To maintain their online presence, businesses need reliable web hosting services, and Liquid Web is one of the most well-known. Eddie Bauer, Home Depot, National Geographic, Porsche, and Symantec are among the companies that have used the company’s cloud, dedicated, reseller, virtual private server (VPS), and WordPress server packages. However, expect to pay a premium for this excellent, managed, enterprise-class service; Liquid Web does not offer a low-cost shared hosting option. Individuals and small businesses may prefer DreamHost, HostGator, and Hostwinds, which are among our top picks and offer more affordable plans.
Liquid Web is a leader in managed hosting, which is why we named them one of our top picks. A company that uses managed hosting does not have to keep its servers on-site. Instead, the servers are housed in the data center of a web host. That may sound like a description of every web hosting service, but Liquid Web goes far beyond simply delivering files over the internet. Regardless of the site’s complexity or scale, the company can handle all administrative and support tasks. As you might expect, this type of service is geared toward large corporations. Liquid Web’s managed hosting is also quite expensive, but it comes with a lot of features.
No Shared Web Hosting
As previously stated, Liquid Web does not provide shared web hosting, which is popular among individuals and small businesses. If you want to try your hand at hosting, you’ll have to look elsewhere. HostGator, our top recommendation for shared web hosting, is a great place to start. HostGator offers shared hosting packages based on Linux or Windows that allow small and medium-sized businesses to expand (starting at $2.75 per month for a 36-month plan). If you’re looking for a low-cost web hosting service, HostGator is the place to go.
VPS Web Hosting
Check out Liquid Web’s VPS servers if you need a server with a lot of power but don’t want to pay the high price of a dedicated server. VPS hosting is a more advanced version of shared hosting, with far more powerful (and guaranteed) system resources.
The entry-level VPS plan includes 2GB of RAM, 40GB of solid-state drive storage, 10TB of monthly data transfers, unlimited domains, and unlimited email (starting at $35 per month for a 12-month plan). Liquid Web’s high-end option (starting at $115 per month) ups the ante by including 16GB of RAM, 200GB of SSD storage, and the choice of Linux or Windows-based servers (the latter for $20 more per month). If you need a more powerful server, you can also contact Liquid Web.
The RAM and storage totals offered by Liquid Web are the best we’ve seen at this price point. Given Liquid Web’s prices, this is a big qualifier. For our main audience of SMBs, Hostwinds is our preferred VPS provider, but Liquid Web is definitely worth a look if you’re looking for enterprise-level hosting. In addition, unlike many of the other VPS services we’ve looked at, Liquid Web only charges you for the number of days you use the service per month, which is useful if you decide to cancel your account.
Dedicated Web Hosting
However, if you want to build your website on the strongest possible foundation, you should look into Liquid Web’s dedicated server options. With dedicated hosting, your site taps a server’s full system resources, instead of sharing them with other sites. In terms of hosting, this is one of Liquid Web’s main offerings.
Liquid Web’s dedicated servers are available in a variety of configurations, ranging from a single quad-core processor, two 240GB solid-state drives (with a 1TB backup drive), 5TB of monthly data transfers, and 16GB of RAM (starting at $169 per month) to a server with high-end, 32-core processors, two 480GB solid-state drives (and a 1TB SATA backup drive), 15TB of monthly data transfers, and 128GB of RAM (starting at $549 per month). Clearly, Liquid Web’s dedicated servers are aimed at businesses that want sharp website performance and that have the money to spend on it.
AccuWebs’ excellent SMB-friendly plans pale in comparison to Liquid Web’s well-rounded, managed-level dedicated server packages. However, the price and feature differences between the two are so significant that we continue to recommend AccuWeb for dedicated web hosting for individuals and small businesses. AccuWeb offers Linux and Windows servers with up to 512GB of RAM, 6TB of storage, and 20TB of monthly data transfers. It’s an apple and oranges situation, and Liquid Web is truly in its own class.
WordPress Web Hosting
Through its Nexcess brand, Liquid Web also offers seven tiers of managed WordPress web hosting, starting at $19 per month for a single domain, 2TB of monthly data transfers, and a 15GB solid-state drive. Liquid Web’s Fantastico library, like that of other managed WordPress hosts, offers one-click installs, automatic updates, and access to hundreds of apps and WordPress plug-ins.
The managed hosting environment provided by Liquid Web is specifically designed for the installation of WordPress and its associated plug-ins. You don’t even need to install the CMS because it comes preinstalled. You can create posts, pages, and galleries in WordPress just like any other self-hosted WordPress site once you’ve logged in.
The back end of your WordPress installation contains several themes that you can apply to your site to give it a more appealing appearance or add functionality. Of course, you can use a WordPress theme that you’ve already paid for.
Individuals and small businesses can use A2 for WordPress hosting. A2 has a pre-built environment with a lot of WordPress-friendly features like live malware protection and curated plug-ins to improve your experience. More importantly, across the board, A2 offers unlimited storage and monthly data transfers.
Cloud Web Hosting
Liquid Web also offers cloud hosting in addition to shared, VPS, dedicated, and WordPress hosting. The resources that your site requires to run are shared across multiple servers with cloud hosting.
Cloud hosting from Liquid Web is available in a variety of tiers, with CentOS 7 Linux or Windows operating systems. Prices range from $149 per month (for 15GB of RAM, 452GB of storage, and 5TB of monthly data) to more than $1,100 per month, depending on your configuration. If you need to increase server resources, you have a lot of options.
DreamHost, on the other hand, wins our vote because it caters to a wider range of potential cloud-hosting customers than Liquid Web’s higher-end, managed solutions, which are in a class of their own. DreamHost offers excellent packages that start at $4.50 per month (for 512MB of RAM, 80GB of SSD storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers) and go up to $48 per month (for four CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, 80GB of storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers).
Reseller Web Hosting
Check out Liquid Web’s excellent reseller web hosting packages if you want to get into the web hosting business for yourself but don’t want to deal with managing servers, bandwidth, and other infrastructure issues. Starting at $139 per month, Liquid Web’s plans include an exclusive WebHost Manager Complete Solution (or WHMCS) plug-in as well as instant provisioning.
The dedicated and VPS reseller packages are available in both Linux and Windows flavors, and they include the same amounts of RAM, monthly data transfers, and storage as Liquid Web’s own offerings. There is no shared reseller hosting plans available. Liquid Web also allows you to brand the servers you rent, as well as provide 24/7 technical support.
Liquid Web has a good selection of reseller plans, but Hostwinds goes above and beyond with stacked specs across a wider range of server categories. As a result, we recommend Hostwinds for reseller hosting.
Security Features
Do you want to feel safe? You’re in good hands with Liquid Web. Firewalls, Secure Socket Layer (SSL), virtual private networks (VPN), malware scanning and removal, and much more are all available from the company.
Some features are included in specific packages, while others must be purchased separately. Liquid Web also offers free nightly backups, which will protect your site in the event of a major disaster.
Highly Dependable Uptime
One of the most important aspects of a hosting service is website uptime. Clients and customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services if your website is down. That is something you do not want to happen. Liquid Web, on the other hand, is extremely dependable.
We use a website monitoring tool to track the uptime of my test sites over the course of two weeks. The tool pings my website every 15 minutes and sends us an email if it can’t contact the test site for at least one minute. During the previous 14 days, Liquid Web experienced one brief outage, according to the data. However, it appeared to be a one-time occurrence, as the service had been performing well for months.
Excellent Customer Service
Liquid Web has a fantastic Heroic Support customer service team, a group of knowledgeable individuals who can help you in under a minute if you call, under 30 minutes if you submit a help desk ticket, and in under 59 seconds if you chat. Isn’t that appealing? Yes, it is. On a weekday morning, we started a webchat with a representative to inquire about the differences between cloud and traditional hosting. A representative arrived seconds later to assist us and provided us with a friendly and thorough explanation. The speed and thoroughness of the response wowed us.
Because Liquid Web is so expensive, it’s a shame that it doesn’t offer the standard 30-day money-back guarantee found in the web hosting industry. Only monthly cloud servers are eligible for pro-rated refunds, and the majority of the company’s other services are non-refundable. Given the amount of money that a company is likely to spend on Liquid Web hosting, more refund options would be welcome. That, according to Liquid Web, is impossible because most services are tailored to the individual user. Other hosting options, on the other hand, offer money-back guarantees; DreamHost, for example, offers a 97-day money-back guarantee.
Expensive, But Highly Capable for Big Businesses
Liquid Web is without a doubt one of the most powerful web hosts we’ve reviewed, and it’s our clear pick for managed web hosting. It offers a number of packages with absolutely incredible specifications that will set you back a pretty penny. Although Liquid Web does not offer shared hosting, it’s excellent dedicated and VPS hosting services are enough to place it among the web hosting elite.
That isn’t to say that DreamHost, HostGator, or Hostwinds aren’t important. They are still our top pick for those looking for more budget-friendly web hosting options. Still, if your company requires high-performance, managed web hosting, Liquid Web can handle it, and do it well.