Nexcess Review: Are the Premium Features Worth It? [2023]

A Solid Host for Small Businesses and E-Commerce Sites

Nexcess specializes in shared cloud hosting that’s more powerful than your standard shared hosting setup. You can also choose from various managed hosting tiers with ample resources, tools, and support.

All of Nexcess’ plans are powerful enough to run most standard informational business sites or e-commerce storefronts – and affordably, as well. Nexcess is one of the lowest-cost premium hosting providers due to its unique shared scalable cloud infrastructure. Typically, hosts only offer scalable resources on pricier VPS and dedicated server plans.

This allows Nexcess to automatically improve site performance and speed during traffic surges. Plus, it offers easy-to-use, exclusive plugins and tools that make monitoring and optimizing site performance straightforward.

Specialized Features Equal Improved Performance and Easier Site Optimization for Beginners

Backed by cloud infrastructure and the unique features and tools included in its packages, Nexcess’ shared hosting plans really do stand out from the competition. First off, all plans include features to ensure your site’s maintenance, security, and optimizations are covered.

Secondly, you can easily optimize your website because all of these tools are very user-friendly, even for beginners. You can clone your site in a staging area to test changes before they go live, and you can even build an online shop without knowing how to code.

Performance Monitor Plugin

The Performance Monitor plugin included with all Nexcess WordPress hosting plans monitors your WordPress site’s performance before and after plugins are installed or updated, giving you valuable insights into potential performance issues and, sometimes, how you can improve or fix these.

Though automatically set up, you may need to toggle the Performance Monitoring plugin on and off in the WordPress dashboard to get it up and running.

Cloud-Based Autoscaling in Times of Heavy Traffic

In addition, Nexcess’ hosting plans include the NGINX Accelerator, which improves site speed and security by pre-fetching and caching site content so that it loads more quickly with repeat visits.

Another benefit is that Nexcess doesn’t charge overage fees if your site exceeds its resource limits. The sales team will recommend upgrading to a higher plan if your site is continuously using more than its allocated resources.

Nexcess Visual Comparison Tool

Updating your site and its plugins without proper testing can be fraught with risks – even potentially crashing or corrupting it. With the Nexcess Visual Comparison Tool, you don’t need to worry about all that.

Nexcess pre-tests update changes to WordPress or WooCommerce sites in a secure staging environment. Then, it lets you know if there may be issues before making any updates. Of course, there’s still a chance problems will occur. But I appreciate that Nexcess adds an extra safeguard to ensure smoother site updates.

Manage and Design Multiple Sites With a Single Plan

Due to generous website quotas on higher-tier plans, Nexcess is a good choice for website designers and managers, as well as companies with multiple brands or platforms. You can run multiple sites on the higher-tier Nexcess plans (or upgrade to do so) without needing to sign up for another account.

That said, Nexcess’s WordPress website quotas are more generous than its WooCommerce-specific and Magento hosting plans. For example, you can only host a maximum of 30 online stores on Nexcess’ most expensive Enterprise WooCommerce hosting plan, whereas you can host up to 250 sites on the top-end Enterprise WordPress hosting plan.

Nexcess Features at a Glance

Very Simple Setup & Management – But It Could Be More Streamlined

Between selecting a domain name and hosting plan, processing payment, and uploading my WordPress test site, the entire Nexcess setup process took around 30 minutes. Overall, it was relatively easy (apart from some minor hiccups, which I’ll discuss later) – and didn’t require too much technical knowledge. The Nexcess portal itself is very easy to navigate, too – I had no issues finding all the tools I’d need to optimize my site.

Creating a New Account with Nexcess

Your Nexcess account is created when you purchase one of its WordPress, WooCommerce-specific, Magento, or StoreBuilder plans, which you can do by clicking the Buy (Plan Name) button under the relevant hosting plan.

The purchasing process is pretty simple from there on out, only featuring one page on which you’ll be asked to answer setup questions.

However, do note that if you want to register a domain name with Nexcess, you should do so in advance, as this option isn’t offered to you while you’re purchasing a hosting plan. You can do so by scrolling down to the bottom of the Nexcess website and selecting Domain Registration from the listed Add On options. Confusing, I know. But rest assured that you’ll be offered a hosting plan after selecting a domain name.

Nexcess’ acceptable payment options include credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and Discover) and PayPal, which is convenient. A plus? The only “upsells” you need to decide on during this entire process are domain privacy (if you’re buying a domain name from Nexcess) and whether or not you’re paying for hosting on a monthly or annual basis.

Connecting a Domain and Installing WordPress

4After paying for your plan, you’ll receive a few emails regarding the status of your purchase and your new account details. You should also receive a request to verify the personal information you provided for domain registration with ICANN (if you purchased a domain). Conveniently, you’ll be logged straight into your Nexcess dashboard after paying, where your WordPress or other site details are also displayed, ready for login.

In my case, WordPress came pre-installed, as I picked a Nexcess WordPress hosting plan (Spark). All I had to do was click Add Website to access the WordPress dashboard and upload my test site.

I only experienced one minor issue with my domain name, whereby my WordPress website didn’t point to it but a placeholder address instead. I found this odd since I purchased my domain name directly from Nexcess. After manually changing this setting myself in the Domains > Modify Master Domain section, I also had to contact support to get my WordPress account reset. In hindsight, I probably could have saved myself the trouble by asking Nexcess support to sort out the issue, but at least it didn’t take long to fix.

Add Team Members

One nifty feature is that you can add team members to your Nexcess account. So, they can edit your site and help with other design, admin, or accounting tasks directly without you needing to share your personal login details.

While logged into your Nexcess dashboard, you can add them by clicking your name in the right-hand corner and selecting Team Members. Then, click the purple Add Member button and configure their user type and details.

Site Stencil Creator

On the Nexcess dashboard, you can quickly and easily create a stencil of your site. You can then use this to copy or re-populate it. A useful feature if you happen to manage multiple websites or just want to keep a copy safe. Simply select Plans > your plan > and Stencil from the left-hand menu in the Nexcess dashboard. You can also make as many up-to-date stencil copies of your site as you want and delete outdated versions here.

Automatic Daily Backups

As a managed host, Nexcess handles all your site backups for you. The best part is that you don’t even need to configure any backup settings at all. Backups are set up automatically as soon as you purchase a hosting plan and create a storefront or site. You can view your backups in the Nexcess dashboard under Plans > select your plan > Sites > select your site > Backups.

Backups are kept for 30 days, and you can even manually back up your site on occasion if need be. However, unlike automatic backups, manual backups are stored locally, meaning they use and count towards your plan’s storage limit. If you’ve used more than 50% of your allocated disk space, you cannot perform manual backups, either. To do so, you’ll need to upgrade.

Stellar Performance – Backed-Up By a Generous 100% Uptime Guarantee

After being put through our rigorous testing process, it’s clear to me that Nexcess has earned its spot among our top-ranked hosts. In a number of tests, it scored above average, which is likely thanks to the aforementioned NGINX Accelerator tool.

However, on top of all this, you can enable Nexcess’ proprietary content delivery network (CDN), which is included with all plans. Our tests were done without it, but I’d certainly recommend setting it up if your site’s customer base is global.

GTmetrix

GTmetrix scores tested websites on a scale, with “A” being the top GTmetrix score – and the value our Nexcess test site typically achieved. Besides caching, the only other recommendation from GTmetrix to improve this score was to use a CDN.

As you can see, the loading times didn’t fluctuate too much over peak and non-peak times, either. Our test site’s loading time remained relatively stable and was often under 1 second throughout the week.

Sucuri Load Time Tester

Nexcess has 10 data centers located around the globe, including in Australia, the UK (2), the Netherlands, and the US (6).

In our Sucuri Load Time Tester tests, loading times were best for servers located near the Eastern Seaboard, as our site was hosted in this location (Lansing, MI). Surprisingly, our Nexcess-hosted test site loaded quite fast further afield, even without enabling the CDN.

UptimeRobot

Potentially catastrophic downtime is kept to a zero with Nexcess hosting, which is backed by a 100% uptime guarantee. True to form, our test site on the Nexcess Spark WordPress hosting plan endured no incidents of downtime whatsoever.

Very Quick & Efficient Support – But With Some Minor Security Concerns

Nexcess offers customer support 24/7, 365 days of the year. Its support channels include:

• Live chat
• Phone (toll-free – Australia, the UK, and the US)
• Ticket (via Nexcess control panel only).

Upon contacting Nexcess support via live chat, I was connected to an agent immediately. I submitted questions regarding my aforementioned issues with my Nexcess domain name and my WordPress site not loading correctly. The agent was quick to suggest the remedy (a reset of my WordPress site password). After sending me a new password, everything was in order, and my site was connected to and loading on the correct domain name.

However, I would advise resetting your WordPress site password if this happens to you. The agent was able to view my entire password, which he relayed to me via live chat. While I was a bit concerned about this from a security standpoint, the agent did ask for permission before they reset the password.

Nexcess’ ticket support was also quite pleasant, as it’s both easy to submit a ticket and track it thereafter. Within two minutes, I received a presumably automated response to say my ticket had been received and was currently being reviewed.

Having tested a few hosts’ ticketing systems, I was quite impressed by Nexcess ticket support. Not only did the Nexcess team get back to me just 15 minutes later, but they answered each and every question in detail.

If you have any queries, it’s also worth checking the Nexcess Knowledge Base. With tons of FAQs and in-depth articles (including written and video tutorials), you may just be able to solve a problem yourself without getting in contact with support.

That said, if you’re strapped for time or confused, feel free to ask the support team to handle the issue for you. You’re paying for fully managed hosting, including 24/7 technical support, after all.

Pricey Shared Hosting – But It Is Cloud-Based

If you know a thing or two about shared hosting, Nexcess’ prices may seem a bit higher than average. However, there are a few factors to take into consideration. Firstly, Nexcess includes some ramped-up performance features and premium plugins that typical shared hosting doesn’t. Secondly, the host’s plan pricing (for more basic packages, at least) is quoted in full – not discounted.

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Nexcess packages are worthwhile if you want premium hosting for one or more busy websites, especially e-commerce sites. The real decision comes down to your ideal platform and specs, which would usually be WordPress (with or without WooCommerce). You can also use Magento (Adobe Commerce) if you prefer. All of these plans have Agency versions as well, which allow you to resell hosting to your clients if you’re a developer.

There is also the StoreBuilder plan, which allows you to use easy-to-use, drag-and-drop tools to build a WordPress/WooCommerce-based website – premium Nexcess hosting included.

If you want total control of your server, you can also select one of Nexcess’ flexible cloud hosting plans, which aren’t limited to one specific website or e-commerce store builder. These are geared towards advanced users.

You can also ask the Nexcess team about their custom enterprise solutions, which can be ramped up to suit heavy-traffic sites or online storefronts if need be.