Editor's opinion
Lorienz Galarpe
I am a website designer and developer for over 7 years now, and I worked with several hosting companies in the past for each website project I handle.
First impression
Nexcess is a subsidiary of Liquid Web, a popular host that’s made a big push into the WordPress space with acquisitions of popular WordPress plugin companies like iThemes, Restrict Content Pro, The Events Calendar, and more.
While it has other services like flexible cloud hosting and enterprise hosting, Nexcess’ flagship offering is managed hosting for WordPress, Magento, and WooCommerce. There’s also support for Drupal, Craft CMS, and good old ExpressionEngine.
When you first sign in to the Nexcess dashboard, you’ll get a basic summary of key billing details and announcements:
The main individual site dashboard gives you access to all of your site’s tools and features – you can jump between different areas using the sidebar on the left.
Trial period
Unfortunately, they don’t offer a free Trial to any of their services though they have a 30-Day Money-back guarantee.
Billing cycle
Nexcess offers a wide range of pricing plans for people of all budgets, starting from the sub-$20 Spark plan that we tested and ranging all the way up to enterprise-focused plans that cost almost $1,000 per month.
With all the plans, you can either pay monthly or pay annually to get two months free (or four months free for your first year).
Control panel
The dashboard is well-designed and helps you access key features, but it’s not the most beginner-friendly dashboard that you’ll find. It’s certainly something most non-technical WordPress users will have no problem with.
Additionally, the dashboard lacks some features that you’ll find at other hosts, such as an in-browser file manager (you need to use FTP) or a redirect manager.
Limits
Nexcess’s plans do not include any arbitrary visit limits like you find at a lot of other managed WordPress hosting providers. Instead, your only limits are "The number of websites'', "Storage", and "Bandwidth".
Their basic hosting plan package starts at $21/month which can host 1 website, Storage with up to 15GB, and a 2TB Bandwidth. And for the most priced hosting package Enterprise which cost around $492.75 for 3 months, can host up to 250 websites, 800GB Storage, and 10TB Bandwidth.
Security
With over 23 years of hosting expertise, Nexcess proudly offers enterprise-class security and service for every customer. Over 500,000 sites and stores use Nexcess because they specialize in keeping businesses safe and growing.
SSL certificates are digital certificates that authenticate your website’s identity and allow for the secure transmission of sensitive information, such as credit card data.
OS
Nexcess hosting services use and offer both Linux, and MAC operating service servers.
Support
Nexcess offers 24/7 support on all of its plans. You can get support via live chat, email/ticket, and phone, with dedicated phone numbers for the Americas, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
However, not all channels seem to be available 24/7, so you might need to rely on ticket support during off-hours. For example, we tried to initiate a live chat at 8 PM EST on Sunday and there were no live chat operators available, which meant that ticket support was the only option.
On the other hand, their live chat support eventually responded to my inquiry and answered my question and they are knowledgeable.
Conclusion
Pros |
Cons |
- 24/7 Wordpress support;
- 30-day money-back guarantee;
- Disaster recovery assistance;
- 1-click staging site;
- Free SSL Certificate.
|
- The support isn’t as responsive as you’d get from other hosts like WP Engine;
- No cPanel features.
|
Nexcess has pretty interesting features, a fairly decent server infrastructure, and good support, for premium prices. There’s a lot to like, and it makes running an online WordPress-based business convenient… if you already sort of know what you’re doing and don’t mind the performance pitfalls of shared hosting.
FAQ
❔Is managed WordPress hosting better than unmanaged?
That depends on what you want. Want complete control over your data and greater privacy? Then doing everything yourself is better, with the only tradeoff being your time or money spent on a WordPress professional. And hey, WordPress can pretty much just update itself these days in any case.
You can get unmanaged hosting a lot cheaper at a company like Hostinger. Use the money you save on a WordPress course, maybe.
The advantage of properly managed WordPress hosting is that you can set up your site and forget about it. I’d update the blog now and then for SEO and to keep in touch with your users, but other than that, you’re home free.
Nexcess is decent for that, but if you have the money to spare, I’d check out Kinsta, which has the best managed WordPress hosting I’ve encountered so far.
✴️What performance tools for WordPress does Nexcess have?
There are two big performance-related features… Well, two that mean anything for WordPress. The first is a built-in caching system integrated right into Nexcess’ server technology. All you have to do is hit a button, and parts of your website will be stored (or “cached”) both on special parts of the server itself and on the user’s computer to make your site load faster.
There’s also a built-in content delivery network (CDN), which will basically store copies of your site all over the world, so international users can load the site faster.
If you want to know how Nexcess’ performance compares to other hosts we’ve tested, be sure to check out our list of the best web hosting providers.
✔️Does Nexcess cost more when you renew?
As far as I can tell, the price stays the same no matter what. Nexcess certainly charges enough right off the bat that raising renewal prices would just be greedy. All things considered, I prefer this approach.
You do get a discount for paying for a year at a time, of course. And hey, if you’re looking for discounts on Nexcess or any other host, you should have a look at our hosting coupon page.