How can I create a website at Liquid Web + Nexcess?
Introduction to Liquid Web and Nexcess
Liquid Web is renowned for its robust infrastructure and premium hosting services, specializing in dedicated servers, VPS hosting, and cloud hosting solutions. Since its inception in 1997, Liquid Web has built a reputation for delivering powerful hosting services aimed at high-traffic websites, large enterprises, and businesses that require top-notch reliability and performance.
Nexcess, a subsidiary of Liquid Web, focuses on managed hosting solutions tailored to specific platforms like WordPress, Magento, and WooCommerce. With a focus on eCommerce and content-driven websites, Nexcess is a go-to choice for businesses that need specialized features, seamless scaling, and optimized hosting for CMS platforms. Nexcess’ fully managed services allow businesses to focus on growth without worrying about the technicalities of hosting.
Together, Liquid Web and Nexcess offer a complete range of hosting solutions for different types of users, whether running an online store, a resource-heavy enterprise website, or a high-traffic blog. But how do they stack up against each other in key areas? In this post, we’ll compare Liquid Web and Nexcess across several important categories to help you make the best decision for your hosting needs.
Types of Hosting Plans Offered
Liquid Web Hosting Plans
Liquid Web focuses on high-performance hosting solutions designed for businesses with demanding needs. They offer:
Dedicated Hosting
For businesses that need complete control over their server environment, Liquid Web’s dedicated hosting provides unmatched reliability and performance. These plans include dedicated resources, advanced security, and the ability to handle high traffic without sacrificing speed.
VPS Hosting
Liquid Web’s Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting offers a blend of performance and cost-efficiency. It’s ideal for growing websites that need more resources than shared hosting can offer but don’t yet require a dedicated server. Users get isolated resources, root access, and scalability in a virtualized environment.
Cloud Hosting
With cloud hosting, Liquid Web offers flexible solutions that can scale with your business. These plans combine the power of cloud technology with robust infrastructure, ensuring high availability, fast load times, and the ability to handle sudden traffic spikes.
Managed Hosting
Liquid Web’s managed hosting services ensure that your server infrastructure is handled by experts, allowing you to focus on your website and business. They provide managed services for various platforms, including WordPress, WooCommerce, and more, while taking care of backups, security, and updates.
Nexcess Hosting Plans
As a subsidiary of Liquid Web, Nexcess focuses on managed hosting, particularly for content management systems (CMS) and eCommerce platforms. Their hosting plans include:
Managed WordPress Hosting
Nexcess provides fully managed WordPress hosting, tailored for bloggers, content creators, and businesses using the world’s most popular CMS. Features like automatic updates, built-in caching, and scalable resources make it ideal for WordPress-powered sites looking for hassle-free hosting.
Managed WooCommerce Hosting
For online stores, Nexcess specializes in WooCommerce hosting, offering optimized environments for eCommerce websites. With advanced features like built-in performance monitoring, automated scaling, and customized WooCommerce enhancements, Nexcess is a strong choice for anyone running an online store.
Managed Magento Hosting
Nexcess also excels in hosting for Magento, one of the leading platforms for eCommerce. Their managed Magento hosting includes features like elastic scalability, PCI compliance, and advanced security, making it the perfect solution for growing online businesses that rely on Magento’s power and flexibility.
Cloud Hosting
Similar to Liquid Web, Nexcess offers cloud hosting solutions, but with a focus on managed services. This option is perfect for users who need the scalability and performance of cloud hosting without the burden of managing the technical aspects.
Enterprise Hosting
Nexcess offers enterprise hosting solutions for large-scale businesses that provide advanced security, customization, and dedicated resources. These plans are designed for companies requiring a high level of performance, particularly for websites with large amounts of traffic or complex applications.
Uptime and Reliability
Liquid Web Uptime and Reliability
Liquid Web guarantees an impressive 100% network uptime thanks to its robust infrastructure. This promise is backed by service level agreements (SLAs), meaning if your site experiences any downtime, Liquid Web compensates you with service credits.
Liquid Web achieves this high reliability through:
- Data Center Redundancy: Liquid Web operates multiple data centers with built-in redundancy, ensuring that even in the event of hardware failure, there is no downtime.
- Proactive Monitoring: Their team of experts monitors servers 24/7/365, addressing any potential issues before they impact your website’s availability.
- High-Performance Hardware: Liquid Web uses enterprise-grade hardware for its dedicated and VPS hosting solutions, ensuring stability and performance even during peak traffic times.
For businesses relying on uptime for mission-critical applications, Liquid Web’s infrastructure ensures that downtime is almost non-existent, which is why they cater to industries with strict uptime requirements like eCommerce, SaaS, and enterprises.
Nexcess Uptime and Reliability
Nexcess, like its parent company Liquid Web, also boasts impressive uptime guarantees, offering a 99.99% uptime for its managed hosting services. While this uptime guarantee is slightly lower than Liquid Web’s, it is still highly reliable for most businesses, especially for those running eCommerce websites or CMS-based platforms like WordPress and Magento.
Nexcess achieves this uptime through:
- Auto-scaling Technology: Nexcess has built-in auto-scaling, which automatically allocates additional resources to handle traffic spikes. This prevents slowdowns or outages during high-traffic events.
- 24/7 Monitoring: Similar to Liquid Web, Nexcess uses round-the-clock monitoring to ensure that any potential problems are addressed swiftly before they affect your website.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN): Nexcess integrates a CDN with its hosting plans to enhance global content delivery, reduce latency, and ensure your website remains accessible even during traffic surges.
Performance: Speed and Server Response Times
Performance is one of the most critical factors in choosing a hosting provider, as it directly impacts user experience, conversion rates, and search engine rankings. Both Liquid Web and Nexcess are known for their fast and reliable hosting services, but they cater to different performance needs. Let’s dive into how each provider handles speed and server response times.
Liquid Web Performance
Liquid Web is built for high-performance hosting, catering to businesses and enterprises with resource-heavy websites. They provide superior speed and responsiveness through several key features:
Dedicated Resources
With dedicated servers and VPS hosting, Liquid Web ensures that each user has isolated resources, including CPU, RAM, and disk space. This minimizes the risk of performance drops due to other websites on the server consuming too many resources.
High-Performance SSD Storage
All Liquid Web hosting plans come with SSD storage, which is much faster than traditional HDD storage. SSDs significantly reduce the time it takes to retrieve data from the server, improving overall website speed.
Built-In Caching
Liquid Web incorporates advanced caching solutions, such as Varnish and Memcached, which store frequently accessed content in memory, reducing load times and speeding up content delivery to users.
Global Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Liquid Web integrates with CDNs to ensure that static files, like images and scripts, are distributed to servers around the world. This allows for faster content delivery to users no matter where they are located, reducing latency and improving load times.
Server Optimizations
With Proactive Monitoring and real-time performance optimization, Liquid Web keeps your server running at its peak performance. Their team continuously monitors traffic and adjusts resources as needed to ensure consistent speed and responsiveness.
Nexcess Performance
Nexcess takes a different approach, focusing on performance enhancements tailored to managed hosting environments, especially for WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento users. They are known for offering specialized optimizations that ensure fast load times, particularly for eCommerce and CMS-based websites. Key performance features include:
Auto-Scaling Technology
Nexcess uses auto-scaling to dynamically adjust the server resources during traffic spikes. This ensures that your website remains fast and responsive, even during high-traffic events, such as sales or promotions.
Built-In Caching Layers
Nexcess provides built-in caching layers such as Full-Page Caching and Redis, specifically optimized for WooCommerce and Magento sites. This helps speed up page loads by storing dynamic content and reducing the need for repeated database queries.
PHP Optimization
Nexcess offers PHP optimization through advanced configurations, allowing PHP scripts to run more efficiently. This is especially beneficial for WordPress and Magento sites, which rely heavily on PHP-based processing.
Edge Caching with CDN Integration
Similar to Liquid Web, Nexcess uses CDN integration to deliver static content quickly across the globe, minimizing latency. For CMS and eCommerce sites, this ensures product images, media, and scripts load faster for users, no matter their location.
Performance Monitoring Tools
Nexcess includes performance monitoring tools with all hosting plans, allowing users to track page load times, server response times, and site performance metrics in real time. This helps businesses optimize their site speed and keep track of performance bottlenecks.
Performance Testing: Real-World Results
Both Liquid Web and Nexcess deliver industry-leading performance, but there are notable differences in their target markets. Liquid Web’s hosting is best suited for large enterprises, SaaS platforms, and resource-heavy applications, offering consistently fast response times under high traffic loads. In contrast, Nexcess excels in optimizing eCommerce and CMS-driven sites, providing auto-scaling and caching solutions specifically designed for high-performance online stores and content websites.
For most users, Nexcess provides more than enough speed and performance enhancements, particularly for WooCommerce and Magento sites. On the other hand, businesses that need dedicated resources and absolute control over server configurations will benefit from Liquid Web’s infrastructure, which is designed for high-traffic and resource-intensive websites.
Scalability and Flexibility
Scalability and flexibility are essential when selecting a hosting provider, especially if you expect your website or business to grow over time. Both Liquid Web and Nexcess offer scalable hosting solutions, but they cater to different needs and use cases. Let’s explore how these providers handle resource scaling and adaptability.
Liquid Web Scalability and Flexibility
Liquid Web is designed to cater to enterprises, high-traffic websites, and resource-intensive applications. Its hosting plans are built to scale effortlessly as your business grows. Here’s how Liquid Web offers scalability:
Dedicated and VPS Hosting
Liquid Web’s dedicated servers and VPS hosting provide scalability through flexible resource allocation. With VPS hosting, users can upgrade their RAM, CPU, and storage as needed without migrating to a different plan. Similarly, dedicated hosting allows you to add resources or switch to a more powerful server as traffic demands increase.
Cloud Hosting
Liquid Web’s cloud hosting solutions are among the most flexible in the market. You can easily scale your server resources up or down based on your website’s needs. This makes it ideal for businesses with fluctuating traffic patterns or seasonal spikes. With cloud hosting, you only pay for what you use, ensuring cost-effective scalability without overprovisioning.
Custom Configurations
For businesses with unique infrastructure requirements, Liquid Web offers custom-built hosting environments. Their team of experts can create tailored solutions with specialized server configurations, ensuring that your hosting environment grows with your business needs.
Seamless Scaling with Real-Time Monitoring
Liquid Web provides real-time monitoring of your server’s performance, so you can anticipate when to scale resources. This proactive approach ensures that your website doesn’t slow down during traffic surges, making Liquid Web a great choice for businesses that expect steady growth or unpredictable traffic.
Nexcess Scalability and Flexibility
Nexcess focuses on managed hosting, with built-in scalability tailored for eCommerce and content management system (CMS) platforms like WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento. Here’s how Nexcess handles scaling:
Auto-Scaling for Managed Hosting
One of Nexcess’s standout features is its auto-scaling technology. During traffic surges, such as a flash sale or a viral content post, Nexcess automatically allocates additional resources to your website without manual intervention. This ensures your site remains fast and responsive, regardless of sudden traffic spikes. Once traffic normalizes, resources scale down to prevent overcharging.
Managed Cloud Solutions
Like Liquid Web, Nexcess offers managed cloud hosting, which is highly flexible and allows you to scale up your server resources based on traffic demands. This is especially useful for eCommerce stores and WordPress sites that experience significant fluctuations in traffic. Nexcess’s cloud infrastructure is optimized for seamless resource scaling, ensuring that your website can handle growth without downtime.
Scalable Hosting Plans
Nexcess offers various scalable hosting plans for WooCommerce, Magento, and WordPress. Users can easily upgrade to higher tiers as their site grows, gaining access to more storage, bandwidth, and server resources without migrating to a different hosting provider. This scalability is particularly beneficial for small-to-medium-sized businesses expecting growth.
Tailored Solutions for eCommerce
For businesses running WooCommerce or Magento, Nexcess provides tailored hosting environments that automatically scale in response to eCommerce demands. For example, resource-hungry websites with large product catalogs or heavy traffic during promotions can benefit from Nexcess’s optimized infrastructure, ensuring a smooth and flexible growth path.
Pricing: Liquid Web vs. Nexcess
Pricing is often a decisive factor when choosing between hosting providers. Both Liquid Web and Nexcess offer premium hosting services, but their pricing structures differ based on the type of hosting and the features included. Let’s break down the pricing for each provider and see which one offers the best value for your needs.
Liquid Web Pricing
Liquid Web is known for its high-performance hosting solutions, and as such, it is positioned in the premium pricing range. Liquid Web’s plans are tailored for businesses that need advanced infrastructure, security, and performance, which is reflected in its pricing tiers:
- Plans start at $25 per month for 2 GB of RAM, 40 GB of SSD storage, and 10 TB of bandwidth.
- Higher-tier plans with more resources (up to 16 GB of RAM and 200 GB of SSD storage) are available at $145 per month.
- Liquid Web offers fully managed VPS plans with 24/7 support, ensuring that the technical aspects are handled, which justifies the higher price point.
- Dedicated servers start at $149 per month for an Intel Xeon processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 480 GB of SSD storage.
- More advanced dedicated hosting plans, with up to 64 GB of RAM and 1.92 TB of storage, can go upwards of $549 per month.
- These plans include premium features like DDoS protection, Proactive Monitoring, and advanced security options, making them suitable for enterprise-level businesses.
- Liquid Web’s cloud hosting plans start at $149 per month for 15 GB of RAM, 452 GB of SSD storage, and 5 TB of bandwidth.
- These plans scale according to your needs, making them a good fit for businesses that need flexible, high-performance cloud infrastructure.
Managed WordPress & WooCommerce Hosting
- Liquid Web’s managed WordPress plans start at $19 per month for 15 GB of storage and up to 30 GB of bandwidth.
- Managed WooCommerce hosting plans start at $19 per month as well, but advanced plans with optimized features for eCommerce can range between $99 and $999 per month, depending on the number of products and traffic.
Nexcess Pricing
As a subsidiary of Liquid Web, Nexcess focuses on managed hosting solutions for CMS platforms like WordPress, Magento, and WooCommerce. Their pricing is generally more affordable, especially for small-to-medium-sized businesses or eCommerce sites. Nexcess offers a wide range of plans with specialized features:
- Plans start at $19 per month for 1 site, 15 GB of storage, and 2 TB of bandwidth.
- Higher-tier plans with more storage and bandwidth (up to 20 sites) can go up to $999 per month.
- All WordPress hosting plans include built-in caching, automatic updates, and advanced security features like free SSL certificates and daily backups.
- Plans start at $19 per month for 1 store, 30 GB of storage, and 3 TB of bandwidth.
- Advanced plans, which offer features like advanced scaling, product catalogs, and conversion tools, go up to $999 per month.
- These plans include WooCommerce-specific optimizations, such as built-in performance monitoring and plugin management.
- Plans start at $49 per month for small Magento stores with 50 GB of storage and 1 TB of bandwidth.
- For larger Magento sites, prices can range up to $849 per month for high-performance hosting with more storage, bandwidth, and resources.
- These plans are optimized specifically for Magento, with features like PCI compliance, staging environments, and auto-scaling.
- Nexcess’s cloud hosting starts at $49 per month, which includes 2 GB of RAM, 50 GB of SSD storage, and 1 TB of bandwidth.
- Like Liquid Web, these plans scale depending on your needs, but Nexcess’s pricing is more tailored for smaller and medium-sized businesses compared to Liquid Web’s enterprise-level focus.
Security Features
Security is one of the most critical factors when choosing a hosting provider. Both Liquid Web and Nexcess prioritize protecting your website from threats, but they offer different levels of security tailored to the specific needs of their user base. Let’s break down the security features provided by each.
Liquid Web Security Features
Liquid Web offers enterprise-grade security designed for high-traffic websites, mission-critical applications, and businesses that handle sensitive data. Their comprehensive security measures include:
DDoS Protection
Liquid Web includes DDoS protection as part of its standard offerings, safeguarding your website against distributed denial-of-service attacks. These attacks, which flood a server with traffic, can cause downtime and performance issues, but Liquid Web’s advanced defenses mitigate these threats, ensuring your site stays online.
ServerSecure Advanced Security
Liquid Web’s custom ServerSecure feature is pre-configured on all servers to deliver enhanced security. This includes firewalls, antivirus protection, intrusion detection, and real-time monitoring for vulnerabilities. These measures protect your site against common threats, including malware, brute force attacks, and unauthorized access.
Data Encryption
Liquid Web supports full data encryption to ensure that sensitive information, such as customer data and financial details, is fully protected in transit and at rest. They also provide free SSL certificates with all hosting plans, adding an extra layer of security by encrypting communications between your website and its visitors.
Proactive Monitoring and Threat Detection
Liquid Web has a dedicated 24/7/365 monitoring team that actively scans for vulnerabilities and emerging threats. This proactive approach helps detect potential issues before they become serious security risks. Their monitoring includes real-time alerts for any abnormal activity and automatic responses to security breaches.
Compliance with Industry Standards
For businesses that require specific compliance measures, such as HIPAA, PCI, or GDPR, Liquid Web offers compliant hosting solutions. This is essential for businesses handling sensitive healthcare data or processing credit card transactions.
Nexcess Security Features
As a subsidiary of Liquid Web, Nexcess inherits a strong foundation of security features, but its solutions are tailored for eCommerce and CMS-based websites. These platforms are especially vulnerable to attacks due to the volume of transactions and user data they handle. Nexcess focuses on delivering enhanced security for WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento websites.
Automatic Backups and Recovery
Nexcess offers daily automatic backups, stored offsite for additional protection. In the event of a data breach, accidental data loss, or site corruption, you can easily restore your website to its previous state without downtime or data loss.
Free SSL Certificates
Like Liquid Web, Nexcess provides free SSL certificates for all hosting plans, ensuring that your website is fully encrypted. SSL is essential for eCommerce sites, as it secures customer payment data and personal information.
Advanced Firewalls and Malware Detection
Nexcess uses firewall protection to block malicious traffic and safeguard your website from brute force attacks. Additionally, their malware detection system continuously scans for harmful scripts and removes them before they can compromise your site.
PCI Compliance for eCommerce
For WooCommerce and Magento store owners, PCI compliance is a critical requirement to ensure the secure handling of credit card transactions. Nexcess offers hosting solutions that meet PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) guidelines, helping you maintain a secure online store and avoid potential fines or security breaches.
Managed Security Updates
Nexcess takes care of automatic updates for WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento installations, ensuring that your platform is always up to date with the latest security patches. This reduces the risk of vulnerabilities being exploited due to outdated software.
Application Isolation
Nexcess employs application isolation for WordPress and Magento websites, meaning each site on a shared server is isolated from others. If one website is compromised, it won’t affect others on the same server, which is a key benefit for shared hosting environments.
Customer Support & Service
Customer support is a vital consideration when choosing a hosting provider, especially when dealing with complex websites, high-traffic platforms, or critical business applications. Both Liquid Web and Nexcess are known for their excellent customer service, but there are differences in how they approach support based on their target users. Let’s explore the key aspects of their customer support and service offerings.
Liquid Web Customer Support
Liquid Web is renowned for its Heroic Support® team, which is designed to assist businesses with high-performance hosting needs, ensuring that any technical issues are swiftly resolved. Their support system offers the following benefits:
24/7/365 Availability
Liquid Web provides round-the-clock customer support through various channels including live chat, phone, and email. This 24/7 availability ensures that you can get assistance whenever you need it, no matter your time zone or business hours.
Proactive Monitoring & Support
One of the standout features of Liquid Web is its proactive monitoring service. The support team monitors your website and server in real time, identifying potential issues such as traffic spikes, performance drops, or security threats. If something goes wrong, their support team takes action even before you notice the problem, minimizing downtime and disruptions.
Dedicated Account Managers
For enterprise clients and businesses with custom hosting needs, Liquid Web assigns dedicated account managers who provide personalized service and handle escalations efficiently. This level of support is particularly beneficial for large businesses that need ongoing assistance and strategic advice.
Knowledgeable Support Staff
Liquid Web’s support team is composed of highly trained technicians who specialize in complex hosting environments such as VPS, dedicated, and cloud hosting. This expertise ensures that businesses can rely on their support to handle advanced technical issues, including custom server configurations, security challenges, and performance optimizations.
Extensive Knowledge Base
In addition to direct support, Liquid Web maintains a comprehensive knowledge base with tutorials, guides, and troubleshooting tips. This allows users to solve minor issues independently or learn more about optimizing their hosting setup.
Nexcess Customer Support
As part of the Liquid Web family, Nexcess benefits from the same high level of support but with a focus on managed hosting for platforms like WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento. Nexcess’s support is designed for developers, store owners, and website managers who need quick, effective solutions for CMS-driven and eCommerce websites.
24/7/365 Expert Support
Nexcess also provides 24/7 support, available via live chat, phone, and email. Their team of CMS experts is available around the clock to address any issues related to site performance, plugin conflicts, theme updates, or any other platform-specific problems.
Platform-Specific Expertise
Nexcess’s support team specializes in WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento hosting environments. This focus allows their support staff to offer precise, actionable solutions tailored to these platforms, ensuring that your website operates smoothly even during high-traffic events or technical challenges.
Application Performance Monitoring
Nexcess goes beyond typical support by offering application performance monitoring tools. This allows you to track your website’s performance in real time, and if any issues arise, Nexcess’s support team helps you identify and resolve bottlenecks or slowdowns quickly.
Managed Hosting Assistance
Nexcess takes a hands-on approach to managed hosting, handling updates, backups, and security measures on your behalf. Their support team is always ready to assist with platform-specific needs, such as plugin installations, troubleshooting compatibility issues, and ensuring your site’s performance stays optimized.
Customer-Focused Service
Nexcess aims to provide a customer-first approach with services tailored to small-to-medium-sized businesses and online stores. They offer free migrations, making it easy to switch to their platform without any hassles. Additionally, their personalized onboarding service helps new customers set up their hosting environment smoothly.
Educational Resources
Like Liquid Web, Nexcess maintains a robust knowledge base filled with platform-specific guides and tutorials, covering topics like WooCommerce optimization, WordPress plugin management, and Magento configurations. This resource library empowers users to handle simple issues on their own or improve their website’s performance with helpful insights.
Pros and Cons of Liquid Web and Nexcess
When deciding between Liquid Web and Nexcess, it’s essential to weigh their strengths and weaknesses to determine which is the best fit for your business needs. Below is a summary of the pros and cons of each hosting provider:
Liquid Web
Pros:
High Performance: Delivers excellent speed and reliability with powerful server configurations.
Enterprise-Level Security: Advanced security features, including DDoS protection and compliance certifications (HIPAA, PCI).
Proactive Monitoring: Real-time monitoring and automatic issue resolution to minimize downtime.
Scalability: Easily scales to meet the demands of growing businesses with high resource needs.
Dedicated Account Managers: Personalized support and management for large businesses.
Customizable Solutions: Highly customizable hosting solutions tailored for complex applications and high-traffic websites.
Cons:
High Price Point: More expensive compared to other hosting options, making it less suitable for small businesses or budget-conscious users.
Overkill for Small Websites: Advanced features may be excessive for small-to-medium-sized websites with lower traffic.
Complex Setup: Requires more technical expertise to configure and manage.
Nexcess
Pros:
Affordable Managed Hosting: Offers budget-friendly managed hosting plans for WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento.
Platform-Specific Optimizations: Tailored optimizations for CMS platforms, enhancing performance and compatibility.
Automatic Updates: Handles updates, backups, and security patches, reducing maintenance headaches.
24/7 Support from CMS Experts: Provides specialized support for WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento.
Free Site Migrations: Makes transitioning to Nexcess easy with free site migration services.
PCI Compliance for eCommerce: Ideal for eCommerce sites needing PCI-compliant hosting solutions.
Limited Enterprise Solutions: Lacks the extensive scalability and dedicated server options available with Liquid Web.
Less Flexibility for Custom Setups: Limited customization compared to Liquid Web’s dedicated and VPS offerings.
Primarily for CMS and eCommerce Sites: Not as versatile for businesses with complex, non-CMS-based hosting needs.
