Nexcess

Nexcess

Company Profile & Results

Nexcess has been serving SMBs and the designers, developers, and agencies who create for them for more than 20 years. With data centers around the world, our collective brands serve over 45,000 customers spanning 150 countries. At Nexcess, we care as much about quick onboarding as we do about quick load times. We’re not just concerned with caching, but effectively managing unexpected traffic bursts with instant auto scaling built-in. We check plugin updates automatically with visual regression testing before applying any changes to your live site. Plus you'll enjoy ongoing access to industry experts who provide platform-specific support, 24/7/365.
Disclaimer: Descriptions are provided by the company.

Historical Performance Summary

Year<$25$25-50$51-100$101-200$201-500Enterprise ($500+)Woo Commerce
2023
2022
2021
- Top Tier - Honorable Mention - No award

2023 WordPress Results

<$25/Month Summary

Nexcess has been a regular participant in these benchmarks and missed earning any awards the last couple years at this price tier. But this was finally Nexcess's year. It's nice to see hard work and improvements pay off. The Load Storm test went by effortlessly. The Static test saw Nexcess pickup the third fastest average and p95 at 13ms and 20ms respectively. Their Achilles heal had been uptime issues which were finally solved this year with 99.999% and 99.9873% uptime. Nexcess also had the fastest PHP and WP Bench scores. Nexcess finally earned a well deserved Top Tier award for this price tier.

$201-500/Month Summary

Nexcess earned Top Tier last year but the performance didn't stand out against its peers. The improvement this year was dramatic with Load Storm's p95 going from 509 down to 299. The Static test saw an even more dramatic drop from 248ms average to 14ms and 473ms to 22ms for the p95. The Static results were the second fastest this year from being in the slowest the previous year. Nexcess had 100% and 99.99%+ uptime. The PHP and WP Bench scores from Nexcess would be the fastest of any company this year except Servebolt. It's nice to see a Top Tier performer improve considerably and earn another Top Tier award.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
Nexcess 2023 25A
Nexcess 2023 500A

2023 WooCommerce Results

WooCommerce Summary

Nexcess saw tremendous improvement over their 2022 WooCommerce performance. Last year the Load Storm test overwhelmed them, this year's performance was a night and day difference. Nexcess even earned the third fastest Page speed this year. The improvements didn't just stop there, the Static test went from 297ms average last year to 15ms this year. Nexcess earned the third fastest average and p95 speeds on the Static test. Nexcess showed 100% and 99.98% on the uptime monitors. Nexcess went from struggling to handling this test well and even starting to compete for the fastest results, it's nice to see companies improve their performance so much between years. It's a pleasure to award Nexcess their first Top Tier recognition for the WooCommerce benchmark.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

Load Storm Average Response Time by Profile

This takes deeper look at the results and analyzes the performance of loading HTML mime types, to ignore a lot of static assets which are cached and bring down average response times. This tests how fast the initial pages are delivered, which is what a user would experience before loading all the other assets like css, javascript and images.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
Nexcess 2023 WooCommerceA

2022 WordPress Results

$101-200/Month Summary

Nexcess handled the Load Storm test without much issue, there was one spike but the average response time stayed below 1000ms. The static test was handled without any problem. Nexcess had excellent uptime. While their numbers didn't lead the pack, they quietly had a solid performance earning Top Tier status. Congrats!

<$25/Month Summary

Nexcess had the fourth fastest asset and login average speeds on the Load Storm test. Nexcess handled the Static test without any problems. Unfortunately, the uptime fell just below the 99.9% threshold required to earn recognition.


$201-500/Month Summary

Nexcess had stellar uptime with both showing above 99.99%. Nexcess also handled the static and Load Storm tests without issue. While it didn't particularly stand out compared to some of it's peers, it delivered flawless results on everything we threw at it. Top Tier.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
Nexcess 2022 200A
Nexcess 2022 25A
Nexcess 2022 500A

2022 WooCommerce Results

WooCommerce Summary

Nexcess had the third fastest PHP bench score. Overall, nexcess had another difficult year on these bechmarks Both load tests caused some struggles and the uptime fell just below the 99.9% threshold. I hope to see some big improvements next year.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

Load Storm Average Response Time by Profile

This takes deeper look at the results and analyzes the performance of loading HTML mime types, to ignore a lot of static assets which are cached and bring down average response times. This tests how fast the initial pages are delivered, which is what a user would experience before loading all the other assets like css, javascript and images.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
Nexcess 2022 WooCommerceA

2021 WordPress Results

$51-100/Month Summary

Nexcess earned an Honorable Mention because on all three impacting measurements it was close to the edge. The Load Storm test had a couple spikes. The K6 test had a couple spikes, slowed down slightly and had a few errors. The uptime while above the 99.9% threshold was closer to 99.9 than 99.99. Their WPT tests were slowest of any company which isn't an impacting measurement. Nexcess' highlight was probably WPPerformanceTester results where it's WP bench was the highest in the price tier and PHP bench was third fastest. The product looks like it's on the edge of Top Tier status and I'm sure with some small improvements will earn that status next year.

<$25/Month Summary

Nexcess is LiquidWeb's newly acquired brand which has competed in the past. This year Nexcess's highlight was having the fastest PHP Bench by 1.5 seconds over the next fastest competitor. Their Load Storm test was good as well. Their K6 test had a few errors and slowed down a bit. But ultimately their downfall was uptime. A caching bug caused the site to drop below the 99.9% threshold.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
Nexcess 2021 100A
Nexcess 2021 25A

Internet.nl

The tool is available at https://internet.nl/test-site/.

Mozilla Observatory

The tool is available at https://observatory.mozilla.org/.

CompanyMozilla Observatory
Nexcess 2021 100F
Nexcess 2021 25F

2021 WooCommerce Results

WooCommerce Summary

Nexcess was a first time entrant on the WooCommerce test. The best part was the K6 test which it did well on. Nexcess also had the third fastest WP Bench. The Load Storm test had a few errors especially on wp-login. But the biggest problem was the uptime dropping below 99.9% because of a caching bug. I'd like to see some big improvements next year to get them up to Top Tier status.

LoadStorm

Load Storm is designed to simulate real users visiting the site, logging in and browsing. It tests uncached performance.

Load Storm Average Response Time by Profile

This takes deeper look at the results and analyzes the performance of loading HTML mime types, to ignore a lot of static assets which are cached and bring down average response times. This tests how fast the initial pages are delivered, which is what a user would experience before loading all the other assets like css, javascript and images.

K6

K6 is designed to test cached performance by repeatedly requesting the homepage.

WebPageTest

WebPageTest fully loads the homepage and records how long it takes from 12 different locations around the world.

Uptime

Uptime is monitored by two companies: HetrixTools and Uptime Robot. A self hosted monitor was also run in case there was a major discrepancy between the two third party monitors.

WPPerformanceTester

WPPerformanceTester performs two benchmarks. One is a WordPress (WP Bench) and the other a PHP benchmark. WP Bench measures how many WP queries per second and higher tends to be better (varies considerably by architecture). PHP Bench performs a lot of computational and some database operations which are measured in seconds to complete. Lower PHP Bench is better. WP Bench is red in the chart, PHP Bench is blue.

SSL

The tool is available at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

CompanyQualsys SSL Grade
Nexcess 2021 WooCommerceA

Internet.nl

The tool is available at https://internet.nl/test-site/.

Mozilla Observatory

The tool is available at https://observatory.mozilla.org/.

CompanyMozilla Observatory
Nexcess 2021 WooCommerceF

About the Author

Kevin Ohashi

Kevin Ohashi is the geek-in-charge at Review Signal. He is passionate about making data meaningful for consumers. Kevin is based in Washington, DC.

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