Nexcess Hosting Review: Justifying the Premium Costs? (2024)

Ease of Use

I would rate the overall ease of use as 4.3 out of 5.

Here’s why:

• The ability to effortlessly transition from creating a new site to selecting and purchasing a new hosting plan is a significant plus.
• While the site dashboard and client area are praised for being informative and easy on the eyes, there's a potential for information overload.
• The user interface of Nexcess, highlighted by its neat, organized, and visually appealing black theme, contributes positively to the user experience.

Nexcess's overall ease of use is commendable, marked by a high degree of user-friendliness in hosting setup and UI design.

However, addressing the minor concerns related to information presentation and user interface customization could further enhance its user experience.

Hosting Setup

For Nexcess, we already have a test hosting account — I may not be able to show you everything from the start, but I can show you how it looks now.

If you want to add a new website, you can easily do so by going to the sites tab in the client area and taking it from there.

Naturally, whether or not you can add a new site depends on the hosting plan that you have.

However, if you need a new plan, a button will easily take you to the checkout page where you can select your hosting package.

It looks like this:

After you click on an application, it will then show you the different packages available (more on the packages later) for that application.

I like the convenience here — the fact that if you wanted a new site and your plan is maxed out, you can easily get a new plan. 👍

User Interface

What does the client area in Nexcess look like?

You have already seen a part of the client area (the screenshots in the previous section), and it’s easy to see that it’s user-friendly.

Here’s the home page of the client area:

From the client area, you will be able to have a glance at different things such as:

• Your affiliate status
• Server status
• Ongoing incidents
• Shortcuts to your site

Of all the things I see on the screen, my favorites are the server status and the ongoing incidents as you don’t have to go to another page to see them.

I also want to show you the site dashboard:

I needed to censor a lot of things here though. 😅

You can see that even if the site dashboard is full of information, it’s still easy in the eyes and you can look for anything you need.

This is also the hub for getting to the different hosting features that Nexcess provides. 🙂

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Features

I would rate the overall features a 3.9 out of 5.

Here’s why:

• Nexcess shines with its managed hosting features, like automatic updates for core and plugins, and a suite of performance enhancements.
• While one-click installations are convenient, presenting these plugin-based functionalities as integral features might set unrealistic expectations.
• Providing free SSL certificates and simple security plugin installation are valuable perks, but they're now common among most hosting providers.

Nexcess provides a robust set of features that cater well to both beginners and experienced users seeking a managed hosting solution.

Improving clarity on plugin features and introducing more proprietary solutions, particularly in security, could enhance Nexcess's services.

⚠️ Note: If you’re looking for what each hosting plan brings to the table, you can find them in the pricing section of this review as what I’ll be talking about here are hosting features.

Here are some notable features of Nexcess:

1. Managed hosting features

Nexcess comes with the usual features that go with managed hosting like automatic core and plugin updates, staging, and email.

You can easily set everything to auto-update:

Even with those features alone, it makes WordPress site maintenance painless when you host your websites on Nexcess.

But what I don’t understand is why certain features are marketed in the Nexcess website when you have to install a plugin for them.

The features I’m talking about are:

• Language translation
• SEO
• Marketing tools
• Multi-site management

What it does is provide you with a page where you can one-click install and activate hand-picked plugins.

I tried installing one of them (for language translation) and I thought I would get something like a premium, pre-activated plugin.

But nope, it simply installs and activates the plugin for you, and you have to take it from there (account activation, setup, etc.). 😒

2. Security features

For security features, Nexcess listed two:

• Free SSL certificates
• Solid Security (plugin)

It’s certainly easy to install an SSL certificate for your website using Nexcess as you can see from the screenshot below:

If you go back to the main client area, there’s also another page for SSL where you can easily import certificates or order new ones.

The other feature that Nexcess mentioned is Solid Security, which pertains to having the plugin installed on your website.

Again, they’re listing having easy access to installing/activating (or actually having the plugin already installed) as a feature. 🤷

3. Performance features

Nexcess also listed quite a few performance features for their managed WordPress hosting.

The one I like the best is the Nexcess CDN that’s powered by Cloudflare, and you can see that under the content delivery page.

Here it is:

You can’t see it from the screenshot above.

But you can easily configure the CDN, activate the performance shield (add-on) on this site, and purge the cached content, all in one click.

Other performance features are:

• Image lazy loading
• Cloud accelerator
• Object cache pro
• Container add-ons

For containers, there’s a separate page where you can enable them:

Nexcess also listed image compressions as one of its performance features.

However, upon further inspection, they meant that you could easily install TinyPNG to keep images sharp while minimizing them. 😓

👉 Related: How to Serve Scaled Images in WordPress (Beginner's Guide)

Reliability

A fair overall rating here would be 3.9 out of 5.

Here’s why:

• Nexcess stands out for its excellent load time, with an average of 1.56 seconds, outperforming notable competitors like Hostinger and SiteGround.
• Despite its strong load time, Nexcess received the lowest performance grade among the compared web hosting providers, with a score of 70/100 from Pingdom.
• Nexcess's uptime of 99.88% with 10 hours of downtime over the past year places it in a good position, though not at the top, among its competitors.

Nexcess demonstrates a high level of reliability with its fast load times and exceptional transparency regarding system status and updates.

However, focusing on improving its overall performance grade and striving for even higher uptime could make Nexcess an even more compelling option.

Performance

For the performance, I actually keep an eye out on 20+ web hosting services via Pingdom since they’re the ones we’re using in Darrel’s videos.

In terms of uptime, Nexcess was up 99.88% of the time for the past year — and it got a downtime of 10 hours.

⚠️ Note: For the hosting plans, we usually get the cheapest one from each web hosting service. Well, if their lowest plans suck, we can’t expect much from their more expensive options, right? We also use the same Elementor template kit and plugins.

Anything with an uptime that’s more than 98% is good in my book, so Nexcess having 99% uptime is still acceptable.

For the page speed, Nexcess had an average load time of 1.56 seconds and got a 70/100 performance grade from Pingdom.

Now let’s compare Nexcess’s performance with the “current” results from other well-known web hosting providers (max of 1 year time):

Here are some observations:

• From the table above, you can see that although Nexcess has good uptime, it’s only better than Bluehost.
• For the performance, Nexcess also got the lowest, even lower than Bluehost and Siteground.
• On the other hand, Nexcess got the second-highest load time, faster than Hostinger and Siteground.

You can easily see that Nexcess is a good host in terms of performance, and you can easily see it trying to ace the load time.

All these are indications that if you’re looking for a host with good performance, Nexcess can fit right in. 🙂

Updates and Maintenance

But can you trust Nexcess with updates and maintenance?

Nexcess already has a good interface and features, and you have already seen the nice status updates in the client area.

Here’s the system status page:

You can see on the left box an itemized list of Nexcess’s services and their individual status, and then the past incidents on the right box.

Besides that page, they also have another “ongoing incidents” page that you can go through both from the client area and the Nexcess site.

The page looks like this:

You can see here ongoing issues in Nexcess, and you can subscribe to the whole server status or on select issues only.

I like what Nexcess is doing here — the transparency is a big green flag to me, and the option to subscribe to specific issues is top-notch. 🎯

Support

I would rate Nexcess's overall support at 4.5 out of 5.

Here’s why:

• The availability of live chat support and 24/7/365 phone support particularly stands out, offering users immediate access to help whenever they need it.
• In high-demand periods, ticket response times could extend, potentially leading to delays in issue resolution for users.
• The presentation of the knowledge base as a blog, complete with search functionality, category tags, and email subscriptions, makes it user-friendly and engaging.

Nexcess’s commitment to accessibility, quality of assistance, and the breadth of support options available.

Improving the knowledge base and ticketing system could strengthen Nexcess's leadership in customer support.

Customer Service

For customer service, Nexcess has a lot to show for.

In fact, the client area has a “support” page where you can see different support options available in Nexcess.

Here it is:

Nexcess has the following support options:

• Ticketing system
• Live chat support
• Contact options
• Knowledge base
• Request migration

It seems that the main support feature in Nexcess is the ticketing system, which I think is as robust as it can get.

Here’s what the screen looks like when you create a new ticket:

It’s also worth noting that Nexcess has two of the best support options available (the best in my own opinion only).

I’m referring to the live chat support function and the contact options — which surprisingly, they said you can call their support team 24/7/365.

I like it! 👏

Knowledge Base

As I pointed out earlier in the support list, Nexcess also has a knowledge base feature, with various articles in different categories.

Here’s what the front page looks like:

I like the fact that the knowledge base supports a few features:

• Search function
• Category clouds
• Email subscription

Basically, the whole home page of the knowledge base looks like what you would see (and expect) on a blog.

For the individual posts, here’s a sample:

For the quality, you can see from the screenshot above that they have well-written articles, with annotated images and embedded videos (not seen above).

It’s actually quite nice as it doesn’t look like your usual help article that feels like it’s written for developers only. 🙂

Pricing

I would rate Nexcess's overall pricing at 4.0 out of 5.

Here’s why:

• Nexcess distinguishes itself by not locking essential features behind higher-tier plans.
• The starting price for Nexcess's managed hosting services is relatively steep, especially when compared to the broader market.
• Nexcess positions itself as a premium hosting provider with higher storage, bandwidth, and performance from the start, despite initial higher prices.

Nexcess's pricing strategy reflects its focus on delivering premium, feature-rich hosting solutions.

Although the initial cost may be higher, the comprehensive features justify the investment for businesses and individuals prioritizing performance and reliability.

By the way, Liquid Web purchased Nexcess, and Nexcess implemented LW property branding across their website and offerings.

1. Managed WordPress/WooCommerce hosting

Nexcess has 8 plans for their managed hosting, and all have monthly and yearly variants.

Here are their prices:

The cheapest plan starts at $21/month and comes with 15 GB storage, and 2 TB bandwidth — but only for one site.

The best value if you’re a beginner with multiple sites is the second plan which costs $43/month, with 25 GB storage and 2.5 TB bandwidth for three sites.

They have a nice table on their landing page that compares each hosting plan:

I want to point out that Nexcess doesn’t lock features behind a paywall or tier, so even the lowest plan gets all the features.

The highest plan, if you’re curious, is the enterprise plan which costs $492.75 for 3 months and then $1,095/month.

It includes:

• 800 GB storage
• 10 TB bandwidth
• 60 PHP workers per site
• Good for 250 sites

Nexcess’s pricing is pretty standard for a managed hosting provider, though the starting price is steeper since you also start with higher storage and bandwidth.

⚠️ Note: They have a separate WooCommerce hosting landing page. But if you check it out, you will find out that the packages are the same.

2. Cloud hosting

If you want a more independent choice on what to run in your cloud server, then you can try the cloud hosting plans from Nexcess.

Here are their prices:

The starting plan costs $52/month and can run up to 11 sites, with 50 GB storage, 1 TB bandwidth, and 25 PHP workers per plan.

If you’re more into organizing your server, then the initial plan alone costs less than the second, best-value price, from the managed hosting packages.

But take note that even if it’s a managed cloud hosting (they manage the backend maintenance and admin tasks), you will have to set up everything. 😨

Anyway, you can also check out a comparison table on their landing page:

For comparison, the most expensive plan here is XXL, which costs $894/month and can run up to 51 sites.

It includes:

• 800 GB storage
• 10 TB bandwidth
• 150 PHP workers per plan
• 32 VCPU
• 32 GB RAM

VCPU and RAM are only available from the fourth most expensive plan up.

Besides that, all cloud hosting plans share the same features and only differ in the capacity these features provide.

3. Other Nexcess products

Besides managed WordPress hosting and cloud hosting, Nexcess offers a lot more products.

Here are some of them and their initial prices:

Besides hosting products, there are also extra ones:

• StoreBuilder at $5/month for 3 months
• SSL certificates that start at $39.95 for a single domain

The only thing I’m wondering about is why they’re not selling domain names as it would complete the whole package. 🤷

Money Back Guarantee/Refund

Does Nexcess offer a money-back guarantee?

Strangely, they offer a money-back guarantee (and a really good one) — though they don’t mention it on any of their pages.

Here’s their FAQ about their money-back guarantee:

What’s cool here is that there seems to be no exception on the reason for asking for a full refund, as long as it’s within 30 days of purchase.

That means if you’re dissatisfied with your hosting, you can request a refund, though add-ons (naturally) may be excluded.

Overall, it’s a good money-back guarantee! 👍

Final Thoughts

Considering the comprehensive features, robust support, and strong performance, Nexcess positions itself as a premium hosting choice for those valuing quality and reliability.

If you’re considering Nexcess, thoroughly assess your site's needs against its offerings.

Use the 30-day money-back guarantee to test the platform risk-free, evaluating ease of use, performance, and support quality to ensure it meets your expectations.

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