Competitors to LiquidWeb for Windows Dedicated Servers

Background
We run a game server hosting company which has been running since 2012. We currently rent roughly 200 dedicated servers from 6 different providers. We currently rent roughly 60 of these dedicated servers from WebNX. We've been with them for just over 7 years and I can safely say that they've been the best datacentre we've used. I know how important reviews are to a company; I feel that we've used WebNX long enough to write an honest review.

Support
We've had our fair share of rubbish support from datacentres in the past. WebNX definitely provides the best support out of all the datacentres we've used. During the past 7 years, I'd say the average response time for a ticket at WebNX was about 10 minutes. We've found the biggest issue with large datacentres is that their support teams are disjointed. This leads to issues which "don't fit the norm" taking a long time to resolve. WebNX is large enough to provide 24/7 365 day support yet small enough to provide genuinely good "straight to the point" support.

Reliability / Uptime
All the datacentres we've used have had some sort of major outage at some point in time. During the 7 years, there have been a couple of network outages at WebNX but the issues have always been resolved quickly along with good communication. Considering the number of servers we have with them, I'd say the uptime is incredibly high.

Hardware
During the past 7 years we've switched our server hardware roughly 4 or 5 times. It's as simple as contacting them letting them know what hardware you like, they provide a reasonably priced quote and in a couple of days, the server is delivered. I'd say on average, broken hardware is resolved in roughly an hour from us opening the ticket.

DDoS Protection
I'd say this is the downside of WebNX. They'll automatically nullroute the IP address if a DDoS attack is detected. The amount of time the IP address is nullrouted depends on how much traffic the attack is sending. It's not really a huge issue for us as we can quickly work out which one of our clients was targeted and then get migrate them over to a DDoS protected IP address. I'm hoping at some stage they'll provide onsite DDoS protection.

Price
They're very reasonably priced considering the support and customisation which they offer.

Network
WebNX's network is top notch. Nothing to complain about at all.

Keep up the great work WebNX! Would be great if you could get another datacentre setup in East Coast USA.

I have some servers at Hivelocity, since 2017.

No network problems, 100% uptime, excellent hardware and support.

Yesterday, after 2 or 3 years, one of the backup disks on one of my servers, failed.

I opened a ticket asking how to change to a new HDD. To my surprise, the support offered the possibility to clone the disk to try to recover the data. Despite being a backup disk, it would be good to recover, as I had left some old accounts there.

Then they removed the HDD and cloned it in 3 hours, for a new HDD. And it worked! all recovered data. Of course, it will not always be possible to recover, it will depend on the problem that the HDD presents.

And during the whole process, the Hivelocity support team was very active, I scheduled to shut down the server after 7PM (so they can insert the new drive) and minutes before they wrote saying "we are ready to install the new HDD, you just have to shutdown the server". Never, but never, have I seen this type of concern with the customer, in the datacenters where I have been. I'm in this market this 2004, I had servers at The Planet, Layered Tech, Host Dime, LiquidWeb, and so many others that don't even exist anymore.

I've had servers in other companies, which were managed, and I didn't have support like that. My servers at Hivelocity have no management, but they go beyond what was expected, gave me all the support from beginning to end of the process, offered the data recovery service for free and even warned that they will save the old HDD for a week, for any emergency.

Thanks Hivelocity, I only have one thing to ask: keep it up, "this is the way".

Welp, so there were some CPU load issues yesterday and I asked for help. While I was sleeping, someone from Liquidweb thought it will be a good idea (without my permissions) to uninstall mod_pagespeed and reinstall something else.

Of course, the version I had before was not the same that they have reinstalled or something else went wrong and my sites are all have been broken ever since. Did they even bother to check if the mod pagespeed was functioning like it was supposed to? Of course not. The CPU load is still here except now I also have broken cache, images not loading, and a support reply of something along the lines of "nah, we can't install the version you want as we don't support it".

Thanks, guys.

Host recommendations needed. Let me start by saying, THANKS in advance for your replies.

I own a (very) small US-based business and my website/email hosting has been with LiquidWeb since they acquired my previous host WiredTree.

LiquidWeb ignored a support ticket yesterday and as my yearly payment comes due next week I thought I probably owe it to myself to at least evaluate my options before it renews.

My biggest priority is knowing I have good managed support when I need it. Problem is, having support tickets linger in the cue for a day or so until I call/chat them and ask when it's going to get looked at has been a pretty constant problem since day one. And it's not like I'm inundating them with support tickets either. My website development has been on hold the past couple years due to personal reasons, so this might be the first support ticket I've even opened this year other than asking them to whitelist an IP because their automated process for that doesn't work.

Looks like I'm paying about $2,400/year for a Cloud Dedicated server and $800/year for a second smaller plan (old WiredTree VPS plan).

The main server appears to be 8 core (Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1271 v3 @ 3.60GHz) with a 24/900/5 config (I think). I'm not currently taxing the box at all; it's a total overkill in all regards. One downside to LiquidWeb is at the time I moved this server from a VPS to this plan I was kind of forced into a much, much higher plan than I really needed because every option in between had the same limited disk space my VPS had and the only reason I needed to upgrade was that I was pushing disk limits.

As such, being able to scale up or down in the future without having to make huge jumps is also important.

As of right now, the second (VPS) server could easily be absorbed by the first. I actually intended to do that a year ago when my bill came due but then life got in the way and it fell through the cracks.

Both my boxes are managed CentOS/WHM/cPanel with Root access. I did not migrate away from cPanel when the prices went up. If there's something legitimately better than cPanel I'm happy to evaluate it, but until then it's the devil I know.

Prior to WiredTree/LiquidWeb I had 2 VPS plans at ServInt. Originally ServInt was excellent... until they weren't. But even after they outsourced their support overseas, I really still didn't have support issues. I left ServInt because my boxes were aging badly and all signs said the company was in trouble. I will also say my brief experience with WiredTree support before they got bought out was amazing.

Before ServInt I was with Inmotion Hosting (originally shared hosting then a VPS albeit without Root access). I will say I have no desire to work with any host that sells shared plans again.

As far as budget is concerned, I can afford what I'm currently paying. Yes I'd love to be paying less although that's not what's driving this search. If I stay with LiquidWeb, I'll migrate the VPS into the Cloud Dedicated and downsize to $2,400/year. If I'm paying less elsewhere, I expect it's because I downsized the Cloud Dedicated server's specs.

When I left ServInt for WiredTree, recommendations from this site caused me to have a short list of WiredTree, KnownHost, FutureHosting and LiquidWeb. I've seen recent recommendations in other threads for KnownHost and BigScoots, so that's where my current short list begins. Any recommendations are appreciated.

Rackspace has recently tripled their prices with us after our contract was up. So, we have servers that they are trying to force us to sign a new contract with them for a considerably higher price.

So, with that being said, we need 5 dedicated machines with these specs or similar:

Server Platform: Dual Processor Multi-Core Dedicated Server - Dell R720
• Processor: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2640, 15M Cache, 2.50 GHz, Hex Core QTY: 2
• Random Access Memory: 128GB
• RAID, Set 1: RAID 1
• Drive Selection, Set 1: 600GB 15K SAS 3.5inch QTY: 2
• RAID, Set 2: RAID 5
• Drive Selection, Set 2: 600GB 15K SAS 3.5inch QTY: 3
• Drive Partitioning: Rackspace Suggested Partitioning QTY: 1
• Operating System: Windows Server 2016 Datacenter 64Bit QTY: 8

We will need about 12 ip addresses per machine.

We will supply our own windows licensing. Drive space cannot be less but definitely would like more space.

They would need to be in the USA. The time frame for 1 machine would be needed as soon as possible whereas the other 4, we will need as time permits to move the data over.

We need reliability, which is something Rackspace does well.

I hope I covered everything.

Thanks!

I notice Liquid Web is the sponsor of our great community.

I am looking for a managed dedicated server provider.

I don't see a lot of people mentioning them (or I am just not seeing it?)

Would seem they would be all over.

Too expensive for most?

Or

Well worth the price due to outstanding service?

After 2 weeks working forth and back with Liquidwebs staff to secure our servers we have to give up.

The situation is that frustrating that we need to find a different hosting center for a managed dedicated server.

I was wondering if anyone know of companies reliable for a small ecommerce website?

If you can't suggest any here then maybe you can hint me what to look for?

We want the server to be located in Europe and has to be managed but with Plesk or cPanel.

Anybody else have servers at WebNX that noticed really slow network throughput from their Utah DC to East Coast NA? So far this has been happening with us for a few days now and support has always said there was no issue with their network, there was just a DDoS and they rerouted traffic. But seems for me its not.

I tested from multiple VPS I have from locations like NY (colocrossing), Canada (OVH), FL (DediPath), SG (Leaseweb), and a multitude of others, all with varying result but bottom line was its unstable. For example, trying to download their network test file (https://mirrors-ogd.webnx.com/test/1gb.bin), it would all yield something really low from 100KB/s to 2MB/s. Occasionally I would hit 20MB/s at my SG server, but only for some time. Tested it with my LA server (colocrossing), this one is good, about 30MB/s.

Tried to do a lot of iPerf3 tests as well, with just similar result with conclusion that its extremely slow.

Just want to know if I am the only one experiencing it.

Hey Everyone,

I am in urgent need of a new Dedicated Server. I have a server with WebNX and they have been down for 16+ hours with no ETA's given.

Here is what I have with WebNX: Intel Xeon W-1290P, 128GB DDR4 ECC, 1.6TB NVMe, 1Gbps Port, 100TB, /29 (iGPU). (Utah)

I would like the server in the US preferably LA, UTAH, Seattle, Texas.

I am looking for something similar around.

Any hosts that have anything comparable would be great or any suggestion from the community would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again.

--
DC

Hi,

Who is offering bare metal dedicated server using AlmaLinux/cPanel now?

I'm currently using LiquidWeb, but they do not offer it yet (no ETA). I have also checked a couple of other major providers, but none of them offers it at this moment too.

For hosting providers, if you are not offering it now, any ETA so we know when to expect it and choose accordingly?

Thank you!