Liquid Web Review 2025: Is It Right for Your Business Site?

Liquid Web is a solid, reliable web host with decent prices and plenty to offer, making it an easy recommendation.

This company offers a little bit of everything, including dedicated servers, virtual private servers, cloud hosting, and hosting tailored to specific content management systems such as WordPress and Magento. However, its primary focus is on managed hosting services.

For the newbies out there, managed hosting is when the hosting company handles all the server management for you, so you don’t have to worry about all the technical stuff. “Unmanaged” means you do the technical stuff yourself.

By and large, Liquid Web’s services are convenient, well-made, and work as advertised. But they could be improved. Some parts of the admin UI could be better explained for beginners who aren’t familiar with hosting, for example, and the interface could be made easier to navigate so you can find advanced settings options.

Liquid Web review at a glance

Price	$5.00-$24.00/mo
Money-back guarantee	Yes - 30 days
Uptime guarantee	100%
Monthly visits	Unlimited
Number of websites	1 - Unlimited
Storage	15GB - 1.5TB (or more)
Free SSL certificate	On all plans
Free domain for a year	No
Backup frequency	Daily
Migration assistance	Starting with Spark: Elevate plan
24/7 support	All plans
Learn more	Get Liquid Web

Score summary

Here's how our star rating is calculated:

Decision factor	Weight	Liquid Web Verdict
Our experience	10%	4.5
Prices and capacity	18%	4.8
Performance	20%	5
Features	25%	4
Security	20%	5
Support and reputation	7%	4.6

We last tested Liquid Web on October 6th, 2025.

Our experience

Liquid Web makes it easy to get started with web hosting, and I have no major complaints. I found the service to be generally reliable, with all the features I’d need to get a good WordPress site started.

The setup process is dead simple. You just click through a few options to set up your hosting plan, pay for it, and let the setup process do the rest.

When you log in to the admin panel, you’ll be given all the credentials you need to access your new WordPress site, and you can get right to work.

Liquid Web plans and pricing

Liquid Web’s plans for managed WordPress hosting cost between $5 and $24 a month, depending on the plan and whether you’ve picked a monthly or annual plan.

The Spark: Elevate plan is pretty strong for advanced users and users building large sites, and it offers the most features, like assisted migration and a free staging site. Having a staging site is helpful because it lets you work on a separate version of your site until you’re ready to push changes live.

The Spark: Thrive plan offers the best value, though, with the most features for the price. DDoS protection, in particular, is a standout feature that should make you consider shelling out more than you would for the cheaper Spark: Launch plan.

Features	Launch (Monthly)	Thrive (Monthly)	Elevate (Monthly)	Launch (Yearly)	Thrive (Yearly)	Elevate (Yearly)
Price	$6.00/mo	$12.00/mo	$24.00/mo	$5.00/mo (billed annually)	$10.00/mo (billed annually)	$20.00/mo (billed annually)
Uptime guarantee	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Monthly visits	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Number of websites	1	1	1	1	1	1
Storage	15GB	15GB	15GB	15GB	15GB	15GB
Bandwidth	2TB	2TB	2TB	2TB	2TB	2TB
Free domain for a year
Backup frequency	Daily	Daily	Daily	Daily	Daily	Daily
Features	Self-serve migration	+ Stencils, Cloudflare Enterprise, DDoS protection, web application firewall	+ Staging site	Self-serve migration	+ Stencils, Cloudflare Enterprise, DDoS protection, web application firewall	+ Staging site
Learn more	View plan	View plan	View plan	View plan	View plan	View plan

Note: this table only covers the managed WordPress plans.

Overall, the prices are reasonable when compared to other services. Some competitors offer plans that start out cheaper, but they then raise their prices when you have to renew. With Liquid Web, what you see is generally what you get.

If you don’t have complex hosting requirements and aren’t worried about DDoS attacks, the Launch plan is perfectly fine.

See our guide to web hosting costs for more comparisons.

Liquid Web hosting features

Liquid Web has a wealth of features across its different hosting plans.

• Almost every kind of hosting you could need
• Great integrations with WordPress and Magento
• Advanced features for developers

Types of web hosting available

Liquid Web offers a variety of web hosting types: shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, cloud hosting, Linux servers, Windows servers (if you need them), GPU hosting for compute-heavy tasks, reseller hosting, and WordPress/WooCommerce and Magento hosting.

It even offers PCI/HIPAA-compliant hosting, since Liquid Web’s servers are considered secure enough to host financial information and transactions, as well as U.S. citizens’ medical information.

Previously, Liquid Web mostly handled cloud and VPS hosting, leaving the smaller sites to a subsidiary called Nexcess. Nexcess is now under the LW brand.

I used the very affordable WordPress Spark: Launch plan in my testing.

Web building features

Liquid Web doesn’t have any traditional website builders like Wix or Squarespace, but if you need a ready-made content management system, it offers WordPress and Magento plans.

WordPress integration

WordPress installation is a cinch and is entirely automatic on the WordPress plans. There are also settings for automatic WordPress upgrades, which are enabled by default.

The WordPress installation comes with a Liquid Web/Nexcess plugin. It offers extra features such as page caching, the ability to block known AI bots, a built-in performance monitor, and easy installation of a variety of plugins, including the StellarWP suite.

There’s also a tool in WordPress that can automatically update your domain for you when you get a new one, and I found it works well.

Bonus features

I particularly like the staging site feature, which lets you work on your website and push changes to live web pages only when they’re ready.

There’s also SSH access for anyone who wants to handle things from the command line, and FTP/SFTP access for easily uploading and downloading files. In addition, there’s free Cloudflare CDN integration to speed up the delivery of your website around the world.

Liquid Web performance

Our web host testing process prioritizes three things: overall speed, server reliability, and a web host’s ability to deal with sudden spikes in traffic. We use a variety of professional tools to see how every host holds up. Liquid Web did pretty well in my testing.

Speed test

You generally want your website to load in under 2 seconds, at most, to keep users from clicking or tapping away. Liquid Web performed pretty well in the tests we ran via Dotcom, which records overall performance, the time until users start seeing your site (First Contentful Paint), and the time until the site is fully loaded (Last Contentful Paint).

Although the initial response times may seem a bit high, they’re consistent, which is good.

Product	Performance score	FCP	LCP
Liquid Web average	98.5	0.7	0.8

Overall, the site felt snappy enough to me when I browsed it and used the WordPress admin panel.

Uptime and response

We put Liquid Web’s 100% uptime guarantee to the test with UptimeRobot, which regularly pings your site to ensure it’s still up. I was able to run the test for 4 days, and Liquid Web passed with flying colors.

Product	Uptime	Average response time	Minimum response time	Maximum response time
Liquid Web average	100%	859ms	854ms	864ms

Stress tests

We used loader.io to send 250 virtual users to the site in 1 minute to see how well the servers would hold up under fairly intense traffic. Once again, the results were highly positive. The server stayed up, and there were no errors to speak of.

Liquid Web security features

Having your site hacked isn’t just an inconvenience. If you store user or customer information, the situation can escalate from an annoyance to a legal liability, so server security is something you want to consider with any hosting service.

Liquid Web has done a solid job of it, with options for PCI and HIPAA compliance and a suite of security features, which include:

• Two-factor authentication: This helps keep your account safe.
• Network protection: Web traffic runs through a firewall and VPN tunnels before it hits your server.
• Server monitoring: Servers get regularly scanned for vulnerabilities and malware.
• Server hardening: The servers have been adjusted and optimized for security.

Liquid Web customer support and reputation

Support type	Liquid Web Help Center
Email or live chat	Both - email support is accessed by opening a ticket.
Phone	No
Online guides or forums	Yes

When I contacted the customer service team, an agent responded to my chat message in about 1 minute and provided the information I needed in short order.

There’s also a wealth of practical, easy-to-follow tutorials and guides online that explain how to manage your hosting, migrate your site, secure your site, and more. However, some users have reported that the “Heroic Support” isn’t as good as it used to be, with longer wait times and less helpful responses from support agents.[1]

Top Liquid Web alternatives

While Liquid Web is pretty great, it’s certainly not the only good hosting option out there, especially for small- to medium-sized businesses. If Liquid Web doesn’t feel quite right for you, the following options might provide what you’re looking for.

Bluehost

Bluehost has a long history in the industry and also offers a wide range of hosting options. However, there’s a greater focus on hosting for beginners, with a website builder and AI-powered design options for WordPress users.

Bluehost’s prices are a bit lower than Liquid Web's, but require long-term subscriptions to get the best value, and prices increase with renewal. It’s also worth noting that Bluehost didn’t perform that well in terms of reliability in our testing.

Learn more in our Bluehost review.

Hostinger

Hostinger is another solid pick for small- to medium-sized business websites. It focuses on ease of use, with tools to help you build sites in minutes, and you actually get more storage and more websites per plan at even cheaper prices than with either Liquid Web or Bluehost.

Those cheaper prices aren’t permanent, though, and after 48 months, the rates increase considerably.

Learn more in our Hostinger review.

IONOS

IONOS is a hosting provider with a long record of reliable service. It doesn’t offer quite as many hosting options, but it does offer shared, WordPress, VPS, and even Joomla! hosting. hosting.

It also offers affordable plans, though pricing increases on renewal. However, they’re comparable to Liquid Web’s regular prices at the higher rate, so they aren’t bad at all.

Liquid Web user reviews

• Trustpilot rating: 4.2

Liquid Web’s Trustpilot rating is solid, with more recent reviews a little mixed but overall positive.[1] The sentiment on Reddit is a bit more negative, with some long-time customers reporting an uptick in reliability issues over the last few months.[2] Users seem to blame Liquid Web’s 2023 buyout for the problems.[1][3]

The primary concern appears to be reported downgrades in customer support, and many of the most popular Reddit threads about Liquid Web include complaints about this.

Bottom line: Is Liquid Web good?

Liquid Web is a solid choice for most people. Users who choose Liquid Web can expect good server performance, a wealth of features and options, and strong security. It’s a good choice overall for the average business that needs a web hosting provider.

There are some minor drawbacks: some elements of the admin UI could be a little more intuitive, and reports indicate the support experience isn’t as good as it could be. If you don’t mind being more hands-on with your web hosting service, I recommend this provider.

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