Launching a Magento store requires Magento hosting plan, that’s where Nexcess managed Magento hosting comes in handy. So read our Nexcess managed Magento hosting review to find out whether is it the right choice for your Magento website or not.
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Nexcess Managed Magento Hosting Review
Our Nexcess managed Magento hosting review is going to be very amazing as it will cover each aspect of the hosting. This review covers the performance (speed tests and uptime data), plan pricing, customer support, ease of use, pros and cons, and much more.
Before getting started, let’s cover the basics.
What is Magento?
Magento is an open-source, eCommerce CMS (Content Management System) owned by Adobe that is designed for eCommerce websites. It powers nearly 200000 eCommerce websites.
Magento saves you time and effort as it helps you manage multiple online stores from one admin panel. In addition, users get access to hundreds of unique features that help them connect with their customers and sell more products.
To get live a Magento eCommerce website, you need to host your website on a server, that’s where Magento hosting comes in.
What is Magento Hosting?
Magento hosting is a web hosting plan in which the entire tech stack is designed for running Magento online stores.
Magento hosting will often offer you all the important features that you need for your eCommerce websites like free SSL certificates and compatibility with the popular tools.
Magento hosting is organized into two categories: Unmanaged Magento Hosting and Managed Magento Hosting.
Let’s compare them, which one is best for your Magento store?
Unmanaged Magento Hosting VS Managed Magento Hosting
When you want to launch your Magento store, you’ll have to choose managed Magento hosting or unmanaged Magento hosting.
What is Unmanaged Magento Hosting?
Unmanaged Magento hosting is a cheaper option where users have to secure their Magento websites, install security patches, and fix errors on their own.
The hosting provider only maintains the hardware, replaces failed components, and keeps the machine turned on and connected to the internet.
The upside of unmanaged Magento hosting is that it gives you complete control over your server which is a good option if you have time and expertise.
A downside of unmanaged Magento hosting is that you’ll pay for customer support, your web host will offer an hourly rate for fixing your issues.
What is Managed Magento Hosting?
Managed Magento hosting is a little bit expensive option where the web host takes care of the technical aspects. This means managed Magento hosting requires less work and little expertise to launch and build Magento stores.
Managed Magento hosting is designed to deliver optimal customer support, better performance, and superior security.
This is a perfect choice if you have no time and little expertise to maintain your website’s security and performance.
You should choose one of them that fits your requirements and needs.
I recommend you managed Magento hosting, so you’ll focus on your business and your web host will take care of technical aspects.
Nexcess is one of the best managed Magento hosting providers, so let’s talk about it.
What is Nexcess?
Nexcess is the fully managed hosting provider and sister brand of Liquid Web that has 23 years of experience. The web host manages over 500000 websites and has 8 data centers around the world.
The web host offers managed WordPress hosting, managed WooCommerce hosting and managed Magento hosting.
Their hosting plans are rich-featured and come up with advanced features and premium tools that help you build your websites and online stores.
Let’s dig dive into the features of Nexcess managed Magento hosting.
Features of Nexcess Managed Magento Hosting
Nexcess managed Magento hosting plans include all the essential plus additional features that help you successfully run Magento online stores.
Here’s the list of 13 important features.
#1. Staging Sites
A staging site (or staging environment) is an identical copy of your live site where you can test new changes and major features that you want to apply to your live website. And changes in the staging environment won’t affect your live website.
Developers use a staging environment to test plugins, themes, codes, major features, and new changes before getting live on the production (live) website.
Nexcess managed Magento hosting enables you to create a staging site to test anything before going to live the production site.
#2. Dedicated IP Addresses
A dedicated IP address is an IP address that is only assigned to a single domain or hosting account. Using a dedicated IP translates to reducing the risk of IP getting blocked, logging into your website securely, and transferring files safely.
With Nexcess managed Magento hosting, you get dedicated IP addresses to increase the security of your website.
#3. Instant Auto-Scaling
Auto-scaling means adding extra resources to your website to maintain the speed, performance, and user experience when more concurrent users come to your website.
Nexcess Auto-scaling feature allows you to bypass PHP capacity limits for a short time to handle traffic spikes.
#4. Built-in Nexcess CDN
Nexcess automatically configures its built-in CDN on managed hosting plans. The Nexcess built-in CDN stores and serves static files like images, videos, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS from worldwide servers.
Nexcess built-in CDN offers 22 locations and advanced cashing for fast-lightning speed.
#5. Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch maximizes your conversion potential because it allows you to show better search results to customers. This means your customers will easily and quickly find what they are looking for.
Nexcess offers Elasticsearch with cloud containers with each managed Magento hosting plan.
#6. Nightly Backups
Nexcess automatically takes backups of your Magento store every night. They store backups for 30-day. You can also manually create and download backups onto your local drive from Nexcess Client Portal.
Read More: How To Backup Your WordPress Website?
#7. Unlimited Email Accounts
A business email address is a professional email account that uses your domain name after @ symbol. Your business email helps you to build your brand credibility and earn customers’ trust as a legitimate business.
Nexcess managed Magento hosting allows you to create as many business email addresses as you want from Nexcess Client Portal.
#8. PWA-Ready
PWA (or Progressive Web App) is a type of apps built using HTML, CSS, JS, and modern web browser APIs. The PWAs are essentially sites that look like native web apps on mobile and other devices.
The purpose of PWA is to deliver app-like speed and ease of use even with a poor Internet connection. So it’s the perfect solution for online stores with poor mobile UX and low conversion rates.
#9. PCI-Compliant
PCI DSS (The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is a mark of trust that lets know customers your business is following industry standards for the secure processing, storage, and transmission of cardholder data.
In simple words, PCI-complaint means that any organization, company, or online store that accepts, transmits, or stores the private data of cardholders is compliant with the industry security measures outlined by the PCI Security Standard Council to ensure that the data is private.
Nexcess offers you PCI-complaint that helps you earn customers’ trust and process credit card information safely.
#10. Nightly Automatic Malware Monitoring
What is malware? Malware (stands for malicious software) is any program, file, or code that is intentionally harmful to your website. It’s used to gain unauthorized access to your website and steal information.
Nexcess automatically monitors and scans your website’s files to detect malware. This is a good security measure to protect your website against malware.
#11. Free Site Migration
Migrating your Magento website to Nexcess is included at no additional cost with every managed Magento hosting plan.
If you want to migrate your website by Nexcess experts, you just request a migration from Nexcess Client Portal by providing the domain name to be transferred and credential information. Usually, it takes one week or less to be completed. Once your website is completely migrated, they ask you to check the migrated data and update your DNS record.
In case you have a strict time frame to migrate your website or you want to experience the migration process, then you should perform your website migration on your own.
#12. Data Centers
Choosing the closest data center near your target audience makes sense a lot. Because if the data center is in the USA and a user attempts to access a webpage from Australia, then the webpage will have to go thousands of miles.
Thus, each Nexcess’s data center location has been chosen carefully for performance, security, and strategic positioning. Nexcess’s data centers are PCI-compliant and offer enhanced security and additional redundancies as well as a 24/7/365 support team.
Nexcess has 8 data centers located in North America, Europe, and Asia-pacific.
Here’s the list of Nexcess’s data centers.
- US Midwest Southfield, MI
- US Midwest Dearborn, MI
- US West San Jose, CA
- US South Miami, FL
- UK South Surrey, UK
- UK South West Sussex, UK
- The Netherlands West Amsterdam, NL
- Australia South Sydney, NSW
- Lansing, MI (DC3)
#13. 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
Nexcess believes that you would love its hosting services however if you don’t, you can request a refund within the first 30-day of signup.
You just need to contact billing support and request a refund. If you’re eligible, you’ll be received back your full payment within 7-10 business days.
Nexcess Managed Magento Hosting Plans Pricing
Nexcess managed Magento hosting plans come in two categories: Small Scale and Large Scale. Each one contains 3 plans.
Small Scale Plans
Small Scale includes the following 3 plans.
- XS Plan: Starts at $14.75 a month and offers 50GB disk space, 10 domains, 1TB bandwidth, and 20 concurrent users.
- S Plan: Starts at $27.25 a month and gets you 75GB disk space, 15 domains, 2TB bandwidth, and 40 concurrent users.
- M Plan: Starts at $47.25 a month and comes with 125GB disk space, 20 domains, 3TB bandwidth, and 60 concurrent users.
Large Scale Plans
Here’s the list of Large Scale plans.
- L Plan: Starts at $77.25 a month and enables you 400GB disk space, 30 domains, 5TB bandwidth, 80 concurrent users, 20 VCPU, and 20GB RAM.
- XL Plan: Starts at $139.75 a month and provides 600GB disk space, 40 domains, 8TB bandwidth, and 100 concurrent users, 26 VCPU, and 26GB RAM.
- XXL Plan: Starts at $214.75 a month and receives you 800GB disk space, 50 domains, 10TB bandwidth, and 120 concurrent users, 32 VCPU, and 32GB RAM.
Quick Note: The above-mentioned prices are for the first 6 months (you save 50% for the first 6 months) then you renew at the normal rate.
Speed Tests
Your website speed or performance translates to how fastly your website loads. Faster websites receive more traffic, drive more sales, and generate higher revenue.
On the other hand, websites with lower performance have small visibility in search results, less traffic, lower conversion rate, and low business outcomes.
Let’s run speed tests.
I launched a demo website hosted on Nexcess managed Magento hosting and installed free Ebajes theme. Then, I ran speed tests from different locations using GtMetrix webpage speed testing tool.
The website was loaded within 588ms with a 98% performance score and A-grade from San Antonio, TX, USA. So, it’s faster.
Uptime Historical Data
Nexcess ensures a 99.99% uptime guarantee which is higher than industry standard.
Nexcess delivered an uptime of 99.98% for July 2022 and 100% for August 2022. In addition, for the first days of September 2022, they delivered 100% uptime.
How Good Customer Support Is?
Nexcess has a team of Magento specialists who are available day and night, 24/7/365 to help you. They could fix your issues and answer your questions via live chat, phone, and ticket as well as provide a helpful knowledge base.
Live Chat Support
Usually, they respond to you within a minute with a friendly attitude via live chat and I experienced it.
I connected with them within a few seconds via live chat and asked about their data centers, they provided me a source link to check it yourself. In addition, I asked many questions and got useful answers as shown in the below screenshots.
Ticket Support
You can also create tickets for any issue that you encounter from your Nexcess Client Portal. Usually, they solve your problem within one hour.
Phone Support
Their phone support is available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week to assist you. Nexcess provides the following phone numbers for different regions’ customers.
- Americas – 1-866-639-2377
- Australia Toll-free – 1-800-765-472
- Australia International: 1-313-279-0722
- United Kingdom: +0-808-196-5715
Ease of Use
Nexcess has its built-in administration panel called Nexcess Client Portal to manage your account, billing, DNS, SSL, and much more. Nexcess Client Portal shows you what is going on with your account in a way that you understand.
There’s no cPanel but all the options you need are available in the Nexcess Client Portal. From the left sidebar menu, you can navigate to different options.
Why Consider Nexcess Managed Magento Hosting?
Choosing an ideal hosting provider is always the first step toward getting successful. You need to choose a web host that fits your needs.
Nexcess is one of the best managed Magento hosting providers on the market. Nexcess managed Magento hosting offers improved performance, enhanced security, and optimal customer support.
Here’re 3 major reasons to host your Magento store on Nexcess managed Magento hosting.
#1. Improved Performance
Nexcess has built its managed Magento hosting service with improved performance in mind. Nexcess offers the following features to boost your website performance.
- Auto-scaling: Nexcess will add more resources to your account when there’s a huge traffic spike.
- PWA-Ready: Your customers will browse your Magento store with an app-like feel.
- Elasticsearch: Your customers will easily and quickly find what they are looking for.
- Nexcess Built-in CDN: This caches your website’s data on worldwide servers and serves from local data centers to customers and visitors.
#2. Enhanced Security
Nexcess offers the following premium features to keep safe your Magento store.
- Nightly Malware Monitoring: Nexcess automatically scans your Magento store for malware.
- Proactive Security Patches: This fixes security vulnerabilities and other bugs to protect your Magento website.
- Nightly Backups: Nexcess will automatically take backups of your Magento store to keep saving your store’s data.
- PCI-Compliant: Your Magento store will be PCI-compliant, you’ll be able to securely accept, transmit, or store the private data of cardholders.
- Staging Environments: This will help you to keep your live Magento store safe from defacing. This means you can then easily push the right changes to your live website after testing them.
- Dedicated IP Addresses: You’ll get dedicated IP addresses that increase your website’s security.
#3. Top-Notch Customer Support
The customer support of Nexcess is top-notch in the hosting industry. Their support experts are available every time, 24/7/365 to solve your problems.
Nexcess offers the following support options to solve your problems and answer your questions.
- Live Chat: You can contact them even if you aren’t an existing customer via live chat.
- Phone: They offer multiple phone numbers for different regions, so you can also call them anytime you want.
- Ticket: If you’re an existing customer, you can create tickets from Nexcess Client Portal.
- Email: If you want to get in touch with the Nexcess support team via email, you just have to send them emails to provided email addresses like [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].
- Knowledgebase: If you want to fix any issue on your own, they have how-to guides, tutorials, blogs, videos, and much more that will help you.
Nexcess VS Other Popular Magento Hosting Providers
Here’s the comparison table of Nexcess and other popular Magento hosting providers.
| Aspects | Nexcess | Cloudways | A2 Hosting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $29.50/Mo | $50/Mo | $54.99/Mo |
| Websites | 10 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Staging Site | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free Dedicated IPs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CDN | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Site Migration | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SSL Certificates | X | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automated Backups | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email Addresses | ✓ | X | ✓ |
| Uptime Guarantee | 99.99% | 99.99% | 99.9% |
Here you can see that Nexcess managed Magento hosting is the cheapest option and still offers dozens of features.
Pros And Cons
Nexcess managed Magento hosting has pros and cons as everything has.
Pros
👍 Top-Notch Customer Support
👍 Enhanced Security
👍 Improved Performance
👍 User-Friendly Client Portal (Dashboard)
👍 Staging Sites
👍 Dedicated IP Addresses
👍 Instant Auto-Scaling
👍 Built-in Nexcess CDN
👍 Elasticsearch
👍 Nightly Backups
👍 Unlimited Email Accounts
👍 PWA-Ready
👍 PCI-Compliant
👍 Nightly Automatic Malware Monitoring
👍 Free Site Migration
👍 8 Data Centers
👍 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
Cons
👎 No Free Domain
👎 No SSL Certificates
👎 A Bit Expensive
Conclusion
Nexcess managed Magento hosting works best for running Magento stores. Nexcess managed Magento hosting comes with top-notch support, superior security and improved performance.
With Nexcess managed Magento hosting, you get all the features that you need to run Magento websites. They include dedicated IP addresses, staging sites, auto-scaling, built-in CDN, Elasticsearch, automated backups, email accounts, PWA-readiness, PCI-complaint, free site migration, 30-day money-back guarantee.
I recommend you host your Magento store on Nexcess managed Magento hosting. Their regular prices are high but don’t worry, the Nexcess Black Friday Sale 2022 is here.
I hope you found useful our Nexcess managed Magento hosting review.
