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A wealth of features for advanced users
Easy WordPress and ecommerce setup
All About Cookies is an independent, advertising-supported website. Some of the offers that appear on this site are from third-party advertisers from which All About Cookies receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear).
All About Cookies does not include all financial or credit offers that might be available to consumers nor do we include all companies or all available products. Information is accurate as of the publishing date and has not been provided or endorsed by the advertiser.
The All About Cookies editorial team strives to provide accurate, in-depth information and reviews to help you, our reader, make online privacy decisions with confidence. Here's what you can expect from us:
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.
| 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 |
We use our proprietary grading rubric to evaluate web hosts based on performance, ease of use, features, support, and overall value. Our hands-on approach ensures our ratings reflect how each service actually performs in the real world, so you can choose a host with confidence.
Our process starts with signing up for each service and setting up a real website, just like you would. We run page speed, uptime, and stress tests to measure reliability and performance under load. We also explore the dashboard, test security tools, and contact support to see how responsive and helpful it is.
To learn more about how we test, check out our full testing methodology here.
Here's how our star rating is calculated:
| Decision factor | Weight | Liquid Web Verdict |
| Our experience | 10% | 4.5/5 |
| Prices and capacity | 18% | 4.8/5 |
| Performance | 20% | 5/5 |
| Features | 25% | 4/5 |
| Security | 20% | 5/5 |
| Support and reputation | 7% | 4.6/5 |
We last tested Liquid Web on October 6th, 2025.
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.
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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.
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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 | $10.00/mo | $20.00/mo |
| 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 has a wealth of features across its different hosting plans.
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.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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 |
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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.
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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:
| 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]
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.
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 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 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 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 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.
Yes, Liquid Web offers VPS hosting, alongside almost every kind of hosting available today. Liquid Web’s VPS plans are plentiful and are reasonably priced. You can also choose between managed and unmanaged plans.
Yes, Liquid Web is good for ecommerce. Liquid Web has Magento and WordPress/WooCommerce hosting plans that can help you get set up in just a few minutes, and it offers PCI-compliant hosting for firms that handle sensitive customer data.
Yes, Liquid Web is good for WordPress hosting. While it’s not a specialist WordPress host, like Kinsta, Liquid Web’s WordPress plans come tuned for security and performance.
A wealth of features for advanced users
Easy WordPress and ecommerce setup
[1] Liquid Web Trustpilot profile
[2] I Left Liquid Web After 10 Years - Reddit
[3] One Equity Partners acquires cloud services provider Liquid Web and forms new holding company, CloudOne Digital - One Equity/images/2025/01/19/best_ai_website_builders.jpg)
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