LiquidWeb specializes in dedicated hosting options for business and enterprise clients.
They offer shared hosting plans, along with partially dedicated hosting options.
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Founded in 1997, LiquidWeb has been a popular name in the hosting industry for decades.
Here is how they’ve trended over the years:
Features
LiquidWeb offer a number of features that separate them from their competition.
Here are some of those features:
1) Dedicated Server Specialists: Many hosting companies offer dedicated server options, but most of those have few options and even fewer specialize in this particular type of hosting. LiquidWeb started focusing on providing dedicated server hosting in 1996 and continues that focus today. They offer multiple types of single and dual processing hardware with Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu or Windows. Their dedicated hosting comes fully managed along with several features and their Heroic Support.
Their specialization makes them more than qualified to handle your servers through the managed plans. If you are an expert, LiquidWeb does offer unmanaged plans that allow you to calibrate and setup your hardware. Your dedicated servers are kept in one of three facilities that are wholly owned by the company. Everything is kept under high care and supervision to ensure your files are safe and can be accessed as soon as possible.
2) Server Secure: To protect your data from the ever increasing threat of malware and data hacks, LiquidWeb has developed an exclusive custom security package for their users. This service has two forms for Linux hardware, free and paid, with the paid option being called Server Secure Plus. The free service comes with firewall protection, malware detection and prevention, and filters to avoid email viruses.
The premium version is an additional $50 a month and includes multiple server hardening options as well as a detailed monthly scan to alert you of any problems. Windows servers also come with Server Secure but doesn’t have a premium version. The options for Windows include anti-virus scans, server hardening options, malware detection, and security updates.
3) Sonar Monitoring: LiquidWeb has taken an extreme step in ensuring the fast resolution and prevention of server problems for their customers. The Sonar Monitoring Team doesn’t just use software but is a dedicated division of the company whose sole purpose is to resolve incidents immediately. The team does this with unique health and services monitoring tools to see (and resolve) these issues before you do.
This team helps reduce downtime to a point that allows them to offer an uptime guarantee that will credit you ten times the amount of time your site is down. The team proactively handles any and all issues for managed and core managed servers, but also sends an email to unmanaged users as soon as the issue is noticed. This is a very high level of proactive and personalized service that has helped earn the name Heroic support for their tech team.
Customer Support
Great all-around support offered by LiquidWeb.
With only a 20 second average response time and 24/7 phone and chat support, LiquidWeb offers one of the friendliest and highest rated support teams in the hosting industry (compared to providers like Google Cloud, Hostwinds, and 1and1).
They also have a “30-minute helpdesk” and managed services, not just managed servers.
Reviews
Looking over internet reviews we found that customers are split in their experiences with customer service. The positive reviews for tech support focused on their helpfulness and determination.
One customer stated: “We recently moved from a plesk based dedicated server to a cpanel based and while we have gotten different quotes over the years for this they wound up doing the full migration and not charging us any thing for the work that they did.”
Another reviewer says: “The support is their best product. When our site was having intermittent outages they investigated and finally found an issue with the server I was on. They moved my site to a new server within a few days we were up with 100% uptime at the time of this writing.”
Not every review was good, and the negative reviews for LiquidWeb tech support stemmed mostly from downtime and not getting the level of help they needed from tech support.
Here one customer is disappointed with response time: “when I need the support was incredible slow and they actually act like the don’t care…”
Another reviewer expresses frustration with a repeat issue: “Last month, requested an upgrade of a hard disk from 250GB to 1TB, to do that they took down my site for 12 hours” After several hours to get the request done the company: “couldn’t complete it so I had to cancel the process. After another downfall and a significant amount of time: “did it get done!”
Pros
1) Great Support: LiquidWeb averages a 20 second wait time for their phone support and seems to genuinely take a proactive role on all tickets.
2) Small Provider: With just over 20,000 accounts, this provider is small which helps them deliver quality service.
3) Large Knowledgebase: The knowledgebase on Liquid Web has a large amount of data that is easily accessed through the blog format.
4) Free Migration: There is a free one site migration service for new hosting accounts.
5) Multiple Data Centers: Even though LiquidWeb has fewer clients, they still maintain three separate server locations.
6) Multiple Backups: There are multiple backups taken of all customer data.
Cons
1) Shared Pricing: LiquidWeb only offers one shared plan, and it starts at $14.99.
2) No Extras: This provider doesn’t seem to offer extras like ad credits for its new customers.
3) Limited Guarantee: LiquidWeb offers a 60 day guarantee, but it is only for their shared hosting account.
Summary
LiquidWeb is a very personal company that offers top of the line support with a specialization in dedicated hosting. If you are looking for managed or unmanaged servers to host your corporate or large website, they will be a great option.
If you are looking for reasonably priced hosting plans other than dedicated, you’ll want to check into another host.