Hivelocity Review

Laura Bernheim

By: Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations' products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world's top hosting providers.

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Editor: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to our team. She has written and edited for major news organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, and she previously served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. Today, she edits HostingAdvice content for clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement.

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OVERALL RATING 4.7 / 5.0
★★★★★
Features4.8 / 5.0
Ease of Use4.7 / 5.0
Pricing4.6 / 5.0
Reliability & Support4.9 / 5.0
Discount for Our Users See Deals

An industry veteran with more than 15 years of hosting experience, Hivelocity offers an impressive array of dedicated servers and luxurious components to provide customers with rich, high-powered, and custom environments. From on-site support to a stellar 99.999% uptime guarantee, Hivelocity is a great choice for business-driven web hosting.

Category Ratings

We had one of our resident hosting experts, Laura Bernheim, sign up for a Hivelocity account and take it for a spin. Below are Laura’s ratings of the Hivelocity experience, broken down by the types of hosting Hivelocity offers.

If you decide to go with Hivelocity, you may get a discount by using our link to sign up. While we often make commissions on purchases made through our links, this had no bearing on Laura’s review.

Here’s what Laura found in reviewing Hivelocity:

Disclosure: When you sign up through links on our site, we often earn referral fees from partners. For more information, see our ad disclosure and review policy.

Hivelocity's Overall Rating (4.7 / 5.0)

Best Overall Rating

4.7
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):

By throwing the company's full weight into fostering its customers' success, Hivelocity has grown from a single rack of servers in a dingy basement to owning and operating more than 65,000 square feet of datacenters across the southeastern United States and Los Angeles. The Tampa-based hosting provider excels at deploying bare-metal dedicated servers while providing a multitude of performance, security, and management options that enable customers to craft the hosting environments best suited for their business needs.

In addition to dedicated servers, Hivelocity also provides colocation services and cloud hosting for thousands of customers in more than 130 countries. The company currently houses thousands of servers and has room for many more in datacenters geared for HIPAA and PCI compliance and holding SSAE-16 certifications. Clearly proud of its datacenter prowess, Hivelocity is one of a few hosts that offers virtual tours and publishes live-stream videos of company facilities.

We're suckers for tech-minded hosting teams who find a way to build and run their own infrastructure, and the technical expertise of Hivelocity's 65 employees is showcased by the incredible support and availability delivered to customers.

With engineers just a few steps away from customers' hardware at all hours of the day and night, Hivelocity averages a 15-minute response to tickets. As with most reputable hosts, support is available 24/7 through tickets, phone, and live chat. Hivelocity, however, shines at connecting customers directly to the knowledgeable people who can quickly address an issue, rather than routing requests through a variety of employees and offices.

Hivelocity already offers an impressive 99.999% network uptime service level agreement, placing the company in the upper echelon of reliable hosting environments. While other hosts tend to stick to the standard 99.9% uptime guarantees to give themselves more cushion or room to overdeliver, we love that Hivelocity still manages to overdeliver on an already impressive five-nines rate — three years in a row, from 2014 to 2016, the company delivered a magical 100% uptime availability. We see no reason to expect anything less from Hivelocity in the future.

  • 4 owned-and-operated datacenters
  • Pre-built or custom dedicated servers
  • 7-minute server deployments
  • 15-minute average ticket response
  • 100% uptime delivered 2014-2016
  • Get started on Hivelocity now.
Money Back Guarantee
N/A
Disk Space
240 GB SSD - 6.4 TB SSD
Domain Name
N/A
Setup Time
7 minutes
Hivelocity's Cheap Hosting (not yet rated)

"We haven't evaluated Hivelocity for this type of hosting service — yet. Either the company didn't offer this option at the time this review was written or this section of the review hasn't made it to the top of our editorial queue just yet. Either way, check back later, as we're always working to keep our reviews up to date and as comprehensive as possible!"

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim, Tech Expert

Want Laura to review your hosting service? Request a review.

Hivelocity's Dedicated Hosting (4.9 / 5.0)

Dedicated Rating

4.9
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Representing the utmost in dedicated server hosting flexibility, Hivelocity offers more than 1,000 hardware configurations that customers can tailor to their specific business needs and objectives. The company deploys hundreds of servers each month, many in fewer than 10 minutes.

Hivelocity servers are available with several different versions of Intel Xeon processors, with anywhere from four to an obscene 36 cores available for maximum computing power. Businesses can enjoy free inbound bandwidth, and data transfers happen between 20TB or 1Gbps unmetered speed.

For those organizations that need to hit the ground running, the company has more than a dozen pre-configured server bundles ready for what Hivelocity calls instant deployment once the customer selects various software, bandwidth, and add-on options. Although the provisioning might be near instantaneous, the servers take roughly seven minutes or less to come online. Hivelocity doesn't scrimp on the instant servers, either — storage, bandwidth, and memory specs outpace many competitors at a similar price point, and all dedicated servers come with 10GB of free cloud storage space.

Custom dedicated servers deploy within 24 hours and allow customers to craft cost-effective server hosting solutions. Hivelocity gives organizations about 16 base configurations to mix, match, and upgrade as needed, or customers can consult with the company's experts for free.

Although the company's available hardware and architecture is sublime, our one minor gripe is that Hivelocity leaves more of the server management to the customers than some other premium hosts. Of course, dedicated server customers tend to have more knowledge and opinions about how their environment should be structured and maintained. But needing to opt for an additional $30-per-month managed services plan to include basic features, including operating system updates and patches, Softaculous installation scripts, cPanel and WHM setup, performance optimization, or assistance with backups, seems a little steep or unnecessary.

  • Server hardening upon deployment
  • FREE inbound bandwidth
  • FREE 10GB of cloud storage
  • 24/7 on-premises support
  • 99.999% uptime guarantee with monitoring and alerts
  • Get started on Hivelocity now.
Money Back Guarantee
N/A
Disk Space
240 GB SSD - 6.4 TB SSD
Domain Name
N/A
Setup Time
7 minutes
Hivelocity's VPS Hosting (not yet rated)

"We haven't evaluated Hivelocity for this type of hosting service — yet. Either the company didn't offer this option at the time this review was written or this section of the review hasn't made it to the top of our editorial queue just yet. Either way, check back later, as we're always working to keep our reviews up to date and as comprehensive as possible!"

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim, Tech Expert

Want Laura to review your hosting service? Request a review.

Hivelocity's WordPress Hosting (4.4 / 5.0)

WordPress Rating

4.4
★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Although Hivelocity does not offer a specific WordPress hosting plan, unlike many of the other hosting providers we review, the company's responsive support and premium architecture make for a solid enterprise-grade WordPress hosting option worthy of consideration.

Unless customized otherwise, all servers come with storage powered by solid-state drives, which routinely show 20-times-faster performance. That speed is critical when hosting WordPress, especially at scales large enough to require dedicated servers.

Hivelocity further boosts speed with a worldwide content delivery network featuring 25 points-of-presence in five continents. Heavy content, such as videos, audio, and images, can be distributed around the globe to be closer to site visitors, and site owners are charged for only the amount of data sent.

The company's proprietary platform, myVelocity, helps users oversee usage and security details of their content. Calling it a content management system, however, might be a bit confusing or misleading, especially given the context of WordPress. Thinking of myVelocity as a CDN management system seems much more appropriate. Regardless, the intuitive and streamlined interface provides granular control and analytics while enabling site administrators to instantly remove or invalidate content, block access based on various geographical controls, and protect content through a variety of methods. Add in dynamic caching and origin server management, and Hivelocity's CDN is a worthy investment for large-scale WordPress installations.

Even though Hivelocity's performance and security features aren't particularly tailored or marketed to the WordPress ecosystem quite like other WordPress-only hosts, the various components' strengths enable the company's services to compete at a high level for enterprise-level hosting of the wildly popular content management system.

  • Manage content with myVelocity
  • Pay-as-you-go CDN
  • Firewalls & DDoS protection
  • Daily backups & Rapid Restore tool
  • Industry-leading SSL certificates
  • Get started on Hivelocity now.
Money Back Guarantee
N/A
Disk Space
240 GB SSD - 6.4 TB SSD
Domain Name
N/A
Setup Time
7 minutes
Hivelocity's Website Builder Hosting (not yet rated)

"We haven't evaluated Hivelocity for this type of hosting service — yet. Either the company didn't offer this option at the time this review was written or this section of the review hasn't made it to the top of our editorial queue just yet. Either way, check back later, as we're always working to keep our reviews up to date and as comprehensive as possible!"

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim, Tech Expert

Want Laura to review your hosting service? Request a review.

Features

(4.8 / 5.0)

On-Site Server Management Services

  • All servers come with hardware diagnostics and replacement within two hours, along with network intrusion monitoring, free migrations, and up to four manual operating system reloads per month. Customers receive two 30-minute instances of best-effort tech support each month.
  • Upgrading to the server management plan includes operating system updates and patches, performance optimization, brute force detection services, and automatic ticket creation and support in the event of downtime or failure.
  • With Hivelocity owning and operating its datacenters, engineers are merely a few steps away from the servers they oversee. The company's knowledgeable support teams are willing to install, configure, and assist with any free ConfigServer script, ModSecurity, and a variety of security processes.

Scalable Private Cloud Environments

  • Hivelocity's single-tenant cloud environments are fully customized and built after a consultation with the company's cloud engineers. The dedicated hardware comes with predictable and controlled costs, boosting security, performance, and availability.
  • Customers can choose their cloud configuration. Private clouds are available through OpenStack, Nutanix, Proxmox, VMware, SolusVM, and Microsoft Hyper-V. Most options cover high-availability, live migration, and scaling needs.
  • Virtual machines can be deployed in seconds on most platforms, which also feature automatic failovers, easy-to-use administrative interfaces, options for virtualization, and the lack of a controller node requirement. Virtual machines can often be networked and clustered together to maximize cloud infrastructure performance.

Add-On Enhancements Boost Security

  • Hivelocity's enterprise-grade DDoS protection service goes beyond router rules to implement internally developed tools in tandem with Corero Smartwall Network Threat Defense. The system monitors the network, inspects and identifies malicious traffic, and mitigates attacks by blocking the visitors and scrubbing data packets.
  • Multiple Juniper-powered hardware firewall options stop attacks, prevent unauthorized access, and helps customers achieve regulatory compliance more easily. The firewalls, which can cover multiple servers, include an intrusion prevention system, and web filtering, along with tools for antivirus, antispyware, antiphishing, and antiadware protections.
  • Single domain, multi-domain, and wild-card SSL certificates come with up to 256-bit encryption. Hivelocity has partnered with several certificate authorities (Comodo, GeoTrust, Symantec, and Thawte) to issue a range of domain-validated and organizational-validated credentials.

CDN Accelerates User Experience

  • Hivelocity customers who opt to use the company's content delivery network to quickly deliver content around the world will pay only for the data sent. Pricing is determined based on which server zone and how much data is delivered. The company maintains points-of-presence in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
  • Solid-state drives and dynamic caching boosts performance and page loads, while origin management protects customers' servers from an overload of requests. Storing large videos and audio files on the edge renders buffering almost unnecessary.
  • The company's proprietary content management system gives users a granular view of usage and data analytics. The intuitive and fully responsive interface works seamlessly across devices and allows customers to protect and instantly remove content, as well as blocking traffic from certain countries, states, and even ZIP codes.

Ease of Use

(4.7 / 5.0)
One-Click Support Tickets
Hivelocity Review
10GB of Free Cloud Storage
Hivelocity Review
Automated Server Monitoring
Hivelocity Review

Even though we really enjoyed using the 2011 edition of Hivelocity,'s customer portal, myVelocity, the company gave us a sneak peek of what's to come. The sleek, modern interface emphasizes simplicity without sacrificing functionality. Customers can seamlessly manage servers and account information, access and submit support requests, as well as monitor services and reboot servers remotely. Customers can view real-time data about bandwidth consumption, CPU temperature, voltage readings, and even how many rotations per minute the fans make.

Pricing

(4.6 / 5.0)

Custom Server

Instant Server

Custom Solutions

Although some of the more novice hosting consumers might suffer from initial sticker shock, Hivelocity dedicated servers are priced comparably with many competitors in the upper echelon of hosting. The dedicated level of hosting always seems like a major investment, but Hivelocity includes a bevy of high-performance hardware and feature options that mostly justify the cost. Instead of simply finding the cheapest dedicated server solutions, enterprise-level customers will appreciate Hivelocity's reliability, flexibility, and experience.

However, we'd like to see a few more services — namely operating system updates and patches, cPanel or WHMCS licenses, and backups — included in the standard managed hosting features. The exclusions make Hivelocity's dedicated solutions a bit more bare-metal than we'd like at the price. We understand the need for custom configurations, of course, but add-ons can get expensive rather quickly.

Reliability & Support

(4.9 / 5.0)

It might be hard to imagine being able to overdeliver on a 99.999% network uptime guarantee, but that is exactly what Hivelocity has done the past three years. The company reached the pinnacle of 100% uptime in 2014, 2015, and 2016, in large part because of the company's expert on-site management of multiple datacenters.

Beyond the company's supreme reliability, Hivelocity excels with personal, on-site support. With around-the-clock service monitoring and engineers within feet of enterprise-grade servers at all hours, a response to issues happens within minutes. We appreciate the included managed services Hivelocity includes with dedicated servers, including free data migration, monitoring, remote and manual reboots, and up to four manual operating system reloads per month. However, our only gripe is how a few seemingly standard services are only included in the add-on managed support plan: performance optimization, operating system updates and patches, malware scanning, and the Softaculous library of more than 400 one-click installation scripts.

Hivelocity Includes:

24/7/365 Support Through Phone, Live Chat, and Email Ticketing System; Free Hardware Diagnostics and Replacement Within Two Hours; Extensive Knowledgebase and 15 Minute Average Response to Tickets; Network Intrusion Monitoring.

The Rundown

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Hosting Expert:

To recap, here's a rundown of what Hivelocity has to offer

Behind a mission to provide top-notch user experiences through exceptional customer support, flawless reliability, and leading-edge innovation, Hivelocity delivers an impressive slate of services. The company, concentrating on dedicated servers and private clouds, offers rapid deployment and custom configurations while enhancing users' environments with tons of optional and proprietary services. With Hivelocity, customers can easily craft enterprise-grade architecture that delivers, stores, and protects content — all backed by a hard-to-beat network uptime guarantee and ultra-responsive, on-site support.

Hivelocity review

Overall Rating

4.7 / 5.0
★★★★★

About The Author

Laura has spent more than 12 years crafting engaging and award-winning articles that share the passion behind organizations' products, people, and innovations. As a long-time HostingAdvice contributing expert, she combines a reputation for producing quality content with rich technical expertise to show experienced developers how to capitalize on emerging technologies and find better ways to work with established platforms. A professional journalist, Laura has contributed to The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Sun Sentinel, and the world's top hosting providers.
Laura Bernheim
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