Liquid Web Review: Introduction

In this Liquid Web review article, I’m going to go into great depth about Liquid Web hosting. I’ll tell you more about what makes the company unique, and my top hosting recommendation. By the time you finish reading my Liquid Web review, you will learn why I think it is one of, if not the best hosting providers out there for WordPress users. Let’s begin!

What Is Liquid Web?

Liquid Web is a managed hosting provider that is famous for stability, speeds, and above all, terrific support. Liquid Web is in the business for more than two decades, and their servers power over a million websites. They have more than 30k customers, which doesn’t sound like a whole lot at first. However, this is a premium, managed hosting solution. Therefore, it is more inclined towards business users than people who only need a simple website or blog. They specialize in hosting solutions for larger sites who sell services to customers. Liquid Web has data centers across the USA and one in Europe, which guarantees maximal speeds.

In fact, they own all of their servers, which is always a big plus if you need technical support. Liquid Web is also one of a kind because they only use the latest technologies that ensure maximum speeds and 100% stability. This is something they stand by and guarantee. Most other companies offer 99.9% uptime guarantee. This is good, but if you run a large website that 0.01% of downtime could result in lost money. They have 500+ employees, and their support is available around the clock. I will discuss this more later on in the support section. I will not beat around the bush here. Liquid Web is far from the cheapest provider in the hosting industry. Some of their plans cost more than ten times as much when compared to the most affordable hosting solutions I reviewed on AddWP.

There is an old saying that you get what you pay for. I believe that applies to Liquid Web, and some other premium hosts as well. If you need a premium managed hosting provider that has everything covered to the very last detail, this is the one you get. When you compare their pricing plans to the number of features and quality service you get, you do get a lot. This is what my Liquid Web review shows. You will not make a mistake if you decide to choose this host, especially if you have a growing site. In the next section, I will discuss Liquid web plans in detail. Hopefully this will help you decide which one is the right for you.

Liquid Web Hosting Packages

I need to note something immediately—Liquid Web doesn’t have shared plans. This can be an instant no-no for many users who are just starting out with their blogs. If you’re starting a simple website or blog I recommend SiteGround. As I’ve said above, Liquid Web isn’t an entry-level company. They are a premium solution for business users. Here is what you can expect from all of their plans:

Hosting Features

100% Uptime

While 99.9% is good enough for most small blogs or portfolio websites, small business owners want their site to be up all the time. While 0.01% doesn’t seem significant, that can actually translate into hours of downtime. And if you run a store for example, every hour your is unavailable, your direct competitors can get your customers business. Not only are you losing sales in this scenario, but your competitors are gaining them. Liquid Web offers 100% uptime, which ensures your customers will be able to reach you around the clock. This means there should be no downtime issues that cause missed sales.

Premium Managed Hosting

Liquid Web gives small business owners the freedom to take care of their trade, while their hosting provider manages the servers. This means that you don’t need to worry about any updates, Liquid Web does it for you. This is especially important for WordPress users. I will get to this more later when talking about Managed WordPress plans. Every small business owner knows how maintaining a website can get tricky. This is especially if you are not technically inclined, and you just want it to work as a hands-off part of your business. Liquid Web gives you peace of mind. You will never have to worry about errors, updates, or plugin incompatibility.

One Of A Kind Support

More on this later in the support section, but it has to be said -Liquid Web has a top of the line support team. They will respond in less than a minute and have experts on-site to help up with any issue you might have. You can try them out for yourself through their site.

Unique Plans

Liquid web offers a good variety of high quality plans. Besides dedicated and VPS hosting, Liquid Web has managed WooCommerce and WordPress plans, as well as Cloud Sites, cluster servers, and virtualization-ready solutions. We’ll cover more on that in the next section.

Managed Dedicated Servers

Dedicated servers are not for everyone. Those of you who have huge websites that are continually growing and already attract thousands of visitors daily should consider a dedicated server. I’m assuming that with user amounts in this range that you can afford it. Managed dedicated servers are the ultimate hosting experience. Here, you get the whole server for yourself, without any neighbors. Not only that it means your site gets all the power the server has, but it also means maximal speed and safety.

With other hosting types where you share resources. If any other site on the server gets infected, there is a chance for the malware to spread to its roommates. The same goes with traffic and resources -more sites will usually mean slower connections. Every Liquid Web dedicated server is fully-managed. They have has ServerSecure Advanced Security, multi-level DDoS protection, CDN, business-grade SSD storage and Backup Drive. Also, you will get full root access, a dedicated IP, and Liquid Web’s famous 100% network and power uptime guarantee.

Dedicated Plans:

Depending on the server location you choose, plans differ. I will focus on their US central servers, located in Michigan:

Intel Xeon 1230 v6 – $199/mo – 4 cores, 3.9 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 2×240 GB SSD, 1TB backup, 5 TB bandwidth.
Intel Xeon Silver 4108 – $299/mo – 8 cores, 3.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, 2x 480 SSD, 2TB backup, 8 TB bandwidth.
Intel Xeon Gold 6130 – 16 cores, 3.7 GHz, 32 GB RAM, 2x 480 SSD, 2 TB backup, 8 TB bandwidth.

There are options to choose dual CPU servers, as well as to bundle up your package with add-ons. These add-ons include cPanel/Plesk, Guardian Backups, and Server protection with Malware Remediation. Of course, this will cost you more, on top of the prices from above.

Liquid Web Virtual Private Servers

Virtual Private Servers are the most flexible hosting solution. These servers “virtualize” a dedicated server, on a shared server. This means that your server gets its own resources, that are guaranteed only for you. So if another site has a traffic spike, it will never take over your hardware, slowing down the connection. VPS basically gives you most of the power a dedicated server has, but at a much cheaper price. Therefore, servers of this type are an excellent value for money. VPS is also very flexible, and you can scale up your hardware in just a few clicks.

That means your site will always have the right amount of resources. It also means you can start small, saving on server costs until your site grows. Liquid Web VPS is cloud-based, which guarantees ultimate stability. Instead of being located on a single location, copies of your site are stored on many different cloud servers. This not only guarantees uptime but also speed. The end user will see the version of the site that is geographically closest to them. Cloud technology is the future, and more and more companies are switching to this type of hosting. All cloud plans have some other key features. They come with CloudFlare CDN, advanced security measures, built-in backups, and DDoS protection.

Cloud VPS Plans:

$29/mo – 2 GB RAM, 2 vCPU, 40 GB SSD, 10 TB bandwidth, Linux
$49/mo – 4 GB RAM, 4 vCPU, 100 GB SSD, 10 TB bandwidth, Linux/Windows
$69/mo – 8 GB RAM, 8 vCPU, 150 GB SSD, 10 TB bandwidth, Linux/Windows
$129/mo – 16 GB RAM, 8 vCPU, 200 GB SSD, 10 TB bandwidth, Linux/Windows

Liquid Web Cloud Dedicated

As explained above, a dedicated server is an ultimate experience when it comes to hosting options, and cloud technology is the most stable and fastest solution and the future of this industry. Well, Liquid Web has Cloud Dedicated servers, which combine the best of both worlds. Cloud means your site will always stay up, as it is almost impossible for the whole cloud system to go down. And dedicated means you don’t share any resources.

Everything your server has belongs only to you. Cloud dedicated servers have one significant advantage when compared to regular – scalability. You can get more resources almost instantly, which means your site will never be held back by the server or servers it’s hosted on. And of course, cloud dedicated is more affordable than traditional dedicated servers. All Liquid Web cloud dedicated server options have standard DDoS protection, CloudFlare CDN, Gigabit Uplink, Advanced Server Security, Full Root Access, Dedicated IP address, and 100% network and uptime guarantee.

Cloud Dedicated Plans:

$189/mo – Intel Xeon E3-1230 v5 – 1 CPU, 4 cores, 3.6 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 2 TB SATA RAID 1
$319/mo – Intel Xeon E5-1650 v4 – 1 CPU, 6 cores, 3.8 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 2x 500 GB SSD
$379/mo – Intel Xeon E5-2620 v4 – 2 CPU, 16 cores, 2.1 GHz, 32 GB RAM, 4x 500 GB SSD RAID 10

Liquid Web Private Cloud Servers

Private Cloud servers are a combination of regular public cloud servers and the isolated infrastructure of dedicated hosting. Liquid Web is a VMware partner, and if you are already a part of this network, switching to their servers will be a breeze. All private cloud servers are fully managed, 24/7, which means you don’t need to worry about hosting. Their job is to run your apps and virtual machines, Liquid Web keeps them online, all the time. You can focus on running your business without any worries.

Private Cloud Plans:

5 VMs – $1599/mo – 2 nodes, 32 cores, 128 GB RAM, 2.5 TB storage,
15 VMs – $2999/mo – 3 nodes, 48 cores, 576 GB RAM, 5 TB storage
30 VMs- $5299/mo – 5 nodes, 80 cores, 960 GB RAM, 10 TB storage

Liquid Web Server Clusters

For those of you who are into creating apps, social networks, news sites, or similar big projects, Liquid Web server clusters are a good option. You can go from two to two hundred servers, and scale up at any time, as your project grows. Liquid Web has four server cluster plans, which you can expand with add-ons:

2 Node Cluster – $743/mo – web/app server, database server, firewall, private switch
3 Node Cluster – $1262/mo – 2 web/app servers, database server, shared load balancer, firewall, private switch
4 Node Cluster – $1711/mo – 2 web/app servers, 2 database servers, shared load balancer, firewall, private switch
6 Node Cluster – $2149/mo – 4 web/app servers, 2 database servers, shared load balancer, firewall, 2 private switches

Liquid Web Managed WordPress Hosting

Every WordPress user knows how painful updates can sometimes be. Yes, most of the time everything works just fine. But, from time to time, you update your plugins, and your site crashes, instantly ruining your day. What follows is several hours of headaches trying to reach your host, or solving the error yourself. Not with Liquid Web. Managed WordPress hosting means that your hosting provider takes care of everything for you. Liquid Web will perform the core, theme, and plugin updates. They will also make sure everything works after the update too.

Going Above and Beyond

Before applying any updates, they first copy the site and do updates in a test environment. Only after Liquid Web WordPress experts make sure nothing will go wrong, they move on to updating the live version of your site. This is a service almost no one offers. This means updates will never take down your site, and you are entirely care-free, only focusing on the content. Liquid Web offers free site migration.

This is always a plus, as transitioning to their servers is hassle-free. Also, their WordPress plans have some advanced features such as image compression, Nginx, and the latest versions of PHP, which all ensures maximum speeds. What also separates them from all of their competitors is the fact that Liquid Web doesn’t charge for overage fees. Getting more traffic to your site is always a good thing, and with Liquid Web you don’t have to worry about your site outgrowing your hosting package.

If that happens on other hosts, you will get an unpleasant surprise when your next hosting invoice comes in. Also, all plans have automatic daily backups, free staging, automatic SSL, and advanced developer tools such as root access, SSH, Git, and WP-CLI. But, the fact that Liquid Web doesn’t charge overage, and that they double check updates before applying anything to your live site is what separates them from all the rest. That’s why I think they are the best WordPress managed hosting provider out there.

Liquid Web Managed WordPress Hosting Plans

Personal – 1 site – $29/mo – 20 GB SSD, 5 TB Bandwidth, Staging, 30 day backups, no iThemes sync
Freelance – 4 sites – $69/mo – 40 GB SSD, 5 TB Bandwidth, Staging, 30 day backups, no iThemes sync
Professional – 10 sites – $99/mo – 100 GB SSD, 5 TB Bandwidth, Staging, 30 day backups, iThemes sync
Business – 25 sites – $149/mo – 150 GB SSD, 5 TB Bandwidth, Staging, 30 day backups, iThemes sync

Liquid Web Managed WooCommerce Hosting

WooCommerce is the #1 eCommerce solution for WordPress. Therefore, WooCommerce stores can be hosted on any kind of hosting. Plus, you can choose any WordPress managed hosting, and have your store on it too. So why a dedicated managed WooCommerce solution? Although you can host your store on any server, doing it on a specialized platform as Liquid Web has will give you some definite advantages.

Liquid Web specifically designed their hardware and configured their servers for WooCommerce stores. That cuts load times, but also increase server load capacity. That means your store will not only run faster, making browsing products more comfortable, but the server will also withstand traffic spikes caused by Black Friday, or any other discount sales you might offer. It also means that you don’t have to upgrade your plan just to make sure the server will handle the spike. This kind of scenario can save you money and avoid stress.

Additional WooCommerce Hosting Benefits:

Liquid Web offers some additional benefits for their WooCommerce users, such as Jilt, an app which handles abandoned carts. Reminding your potential customers that they have forgotten to finalize a purchase will draw them back to your site. This is easily one of the best ways to increase sales. Liquid Web also lets you test how your store performs, which is something not many providers do. You can use more than 20 different tests.

These test allow you to check how your site behaves when under heavy load, which means Christmas sales won’t catch you off-guard. Liquid Web managed WooCommerce hosting is excellent for every store type. Whether you sell physical, digital products, dropship, or have a marketplace, Liquid Web has the right solution. Their custom eCommerce servers are ready to handle the traffic, no matter how popular the store is. You can expect maximum speeds, and best stability, all the time.

Liquid Web WooCommerce Managed Hosting Plans

You can choose between two servers, Michigan and Amsterdam, but the prices are the same. There are four plans:

Beginner – 150 transactions – $39/mo – unlimited products or orders, free SSL, Jilt (50 engaged users), Beaver builder.
Basic – 300 transactions – $99/mo – unlimited products or orders, free SSL, Jilt (50 engaged users), Beaver builder.
Dropshipping – 300 transactions – $125/mo – unlimited products or orders, free SSL, Jilt (50 engaged users), Beer builder, 20+ suppliers supported (AliExpress too)
Marketplace – 300 monthly transactions – $149/mo – unlimited products or orders, free SSL, Jilt (50 engaged users, Beaver builder, Dokan + Stripe

Liquid Web CloudSites Hosting

Cloud Sites are a great way to manage websites without messing around with cPanel or doing any server management. Liquid Web takes care of all that for you. Your job is only going to be the development of the website itself via PHP, .NET, or using CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla. Using Cloud Sites is the quickest way to launch and manage multiple websites. Therefore, it is an excellent option for freelancers and other creatives who are selling their services.

You can create profiles for your clients, and even do it white-label, which is a massive plus for developing your brand. This is something I do personally for my clients. There is also a convenient instant preview option that will let you show your work to clients even before competition, asking for feedback. This feature really comes in handy. Of course, Cloud Sites share LiquidWeb’s 100% uptime, with the highest speeds and best support. Your clients will love it. Of course, because this is cloud technology, your sites are stored on multiple servers at the same time, eliminating the possibility of failure.

Liquid Web Cloud Sites Plan

There is only one Cloud Sites plan, and it includes hosting unlimited websites and domains, with unlimited visitors. You also get 50 GB SSD, 1 TB Bandwidth, built-in autoscaling, and CloudFlare CDN for free. It costs $150 per month. If you need any additional storage or bandwidth, they are also available. Storage costs $2/GB, while added bandwidth is $0.15/GB. There are also options to purchase Dedicated IP, MSSQL databases, or Windows Framework.

Liquid Web Customer Service

When it comes to customer support, Liquid Web is one of a kind. You are guaranteed to get an initial response via phone or chat, within the first minute. Very few web hosts deliver on support like this, and even less guarantee it. It is truly amazing. Furthermore, their help desk will address your question within 59 minutes, guaranteed. This speed is something unheard of. In my opinion, Liquid Web towers above the competition when it comes to customer support. They are not only fast, but knowledgeable and polite. This ensures every issue is taken care of immediately. They have level-3 technicians in their datacenters 24/7/365, ready to check what’s wrong right on the spot.

I have already mentioned how Liquid Web owns all of their servers, which means they will never blame a 3rd party company for any problems you might have. They even have a knowledge base as well. Their support is top of the line, and the best one I’ve ever encountered. And in the hosting business, support is often what makes or breaks the experience. Liquid Web passed this test with ease.

Liquid Web Hosting Pros and Cons:

Pros:

100% uptime – not 99.9% like other hosts have, with Liquid Web you know your site will be available all of the time.
Best Support In The Hosting Industry – initial response in 60 seconds is something unheard of, and it guarantees that your problem will get a solution in no time at all.
Best Managed WordPress Plans – Liquid Web tests all updates before applying them to your site, so there’s no way for anything to break. Plus they don’t charge you for extra traffic.
WooCommerce plans – your WooCommerce store will fly, and stay online forever with custom Liquid Web plans explicitly designed for this purpose.
Business-oriented – Liquid Web is all about letting you run your business while they take care of the website. No constant hassle and headaches caused by failed updates. Your site is their worry.

Cons:

Premium solution – Liquid Web is not a budget solution. There is no shared hosting. Liquid Web targets small and medium-sized businesses, not portfolio websites and tiny blogs. It is not a solution for everyone.

Liquid Web Coupon Code:

After reading all about Liquid Web you might be wanting to try it out for yourself. Luckily, they were kind enough to give me a Liquid Web coupon code for my readers. You can take advantage of this coupon code by using ADDWP35 during the checkout process or by using the link above.

Liquid Web Review: Conclusion

I hope you’ve found this Liquid Web review to be helpful. Over the years I’ve reviewed so many different hosts. I’ve found that plain and simple there are different tiers to WordPress hosts. There are more premium options like Liquid Web. I used to wonder if they were really that much better than the competition. Now, I know with clarity they are.

However, I also know that the large majority of WordPress users would much rather pay less for something solid. They see it as a slight drop off, but an area in which they can save money. If this sounds like you I’d recommend hosts like SiteGround or GreenGeeks. Here are my SiteGround and GreenGeeks reviews if you’d like to check them out. I get it, who doesn’t like saving money? There are just better places in which you can save if you ask me. For example, changing your hourly rate as a web developer by only a dollar more an hour could pay for the hosting upgrade. It would also likely result in many more happy customers as well.

Another area it makes it worth it is in regards to your time. If your a business owner you can take a more hands off approach with Liquid Web. I say this because of their amazing support and automatic plugin updates. Overall, Liquid Web is the top premium host I’ve ever reviewed. Feel free to check them out for yourself. I hope you enjoyed all the effort that went into this Liquid Web review. Be sure to let me know if this is a host you’d consider, and what your thoughts are on premium priced hosts.

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