Businesses need reliable web hosting services to manage their online presence, and Liquid Web is a company that many brands depend on. Liquid Web is a hosting provider that runs over 500,000 websites and has 10 global data centers. They have VPS, cloud, and dedicated server hosting. However, shared hosting is not one of their offerings. Be prepared to pay a premium for this outstanding, managed, enterprise-class service; Liquid Web does not offer a low-cost, shared hosting tier. Individuals and small businesses can prefer our Editors’ Choice picks DreamHost, HostGator, and Hostwinds, which offer more affordable packages.
Liquid Web excels at managed hosting, which is why the service was named an Editors’ Choice. A company that uses managed hosting does not keep its servers on-site. Instead, the servers are housed in the data center of a web host. That may sound like a summary of any web hosting service, but Liquid Web goes far further than simply serving files remotely. Regardless of the site’s size or scale, the company will manage all administrative and support activities. As you would expect, this type of service is designed for large companies. Liquid Web’s operated hosting is also very expensive, but with a big ticket comes a big specification.
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Free Email Accounts
When running a business, you will need to communicate via email with colleagues, clients, partners, suppliers, and others. A branded email address that matches your website domain goes a very long way toward creating your brand identity and instilling professionalism and confidence in everyone you associate with.
Fortunately, branded email accounts are included with Liquid Web’s VPS service. The Liquid Web control panel is used to handle these accounts. Surprisingly, this service is not prominently displayed on the Liquid Web website. To obtain the details, we had to contact customer service.
Responsive Live Chat Support
Live chat is the easiest and quick way to communicate. According to various live chat surveys, 51 percent of customers believe it is important for a company to be available for support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It has been shown that a fast customer service response time, as well as a positive chat experience, increases sales figures.
We used the live chat system ourselves and found it to be extremely responsive. We contacted them twice and received a quick response both times.
Great Uptime
Liquid Web claims to have a 100% uptime guarantee. Since natural disasters cannot be predicted, most hosting companies can guarantee 99.9 % uptime. Claiming 100 percent uptime is really something you don’t see too much in the hosting industry, and we’re not going to take their word for it; we checked their uptime ourselves.
We perform this by creating a website on the hosting platform and monitoring its uptime over a period of several months. And, over the last year, Liquid Web’s uptime has been >99.99 percent, with just 11 minutes of downtime. Except for January 2021, when the uptime was 99.99 percent, they delivered a perfect 100 percent uptime almost every month.
Great Page Loading Speed
On its website, liquid Web makes a number of bold claims about the speed of the websites it hosts. According to the company, it is 200 percent faster than DigitalOcean, AWS, and Rackspace.
When selecting a website host, one of the most important considerations is speed. If your page takes too long to load, potential customers will leave your site in droves, and famous search engines such as Google will not display you prominently. With an average page loading speed of 338 ms, Liquid Web delivers on its promises. It is considered one of the best in the hosting industry.
Free SSL Security
An SSL certificate is one of the factors that determine whether your website is HTTP or HTTPS. HTTPS provides advanced protection, while HTTP is generally insecure and vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Google actually classifies HTTP sites as non-secure, which is not attractive to potential clients.
For example, if you have a non-HTTPS eCommerce website, the browser can send all details to the server in plain text. If anyone is scanning your website, they can steal your visitor’s confidential information, such as email addresses, passwords, credit card numbers, and more. That is why having an SSL encrypted website is important.
Site Migration is Free
Assume you have a well-established website on another hosting platform and are looking for a change. You don’t really want to toss out your website and start over. To transfer the website from one host to another, migration is needed. That is a free service provided by Liquid Web.
Liquid Web users will have their sites migrated both internally (on the Liquid Web server) and externally. On the company’s official website, Liquid Web has a great article about their involved migration process.
Control Panel Selection and Dashboard
Almost all of the providers we’ve tested have only one control panel with their package. however, Liquid Web provides three control panels to choose from Plesk, InterWorx, and cPanel. All of these packages are already included in the pricing if you choose the annual or biannual plan.
If you choose the monthly package, InterWorx will cost you $10 per month, and cPanel and Plesk will cost you $17 per month. The InterWorx dashboard from Liquid Web is simple to use. From there, you can handle your account settings, backups, domains, billing, and other hosting-related services. Overall, their custom control panel is simple to use and intuitive after some practice.
Free Domain Not Included
When you’re already paying for premium content like Liquid Web, you want to make sure you’re not overspending. A free website domain is a popular free service provided by several hosting providers.
Unfortunately, it is not included with all of Liquid Web’s VPS plans.A free domain for at least one year is something that many other affordable hosts already have in their packages. So, by not including a free domain, Liquid Web has added an extra expense of $15/year to an otherwise costly service.
Expensive Pricing
Liquid Web is more costly than most of the services we’ve reviewed. Normally, we look for shared hosting providers with low monthly rates. On average, we look at packages that cost $3–$7 a month. Liquid Web’s starting price is a staggering $15 per month (with biannual payment), and it just gets more expensive from there. If you sign up for a year, the cost is $35 per month, while the monthly option would cost you $59/month.
No Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is much more cost-effective and ideal for small businesses and start-ups. Unfortunately, Liquid Web does not have shared hosting, with VPS being the most basic service available. We believe Liquid Web is significantly limiting its reach by pricing out several smaller companies. Subscribing to entry-level services such as shared hosting allows a company to rise in comfort before upgrading to a service such as VPS or dedicated hosting.
12 Alternative Hostings
- Hostinger – Affordable Hosting Plans
- A2 Hosting – Best for Shared Hosting
- InMotion – Best VPS Hosting
- Namecheap – Best Deal For Your Business
- Bluehost – Affordable Hosting for Beginners
- Dreamhost – Best Month-to-Month Plan
- Hostgator – Affordable for Minimal Needs
- GreenGeeks – Eco-Friendly Hosting
- SiteGround – Best for WordPress
- WPEngine – Best Managed WordPress Hosting
- CloudWays – Cheapest WordPress Hosting
- Nexcess – Best for scaling and growth
Conclusion
We recommend Liquid Web. If you own a small business or are just starting out with a personal website, Liquid Web is not for you. Their lack of a shared hosting option, as well as their overall high prices, make them unsuitable for anyone. However, if money isn’t a problem and you’re looking for a decent web host, we can’t recommend them highly enough. It is an outstanding service, from their stellar customer service to their incredible uptime and page loading speed.
