Nexcess 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
★★★★★
Features4.7 / 5.0
Ease of Use4.8 / 5.0
Pricing4.5 / 5.0
Reliability & Support4.8 / 5.0
Discount for Our Users See Deals

Offering high-class managed hosting solutions for WordPress and ecommerce, Nexcess delivers stress-free web hosting experiences primed for scalability and performance. The company's optimized cloud servers mean site owners can concentrate on their business instead of struggling to maintain their infrastructure. Go with Nexcess for any digital commerce needs.

Category Ratings

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

If you decide to go with Nexcess, 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 Nexcess:

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.

Nexcess's Overall Rating (4.7 / 5.0)

Best Overall Rating

4.7
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com):

Promising fast, reliable page loads and a hosting service with tons of built-in perks, Nexcess represents a tremendous option for small businesses and large organizations — as well as the designers and developers who dream big.

The hosting provider's already stellar reputation for innovation and high-touch managed services got an additional boost in 2019 when it came under the Liquid Web umbrella. The move solidifies Nexcess's role in the application hosting and digital commerce spaces.

Nexcess specializes in managed WordPress hosting, along with plans tailored for Magento, WooCommerce, Drupal, Expression Engine, and Craft CMS. Each application is supported with built-in image compression, a content delivery network, and caching tools.

In addition to automatic updates and around-the-clock monitoring, the company tracks plugin performance — constantly checking speed scores and discovering how changes and updates affect page load times in the company's exclusive application.

Nexcess clearly takes pride in its services, seamlessly weaving together premium features with a customized administrative interface and WordPress dashboard.

Wherever we looked in our Nexcess plan, we found tools that further increased the functionality, performance, and security of our test site.

Perks include a curated set of plugins, accelerated NGINX microcaching, and advanced autoscaling. Despite all the technical configurations and improvements, we found the Nexcess platform to be extremely user-friendly and capable of serving large teams and businesses.

All plans come with an outstanding 99.99% uptime guarantee, free website migration, and around-the-clock support through phone, chat, and email tickets.

  • Powerful cloud hosting optimized for growth
  • 99.99% uptime guarantee with 1-click autoscaling
  • Premium managed services and platform support
  • FREE WordPress site migrations with every plan
  • Easy online store design and creation with StoreBuilder
  • Get started on Nexcess now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
15 GB - 800 GB
Domain Name
$15.00
Setup Time
8 minutes
Nexcess's Cheap Hosting (not yet rated)

"We haven't evaluated Nexcess 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.

Nexcess's Dedicated Hosting (not yet rated)

"We haven't evaluated Nexcess 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.

Nexcess's VPS Hosting (4.5 / 5.0)

VPS Rating

4.5
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Although all Nexcess services come with the basic scalability and reliability of the cloud, the web host saves some extra oomph for those interested in cloud VPS environments or enterprise-grade server clusters.

The well-tailored plans support up to 800 GB of disk space plus 10TB of bandwidth, 32GB of RAM, and 32 vCPUs. Customers can choose from seven optimized server images to configure their environment for top-tier speed and security.

In addition to the expected applications like WordPress, Drupal, WooCommerce, and Magento, we appreciate Nexcess for extending its expertise to ExpressionEngine, Craft CMS, and OroCRM.

Nexcess doesn't take its role as a leader of managed ecommerce solutions lightly, either. PCI and GDPR compliance comes standard with all cloud VPS hosting plans, and the company undergoes annual assessments to ensure conformity with SSAE-18 standards.

Adding support for containers is simple and cost-effective, given the impact software like Elasticsearch, Varnish, RabbitMQ, or Solr can have on your online business. Otherwise, enjoy development with SSH access and supported development workflows with Git, Mercurial, or Composer.

Prices may seem a little steep compared with budget competitors, but keep in mind all the low-cost unmanaged VPS offerings out there. Nexcess removes all the hassle of configuring, securing, optimizing, and maintaining your VPS so you can focus on growing your business.

We highly recommend the finely tuned Nexcess platform of optimized and fully managed VPS options for WordPress users and ecommerce businesses looking to take the next step. As the success builds, be sure to explore the company's enterprise-grade server clusters with custom-built architectures.

  • Cloud environments built for speed and scalability
  • PCI compliance comes standard with all plans
  • Cloud Accelerator™ with NGINX and microcaching
  • Enterprise-grade virtual server clusters available
  • 24/7/365 premium managed services and support
  • Get started on Nexcess now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB - 800 GB
Domain Name
Setup Time
8 minutes
Nexcess's WordPress Hosting (4.9 / 5.0)

WordPress Rating

4.9
★★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

We get it, many new WordPress users simply opt for an affordable one-size-fits-all shared hosting package for their new website. Given the worldwide popularity of the content management system, web hosting companies will make sure all the basics are covered for a very low cost.

However, the site owners will have to take on a good bit of maintenance: regularly updating the platform and plugins, making sure those updates don't break other things, staying ahead of security concerns, and optimizing performance with caching plugins and a content delivery network.

Why not upgrade to a host that handles it all for you? With Nexcess, WordPress users encounter professional-grade managed WordPress environments that enable them to focus on growing their website and running their business.

Instead of building flashy, custom-branded tools for caching or website design, Nexcess focuses on deploying the best modern technologies that lead to success.

Each managed WordPress hosting account comes with incredibly easy integrations for New Relic performance monitoring, NGINX and Redis caching, plus KeyCDN preinstalled. Beyond basic automatic updates, Nexcess protects your sites from unexpected changes.

A custom plugin monitoring tool watches site performance, and the account dashboard includes an ultra-simple visual regression testing service. Before updating anything on a live site, Nexcess creates a copy of the website and takes screenshots to document before and after the upgrades. If anything changes, the update is paused and the site owner is notified.

Sure, Nexcess WordPress hosting plans cost a decent amount more than the average bargain-basement hosting provider. But serious users will quickly see the value that comes from the peace of mind from such a high-touch managed platform with the full suite of useful tools to make your website stand out from the rest.

  • FREE site migrations and automatic updates
  • 1-click staging and unlimited email accounts
  • Built-in image compression, caching, and CDN
  • 24/7 support and plugin performance monitoring
  • Monthly hosting unlocks the most savings
  • Get started on Nexcess now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
15 GB - 800 GB
Domain Name
Setup Time
6 minutes
Nexcess's Website Builder (4.2 / 5.0)

Website Builder Rating

4.2
★★★★

Price:

Setup Time:

Already boasting a powerful platform for running WordPress and WooCommerce, Nexcess makes creating and growing your online store even easier with StoreBuilder system.

Billed as an "intelligent website assistant," StoreBuilder asks entrepreneurs about their company's products, services, industry, experience, and content to help formulate a custom storefront.

Nexcess automatically installs WordPress and configures it with a special blend of plugins and performance boosters. Many of the design tools are powered by Kadence WP themes and blocks, but you can use whatever design you prefer.

Once signed in, site owners are ushered through a wizard to equip their site with store details, a starter template, payment method, inventory, and shipping. Each step comes with tutorials to help you along the way.

Although the WordPress design experience still may not be as fully intuitive as some of the drag-and-drop specialists in the website builder industry, Nexcess gives its customers an intuitive way to design, operate, and grow their online business.

Most site builders, including Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace, operate with limited user access to certain controls. That means your data and website files can only stay with the one company. By unlocking WordPress and WooCommerce functionality in a user-friendly way, Nexcess and StoreBuilder gives the keys to you; you'll enjoy complete site ownership.

Even better, you'll find no transaction fees and a 30-day free trial of all features — other components not seen with most competitors.

We'd love to see more available templates (we could only choose from 10 options based on our selections at the time of our review) — but each design is incredibly polished and appealing. Select your font and color scheme, and off you go!

  • Code-free design tools for eCommerce stores
  • Templates for retail, food, clothing, and services
  • Custom WordPress integrations and optimizations
  • 24/7/365 support via phone, chat, and email
  • Try StoreBuilder for 75% OFF for 3 months
  • Get started on Nexcess now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
15 GB - 800 GB
Domain Name
New or Transfer
Setup Time
7 minutes

Features

(4.7 / 5.0)

Premium Add-Ons for Powerful Performance

  • Automatic scaling services cover 24 hours per month to handle sudden traffic spikes. Plan ahead for expected traffic spikes with advanced configurations.
  • Instant dev and staging sites enable site owners to test changes without affecting what visitors see. Included database scrubbing removes all sensitive personal information.
  • A content delivery network featuring 22 edge locations is integrated into Nexcess platforms for easy configuration.
  • Containers for Elasticsearch, RabbitMQ, Solr, and Varnish increase the performance, stability, and security of your website.

Enterprise Hosting & Flexible Cloud Solutions

  • Custom server clusters scale horizontally to increase throughput and add fault tolerance with redundancy.
  • Two basic layouts: simple with an external database server, or more complex with a solution that includes a file server, database server, and one or more web nodes.
  • SSH availability or primary control through SiteWorx for tasks like adding or removing domains, changing PHP versions, or managing databases and users.
  • Proactive monitoring and 24-hour support from the dedicated Nexcess Enterprise Support group, which will oversee the initial migration.

Built-In Cloud Accelerator for Fast Page Loads

  • An NGINX-powered abstraction layer sits in front of the cloud hosting stack to efficiently manage static content like images and JavaScript.
  • MicroCache keeps static, frequently content stored in memory to serve visitors quickly via redundant solid-state drives.
  • Nexcess enables Cloud Accelerator as default with all plans, or manage it with a one-click toggle switch on the hosting account management portal.
  • The multi-pronged approach includes HTTP/2, SSL termination, Gzip compression, and bot management to handle more concurrent users.

 

High-Powered Stack for Wide Application Support

  • The Nexcess stack of carefully chosen, enterprise-grade technologies starts with OpenStack, Ansible, and Docker to promote reliability and scalability.
  • A fine-tuned Redis instance combines with a memory-backed data store for modern PHP, NodeJS, Python, and Ruby programming.
  • PCI compliance comes standard with Nexcess application hosting, complete with security hardening, remote monitoring, and a web application firewall.
  • Enjoy the flexibility to implement your own custom workflows with Git, Mercurial, or Composer for dev teams with SSH and SFTP server access.

Ease of Use

(4.8 / 5.0)
Sleek Account Management Portal
Nexcess Review
Guided eCommerce Store Setup
Nexcess Review
Easily Add Managed Services
Nexcess Review

New systems can be intimidating to learn, but we love the thought and care Nexcess put into its account management platform. Although we certainly enjoy the familiarity of cPanel as we test various hosting plans, the Nexcess portal cuts out so much of the unnecessary baggage of unused features. Instead, we adore how Nexcess puts so many advanced — but game-changing — features front and center. Want to set up auto scaling? Purge your cache? Accelerate your performance? Those perks are right on the front page of your website's dashboard.

Pricing

(4.5 / 5.0)

Spark Plan

Maker Plan

Designer Plan

Cheap hosting customers may see some sticker shock from the Nexcess portfolio of managed WordPress hosting solutions, but we see deep value in the high-quality plans. Website owners will be well-equipped for success, especially trusting the hosting provider with a Magento or WooCommerce storefront. Instead of comparing Nexcess WordPress hosting to budget hosts, consider how the company stacks up against VPS competitors. The managed cloud servers and automatic scaling of Nexcess are far more cost-effective than most VPS offerings — particularly when you consider the time and headaches invested in server setup and maintenance.

Reliability & Support

(4.8 / 5.0)

By all accounts, you can trust the global Nexcess network of datacenters to deliver your site quickly and reliably. We didn't encounter any unexpected downtime during our testing, but a somewhat confusing uptime policy might give detail-oriented customers the slightest bit of pause. Nexcess promises 99.99% uptime on its website — impressively above the industry average — but 100% uninterrupted electricity and internet connections in the service level agreement. Both numbers clearly speak to the high quality of service, but they communicate different things. Regardless, in the event of an outage of up to 15 minutes, Nexcess reimburses website owners with 5% of the customer's monthly fees for every additional 15 minutes services remain down. On the other hand, there is ZERO questioning of the Nexcess support teams. The company's dedication to managed services and customer support closely mirrors those of parent company Liquid Web, an unquestioned leader in high-touch service. In addition to the knowledge base and multiple 24/7 support channels, we especially appreciated the integrated WP101 training videos scattered throughout the company's custom WordPress interface. Wherever you turn, Nexcess support is readily available.

Nexcess Includes:

24/7/365 Customer Support Through Phone, Chat, and Email Tickets, 99.99% Uptime Guarantee, Extensive Knowledge Base, Integrated Training Videos, iThemes Security, Performance Monitoring, And Instant Backups Stored for 30 Days

The Rundown

Laura Bernheim

Laura Bernheim

Hosting Expert:

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

Nexcess truly shines for website owners looking for a luxurious managed hosting experience on WordPress, WooCommerce, or Magento. The Liquid Web subsidiary more than lives up to the parent company's stellar reputation for customer support and forward-thinking technologies. We especially love the Nexcess attention to performance and stability, ranging from easily integrated content delivery networks to NGINX/Redis caching and New Relic monitoring. Regular backups and automatic updates are always nice, but Nexcess takes things several steps further with visual regression testing, one-click staging areas, and plugin performance monitoring. Business owners and advanced WordPress users don't need to spend a fortune on developers to take their online presence to the next level. Simply sign up with the Nexcess team of experts.

Nexcess 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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