Liquid Web Reviews and Expert Opinion

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Get help when you need it from knowledgeable support staff 24/7/365 through live chat, phone and email.
• Keep costumers satisfied and shopping with incredibly fast load times and close to zero service disturbances.
• Make security a premium with Cloudflare CDN, DDoS attack prevention, and integrated firewalls.
• Migrate and scale with ease with the help of customer service experts.
• Create stunning WordPress websites with the help of a staging site and automatic WordPress maintenance.
• Deploy Liquid Web’s custom-built server clusters for complex website needs.

Cons:

• The company no longer offers shared web services.
• As a niche hosting company, prices fall on the more expensive end of the spectrum.
• Although their knowledge base is extensive, the tone is geared towards web professionals and may be less useful to beginner website owners.

Pricing and Payment Methods

Liquid Web has a broad selection of plans that fit a great variety of businesses and specific web needs. Their basic managed WooCommerce plan, Beginner, starts at $39 a month and includes a several e-commerce must-haves like the drag-and-drop Beaver Builder website builder, SSL certificates and mobile optimization.

Each WooCommerce plan also comes with simple promotion scheduling tools and Abandoned Cart by Jilt. The company’s WordPress packages start with a basic plan at $99 a month, which offers staging sites, automatic daily backups and a host of development tools.

Their managed Cloud VPS plans start at $59 monthly and give developers a plethora of customization options including cPanel of Plesk Onyx control panels and root access alongside robust security features. You can also apply to resell Liquid Web services, and existing hosting clients that want to turn reseller receive free tools and revenue-based discounts.

Our takeaway from the pricing is that although Liquid Web is an unabashedly exclusive hosting option, businesses that can afford the prices get a lot of value in return. The plentiful features, optimal security conditions and insightful support staff are well worth the investment, and customers that opt for managed plans are leaving their backend in expert hands.

Ease of Use

For the most part, we found it very easy to use the different Liquid Web hosting services we tested. Though beginners with the right amount of capital can get a lot out of Liquid Web’s managed solutions, the products really target larger companies with more advanced web needs. Nevertheless, the company’s intuitive Beaver Builder website builder and the automatic daily backups and updates management that come with WordPress plans, can let beginners go about their business without worrying about their website’s behind-the-scenes.

With multiple websites to maintain and higher web traffic, however, mid-range and enterprise level businesses might have an even stronger sense of how simple it is to use Liquid Web’s more advanced features. Moreover, the company’s knowledge base empowers the web proficient to grow into web savvy users.

Load Times and Reliability

Our tests showed that Liquid Web performs admirably when it comes to uptimes. As always, we tested the average amount of time the hosting service experienced downtime over a period of several months. Our tests revealed that the company’s uptimes were consistently over 99.9%, making Liquid Web an extremely reliable web hosting service and way ahead of the industry-average 99.4%. In our tests, Liquid Web’s load times were approximately 500ms, and sometimes dipped as low as 400ms. Liquid Web charges for its deluxe services, and you would be hard-pressed to find more reliable uptimes or near-instantaneous load times.

Features

The upside of opting for a more expensive hosting service like Liquid Web is that each plan is feature-rich. Even the most basic WordPress plan, for example, offers staging sites and automatic daily backups. Similarly, the basic WooCommerce package provides a drop-and-drag website builder, Abandoned Cart by Jilt and an exclusive platform for enhanced load times. More advanced controls are also available, and developers can take advantage of features like root access, free Git repositories and SSH to fully customize their business’ backend, and cPanel or Plesk Onyx control panels.

At the end of the day, we found that Liquid Web is unique in its attention to detail and customization. If you’re not finding all of the features you want or if you’re looking for more complicated hosting solution you can working with their developers to create the backend of your dreams.

Customer Support

Liquid Web’s customer support was definitely among the top teams we’ve encountered in our reviews. Response times on the three support channels they offer – phone, live chat, and email – were consistently within the guaranteed hour, and often under a minute. Each and every agent we spoke to was friendly, knowledgeable, and able to wrap up most of our issues very quickly. It’s worth noting, however, that some more complex support services, such as personalized account reviews or solutions architects’ solutions, are only available with the enterprise plan.

We were also pleased with Liquid Web’s knowledge base, which featured hundreds of articles and tutorials, as well as a dedicated section on common fixes. However, the content and the support tools offered seem to have been written with webmasters in mind, and beginners may find them too technical to be actually useful.

User Reviews

Our team reviews each and every hosting service in-depth to give you an expert take on the service. Browse our user reviews to get a comprehensive view of how Liquid Web stacks up against the competition.

Conclusion

We entered the evaluation process for Liquid Web in the knowledge that their solutions aren’t cheap and with an expectation that their products would be superior to what their competition is offering for less. On the whole, Liquid Web was able to meet and sometimes even exceed our expectations. Their platform makes it easy for beginners to get started with features like the Beaver Builder website builder in the ecommerce plans, or staging sites in WordPress plans that lets them experiment before going live. With all plans, newcomers have access to stellar customer service that can guide them through whatever issues they’re experiencing.

At the same time, advanced functionalities like root access and GIT repositories give you the flexibility to create your own developer environment. As most of Liquid Web’s plans are managed, their own developers do a lot of the routine maintenance and beyond, leaving your IT team with more time to focus on innovation.

No matter what your familiarity with web hosting, we found that Liquid Web truly does deliver an above-average experience. Free SSL certificates with most plans, automatic daily backups and WordPress updates push Liquid Web toward the top of the web hosting pack.