optimization

• Free SSL certificate & iThemes Security Pro

• Worry-free automatic plugin updates with visual comparisons

• More than $150/month in free software and tool bundles

Managed WooCommerce from Liquid Web includes the following bundles that come free with all plans:

• BeaverBuilder – premium page builder plugin (valued at $99/year)

• IconicWP – ALL of their premium WooCommerce plugins (valued at $200+/year)

• Jilt – premium abandonded cart plugin (valued at $850/year)

• AffiliateWP – premium affiliate management plugin (valued at $99/mo)

• GlewAnalytics – ecommerce analytics (valued at $199/mo

The WooCommerce Beginner plan starts at just $19 per month, with no hidden fees and you’re never stuck in a contract. You can upgrade or cancel at any time to fit your needs.

Liquid Web’s higher performance plans (Standard, Plus, Pro, & Enterprise) come with Glew.io included. Glew.io (valued at $199+ per month) is the ultimate analytics and reporting software for ecommerce marketers, allowing you to see all analytics on your site and market like a giant million-dollar corporation. For example, imagine being able to segment your customers in groups like “customers who spent $500+ but have not returned in the past 6 months” or “VIP customers who spend over $1,000 this year” all with a click on a button.

6. Premium Support, Including Friendly Humans

One of the neatest things about Liquid Web is what I’m calling the “59” Support Guarantee.

As a way to prove to you that you matter as a Liquid Web customer, Liquid Web offers the following 59 support guarantees:

• Help Desk Initial Response: any time you submit a trouble ticket using the help desk system, you’ll get a response from a technician within 30 minutes. If Liquid Web fails to respond within 59 minutes, you’ll be credited 10 times the amount of time exceeding the SLA commitment. In other words, if your ticket goes 1 hour beyond the 59-minute support guarantee, you’ll receive a 10-hour hosting credit.

• Phone Answer Time: a live support agent will answer your phone call within 59 seconds from the time you choose the department you want to talk to. If not, you’ll receive a hosting credit of 10 times the amount of time that passes the guarantee.

• Live Chat Initial Response Time: a live chat support representative will answer your chat within 59 seconds of choosing the department of your choice and filling out the pre-chat survey questions. Again, if Liquid Web fails to fulfill the 59-second guarantee, you’ll receive 10 times hosting credit to your account.

Remember, too, Liquid support is available 24/7/365, so you never have to worry about getting in touch with help when you need it most.

Liquid Web also has a blog, Knowledge Base, WooCommerce Resource Center, content hub (breaking content into hosting type categories), an ecommerce shop owner podcast (called Store Builders), webinars (accessible anytime), and an event lineup for those interested in attending WordPress community events.

Need even more help? Get in touch with your personal consultant or account manager and ask away!

7. 100% Power and Network Uptime Guarantee

Liquid Web joins the few web hosting companies out there offering a 100% uptime guarantee. In other words, it promises that all major routing devices within Liquid Web networks will be reachable from the global internet all the time.

Of course, there are some exclusions:

• Scheduled network, hardware, or software maintenance
• Malicious attacks (such as major DDoS attacks)
• Legal actions taken against your website or company
• CPanel issues

While 100% uptime is impossible to achieve forever, Liquid Web does a really good job of almost doing it anyways. In fact, this year Liquid Web has maintained an impressive 99.997% uptime over the course of ten months.

And just in case you’re wondering, they offer a 10 times credit for the amount of downtime to all hosting customers affected should the downtime. In other words, if your website goes down for 1 hour, you’ll receive a 10-hour hosting credit to your account.

8. Free Site Migrations

Whether an internal move within Liquid Web or an external move from another web host, Liquid Web will migrate your site to its hosting platform for free. And if its team of experts can’t migrate your site for whatever reason, rest assured you’ll receive whatever support the team can give you while you work it out.

Though this might not seem like such a great feature to offer site owners, and you may even think it standard in the hosting industry, trust us when we say it’s not. Many web hosting companies force you to migrate your site yourself or charge you a hefty fee to help you.

If you want to migrate a WordPress site (or sites) to the Liquid Web managed WordPress hosting platform by yourself, then you can use the free Migrate To Liquid Web WordPress plugin. The plugin takes care of everything, from copying all the data to transforming config files and importing this to the Liquid Web server.

9. Free DDoS Protection

The last thing you want to deal with is a DDoS attack that brings your site down and causes you a loss in sales or leads.

That’s why Liquid Web offers all website owners the option to enable free Cloudflare CDN services (including DDoS protection) in their hosting account. Cloudflare CDN services do more than deliver site content around the world instantly using servers spanning the globe.

But just in case you need a refresher, here are the top reasons to take advantage of the free Cloudflare CDN services:

• Your large video or image files will slow your site down
• Large bandwidth use will strain resources
• Tons of traffic but low conversion rates can be improved with faster content delivery
• Improve your SEO efforts with faster load time and more user engagement on site

But more than that, Cloudflare insulates your website and automatically drops malicious traffic to prevent a DDoS attack from bringing down your website.

In fact, it has the advanced capability of ensuring legitimate traffic makes it through to your website, even during an attack. And just in case your site does become involved in a DDoS attack, trust that Liquid Web will notify you immediately.

Want something a little more powerful? You can always purchase Liquid Web’s premium DDoS Attack Prevention services that will do the following:

• Monitor all web traffic that reaches your site in real-time
• Intelligently identify attacks before they happen and proactively react
• Scrub and separate all malicious traffic before it reaches the critical layer of your infrastructure

Premium DDoS protection starts at $99/month.

10. Free SSL certificates

SSL certificates are great for protecting:

• Banks, credit unions, or other websites (such as WooCommerce shops) that handle financial transactions
• Connections to a web or email server
• File transfers (SFTP) from your computer to a server
• Online application logins (any password-protected websites)

An SSL certificate will encrypt the data being transferred between your host’s server and your user’s browser so that no one can intercept it in the process. Plus, it will prevent your website from being flagged by Chrome as “Not Secure.”

Luckily, Liquid Web offers all hosting customers a free SSL certificate, which is nice seeing as many web hosts will charge you extra for this much-needed service.

Liquid Web’s Managed WooCommerce and Managed WordPress plans automatically come with free Let’s Encrypt SSL for your primary domain that you have set in the control panel when your site goes live or if you rename your primary domain in the control panel.

Hosting Plans

Liquid Web is different from most web hosts in that it doesn’t offer shared hosting (like SiteGround and Bluehost). Let me repeat – Liquid Web does not offer shared hosting.

What it does offer, however, are the following types of web hosting: managed dedicated servers, managed VPS hosting, managed WordPress, and managed WooCommerce.

So, let’s take a look at each before diving into the features you can expect when you use Liquid Web as your web host.

Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting services that truly handle it all can be hard to come by. But with Liquid Web you get zero overage fees, traffic limits, or metered page views to start. This means you can continue to grow your WordPress website without fear of being cut off due to your own success.

In addition, you’ll get the following features with managed WordPress hosting:

• PHP 7 support
• Fast speed with 10 PHP workers
• Nginx
• Built-in image optimization
• Free site migrations with zero downtime
• Nightly plugin updates tested in a staging environment (why aren’t more web hosts doing this?)
• iThemes sync and iThemes Security Pro
• Full server access
• Automatic daily backups (stored offsite for 30 days)
• Developer tools (SSH, Git, and WP-CLI)
• Free SSL certificates
• Staging sites
• 24/7/365 phone, email, and live chat support

Managed WordPress hosting plans start at $19/month for one site

Get managed WordPress hosting now
Use code WHR40VIP and get 40% OFF for 2 months on ALL hosting products!

Managed WooCommerce Hosting

Liquid Web offers those with WooCommerce stores specialized managed WooCommerce hosting services. To start, the team at Liquid Web understands that even high-quality managed WordPress hosting may not cache your ecommerce store the way it needs to be. So, they take it upon themselves to intelligently cache your site for maximum performance and exceptional user experience.

Liquid Web gives WooCommerce shop owners features such as:

• Tables to store order data to reduce query loads by as much as 95%
• Jilt abandoned cart email services
• 20+ performance tests you can run to prepare for traffic increases
• Support for physical, digital, dropshipping, and marketplace shops
• Free “White Glove” site migrations
• Built-in page builder (Beaver Builder) for easy site creation
• Pre-packaged Astra theme, which is optimized for online stores
• Mobile optimization
• Free SSL certificate & iThemes Security Pro
• Worry-free automatic plugin updates with visual comparisons
• More than $150/month in free software and tool bundles

Managed WooCommerce hosting plans start at $19/month

Get managed WooCommerce hosting now
Use code WHR40VIP and get 40% OFF for 2 months on ALL hosting products!

Managed Dedicated Servers

Liquid Web’s managed dedicated server hosting means your website data and files are stored on a single-tenant server. You never have to share resources, can customize your hosting environment, and can build-to-order your hosting solution using Linux or Windows (which not every web host does).

Plus, you’ll enjoy features such as:

• Real-time monitoring
• 100% power and network uptime guarantee
• Standard DDoS protection
• CloudFlare CDN services
• Backup drives
• Root access
• Dedicated IP address
• Business-grade SSD storage for maximum performance

Dedicated server hosting plans start at $199/month.

Get managed dedicated server hosting now
Use code WHR40VIP and get 40% OFF for 2 months on ALL hosting products!

Managed VPS Hosting

Their managed VPS hosting claims that its managed VPS hosting services are faster than AWS or Rackspace (two leading cloud hosting solutions in the industry), Liquid Web provides website owners the reliability they need and advanced security features so they never have to worry.

Plus, VPS hosting comes with the power of a dedicated server and the flexibility of cloud hosting. In other words, it’s great for those that need the control of a dedicated server, but want to keep costs down.

Here are some of the most notable features you get with Liquid Web VPS hosting:

• Gigabit bandwidth
• Unlimited sites
• CloudFlare CDN services
• Dedicated IP address
• Local backups
• Root access
• Integrated firewall
• DDoS protection
• Easy scaling up or down
• cPanel, Plesk, or Interworx
• 100% power and network uptime guarantee

VPS hosting plans start at $29/month.

Liquid Web Pros and Cons

Here I have listed the pros and cons of their managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting services.

Managed WordPress Hosting Pros:

• High performance (PHP Workers, SSD, PHP7, HTTP/2, Let’s Encrypt SSL, and Nginx)

• No overusage fees, or limits on page views or traffic

• Free iThemes sync (manage multiple WordPress sites from one dashboard) and iThemes Security Pro

• Free propriety image optimization plugin

• No WordPress theme or plugin bans

• Free “White-Glove” site migrations

• 100% uptime guarantee and generous compensation for downtime

• 24/7/365 support with stellar 59 minutes/seconds guarantees

• Cheap starter plan from $19/month

Managed WooCommerce Hosting Pros:

• WooCommerce speed and performance-optimized (SSD, PHP7, Let’s Encrypt SSL, HTTP/2, Nginx, Varnish & Redis Caching)

• 30 to 300 PHP Workers to guarantee fast speeds

• Free bundle included: Beaver Builder page builder plugin, All Iconic WP plugins, Jilt Abandoned Cart, Affiliate WP, and Glew Analytics

• Affordable beginner plan from $19/month that is WooCommerce fully featured

• Free PayPal & Stripe integration on all plans

• Free “White-Glove” site migrations

Managed WordPress and WooCommerce Cons:

• Expensive (no inexpensive shared hosting; caters to those who need performance, reliability, and support – and will pay for it)

• No free email hosting (premium add-on starts at $1/month)

• US & Europe centric; no data centers in Asia Pacific (however a CDN helps with geographic coverage in Asia-Pacific regions)

• Beginner WooCommerce package caps at 15 products with unlimited transactions or 150 orders per month

• No money-back-guarantee – though there is no contract and you can cancel at any time

Our Verdict ⭐

So, is Nexcess any good? Yes, it’s great for website owners that are growing exponentially and need guaranteed reliability, speed, and uptime all the time.

When it comes to web hosting providers, Liquid Web Hosting is definitely worth considering. As evident from the numerous LiquidWeb reviews available, it is crystal clear that their services are highly praised by customers. In this liquid web hosting review, we will delve into the key aspects that make Liquid Web Hosting stand out among the competition.

Check out how Nexcess can help your website reach its potential and continue to grow beyond your wildest dreams.

Reviewing Nexcess: Our Methodology

When we review web hosts, our evaluation is based on these criteria:

1. Value for Money: What types of web hosting plans are on offer, and are they good value for money?
2. User Friendliness: How user-friendly is the signup process, the onboarding, the dashboard? and so on.
3. Customer Support: When we need help, how quickly can we get it, and is the support effective and helpful?
4. Hosting Features: What unique features does the web host provide, and how do they stack up against competitors?
5. Security: Are essential security measures like SSL certificates, DDoS protection, backup services, and malware/virus scans included?
6. Speed and Uptime: Is the hosting service fast and reliable? What types of servers do they use, and how do they perform in tests?

For more details on our review process, click here.

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