Based in the sunny state of Florida, Hivelocity has accumulated valuable industry experience since 2001. Based in Tampa, USA, with its first data center, the company today offers hosting solutions in the cloud, dedicated servers and colocation services to thousands of businesses in more than 130 countries around the world. They claim that their business philosophy has not changed since the early days, in line with their motto "the more successful our customers are, the more successful we will be." Hivelocity currently employs approximately 70 people and operates eight world-class data centers covering Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Atlanta, Tampa and Chicago (USA), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Frankfurt (Germany). Each of these data centers is SSAE-16 SOC1 and SOC2 certified, with HIPAA and PCI compliant services available. The Hivelocity team is led by Mike Architetto (CEO), Ben Linton (CTO) and Steve Eschweiler (DOP and one of the founders of the company). Although Hivelocity has been around for two decades, its official website looks and feels refreshingly modern, while providing all the information you need to get up and running. The same goes for his official blog, making for both informative and interesting reading. If you use social media sites, you can find Hivelocity on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube, though the latter's account hasn't been updated in years. We should also see a lot of positive reviews from past and present Hivelocity customers on consumer review sites like Trustpilot and HostAdvice, which is always good news.
Hivelocity has a wide variety of bare metal server plans available, all at a great price (Image credit: Hivelocity)
Packages and prices
Hivelocity currently maintains and manages over 15,000 physical and virtual servers and provides managed dedicated server, cloud, and virtual private (VPS) server solutions as well as colocation services. Even at first glance, it's obvious that Hivelocity's hosting solutions are aimed at wealthy customers looking for powerful, high-tech solutions that they can tailor to their own needs. “Instant” bare metal servers range in price from €94,00 to €155,00 per month, but throwing plugins into the mix can see the price go up pretty quickly. The same goes for their dedicated server solution, which can cost you between €135 and €451,00 per month, both pre-built and custom. However, Hivelocity frequently offers bundles for around 20-25% off their original price, so be sure to check them out. Like many premium providers, Hivelocity does not offer any money-back guarantees or money-back guarantees in general. They accept payments by credit cards (Visa, MasterCard and American Express), PayPal, checks, bank transfers, ACH and Bitcoin.
Ease of use
To start rolling, the first thing you need to do is create an account with Hivelocity, and it will be up and running in minutes. You'll just have to provide your email address, produce a password, and browse the terms of service, where you'll find everything (even if it's a long read) explained quite simply, with no fine print or similar issues.
Hivelocity's custom dashboard allows you to deploy, monitor, and manage your virtual servers (Image Credit: Hivelocity) After that, you'll switch to myVelocity, which is Hivelocity's own dashboard. It sounds pretty simplistic, but in a good way. It makes it easy to deploy, monitor, and manage your devices, billing information, DNS, networking, storage, and all the essentials. When deploying your first server, keep in mind that the Hivelocity technical team is available 24/7 to assist you, so don't hesitate to ask for help at the first sign of trouble. Here you will have the option to decide where the server is located and if the one you want is out of stock (and you're not in a rush), please contact the Hivelocity team and see if they can get back to you when the server is available again. If available to take, be sure to select a location, server (all specs listed with price), operating system (some versions of Ubuntu, CentOs, and Windows are available and more), then enter a hostname and choose a payment method. As for optional settings, you can later add user data, customize access to SSH keys, and choose the control panel and license type you want. A full list of control panels is available to you, including cPanel, DirectAdmin, Parallels Virtuozzo, SolusVM, ProxMox, Webmin, Plesk, and WebsitePanel. Therefore, the ease with which you will manage all aspects of your website(s) is directly proportional to your experience with your chosen control panel. All servers include 10 GB of free cloud storage, but you can upgrade at any time (for an additional fee). Overall, our experience with Hivelocity as a whole was easier than we could have hoped in our wildest dreams, both in terms of website usability, user interface, and the support we received along the way.
We use GTmetrix to measure the uptime and response time of the main Hivelocity site (Image credit: GTmetrix)
Speed and experience
Hivelocity offers a 99,99% uptime guarantee, which means that all users are eligible to receive a 5% credit (on request) if they find anything less than promised. However, scheduled maintenance is excluded. With that in mind, we monitored the uptime of Hivelocity's main website (via UptimeRobot) over a one-month period and were pleased to see a report showing a flawless 100% uptime. When it comes to speed, we hired the services of good old GTmetrix to check the speed of the main Hivelocity site. After several tests from multiple server locations, we found about the same level of poor performance in terms of speed, while the site structure received plaudits. The time it took for the site to fully load was 4,6 seconds, which beat the average score of 8,1. However, the total block time and the time it took for the largest content to become viewable exceeded the recommendation so much that GTmetrix decided to punish the site with an E (41%), leaving us speechless.
Support
While some things have changed with Hivelocity over the years, their customer service seems to have stayed exactly the same, demonstrating competence, courtesy, and (most importantly) commitment. This top-notch technical team is available 24 hours a day and can be contacted via a toll-free number, live chat (which works more like a support ticket), and email. According to Hivelocity, the average response time for your chat should never take more than 15 minutes, which is our own experience. For all remaining inquiries, you can contact sales or billing services Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm
Hivelocity has a knowledge base with over a thousand useful articles, guides and tutorials (Image credit: Hivelocity) For those of us who want to be as independent as possible, the best option is the Hivelocity knowledge base. It uses the same user-friendly layout as your blog, making searching easy and satisfying. Since the knowledge base consists of a whopping 1388 articles covering all the important topics, there wasn't enough time to inspect them all. However, the ones we took a closer look at were easy to follow and really helpful.
Competition
In terms of services, Hivelocity and Liquid Web seem somewhat similar, however, when it comes to pricing, they couldn't be more different. While Liquid Web caters to large and small businesses, Hivelocity is more focused on offering plans for midsize businesses that need high-performance servers with 100% uptime and top-notch support. As a result, Liquid Web hosting packages are much more affordable and include all the newbie-friendly features one would expect from such a provider. OVHcloud is another cloud-focused hosting solution provider that compares a lot to Hivelocity, although they are not as similar as they seem. For example, the OVHcloud packages are noticeably cheaper, but will require you to compromise in terms of performance and customer support (sometimes called "absolutely abysmal"). Those looking for a beginner-friendly host to start their blog, small online store, or small business will probably find Hivelocity's packages a bit overkill. In that case, be sure to check out some of the more versatile hosts like HostGator and Bluehost, and since they both offer money-back guarantees, you can do so without worry.
Final verdict
Hivelocity is too expensive for someone with simpler needs and no brilliant infrastructure, special features, and superior support to make up for it. However, if you have a business that is demanding enough to require a dedicated server and you don't mind paying top dollar for it, you can't go wrong with Hivelocity. However, if you're on a budget, check out hosts like HostGator, GoDaddy, and Bluehost. They will provide you with everything you need to get off to a good start and all without burning a big hole in your pocket.