Liquid Web review for 2024: Your step-by-step guide

Our Verdict

Our Verdict

Liquid Web is a leading web hosting provider renowned for its high-performance hosting solutions, exceptional customer support, and robust infrastructure. Catering to a diverse range of needs, Liquid Web offers various hosting plans including Managed WordPress, VPS, Dedicated Servers, and Cloud Hosting, each designed to provide superior reliability, speed, and security.

Pros

• Outstanding customer service
• Adaptable VPS hosting options
• A 99.999% uptime assurance
• Suited for e-commerce websites
• Provides bare metal cloud hosting

Cons

• High learning curve
• Comparatively costly
• No shared hosting options available

4.8

Our ratings take into account a product's cost, features, ease of use, customer service and other category-specific attributes. All ratings are determined solely by our editorial team.

Starting price

$17.5

High-performance hosting solutions

Yes

Exceptional customer support

Liquid Web is renowned for its customer service

Liquid Web hosting pricing & plans

While Liquid Web provides diverse hosting plans tailored for advanced users requiring robust solutions for complex projects and high-traffic websites, its services are not the most economical. Its managed WordPress and WooCommerce hosting plans start from $17.50/month.

In addition to these, Liquid Web offers cloud hosting, VPS hosting, enterprise hosting, dedicated server hosting, Magento hosting, and more. As it does not provide shared hosting, we'll focus on its managed WordPress plans, which represent the most budget-friendly subscriptions available from the provider.

Managed WordPress Plans – starting at $17.50/month with a 12-month plan Liquid Web's WordPress

Spark plan marks the entry point among its eight tiers of managed WordPress hosting plans. It delivers a tailored hosting solution with 15GB of storage and 2TB of bandwidth, suitable for small-to-medium websites.

All managed WordPress hosting plans include free SSL certificates and unlimited email accounts, bolstering business communication and ensuring a secure browsing experience for visitors. Additionally, you benefit from daily backups and free staging.

The most affordable plan allows hosting for one website, and all managed WordPress plans include a two-month free subscription period.

What types of hosting does Liquid Web provide?

While Liquid Web does not offer basic shared hosting plans, it caters to a diverse audience. In this section of our Liquid Web review, we'll outline all the hosting types Liquid Web provides and how you can leverage its plans.

Managed WordPress Hosting – starting at $17.50/month with a 12-month plan
Liquid Web's managed WordPress hosting plans are tailored for bloggers, small-to-medium businesses, and WordPress developers. Ranging from 15GB storage and 2TB bandwidth to 800GB storage and 10TB bandwidth, these plans offer scalability and flexibility.

Unlike unmanaged hosting, choosing these Liquid Web plans ensures assistance in starting with WordPress, along with regular updates and monitoring for suspicious activity.

Managed VPS Hosting – starting at $20/month with a 24-month plan

• Essential – $20/month for two years
• Advanced – $30/month for two years
• Professional – $40/month for two years
• Elite – $50/month for two years

Liquid Web's managed VPS hosting plans are robust and scalable, featuring free setup, Cloudflare Content Delivery Network (CDN), DDoS protection, built-in backups, and enhanced security. These plans are ideal for e-commerce stores and growing businesses.

The VPS Essential plan offers 2 vCPUs, 2GB of RAM, 40GB of SSD storage, and 10TB of bandwidth, providing high performance at an affordable price. All managed VPS hosting plans include cPanel, InterWorx, and Plesk control panels.

Storage options extend to 200GB with the Elite plan, and memory scales to 12GB of RAM. This makes Liquid Web a reliable choice for database hosting or high-traffic websites. Additionally, there are memory-optimized and CPU-optimized plans, offering up to 16GB of RAM and 16 vCPUs, respectively.

Cloud Hosting – Starting at $115/month with a monthly plan

Liquid Web provides Cloud Metal plans as an excellent choice for users seeking a self-managed hosting environment. These plans offer fast server provisioning for quick setup, easy server resizing, and a user-friendly API for custom integrations. This hosting type is particularly suitable for resellers and businesses with fluctuating needs.

Cloud Metal plans combine the benefits of cloud hosting, such as scalability and redundancy, with the advantages of bare metal hardware. This ensures that your server's resources are always available, and you won't need to share resources with other users. Liquid Web also offers add-on services like cPanel licenses, cloud backups, and more.

Dedicated Server Hosting – Starting at $199/month with a monthly plan

• Intel E-2356G – $199/month
• Intel Xeon E-2334 – $174/month
• Intel Xeon Gold 6226R – $299/month

Liquid Web's Dedicated Server Hosting provides several advanced features necessary for large businesses with high-traffic sites to ensure high performance and security. Key features include CloudFlare CDN, DDoS attack protection, a backup drive for data protection, root access, a dedicated IP address, and more.

You can choose between InterWorx, Plesk, or cPanel control panels. The starter plan offers 16GB of RAM, two 480GB SSD storage disks, a 2TB backup SSD disk, 8TB of bandwidth, and a 6-core, 3.2 GHz processor.

Opting for higher-priced plans can increase these specifications to 64GB of RAM, two 960GB SSD storage disks, a 4TB SATA backup disk, 10TB of bandwidth, and a 16-core, 2.9 GHz processor.

Liquid Web features

Liquid Web stands out as one of the most feature-rich web hosting providers we've evaluated, making its pricing justified. It sets industry standards with its customer support teams, offers HIPAA compliance, and is nearly unmatched in providing superior high-performance hosting.

In addition to its outstanding hosting solutions with top-tier hardware specifications, Liquid Web offers the capability to harness the power of multiple machines, aiding even the most demanding websites in managing high volumes of traffic.

Utilizing more than one server and a load balancer allows traffic to be spread across multiple machines, resulting in a seamless visitor experience with minimal latency and uninterrupted uptime. This approach is highly scalable, allowing you to add servers as needed.

HIPAA compliant hosting

Liquid Web addresses specific hosting needs by offering specialized solutions, including HIPAA-compliant hosting, which adheres to the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

This makes Liquid Web an excellent choice for healthcare providers, insurers, and businesses dealing with personal health information (PHI).

Unlike providers like DreamHost, Liquid Web takes extra measures with its servers to safeguard clients against the risk of losing health information. Liquid Web ensures that technical controls, backup management, and data encryption are all in place. These plans are priced as follows:

• Standalone HIPAA Server starting at $229/month
• HIPAA Server & Firewall Package starting at $428/month
• HIPAA Multi-Server Package starting at $657/month

Customer support

In our testing process, we always reach out to the customer support of the service being tested, and Liquid Web's responsiveness left a strong impression. Their support is available 24/7/365, ensuring clients have continuous access to professional assistance.

What sets Liquid Web apart? They guarantee that one of their 250+ Red Hat Linux, Juniper, Cisco, and Microsoft-certified technicians will respond to your tickets and assist you. 

Moreover, Liquid Web boasts one of the quickest response times among all the small business website hosting services we've tested, eliminating the need to navigate through lengthy exchanges with chatbots.

Furthermore, Liquid Web offers fully managed hosting, meaning a team of experts will proactively monitor your servers, optimize their performance, troubleshoot issues, and perform security updates. This is particularly beneficial for small-to-medium-sized businesses seeking web hosting that doesn’t require constant maintenance to function.

Setting up Liquid Web Hosting

While some plans may have a steeper learning curve than others, getting started with Liquid Web is straightforward. We'll walk you through the process using its WordPress Spark plan to demonstrate how to install and use a CMS on Liquid Web.

1.Create a Liquid Web account
 

• Visit the Liquid Web homepage and click "Login" in the top right corner.
• Click "Create Account" and fill out the required information.
• Log in to your new account.

2. Add a Payment method
   

• After logging in, navigate to the "Manage My Account" section.
• Add your preferred payment method to the account.

Next steps in the process would include setting up your hosting plan, configuring your domain, and installing your chosen CMS, such as WordPress, using the provided tools and guides from Liquid Web.

3. Select a hosting type and plan

Now that your account is set up and your payment method is added, visit the Liquid Web hosting plans page to choose a plan that meets your requirements and fits your budget. Additionally, you should register a domain name for your website. After selecting a plan, proceed to checkout and follow the on-screen instructions.

4. Install your CMS

After completing your purchase, you will be directed to your dashboard, which in this case is the WordPress portal. Liquid Web will automatically install your first WordPress website. All that remains is to connect your domain name and SSL certificate. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete this process.

Control panel

Liquid Web provides a choice between three types of control panels with most of its plans – cPanel, Plesk, and InterWorx, offering versatility in the web hosting industry.

• cPanel – Widely used for its user-friendly interface, cPanel is great for beginners. It offers easy management of files, email accounts, servers, and websites.
• Plesk – Ideal for Windows Server hosting, Plesk provides a Windows-friendly environment but also supports Linux servers. It offers similar features to cPanel, including one-click installations and website management.
• InterWorx – Known for its cluster management capabilities, InterWorx is scalable and suitable for high-traffic, large-scale websites and owners managing multiple servers.

Liquid Web website migration

Liquid Web offers free website migration for new customers. Their specialists guide you through the process, requiring minimal effort on your part. They keep you updated throughout the migration, requiring some information and updates from you, including:

• Confirmation of the project scope
• Ensuring your Liquid Web plan can accommodate your site
• Identification of outside providers to be informed, such as domain and DNS providers
• Updating your OS, CMS, database, and plugins before migration
• Providing root or user-level SSH to your migration specialist
• Cleaning out outdated backups and changing passwords

Liquid Web performance

Liquid Web boasts an impressive 99.999% uptime guarantee and offers compensation for downtime. They compensate with credit for ten times the actual downtime, ensuring minimal disruption to your website.

During testing, we observed no slowdowns, downtime, or increased latency. With SSD storage and generous RAM in most plans, Liquid Web ensures fast loading and rapid website response times.

We also stress-tested our site's performance with high traffic volumes and data-intensive operations, noting minimal performance changes. While unlimited high-speed bandwidth is not offered, Liquid Web's plans can easily accommodate a large audience.

Is Liquid Web secure?

Liquid Web provides free security features to protect your sites from malicious traffic and data loss. While some security measures need to be added manually, others can be purchased as add-ons. Here are the security features users can expect:

• Standard DDoS Protection: Monitors website traffic and protects against sudden spikes of potentially malicious traffic.
• Firewall Protection: Acts as a shield against unauthorized access.
• Server Secure Plus: Enhances security settings and automatically configures them to protect websites from malware.

Additionally, users can opt for advanced DDoS protection to safeguard against large-scale attacks. Vulnerability Assessment and Scanning are also available to identify hosting environment vulnerabilities, with monthly reports delivered by email.

While Liquid Web offers free SSL certificates, they need to be installed manually. They are available from the control panel and can be easily installed by following on-screen instructions from Let's Encrypt, ensuring your audience knows their data is secure.

Liquid Web reviews from customers

Assessing long-term user reviews of Liquid Web can offer valuable insights into its performance, customer support, and other aspects not easily gauged in the short term.

A visit to Liquid Web’s Trustpilot page reveals a positive rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 1,000 reviews, with 88% giving 4 or 5 stars. Users appreciate the prompt and professional customer support, often noting it as a worthwhile investment despite the higher cost compared to cheaper alternatives.

Reviews also highlight Liquid Web’s reliability and performance, with users confirming its quick and seamless website migration service at no additional cost.

However, some negative reviews mention the high prices and the absence of shared hosting, making it less ideal for those seeking a budget-friendly option.

What is Liquid Web good for?

While Liquid Web may not offer the lowest prices, it provides numerous advantages that set it apart from other providers. One standout feature is its 99.999% uptime guarantee, a level of reliability not typically seen with providers like Hostinger or GoDaddy.

Liquid Web is known for its highly trained and responsive customer support team, which is considered one of the best in the industry. Its website migration services are also highly regarded. Additionally, Liquid Web's support policy extends beyond traditional services, offering assistance in various areas as needed.

The provider's dedicated hosting service is its strongest suit. Liquid Web owns all of its hardware and operates a powerful network infrastructure across three data centers, making it a leader in security features among hosting providers.

Liquid Web vs. best competitors

In this comparison, we'll present Liquid Web alongside three leading competitors to help you evaluate them. Each provider has its distinct strengths and serves various web hosting requirements, as outlined in our table.

Liquid Web vs. HostGator

When comparing Liquid Web to HostGator, it's clear they target different customer bases due to their pricing models and hosting offerings.

Liquid Web stands out in fully managed VPS and dedicated server hosting, and is highly regarded for its WordPress hosting services. In contrast, HostGator's shared hosting and ecommerce plans offer better affordability, making them a popular choice for small businesses and startups launching their initial online presence with WordPress or an online store.

For larger enterprises, Liquid Web is often the preferred choice due to its advanced features, including high-performance hosting and top-of-the-line hardware.

Liquid Web vs. Bluehost

When comparing Liquid Web to Bluehost, it's clear that Bluehost is a more budget-friendly option suited for small businesses, individuals, and startups. Bluehost offers competitively priced shared and WordPress hosting plans, which are ideal for those looking to start a blog or establish a basic online presence.

Bluehost provides several benefits, such as a free domain and SSL certificate, as well as data centers in various locations worldwide, allowing you to reach a global audience at a lower cost compared to Liquid Web.

However, Bluehost's customer support may not be as robust as Liquid Web's, particularly for complex server optimizations and troubleshooting. While this might not be a major concern for smaller businesses, larger enterprises may prefer Liquid Web for its more comprehensive support services.

Liquid Web also offers greater scalability and flexibility with its managed hosting solutions, including a mix of cloud and bare metal hosting options.

Liquid Web vs. GoDaddy

While GoDaddy is more affordable than Liquid Web, it still offers competitive pricing compared to Bluehost and HostGator. GoDaddy's starting plans are considerably cheaper than Liquid Web's, making it a more budget-friendly option for small-to-medium-sized businesses.

GoDaddy also excels in domain registration services, offering cheaper and easier-to-use options compared to Liquid Web.

However, if your business can afford a higher-priced service, Liquid Web provides superior hardware, security, and support, particularly with its dedicated server hosting. Liquid Web also offers specialized services like database hosting and HIPAA-compliant hosting, which GoDaddy does not offer.