How Good is Register.com Hosting?
Our Official Register.com Hosting Review
Register.com is one of the original domain name registration companies still in business today. They’ve expanded their product line with Web hosting. The one area where they seem to shine is in their customer support area.
Best Features of Register.com Hosting
Register.com offers three hosting packages – all of them with excellent customer support. Their highest-tier – the e-commerce package – supports credit card processing and shopping cart features.
Register.com Web Hosting Pricing Table
| Hosting Plan | Starter | Essential | Premium | Premium Plus |
| Starting Price | $5.69/mo | $9.96/mo | $25.70/mo | $30.28/mo |
| Storage Space | 15 GB | 300 GB | 500 GB | Unlimited |
| No. of Websites | 1 | 3 | 10 | 10 |
| Email Box | 1 | 3 | 10 | 10 |
| Feature 1 | – | Domain Name Included† | Domain Name Included† | Domain Name Included† |
| Feature 2 | – | SiteLock (Malware Scanning) | SiteLock Premium (Malware Scanning, Auto Malware Removal) | SiteLock Premium (Malware Scanning, Auto Malware Removal) |
| Feature 3 | – | – | – | SSL Certificate |
Register.com WordPress Hosting Pricing Table
| Hosting Plan | WordPress | WordPress Plus | WordPress Premium |
| Starting Price | $7.00/mo | $13.00/mo | $18.00/mo |
| Storage Space | 50 GB | 100 GB | 200 GB |
| Email Boxes | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| WordPress Sites | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Feature 1 | On-Demand Cloud Backup | On-Demand Cloud Backup | On-Demand Cloud Backup |
| Feature 2 | Domain Name† | Domain Name† | Domain Name† |
| Feature 3 | – | SSL included | SSL included |
FTP Access
Very few hosting providers offer FTP access anymore. Although this is a more technical solution, it also allows for a greater degree of flexibility and customization. FTP is an Internet standard that stands for File Transfer Protocol. This protocol gives you the freedom to transfer files of any type back and forth between your computer and their server for complete customization.
Site Backups
Although this is a standard feature for some of the hosting providers, it seems to be missing from many others. With register.com, not only will they back up your site, but they give you access to a feature they call File Restore. File Restore lets you roll back the version of your site to erase any mistakes that might’ve been made. We did find it a little shortsighted that it only keeps your data for the last three days, but the fact that they had this at all is definitely a plus.
24/7 Phone and Email Support
This is where register.com shines. They have 24/7 year-round support via phone and email. Although they don’t offer live chat, we did find that we got a competent support representative on the phone every time we called – and we called several times a day. This is significant because of the trend in business that puts people through long hold times to reach a live support agent.
Downsides of Register.com Hosting
Unfortunately, there was more to dislike about register.com than there was to like – a rare occurrence.
Extremely Expensive
If you consider the fact that register.com was one of the original Web registrars, this one comes as a slight surprise. At the moment, GoDaddy is the most prevalent Web registrar on the net today. Many other hosting providers use GoDaddy’s registration feature as their own. However, Go Daddy only charges $14.99 to register your domain name. Register.com charges $35 a year for a dot-com address – a 250 percent increase from the net’s most popular registrar.
This is extremely significant considering that many people use Web hosting providers to park domains. A 250 percent increase in domain name registration will add up extremely quickly, making register.com one of the worst places to register and park domains.
They Charge for Their Site Building Tool
Every other hosting provider that provides tools to simplify your Web building experience provides these tools for free. Register.com charges for its site-building tools. It almost feels as if register.com is trying to nickel and dime you – attempting to get every penny they can out of you. WordPress offers better site-building tools with templates for free. On top of that, WordPress is easier to use yet register.com insists on charging you for a tool that every other hosting provider offers for free.
Confusing Sales Pages
Whenever you see a headline that states, “We will build your website for free,” it’s certainly something worth looking into. Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of a service like that?
The problem with this is that the fine print will clearly tell you that they will charge you $94.95 per month for this service. Even the most expensive hosting option is less than $30 a month, so which is it? Will they build your website for free or will they charge you close to $100 a month for it?
After digging around in their terms of service, I found that they charged $799 for their site building service, plus the $94.95 per month. I wasn’t sure if this was meant to be deliberately deceitful or if they meant that they won’t charge you upfront for the $1139.40 that it will cost you over the next 12 months.
They Charge Extra for Email
This is when we found it a bit ridiculous. Every other hosting provider includes email hosting as a part of the website hosting package. Register.com not only has these two features separate but if you want to manage your email, you must log in to a different portal using a different set of credentials to manage your email than you do your website. None of the three hosting packages comes with a single email address.
They may try to make it affordable with webmail portal access with 5MB of storage costing you $9.99 per year, but their most expensive package with 10 mailboxes and 100MB of storage costs up to $99.99 per year. Email is not a commodity to be sold like this – even Google offers domain-customized email with 10 times as many features at a more affordable price.
Bottom Line
At best, register.com preys upon the ignorance of people. Their Web hosting may be reliable and they may have stellar customer service to go with it, but they charge way too much for their services and they fail to deliver on key components – such as email – that should be included with every hosting package.
- FTP Access
- Site Backups for The last 3 Days
- 24/7 Phone and Email Support
- Extremely Expensive
- They Charge for Their Site Building Tool
- Confusing Sales Pages
- They Charge Extra for Email
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