Nexcess stands out as a managed hosting provider, delivering robust features, dependable server infrastructure, and excellent support. Operating under the umbrella of Liquid Web, it specializes in WordPress, Magento, and WooCommerce hosting. While its pricing may be higher, the investment could prove worthwhile for revenue-generating websites.
Distinguishing itself from Liquid Web, Nexcess places emphasis on managed shared hosting and high-speed infrastructure, catering to the specific needs of users. Alongside WordPress, Magento, and WooCommerce, Nexcess also extends support to Drupal, Craft CMS, and ExpressionEngine.
Considering Nexcess’s pricing, it may be deemed reasonable for websites generating revenue, although it should be noted that it is not a budget option. Ultimately, the suitability of Nexcess’s WordPress plans will depend on the unique requirements of your website.
- Nexcess is a managed hosting provider, specializing in WordPress, Magento, and WooCommerce.
- It offers powerful features, reliable server infrastructure, and quality support.
- As a subsidiary of Liquid Web, Nexcess’s pricing tends to be relatively higher.
- Deciding if Nexcess’s WordPress plans are the right fit necessitates evaluating your specific requirements
Table of Contents
Features
Nexcess: Simplifying Managed WordPress Hosting
Delve into the world of Nexcess, a managed WordPress hosting provider that prioritizes a robust server infrastructure and a streamlined WordPress experience. While it may not boast an extensive array of advanced features like its competitors, Nexcess caters to businesses seeking reliable and scalable hosting solutions with a strong focus on the essentials.
Never Worry About Losing Content: Nexcess Keeps Your Data Secure
When it comes to website backups, not all hosting providers are created equal. While some may lack this crucial feature entirely, others only offer infrequent backups, leaving you vulnerable to substantial content loss.
But fear not, as Nexcess comes to the rescue with its impressive daily backup system. Your website’s data is securely stored for a generous 30-day duration. This means you can breathe easy, knowing that even in the event of an unforeseen incident, you won’t lose more than a day’s worth of content.
With this invaluable advantage, Nexcess emerges as an irresistible option for website owners who prioritize the safety of their content. Say goodbye to sleepless nights fretting over potential data loss and entrust your website’s protection to Nexcess.
Auto Scaling- Dynamic Resource Allocation
With Nexcess, your website receives an automatic boost in resources when faced with a sudden influx of users. This valuable feature ensures smooth handling of traffic spikes, safeguarding your site from suspension or shutdown, especially during high-impact events like the “Reddit effect” (formerly known as the “Digg effect”).
For the first 24 hours, the auto-scaling capability is complimentary. Should the increased traffic persist beyond this period, upgrading your plan may be necessary. However, if the surge in visitors translates to revenue generation for your website, this outcome can be seen as a positive development.
Enhanced Collaboration: Multiple User Accounts
Unveiling an often overlooked gem, Nexcess offers the functionality to create multiple user accounts with customizable access levels to your hosting account. This feature proves highly valuable in team settings, agencies, or scenarios where multiple individuals require involvement in your website operations.
Imagine assigning a user account to each team member, granting them access to their designated files and settings. Furthermore, you can create a dedicated user account for your web developer, endowing them with full access to your hosting account.
Setting itself apart from other web hosts, Nexcess demonstrates the significance of this simple yet pivotal feature. Seamlessly managing your website becomes effortless, as you retain the flexibility to grant different users the specific access privileges they require.
A User-Friendly Experience
Navigating Nexcess is a breeze, catering to professionals of all skill levels with its minimal learning curve. If you’re already familiar with traditional hosting, you’ll find it particularly straightforward. However, if you’re a novice in website building, alternative services like Hostinger might be more beginner-friendly.
Nexcess presents its own hosting administration panel, enabling you to effortlessly manage your account, billing, and more. The dashboard provides essential insights into your account, ensuring you stay informed. Should any assistance be required, the support team is readily available, ensuring a seamless and prompt experience.
While Nexcess’s hosting administration panel may not boast the extensive features of cPanel, it encompasses all the necessary options. Given its primary focus on WordPress, the interface will feel familiar to most users within the publishing industry. Moreover, Nexcess offers a handful of distinctive features to enhance your hosting experience.
Stencil Sites: Simplifying Website Creation
Introducing “Stencil Sites,” an innovative feature offered by Nexcess that streamlines the process of building multiple websites effortlessly. These complex website templates serve as a time-saving solution when creating multiple websites that share the same WordPress theme, framework, plugins, and other essential elements.
The process is straightforward: Begin by creating a single site and saving it as a stencil site. Once this is done, utilizing the stencil site enables the creation of new websites with just a few clicks. This convenience proves invaluable when juggling multiple personal projects or constructing similar websites for clients, eliminating unnecessary time and effort.
For instance, you can design a stencil site tailored to restaurant websites, another customized for gardening businesses, and so forth. By doing so, you gain the ability to swiftly generate new websites customized to meet the unique needs of your clients or projects, further enhancing productivity and efficiency.
Introducing StoreBuilder: Elevate Your E-commerce Experience
Unlock the potential of your online store with Nexcess’ exclusive paid add-on, StoreBuilder. Tailored for newcomers to the realm of online selling, this feature-rich toolkit empowers you with essential e-commerce tools.
With StoreBuilder, creating a professional online store is effortless, thanks to the user-friendly site building wizard. No prior e-commerce experience required. Additionally, the premium theme is specifically designed to optimize sales and enhance conversions, while the abandoned cart recovery function works its magic to recover sales from customers who left their carts behind. Keep a close eye on your performance with the sales performance monitor, enabling you to identify areas for improvement.
What sets StoreBuilder apart is its separate 30-day money-back guarantee, ensuring you can explore its benefits without any risk. Embrace the opportunities it offers and unlock your online selling potential today.
Seamless Transition: Effortless Site Migrations at No Cost
Suppose you’re presently hosting your WordPress site with another provider and have set your sights on Nexcess. In that case, you’ll be delighted to know about their complimentary site migration service. Bid farewell to the hassle of manual site importation and meticulous checks. Nexcess takes charge of the entire process, saving you invaluable time and effort.
While this feature is a standard offering in the industry, it deserves special mention for its remarkable convenience. If the prospect of manually migrating your site leaves you feeling uncertain, Nexcess presents an excellent solution. Embrace the simplicity of a smooth transition with their free site migration service.
Effortless WordPress Testing: Introducing One-Click Staging
Unleash your creativity on WordPress without the fear of disrupting your live website. Nexcess simplifies the process with its convenient “staging” feature, enabling you to create a duplicate version of your site. This dedicated space allows you to freely experiment, make alterations, and incorporate new content, all while keeping your live site untouched.
Staging sites prove invaluable when it comes to testing fresh designs, features, or content. Seek input from colleagues or friends before unveiling your creations to the public. Once you’re satisfied with the changes, a single click merges them seamlessly back into your live site. Nexcess empowers you to refine and perfect your WordPress experience effortlessly.
Impressive Performance
Nexcess adopts a globally-friendly approach, strategically establishing eight data centers worldwide. Their performance is further enhanced by an integrated content delivery network (CDN), ensuring optimal speed and responsiveness. Hosting on NGINX servers, known for their efficiency, adds to the overall efficiency.
To assess Nexcess’s performance, I conducted tests using my preferred WordPress installation with a feature-rich theme that included slideshows, animations, intricate designs, and poorly optimized images. This approach aimed to simulate real-life scenarios where user-created websites are often unoptimized.
My objective was to achieve a page load time of under two seconds from a reasonably nearby server. Nexcess performed admirably, averaging a swift 1.65 seconds. While encountering intermittent slowdowns, the uptime remained consistently exceptional at an average of 100%.
Overall, Nexcess delivered satisfactory and dependable performance. For a more detailed breakdown of the figures, please refer to the subsequent sections. Should you be interested in learning about my experience with the support team, kindly navigate to the Support section.
GT Metrics
We rely on GTmetrix for assessing our page load time and overall performance. While we had hoped for more stable servers, we experienced varying load times ranging from 1.1 to 2.8 seconds for complete page loads. However, the majority of tests fell within the range of 1.1 to 1.5 seconds, which is generally acceptable. It’s worth noting that shared hosting can encounter challenges due to the lack of dedicated resources, potentially affecting your site’s performance based on other sites and their traffic on the same server. Our most favorable result during the testing period was a speedy 1.1-second page load time.
UptimeRobot: Ensuring Stable Server Connections
We found UptimeRobot to consistently deliver a strong ping rate, ensuring seamless server connectivity. While the impressive 100% uptime result from our testing is noteworthy, it’s important to acknowledge that our evaluation period was limited in duration.
It’s worth noting that there is a possibility of potential downtime for UptimeRobot in the future. However, based on our testing experience, it remains a reliable service that merits consideration for its dependability.
Support
Communicating with the support team at Nexcess is generally a positive experience. It is reassuring to know that they have WordPress experts available to help with any issues, especially since they are a WordPress-focused service.
However, during my testing, I encountered some inconsistencies with the support systems. While the individuals I communicated with were helpful, the tools they used to provide support were not always reliable. For example, I had one instance where I was unable to access the chat support system, and another instance where the ticket system did not send me an email notification when my ticket was updated.
Engaging Support: Live Chat
My encounter with the support team regarding site migration between data centers was positive. Within minutes of reaching out, the agent promptly shared a helpful response along with a relevant link. While their English wasn’t flawless, they understood my inquiry and provided the necessary assistance.
Efficient Ticket/Email Support
Unfortunately, the welcome emails lacked nameserver details, and the provided documentation didn’t offer clear guidance on which nameserver to utilize. Seeking clarification, I submitted a ticket.
To my satisfaction, a comprehensive and informative response arrived merely nine minutes later. Notably, the ticket system seamlessly integrates with the email support system.
Phone Support
When I reached out to the American support line of WordPress Experts via phone, I sought advice on the most reliable and secure membership plugin for my membership site. The support agent was highly responsive and courteous, efficiently addressing my query and providing a prompt and satisfactory solution.
Pricing Considerations
While Nexcess’s pricing may not be the most budget-friendly, it is justified when you consider the array of features it offers. The service is designed to generate revenue, making the pricing reasonable.
From my perspective, I would be willing to pay slightly more for a VPS to ensure consistent performance. This would require configuring and managing everything independently, but the investment would likely be worthwhile. Ultimately, the optimal choice depends on your specific requirements and preferences.
Nexcess conveniently accepts payments through PayPal and major credit cards.
Here’s an overview of the pros and cons of Nexcess’s pricing:
Pros:
- The comprehensive feature set encompasses automatic updates, staging, and backups.
- The service maintains a strong track record of reliability and uptime.
- Responsive and helpful customer support.
Cons:
- The pricing may not be the most budget-friendly option.
- Customization capabilities are limited compared to a VPS.
- Account changes may require waiting for customer support assistance.
Cancellation and Refund Policies
When considering Nexcess, you can take advantage of their 14-day free trial for their most affordable plan. This allows you to test their services without any obligations. It’s a smart way to ensure satisfaction before committing to a paid plan. However, it’s important to note that Nexcess does not offer refunds for accidental sign-ups to paid plans. On the bright side, canceling your subscription is a straightforward process that can be easily done through the admin panel.
Conclusion
Nexcess: Empowering WordPress-Based Businesses
For WordPress-based businesses seeking premium features, a robust server infrastructure, and exceptional support, Nexcess emerges as a compelling option. However, it’s worth noting that Nexcess comes at a higher price point compared to basic shared hosting.
Standout Features: Setting itself apart, Nexcess offers exclusive features like visual testing for plugin updates and staging sites, providing users with added convenience and control.
Reliable Server Infrastructure: Leveraging high-performance servers and a global network of data centers, Nexcess ensures the seamless operation of your website, ensuring minimal downtime.
Premium Support: With 24/7 support from seasoned technicians, Nexcess guarantees prompt assistance for any hosting-related queries or concerns.
Affordability Considerations: While Nexcess comes at a higher cost than basic shared hosting, the value it provides in terms of features justifies the investment for businesses seeking advanced hosting capabilities.
Exploring Alternatives: For those in search of a more budget-friendly option, Hostinger presents a suitable choice. On the other hand, if you require a comprehensive enterprise-grade solution, Liquid Web offers a compelling alternative.
Ultimately, Nexcess caters to WordPress-based businesses that prioritize premium features, a robust server infrastructure, and exceptional support. While it may be pricier than basic shared hosting, its value proposition and unique offerings make it a worthwhile investment for businesses seeking advanced hosting solutions.