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Liquid Web review: our go-to VPS hosting choice?


There are several big names in Cloud and VPS hosting with Liquid Web being one of them. So, if you’re searching for a known provider to host your web project that also has a good reputation and offers feature-rich packages, Liquid Web will definitely appear in your search.

In this LiquidWeb review, I decided to test out the capabilities of this provider. I went through pricing analysis, ease of use, performance monitoring, and testing, security overview, as well as customer support.

One thing is clear – Liquid Web is a successful and a major player in VPS hosting, but it’s not cheap. That’s why providers such as Hostinger make strong competitors to Liquid Web offering lower price and competitive VPS hosting packages.

Best Liquid Web alternative
If you're looking for a different VPS hosting option, Hostinger is a great alternative. With an uptime of 99.99%, Hostinger is fast and reliable. Moreover, it's easy to use even for those less tech savvy. And if you're having trouble, Hostinger has a 24/7 customer support that's sure to help you solve any problems.
cybernews® score
4.9 /5
⭐ Rating:
4.4
💵 Price:From $5.00/month
📑 Uptime guarantee:100%
⚙️ Hosting types:Email, managed WordPress, PCI-compliant, HIPAA-compliant, Private cloud, WooCommerce, Magento, Reseller website, VPS, GPU and dedicated hosting
🌎 Server locations:The US and the Netherlands
👨‍💻 24/7 live support:Yes
Best deal: Get up to 74% OFF Liquid Web VPS
Recent update
In the January 2025 update, I included an additional VPS plan offered by Liquid Web. Also, I updated the provider's uptime test results and discussed its interface changes.

Pros and cons of Liquid Web

Liquid Web video review

Liquid Web pricing

Liquid Web is a premium provider with many different hosting solutions. The prices start at $5.25/month for its daughter company – Nexcess – Managed WordPress plans. However, the most popular solution is Liquid Web’s VPS hosting that starts from $8.85/month. Additionally, there are more advanced solutions, such as dedicated servers and Public Cloud.

Type of hostingWhat is it best for?
Managed WordPress hostingOnline stores, popular and commercial blogs will benefit the most. It's fully managed and easy to use.
VPS hostingProjects requiring powerful servers. Get up to 74% OFF Liquid Web VPS.
Dedicated server hostingHigh-security enterprise hosting for websites and applications.
Cloud hostingHigh scalability on cPanel platform for enterprises.
Bare metal hostingAimed at resource-intensive applications like eCommerce, gaming, financial services, and enterprise solutions that require high performance, security, and full control.
GPU server hostingFor AI, machine learning, data analytics, content rendering, and cybersecurity, offering powerful NVIDIA GPUs for high-performance parallel processing.

The prices range quite a lot, and solutions such as Managed WordPress and VPS can be scaled to a price of over $5.00/month. Nonetheless, the most popular Liquid Web option is VPS hosting, and that’s what I’m reviewing in this article.

Liquid Web has 4 VPS hosting plans. All plans come with unlimited sites, dedicated IP, monitoring, Cloudflare CDN, an integrated firewall, advanced security features, 50GB Acronis Cyber backup, and DDoS protection.

PlanFeaturesPrice
1 GB
1GB RAM, 1 vCPUs, and 30GB SSD disk space.$5.00/month
4 GB
2GB RAM, 6vCPUs, and 80GB SSD disk space.$8.85/month
8 GB
4GB RAM, 8 vCPUs, and 240GB SSD disk space.$14.80/month
16 GB
6GB RAM, 12 vCPUs, and 440GB SSD disk space.$20.80/month

At this point, everything depends on your project’s needs. Only you or your developer can calculate how much server resources will be needed. However, if you're still in the development phase – simply pick the cheapest plan and scale as needed.

Best value

The cheapest price is picking the 1 GB plan that totals to $5.00/month. But we are always looking to acquire even better deals, so see if there’s a discount for you.

The only drawback is that the price increases after renewal. It comes back to the regular monthly price, which is more than double. Higher renewals are nothing unusual in the web hosting industry, Liquid Web is no exception.

One more important thing to touch upon is Liquid Web’s refund policy. Liquid Web follows a standard refund policy. This means that if you’re not fully satisfied, you can apply for a 30-day money-back guarantee.

While the pricing can make you think twice before starting to use Liquid Web, the user experience is reassuring. After all, paying for such a service without the possibility to cancel wouldn’t be ideal.

All in all, Liquid Web has an enterprise-level service that can be very flexible when adapting it to personal business needs. This makes it quite expensive, though there are a couple of more affordable options with introductory discounts out there.

Hosting management – is it easy to use?

Liquid Web is an advanced solution, so I’m not expecting it to be as straightforward as shared hosting. Nonetheless, the advertised plans come fully managed with either an InterWorx, cPanel, or Plesk control panel (for this specific review I explore the InterWorx panel). This means that it’s enough for you to take care of application installation and general settings, while Liquid Web does the rest – launches the server, prepares it for use, and takes care of maintenance.

The initial experience is as described. After the purchase, I logged in and saw that my server was being built. In a couple of minutes, the status changed to Running, and I was ready to explore the interfaces.

The interface you see below is the main account management interface, where you’ll see your services, billing information, and support. It looks neat and is easy to navigate.

Liquid Web home page
Liquid Web home page

In terms of hosting management with Liquid Web, there’s just one important thing to mention.

If you are not buying a domain from Liquid Web, you’ll need to point it to your server yourself. The same goes for performance and speed optimizations – that’s your responsibility unless you buy additional Liquid Web services.

So while Liquid Web is a managed service, site-level management such as domain, performance, and application-level security is up to you. All that is done in the account management interface.

What does the Liquid Web control panel look like?

InterWorx control panel consists of 2 different management areas – NodeWorx and SiteWorx. NodeWorx is reserved for server-level management, while SiteWorx deals with individual websites’ tasks.

In any case, you’ll first end up in NodeWorx, where you’ll be able to assign space for the website. You can reach it by clicking on your server listing in either the old management area or the new one and finding the InterWorx button.

LiquidWeb NodeWorx server management panel
NodeWorx’s management area interface

This interface shows all the information related to your service. The left side menu has all the management options such as reseller hosting management, system services, or plugins. In the middle, you can see if all services are operational as well as the possibility to reboot or stop them.

If we are not getting into details as to what each option does, the most important one will be the SiteWorx option. It has an Accounts section where you’ll be able to assign server space to your website.

Account management in LiquidWeb NodeWorx panel
SiteWorx’s Accounts section

You will have to create an account for yourself here to reach SiteWorx.

The creation includes setting up simple things like the main domain, email, and password. You can also assign server resources.

Creating SiteWorx account in LiquidWeb
Creating an account on SiteWorx

You can also use this to host your clients’ websites as a shared hosting service. They’d each get a piece of your VPS server and an individual SiteWorx control panel.

Once you’re done setting up that account by filling out all the details, you can reach SiteWorx.

Liquid Web SiteWorx control panel
SiteWorx control panel layout

This is more like cPanel, with exactly the same functionalities.

SiteWorx is used for a variety of day-to-day tasks:

  • You can install WordPress or any other app with the familiar Softaculous one-click installer library
  • Email accounts with your domain can be created here
  • Domain management for adding new domains or creating subdomains is available. This is also where you’ll be able to install free SSL certificates
  • Database management and PHPMyAdmin are located here.
  • File manager, account options, backups, and other website-related settings are available

Generally, SiteWorx has the same functionality as any other control panel. Also, it’s quite easy to use once you’re used to the new design.

Overall, Liquid Web is easy to use as it sets up the server for you and includes a graphical interface to manage the services. On the other hand, it’s also easy to get lost among the many management modules. So while advanced users will feel there like in a playground, beginners might need some time to get over that learning curve.

Performance – is Liquid Web fast?

Performance is the key thing that you pay for when buying hosting, and Liquid Web quickly proves its worth. In all the tests, it showed reliable and fast results. Plus, the servers are powerful enough to handle significant amounts of traffic.

Let’s take a more detailed look into each of the tests.

Liquid Web uptime and response time

One of the most important performance metrics is uptime, and Liquid web does not fail to impress. When testing it's standard VPS plan, over a span of 2 weeks, it was up 100% of the time. In fact, the provider is so confident in its abilities that it has a 100% uptime guarantee backed by a service level agreement. This means that you'll be compensated if there's excessive downtime.

Of course, 100% uptime is an aspiration and it's likely that the provider will have to have some downtime for maintenance or any other reason.

Liquid Web uptime results
Liquid Web WP hosting speed test

As for response time, Liquid Web is also impressive. The average 110ms response time is within the range that is considered very good in the industry. As I would expect for a provider like this one.

This is a result that a bare server achieves, with no optimizations or speed-boosting technology in place. So Liquid Web's server performance definitely deserves praise for reliability and good response time.

Liquid Web speed

To test Liquid Web speed, I first wanted to see how fast it loads an empty WordPress installation from different locations. This makes for a great comparison point.

The key measure we are looking at is largest contentful paint (LCP). As long as it is lower than 2.5 seconds – we are good. And Liquid Web is good, with LCP at only 637ms.

Liquid Web speed testing
Liquid Web speed testing results

Plus, it’s important to understand that we are using a bare server with no app-specific configurations or speed-boosting technology. By the way, as the server instance is entirely yours, you can implement the needed optimizations such as web server software or Cloudflare content delivery network. The latter one is free, and it will work to battle latency – potentially speeding up website load times in faraway locations too.

Good to know

If you have a specific audience to target, you can choose a server to be located closest to that audience. Liquid Web has three data centers: two in the US and one in Europe.

Security – is Liquid Web secure?

Liquid Web takes advanced measures to keep its servers secure and protected. Nonetheless, you’ll need to take care of some of the things yourself.

This is what Liquid Web takes care of for you:

  • Standard DDoS protection. Provider monitors traffic and protects from sudden attacks.
  • Standard ServerSecure security package. It's available by default on all servers, this solution configures the best security settings to protect your website from common threats such as malware.
  • An integrated firewall. This feature is available and can be to turned on from your dashboard. It will work as the first filter to block malicious traffic from reaching the server.

While these measures are advanced and take care of common threats, some security gaps will need to be filled by you.

This is what you’ll need to take care of:

  • Liquid Web does not install SSL certificates automatically, but free Let’s Encrypt ones are available in your control panel. So don’t forget to generate and activate them yourself and update WordPress URLs from http to https.
  • Server backups are performed by the provider, but you’ll need to take care of secure storage of them.
  • You will need to take care of application security by yourself by setting up and configuring a web application firewall.

Overall, Liquid Web security is comprehensive but is mostly focusing on the server level. That is server monitoring and threat prevention. Additionally, you get free SSLs and automated backups. Meanwhile, application security is your own responsibility.

Will Liquid Web customer support help me?

You can reach Liquid Web customer support via live chat, phone, or tickets 24/7. Additionally, articles and documentation are available in the Help Docs.

Liquid Web calls their support agents “the Most Helpful Humans in Hosting®.” And yes, they do have that trademarked.

So I decided to check on this claim and contacted the support.

My first interaction was with a sales agent. I wanted to know what price I will pay after the introductory period discounts are over.

Liquid Web sales live chat
Customer support chat window

I got connected instantly and received a very straightforward answer. Which is amazing. What I did not appreciate was that after the chat, the agent sent me a follow-up email even though I checked the box that I don’t want to get promotional emails.

So if you are protecting your mailbox from unwanted emails, use a fake one for sales interactions.

Technical support was also instant. I wanted to get some security advice and to know more about SSL.

Chat with Liquid Web technical support
Conversation with Liquid Web’s agent

As for security advice, the agent redirected me to the knowledge base called Help Docs. Which, while efficient, doesn’t go well with the “Most Helpful Humans in Hosting®” claim.

As for SSL certificates, the agent explained where to find the option and complimented that with another Help Docs article.

Altogether, the interaction was very quick and straightforward. The agent was friendly. However, I expected that more will be done by the agent as per Liquid Web’s claim to have all of its plans fully managed for the user.

Nonetheless, this was still very good and efficient. Plus, I got to see that Liquid Web’s knowledge base is extensive and covers not just control panel documentation, but includes advice in terms of web security and management.

Good to know

In your hosting agreement, Liquid Web takes responsibility to respond to live chat messages and phone calls in 59 seconds, while tickets will be responded in 59 minutes.

So it wasn’t just luck to get connected instantly, that’s the policy and you’ll be compensated if Liquid Web is not able to respond to you in that time frame.

Now, if a support agent redirects you to the knowledge base or you want to find help on your own, it’s there, available, and very well maintained.

Liquid Web knowledge base
Liquid Web’s Help Docs library

Articles are updated regularly and categorized logically. There shouldn’t be any issues in finding what you need.

Overall, Liquid Web has thorough and efficient customer support. You’ll get help immediately. And while I’d personally enjoy more actionable help, support agents will definitely guide you in the right direction.

Liquid Web review – the final verdict

In this LiquidWeb review, I went through extensive testing to see if this provider is worth the hype. I found out that it is an advanced and high-performing solution that’s best used for business projects and web-based applications that need critical reliability and stability.

Feature
4
Managed VPS for mission-critical projects
Pricing
Liquid Web is a very advanced hosting solution that employs only the best hardware for its services. This makes it quite expensive. On the other hand, introductory discounts and some more affordable hosting options are available for tighter budgets. Plus, paying month-to-month can reduce your initial investment.
Ease of Use
The InterWorx control panel is included by default, making Liquid Web one of the easiest VPS services to use. Just keep in mind that it is an advanced service, and you’ll take full advantage of it if you have prior experience with VPS or if you’re willing to study.
Performance
With a 100% uptime guarantee, Liquid Web is among the most reliable providers. It also showed a speedy load time and handled a significant load of traffic without any optimizations set up.
Security
Liquid Web takes care of essential server security while application protection is left up to the website’s owner. Nonetheless, DDoS, firewalls, and SSL certificates are either automatically on, or you can easily set them up in the control panel.
Support
24/7 live chat and phone support have a guarantee of 59 seconds response time while tickets will be answered within 59 minutes. The agents are friendly and knowledgeable, while the knowledge base is well maintained. Plus, you get access to case studies and webinars for professional development.

Who do I recommend Liquid Web hosting to?

Liquid Web is best for hosting eCommerce websites and web applications as it offers advanced solutions to power them. Additionally, experienced users will benefit from the service the most, although less tech savvy people will be able to comprehend and use services quite easily too.

Alternatives to Liquid Web

Liquid Web can sound and look intimidating no matter how good of a service it offers. Especially if it's your first time picking VPS. Or, it might simply not be what you are looking for. So, if you want something different, there are many other hosting providers available.

For example, Bluehost is a more user-friendly yet still premium alternative for both WordPress and general hosting, while Hostinger is affordable and efficient, perfect for those on a budget without compromising on performance.

Hostinger

On the completely different side of the spectrum, we have Hostinger’s cheap plans. Semi-managed VPS starts at just $4.64/month, and you get performance that can be compared to Liquid Web (see our Hostinger review for more details).

However, you will lose the fully-managed aspect, meaning that a server will be launched for you, but you are the one responsible for configurations. That’s quite easy, as a control panel is provided, but might be more challenging for beginners.

Bluehost

For high-performing WordPress hosting with ease of use, Bluehost is a great alternative to Liquid Web. It handles server management and security and offers tools like staging environments and automatic backups. As a WordPress-recommended provider, it’s designed to make hosting hassle-free.

Bluehost VPS pricing starts at $46.99/month, providing NVMe storage and scalability for growing sites. It’s a user-friendly option with solid performance for both beginners and businesses alike.

FAQ

Comments

William
prefix 11 months ago
LiquidWeb support leaves even urgent tickets left unattended for days. Even if requested they allowed most of my domains/websites SSL expire. Liquidweb support tickets usually look like this:

"My name is "some exotic outsourced name", and I'll be assisting you today. Please allow me some time to look into your request and I will update you when I have more information.

Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns in the meantime."

Several hours later:

"Thanks for your patience. Unfortunately, I have reached the end of my shift. So, I will hand off the ticket for further investigation and one of our admins in the shift will soon look into the issue and update you further. In the meantime, please let us know if you have any further issues, questions, or concerns. We're delighted to assist!"

About an hour later:

"My name is "some name" and I have picked up this ticket to assist you. Please allow me a few moments to look into this for you."

Then repeat the end of shift again and again!

Finally days later someone attends the ticket, but they do something and fail to do it right!

They allowed all my SSL certificates to expire! And on the chat they ask me am I sure all the SSL expired after I clearly stated and asked them to take a look to see that they all epxired. It's like a mocking game. This is what LiquidWeb has become!
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