Web Hosting Reviews – Liquidweb Review

Dear Readers,

My first LiquidWeb web hosting account was a Virtual Private Server (VPS), which I purchased it on the 23rd of March 2005. The decision was made after reading nothing but positive reviews about LiquidWeb on the Internet, especially from first-hand reviews of LiquidWeb’s clients at the popular web hosting forum, Web Hosting Talk. After a couple of pre-sales questions from the support staff, I finally settled for a VPS account with a $10/mth discount that I obtained from Web Hosting Talk.

Prior to that, I was using web hosting services (shared hosting) like Host4Profit from Allen Says & Third Sphere Hosting (company closed). I moved to other web hosting services like ResellerWorkz (now known as Severstra), and other hosting companies which I could barely recall their names by now.

The decision to move to LiquidWeb was done after I encountered many problems with the previous hosts (excluding Host4Profit) ranging from slow and irresponsive support staff, overcharged billing due to a security exploit (despite the company advertising that the servers are hacker proof) and many more.

One Year With LiquidWeb’s VPS

As far as I can recall, I was with LiquidWeb VPS for about a year. During that time, I couldn’t recall if there are any major hiccups with the server. All of my support emails were answered promptly and the server was doing exceptionally well. There almost isn’t any downtime the last time I recall. I didn’t encounter any security breach on my server, unlike with the previous hosts, and I wasn’t being charged for any unexpected excess in bandwidth (since there isn’t any excess in the first place)

After 1 year of becoming a happy and satisfied client of LiquidWeb, I decided to upgrade to a higher plan, this time, a dedicated server instead. The reason was due to increase in traffic to my sites and I was about to run a special offer known as firesales. I was also starting to use an e-commerce platform known as JV Manager (now known as Delavo) and it uses extensive resources on the server. Therefore, I decided that upgrading to a dedicated server is the best move.

Requested For A Discount via Private Messaging (PM) at Web Hosting Talk

After a satisfied year with LiquidWeb’s VPS service, I decided to request for a discounted price for the new dedicated server that I’m planning to upgrade to. Travis Stoliker handled my request and since I have been a loyal client for a year, he did have me a coupon for me to use when upgrading to a new dedicated server. Now this is on top of the current special pricing available to readers of Web Hosting Talk. He gave me a special coupon for 10% off. Now, 10% every month is indeed a huge savings for me as the dedicated server’s pricing is well above $150 per month! So it’s a HUGE savings and I really appreciate the gesture! 🙂 I proceeded with the order of my first dedicated server with LiquidWeb.

After more than 3 years with the dedicated server, I decided to further upgrade my server to see if there are any significant differences on the performance of my sites. This was done on the 2nd of September 2009, and the monthly cost of the server is $340 per month. Soon I realised that I have been under-utilising the resources of my server. That means I have been paying additional dollars unnecessarily all this while.

Storm On Demand Servers

Coincidentally, LiquidWeb has just announced the offering of cloud servers known as Storm On Demand. The customer representative recommended me to use this service instead since it would be the perfect servers for me according to my situation.

So I proceeded with their suggestion and took up the Storm server instead. One quick note about Storm On Demand: I will only pay for how much resources I use every month. The basic server plan is there, but the ultimate usage of the server like the bandwidth, RAM, etc will be charged according to my usage at the end of the month.

I can easily scale the server up and down whenever I feel the need to do so with just a few clicks of the button. For example, if I need to use the server for an upcoming promotion or special offers, I would definitely expect a quick surge of traffic for the first few days. Instead of getting my server overloaded, I can easily scale the server up for the first few days, putting in more RAM, bandwidth and horsepower to the CPU and once the traffic returns back to normal, I can easily scale the server down back.

And I shall only be charged according to what I use!

Ain’t that cool!?? 🙂

Anyway, here’s my conclusion for my review on LiquidWeb based on my 5 years experience with them:

The Pros:

• Fully-managed servers with pro-active monitoring from their Heroic Support® team

I can sleep well and not worry about the security of my server. Prior to this, my server has been compromised a few times when I was with other hosting companies. Now I spent more time taking care of my online business rather than worrying over my server. Nothing major happened to my server at the time when I was with them and I never encountered a single breach of security. Everything has been well taken care of.

• They own their own data-centers and thus they have immediate access to the physical location of the servers. Therefore they can quickly access to the servers whenever there is a pressing need (unlike hosting resellers).

Whenever there is a small issue that arises with my server (like a potential hard disk failure), the support team quickly act upon resolving the issue. Since the server is physically accessible to them, they took care of the problem quickly and efficiently.

• Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to save the day quickly and thoroughly for their customers.

I did not have to wait whenever I need any help from them pertaining to my server. They are available 24/7. Imagine if you have an issue with your server, or something unexpected came out from your server that are affecting your customers. When that happens, you would surely need immediate attention and help from your web hosting company. Imagine getting help only a few hours later… how would your customers react to your shortcomings? I have encountered a few occasions whereby potential customers did not proceed with ordering my products due to the long wait in getting my pages back online. The support team of that hosting company only got back to me regarding the downtime more than 6 hours later!! And the best (worse actually) part was that it was just a reply of acknowledgement, not a reply of letting me know that the problem has been resolved. With LiquidWeb’s 24/7/365, it really saves the day for me!

The Cons:

• They are a bit expensive in pricing, especially their bandwidth

First of all, whether or not the service is expensive, this is a subjective topic. However, based on my own research, I can get cheaper servers elsewhere with better server specifications. For some loyal customers, the Heroic Support and excellent reputation of LiquidWeb make up for the higher pricing. So pricing is never an issue with these people.

• Occasional slow (follow-up) support

This happened to me a few times. Their support normally responded to my initial queries extremely fast, less than 20 minutes for most of the time. In fact, it was just a few minutes for the majority of the time. However, the follow-up could be much longer. This happened especially when the initial staff that answered my query had gone back home after his working hours and therefore, the ticket was not assigned to other staff. I had to push hard for them to get back to me quickly with the solution to my problem. However, this can actually be solved by just calling them up! 🙂

Overall Conclusion

LiquidWeb is one of the best web hosting providers out there. It’s superb reputation and excellent track record speak for itself. I highly recommend LiquidWeb especially if you are looking for a VPS or a dedicated server.

My 5 years of experience with LiquidWeb simply states that you cannot go wrong with them. If you don’t mind spending a bit more, go with LiquidWeb right from the start. Trust me, using your time to concentrate and focus more on your business is far more important than dealing with server and hosting issues.

Go for it! Go for LiquidWeb! You simply can’t go wrong…