Liquid Web VPS: The Good and the Bad

Table of Contents

Liquid Web VPS: The Good

Here are all the advantages of Liquid Web VPS plans.

1. Free Acronis Backups: 100 GB

It’s hard to overstate how useful this is. All Liquid Web VPS servers come with 100 GB of free Acronis offsite backups. This service backs up your server in real-time and lets you restore your server to within seconds before it failed. By itself, this service costs over $50/m, so LiquidWeb customers get this premium service for free.

You need to purchase an additional plan to cover backups with other web hosts. For example, you might have to buy JetBackup for $6/m with KnownHost VPS plans or the Backup Manager from InMotion. And all these will eat into your storage quota. With JetBackup, you also have to configure offsite storage and set up a system to transfer data back and forth.

With Acronis backups on Liquid Web VPS servers, you don’t have to worry about backups again.

2. Massive Liquid Web VPS Discount for Two Years at $15.00/m

Liquid Web’s initial discount for its VPS plans is 75%, starting at $15.00/m. Other web hosts like NameHero and KnownHost don’t let you choose a billing cycle of more than one-year, so this limits your savings. With Liquid Web, you can lock in the huge discount for 24-months. Here are all the Liquid Web promo codes for all the deals.

The savings are so large that even with the higher renewal costs, a Liquid Web VPS can be cheaper than other web hosts over 4 years. Here’s a table showing the total amount you pay for 2, 3, and 4 years VPS hosting compared to LiquidWeb:

VPS Hosting	2 Years	3 Years	4 Years
Liquid Web VPS	$360/m	$1068/m	$1776/m
NameHero VPS	$743/m	$1222/m	$1702/m
KnownHost VPS	$960/m	$1440/m	$1920/m
A2 Hosting VPS	$1404/m	$2772/m	$3696/m
Hostgator VPS	$1199/m	$2878/m	$3838/m

You can see that even with higher renewal costs, Liquid Web is cheaper than other web hosts with lower renewal prices, thanks to the massive 24-month initial discount.

3. Very High Bandwidth Limits

The Liquid Web VPS plans have extremely generous bandwidth limits. Even the cheapest VPS package comes with 10 TB of data transfer. Here’s how LiquidWeb compares with other VPS providers:

VPS Provider	Free Data Transfer
Liquid Web VPS	10 TB
KnownHost VPS	2 – 6 TB
NameHero VPS	10 TB
Bluehost VPS	1 – 3 TB
A2 Hosting VPS	2 TB
RoseHosting VPS	2 TB
InMotion VPS	2 TB

You can see that only NameHero matches the LiquidWeb VPS plan in terms of allowed bandwidth. Other hosts like InMotion claim to have “Unlimited” bandwidth on the higher plans, but while that might be an acceptable term when talking about shared hosting, they should be more specific when referring to a VPS. I’m suspicious of “Unlimited” bandwidth claims for a VPS.

4. Free cPanel: Five Accounts

With every Liquid Web VPS plan, you get five free cPanel accounts. So you don’t have to learn a new interface like InterWorx or Direct Admin. Most web hosts charge you extra for cPanel accounts. Here’s a table showing how different VPS providers offer cPanel:

VPS Provider	cPanel Cost
LiquidWeb VPS	5 cPanel Free
KnownHost VPS	$12.25/m
NameHero VPS	$10.00/m
Bluehost VPS	1 cPanel Free
A2 Hosting VPS	1cPanel Free
RoseHosting VPS	$15/m
InMotion VPS	5 cPanel Free

Apart from Liquid Web VPS, only InMotion VPS offers five free cPanel accounts. All the others charge you extra for cPanel or include a single solo license. Given how vital cPanel is and the number of cPanel compatible plugins, you save a lot of money getting this for free.

100% Uptime SLA on the LiquidWeb VPS

Liquid Web is the rare host that has a 100% uptime SLA. What’s more, it compensates you for 10x the amount of downtime. So half an hour of downtime a month would mean you get 5 hours of SLA credits deducted from your next bill. Here’s how Liquid Web compares to other web hosts in terms of SLA uptime agreements:

VPS Provider	SLA Uptime
LiquidWeb VPS	100%
KnownHost VPS	99.9%
NameHero VPS	99.9%
Bluehost VPS	No SLA
A2 Hosting VPS	99.9%
RoseHosting VPS	100%
InMotion VPS	No SLA

Apart from RoseHosting and Liquid Web, no other VPS provider has an uptime guarantee of 100%. And some don’t even have an SLA – a shocking omission.

Cheap Cloudflare Pro Add-on for Just $5

Though Cloudflare is valuable even as a free service, the paid Cloudflare Pro is even more so, and I use it myself. With a Liquid Web VPS, you can pay just $5 a month for Cloudflare Pro, which costs $20/m if you purchase it separately from Cloudflare. So if you’re already a Cloudflare Pro customer, you can save a considerable amount every month by switching to a Liquid Web VPS plan instead.

The extra $5/m add-on also brings you the premium business e-mail service, letting you do away with configuring email servers, filtering spam, and more.

Liquid Web Features Rating: ★★★★★ 5 stars

Liquid Web VPS: The Bad

These are the downsides of LiquidWeb VPS plans.

High Renewal Costs

Even though it has very high discounts for two years, Liquid Web’s VPS renewal costs are higher than most of the competition. Yes, the extra features make up for it, and yes, you might spend more with other hosts when you consider the additional cost of add-ons, but there’s no hiding the fact that Liquid Web is a premium VPS service. If you want the cheapest VPS hosting without add-ons for the long term, I suggest the Bluehost VPS plan as explained below.

Liquid Web Price Rating: ★★★★★ 5 stars

No Unmanaged VPS Servers

All of Liquid Web’s VPS hosting plans are managed. This means that the LiquidWeb team installs and maintains the OS and the control panel and takes care of security, hardening, and blocking malicious traffic. You don’t need to worry about keeping your system up-to-date, patching system files, or rotating logs, which incurs a management fee.

Unfortunately, there’s no unmanaged Liquid Web VPS plan. Other web hosts like KnownHost or A2 Hosting let you rent a VPS server without any management, cutting the cost in half or more. Companies like DigitalOcean, on the other hand, specialize entirely in unmanaged VPS servers, so if that’s what you want, I suggest you look at those instead. But with Liquid Web, there’s no opting out of management fees.

No Asia Data Centers

Liquid Web has two VPS data centers in the United States and one in Europe. Here are the locations:

1. Lansing, Michigan (US Central)
2. Phoenix, Arizona (US West)
3. Amsterdam, Netherlands (Europe Central)

Sadly, it doesn’t have servers in Asia. So if your customers are located on the other side of the globe, you might want to choose another VPS provider rather than Liquid Web. I suggest HostArmada VPS below.

LiquidWeb VPS Performance

Liquid Web’s VPS performance is outstanding. Unlike other hosts, it offers a 100% uptime SLA, including ten times the SLA credits for downtime. So if your VPS is down for half an hour a month, you get 300 minutes of credit – or 5 hours. Liquid Web servers also have excellent bandwidth limits, often more than five times that of other web hosts. The Cloudflare add-on gives you tight integration with Cloudflare’s WAF and DDoS protection packages, which further isolate your VPS from malicious attacks.

All this makes for impressive performance metrics compared to other web hosts.

Liquid Web Performance Rating: ★★★★★ 5 stars

Liquid Web VPS Security

All Liquid Web VPS plans come with the “Server Secure” service for free. This includes:

• Server hardening
• Disabling SSH root
• Firewall protection
• Security audits
• Intrusion protection

If you want more, you can purchase the “Server Secure Plus” add-on that includes malware and vulnerability scanning. You can purchase these as a bundle, or as individual add-ons. Combined with the cheap Cloudflare Pro plan security package, Liquid Web’s security suite is very strong, even without additional purchases.

Liquid Web Security Rating: ★★★★★ 5 stars

LiquidWeb Customer Service

While other web hosts make customer support promises, Liquid Web is the only one that guarantees it. Here are their minimum response time guarantees for the various support channels:

• Phone service: 59 seconds
• Live chat: 59 seconds
• Ticket: 59 minutes

When you call them or initiate a live chat, you’re guaranteed to get a response in less than a minute. Liquid Web also doesn’t have unmanaged VPS hosting, so customer service is an integral part of your experience, regardless of which product you choose.

Liquid Web Customer Service Rating: ★★★★★ 5 stars

Liquid Web VPS vs Other VPS Providers

Ratings of various VPS providers compared to Liquid Web:

VPS Provider	Rating
LiquidWeb VPS	★★★★★ 5 stars
KnownHost VPS	★★★☆☆ 3 stars
NameHero VPS	★★★★☆ 4 stars
Bluehost VPS	★★☆☆☆ 2 stars
A2 Hosting VPS	★★★☆☆ 3 stars
RoseHosting VPS	★★★☆☆ 3 stars
InMotion VPS	★★★★☆ 4 stars
Hostgator VPS	★☆☆☆☆ 1 star

Here’s how Liquid Web stacks up to other VPS services.

Liquid Web VPS vs KnownHost VPS

KnownHost has attractive long-term VPS pricing. However, it falls behind Liquid Web regarding features such as backups and cPanel availability. Here are the KnownHost promo codes for all their deals. The LiquidWeb discounts are so high that even after four years, it’s still cheaper than KnownHost with lower renewal prices.

Here’s a comparison of Liquid Web and KnownHost VPS features:

Feature	LiquidWeb VPS	KnownHost VPS
Initial Pricing	$15.00/m	$40.00/m
Backups	100 GB Free Acronis	Paid
Bandwidth	10 TB	1 TB – 6 TB
Storage	40 GB – 200 GB	20 GB – 300 GB
Free cPanel?	Yes. 5 Accounts	❌
Uptime SLA	100%	99.9%

KnownHost has add-ons for everything, which increases the cost of hosting, and it also has meager bandwidth limits compared to Liquid Web. For a more in-depth review of the differences, check out my KnownHost vs LiquidWeb comparison.

Liquid Web vs NameHero VPS

NameHero is a very close competitor to Liquid Web. They have similar bandwidth and storage limits, but they differ in pricing. NameHero is cheaper in the long term, with renewal prices starting at $39.95/m. Here’s the best NameHero coupon to get the best discount. but it doesn’t have as many features such as backups. Here’s the best NameHero coupon you can use today. NameHero also doesn’t offer cPanel for free, but you can use InterWorx on as many sites as you like without charge.

Feature	LiquidWeb VPS	NameHero VPS
Initial Pricing	$15.00/m	$21.97/m
Backups	100 GB Free Acronis	Paid
Bandwidth	10 TB	10 TB
Storage	40 GB – 200 GB	30 GB – 120 GB
Free cPanel?	Yes. 5 Accounts	❌
Uptime SLA	100%	99.9%

If you require cPanel and plan to pay extra for backups anyway, then Liquid Web is better than NameHero, especially if you’re a Cloudflare subscriber. For a more detailed look, see my NameHero review.

LiquidWeb VPS vs Bluehost VPS

The Bluehost VPS barely has any features at all. However, it also has the cheapest plan starting at just $18.99/m, and the renewal price is half as much as Liquid Web. Here’s the complete Bluehost discount list. It’s suitable for cheap managed VPS hosting, but you barely get any features.

This is the feature comparison of Bluehost and LiquidWeb:

Feature	LiquidWeb VPS	Bluehost VPS
Initial Pricing	$15.00/m	$18.99/m
Backups	100 GB Free Acronis	Paid CodeGuard add-on
Bandwidth	10 TB	1 TB – 3 TB
Storage	40 GB – 200 GB	30 GB – 120 GB
Free cPanel?	Yes. 5 Accounts	Free solo account
Uptime SLA	100%	No SLA

The lack of an SLA is a big red flag. Also, Bluehost has such low bandwidth quotas that I worry about the quality of their VPS hosting.

Liquid Web vs Kinsta

Liquid Web and Kinsta are two very different products. Kinsta is managed WordPress hosting, whereas Liquid Web is VPS servers. For single-site WordPress hosting, Kinsta is better in every way and is cheaper, too, starting at $29.17/m for a lifetime discount. Check out my article on why Kinsta is so expensive. But despite that, Liquid Web costs a lot more, particularly after the renewal period.

Liquid Web makes more sense than Kinsta if you have multiple sites since Kinsta charges you per installation, whereas you can install as many sites as you want on a single Liquid Web VPS plan. This is why, for Kinsta, a VPS is a good alternative.

LiquidWeb VPS vs A2 Hosting VPS

A2 Hosting’s basic VPS plan is more expensive than Liquid Web’s, but the starting server’s configuration is higher, and Liquid Web is still more expensive after controlling for the difference. You can get started with A2 Hosting’s VPS plan for just $39.99/m. Here’s the A2 Hosting coupon code list for more details.

Feature comparison between Liquid Web VPS and A2 Hosting:

Feature	LiquidWeb VPS	A2 Hosting VPS
Initial Pricing	$15.00/m	$39.99/m
Backups	100 GB Free Acronis	❌
Bandwidth	10 TB	2 TB – 4 TB
Storage	40 GB – 200 GB	150 GB – 450 GB
Free cPanel?	Yes. 5 Accounts	Free solo account
Uptime SLA	100%	99.9%

The most significant difference is that Liquid Web has free remote Acronis backups, while A2 Hosting has a single non-guaranteed daily backup. This means that Liquid Web is better than A2 Hosting, and liquid Web also has a better compensation for downtime – see the section on performance for more details.

Liquid Web vs RoseHosting VPS

RoseHosting is one of the oldest VPS providers. Like Liquid Web, they have a 24-month billing cycle, but the difference is that RoseHosting’s VPS discounts are permanent. There are no higher renewal prices, which makes RoseHosting very affordable, especially since their starting VPS servers are pretty cheap at $20.97/m. Click here for the complete RoseHosting review.

Feature	LiquidWeb VPS	RoseHosting VPS
Initial Pricing	$15.00/m	$20.97/m
Backups	100 GB Free Acronis	Free Weekly + Paid Extra
Bandwidth	10 TB	2 TB – 12 TB
Storage	40 GB – 200 GB	30 GB – 200 GB
Free cPanel?	Yes. 5 Accounts	$15/m
Uptime SLA	100%	100%
NVMe Drives	❌	✅

RoseHosting has some unique features like NVMe drives instead of SSDs. Also, they’re the only other web host that has 100% SLA uptime guarantees like Liquid Web. However, the lack of free backups is a significant hurdle. Even if you’re willing to pay, RoseHosting charges you an exorbitant fee for just a single extra weekly backup – a far cry from Liquid Web’s real-time Acronis backups.

Liquid Web VPS vs InMotion Hosting VPS

InMotion VPS plans are cheaper than Liquid Web, starting at just $17.99/m. The lower-end InMotion Hosting servers have a higher configuration than the lowest-tier LiquidWeb package, so comparing prices is hard. Here’s the InMotion coupon page for all their deals.

Feature comparison between LiquidWeb VPS and InMotion VPS:

Feature	LiquidWeb VPS	InMotion VPS
Initial Pricing	$15.00/m	$17.99/m
Backups	100 GB Free Acronis	❌
Bandwidth	10 TB	2 TB
Storage	40 GB – 200 GB	90 GB – 360 GB
Free cPanel?	Yes. 5 Accounts	5 Free Accounts
Uptime SLA	100%	None
NVMe Drives	❌	✅

LiquidWeb has more features than InMotion and is a better choice for VPS hosting if you can get past the price. Free backups, a massive bandwidth quota, and excellent add-ons make it a no-brainer. The lack of an uptime SLA for InMotion is concerning and comes nowhere close to matching the unique 100% SLA offered by Liquid Web.

Hostgator VPS vs Liquid Web

Hostgator is terrible for VPS hosting. It’s costly, starting at $19.95/m, with renewal prices that are even higher than those of Liquid Web. Here are the list of Hostgator coupons to get more deals It comes with a single weekly backup, no free cPanel, low storage, and no specific bandwidth commitment. I don’t know why anyone would purchase a Hostgator VPS plan.

Here’s the full Liquid Web vs Hostgator page for an in-depth comparison.

Feature	LiquidWeb VPS	Hostgator VPS
Initial Pricing	$15.00/m	$19.95/m
Backups	100 GB Free Acronis	❌
Bandwidth	10 TB	Unspecified
Storage	40 GB – 200 GB	120 GB – 240 GB
Free cPanel?	Yes. 5 Accounts	❌
Uptime SLA	100%	99.9%

Despite the stunning lack of features, the Hostgator VPS plans are far more expensive than even the premium Liquid Web VPS. They could have at least provided a decent backup service, and instead, their terms of service explicitly state that the backups are at your own risk. And unlike Liquid Web, with provides 10x the hosting credit for any downtime, Hostgator issues credits only for the actual downtime. Here’s the full review of the Hostgator VPS if you want to learn more.

Final Thoughts on Liquid Web VPS Plans

Liquid Web isn’t cheap. But the add-ons and features they provide for free can cost you less than if you were to purchase them separately – particularly Cloudflare Pros and the free Acronis Backups. The initial two-year discount is exceptionally high, making it an attractive choice even for cost-conscious customers. You see why a Liquid Web VPS is so good when you throw in 100% uptime SLA and the customer service response guarantees.