It is difficult to run an online store because of the many tasks involved in inventory management, web design and marketing. Fully managed ecommerce hosting services can be a great option to help you focus on your business and not the technical aspects of hosting. We’ll be reviewing Nexcess and explaining its pricing, features and types of hosting.
We’ll then help you determine if Nexcess (owned Liquid Web), is a viable option for hosting your online store.
But before that… What is managed hosting?
Hosting is required for all websites. A server management company will store your files on its servers instead of you having to host it in your house or office.
Hosting companies often only sell server space. However, you will end up managing site optimization, site installations, and backups.
Although managed hosting is more expensive, it can save you a lot of time. The hosting company usually completes all hosting tasks. It all depends on which company you choose, but you might receive automated backups and speed optimization as well as installation assistance and site file management.
Managed hosting, in its simplest form, is what the name implies: managed hosting, which means that you don’t need to worry about technical aspects of hosting.
Nexcess offers a variety of hosting options
We found Nexcess to offer fully managed hosting services that are optimized for ecommerce stores with high scalability, speed, and uptime.
There are many ecommerce platforms that you can choose from. It’s important to know which platforms are supported and maintained by Nexcess Hosting.
Nexcess provides hosting for these popular ecommerce platforms. Each platform has its own requirements and features that make them stand out.
- Managed WooCommerce Hosting: Boost performance and eliminate unnecessary tasks so your WooCommerce site is more efficient.
- Managed WordPress Hosting: Get automatic updates and many other benefits for WordPress ecommerce and membership sites. You get SSL certificates free of charge and automatic scaling. WooCommerce runs on WordPress, but there are many other ecommerce plugins.
- Managed Magento Hosting is an excellent solution for Magento users. This open-source platform is designed for websites that are high-traffic and rapidly growing.
- BigCommerce for WordPress Host – Create a headless online shop through BigCommerce and take advantage of WordPress’s content creation and blogging abilities. Nexcess is a great option for this type configuration.
- Drupal Hosting Create a membership website, ecommerce site, or standard website using Drupal. Nexcess managed hosting is available for optimal performance.
- ExpressionEngine Hosting Nexcess offers managed hosting for ExpressionEngine LMS (learning management software) that allows you to create and sell online courses.
Nexcess Pricing
Pricing for Nexcess depends on the type and amount of managed hosting that you choose, as well as other factors such disk space requirements.
All pricing below is applicable to monthly payments. A yearly plan can help you save money.
Let’s start by reviewing the Nexcess pricing model for Magento hosting.
- XS $49 per Month for 20 Users, 50GB Disk Space, 10 Domains, and 1TB Bandwidth.
- S $99 per Month for 40 Users, 75GB Disk Space, 15 Domains, and 2TB Bandwidth.
- M $179 per Month for 60 Users, 125GB storage and 3TB bandwidth.
- L: $299 per month for 80 people, 400GB disk space, 30 domains and 5TB bandwidth. This plan also includes 20 VCPUs and 20GB RAM.
For Managed WooCommerce hosting
- Starter $19 per Month for one store, 30GB storage and up to 500 orders an hour. The Nexcess StoreBuilder is also available.
- Creator $79 per Month for up to 3 stores, 60GB storage and up to 1000 orders per hour. Access to the StoreBuilder.
- Merchant: $149 per Month for up to 5 stores, 100GB storage and up to 2500 orders per hour.
- Standard $299 per Month for up to 10 stores and 300GB storage. Advanced analytics available.
Pricing plans for Managed WordPress site hosting include:
- Spark $19 per Month for One Site, 15GB Storage and 2TB Bandwidth
- Maker $79 per Month for up to 5 websites, 40GB storage and 3TB bandwidth
- Designer $109 per Month for up to 10 websites with 60GB storage and 4TB bandwidth
- Builder $149 per Month for up to 25 websites, 100GB storage and 5TB bandwidth
Nexcess offers several more expensive plans to help you grow your online store. Magento, WooCommerce and WordPress offer hosting that is highly efficient and cost-effective at around $800 per month.
Hosting Features and Products
Each Nexcess hosting plan includes a set amount of disk space and bandwidth.
You can expect many other features and products from managed hosting plans. Some of these include:
Automated backups
Nexcess plans include nightly automatic backups that save your site files and database in case of an error or need to restore them.
These backups are kept for 30 days. This gives you enough data to go back and see which ones you want to restore, if needed.
It is also nice to know Nexcess offers support for data restoration from the past. This means you are never left to do it all by yourself.
Advanced Security
It is important to know that both your website data and personal data of your customers are protected at all times. Nexcess has a variety of security solutions that will protect you.
The nightly backups are a way to safeguard your databases in the event of an attack or human error. Nexcess provides proactive security that runs in the background and is available at any time. This eliminates the need to install a security plugin or monitor the status of your website.
Nexcess is PCI compliant. This allows customers to keep their personal and financial data secure when they make a transaction. There is also malware monitoring that runs every night and automated security patches. These are just a few of the many proactive elements you have to make sure you keep out the bad guys, protect customer data, and lock down customers’ data.
Automated Scaling for Traffic Surges
Online shops see an increase in traffic at certain times of year, particularly during holidays. This is true for certain industries as well. You might sell horseracing hats, and you need to be ready for an increase in sales when the Kentucky Derby or Belmont Stakes are held each year.
This type of surge is not possible with standard hosting, so your site may slow down or crash.
This is not something you want to be in. Nexcess has an automatic scaling feature that increases concurrency when there is a surge in traffic. You will see an increase in visitors to your site over 24 hours.
Speed Boosted Pages
You can improve the page speed with several parts of Nexcess’ hosting infrastructure. The Nexcess cloud hosting is known for its ability to speed up page loads. You can also choose the location of your server.
Nexcess also offers a CDN (content delivery system) which uses a network dedicated servers to deliver your website content to the user based on their location. It is important to consider the location of the server. For example, a CDN might deliver your site content via a Los Angeles machine to a Los Angeles user who visits your site from Los Angeles. The Nexcess CDN currently has 22 locations.
Nexcess offers some of these technologies to speed up load times and improve the performance of your website:
- Premium image compression.
- PHP 7 + Varnish technology.
- Automated scaling
- Elasticsearch technology.
- Advanced caching
Staging Environments
Developers can use a staging environment to create a website or make changes to an existing website without having to affect the live site.
You can make mistakes, change content and spend as much time in the staging area before releasing the changes to the public.
Staging makes development easier and more professional. The staging environment can be used to collaborate with other stakeholders to present changes for their approval before the publication.
Combination of cloud and physical hosting
Nexcess hosting offers a variety of special features, such as dedicated IP addresses and staging sites. These are all added to your service via a cloud-based system.
Nexcess also uses virtualization to make your server available in a cloud environment. This allows for faster access, better security, and backups.
You still have the option to choose a physical data centre, as that is necessary for storing your site files on a web server. The best thing about selecting your server location is the fact that it can speed up load times, since you want the server closer to your site visitors.
Support for Nexcess customers
An ecommerce store that is growing must know that their site runs smoothly at all times. This is the purpose of managed hosting. However, it’s important to know that you can always call or email the web hosting company.
We discovered that the web host offers a lot of support during our Nexcess review. They offer 24/7 customer service as well as several contact options like email, phone, and chatbox.
You will be redirected to experts for your specific type of hosting.
Magento hosting for your Magento site? Nexcess will connect you with someone who has that specialty. This is true for both WordPress and WooCommerce websites.
For those who are interested in doing their own research or learning more about Nexcess, the online resources available from Nexcess support can also be very helpful. Access to the Knowledgebase and Help Sections, which are filled with information about file management and security.
Nexcess.net has resources that are tailored for specific types of hosting such as its page on WooCommerce Resources. To understand your server’s health, you can also find case studies and a page on system status.
We like the Nexcess Blog as well. It has a lot of great information about growing your ecommerce website, creating online booking systems and more.
You can also reach Nexcess via Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook if all else fails.
Our Nexcess review revealed a host with a great number of support channels and resources.
Nexcess Hosting is Right for Your Online Store
It’s hard to find quality ecommerce hosting. Hosting is not always managed properly, does not have daily backups and can scale for increased traffic. Nexcess hosting, on the other side, focuses almost exclusively on Ecommerce Hosting. This covers all the requirements of online stores, including scaling and downtime.
Nexcess is a great choice for ecommerce shops, especially if you use autoscaling and one-click staging sites. They offer a range of options and reasonable pricing to help you grow your business.
We like Nexcess hosting for WooCommerce, WordPress and Magento sites. It is also available for BigCommerce and membership sites.
If you have any feedback or experience with Nexcess, please leave it in the comments. We welcome any questions about Nexcess. It can be difficult to find the right web hosting solution for your ecommerce store.
