LiquidWeb WordPress Hosting Review (2016)

LiquidWeb was a first time participant in WordPress Hosting Performance Benchmarks. They have been around for a long time in the managed web hosting space but only recently entered the WordPress space. They have consistently been one of the top companies tracked at Review Signal winning numerous awards for their shared and VPS hosting.

Those are some pretty big expectations to meet when you enter a space that is already full of many competitors and being the new kid on the block. The only other first time participant that did as well was WordPress.com VIP, which isn't a new entrant into the space, but only this testing.

Products

Company / Price Bracket	Plan	Monthly Price	Visitors Allowed	Disk Space	Bandwidth	Sites Allowed
LiquidWeb 51-100	Personal	$89	Unlimited	100GB SSD	5 TB	10
LiquidWeb 101-200	Professional	$149	Unlimited	150GB SSD	5 TB	20

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Performance Review

LoadStorm Results

Company / Price Bracket	Total Requests	Total Errors	Peak RPS	Average RPS	Peak Response Time(ms)	Average Response Time(ms)	Total Data Transferred (GB)	Peak Throughput (MB/s)	Average Throughput (MB/s)
LiquidWeb 51-100	520072	2745	408.3	288.93	15322	525	24.04	19.69	13.35
LiquidWeb 101-200	635893	76	490.78	353.27	15097	360	31.3	25.19	17.39

LoadStorm test logged in thousands of users to simulate heavy uncached load on the server, scaling up with more users on larger plans after the $25-50/month range. LiquidWeb handled these tests with relative ease. The larger plan did better managing a faster average response time and having fewer errors. But both results were top tier performances.

Blitz Results

Company / Price Bracket	Hits	Errors	Timeouts	Average Hits/Second	Average Response Time	Fastest Response	Slowest Response
LiquidWeb 51-100	54574	0	4	910	78	77	82
LiquidWeb 101-200	81393	47	10	1357	80	76	118

The Blitz test is designed to make sure that static assets (which should be served from cache) are being handled properly and can scale to very heavy big spikes in traffic. If the LoadStorm test was a clinic, this was absolute perfection. LiquidWeb had minimal issues with the Blitz test. A very minor spike up to 118ms on the bigger test is the only noticeable thing. Again, top tier performances.

Uptime

Company	StatusCake	UptimeRobot
LiquidWeb 51-100	100	100
LiquidWeb 101-200	100	100

Perfect.

WebPageTest / WPPerformanceTester

I mention these because they are in the full testing but I won't bother putting them here. No company had any significant issue with either and it's not worth writing about. If you're very interested in seeing the geographical response times on WPT or what the raw computing power test of WPPerformanceTester measured, read the full results.

Conclusion

LiquidWeb earned Top Tier WordPress Hosting Performance for both plans it entered. It's product line starts in the mid-range price wise and goes up. They definitely have the performance to match the pricing. Absolutely perfect uptime was nice to see too. I'm pleased to see they bring their strong reputation to this market with a strong product that matches the quality people have come to expect from LiquidWeb.