Network Solutions Web Hosting Review

The typical web hosting service can overwhelm novice customers with its many choices. Do you go along with devoted, shared, VPS, or WordPress internet hosting? Linux- or Windows-based servers? Network Solutions simplifies the decision-making course of by taking most of these issues off the desk. The net host focuses on streamlined choices and area registration to be able to rapidly construct a shared, cloud-based web site. Unfortunately, Network Solutions lacks the feature-rich choices seen in HostGator, Hostwinds, and different Editors’ Choice award winners.

Shared Web Hosting

If you do not wish to spend some huge cash on hosting, shared internet hosting is the way in which to go. This cheap web hosting locations your web site on a server with different web sites, and the group shares server assets. This implies that it’s miles from essentially the most highly effective hosting kind. Still, Network Solutions presents a number of wallet-friendly, shared internet hosting choices—at the least firstly.

Starter ($5.99 per 30 days) is the entry-level tier, a plan that options one web site, 5 e mail accounts, 15GB of disk house, and limitless knowledge transfers. Next up the ladder is Essential ($15.95 per 30 days), a package deal containing help for 3 web sites, 1,000 e mail mailboxes, 300GB of disk house, and limitless knowledge transfers. The Professional Hosting ($22.94 per 30 days) tier helps 10 web sites, limitless storage, e mail, and month-to-month knowledge transfers, and comes with SiteLock Premium. Finally, the Premium tier ($32.93 per 30 days) provides an SSL certificates to the Professional service. These costs replicate the month-to-month value, although you will get reductions for signing up for one- or multi-year commitments.

Network Solutions has odd pricing. The Essential, Professional, and Premium plans all value $15.95 per 30 days ($9.96 for annual dedication), regardless of Essential providing fewer e mail accounts and disk house than the opposite tiers. The distinction between the three tiers comes right down to the add-ons: Professional provides SiteLock for $6.99 per 30 days, and Premium provides SSL on high of that for $9.99 per 30 days. If you join an annual dedication with the Essential, Professional, or Premium tiers, Network Solutions waives the area registration price. There’s additionally an extra $1.99 per 30 days cost if you wish to go for personal registration.

HostGator, the Editors’ Choice choose for shared internet hosting, tops Network Solutions by providing extra options for the same value level. Its Hatchling plan begins at $10.95 per 30 days, however an annual dedication drops the associated fee to $3.95 per 30 days. Plus, the plan comes with free one-year area registration, the superb Gator Website Builder, unmetered disk house and bandwidth, and a free SSL certificates.

WordPress Web Hosting

Like many different net hosts, Network Solutions has WordPress internet hosting. WordPress is the content material administration system that powers roughly a 3rd of all web sites. It’s simple to make use of, and has a thriving theme and plug-in ecosystem for increasing your web site’s performance. If you are trying to create a primary, WordPress-powered web site, try Network Solution’s three tiers: Entrepreneurs, A Growing Business, and Professionals.

The Entrepreneur plan prices $7.99 per 30 days, with help for one web site, 50GB of storage, 10 e mail packing containers, and a cloud-backup answer. A Growing Business ($13.98 per 30 days) builds upon Entrepreneur providing three web sites, 100GB of storage, 25 e mail packing containers, and an SSL certificates. Finally, the Professional tier ($18.98 per 30 days) helps 5 web sites, 200GB of storage, and 50 e mail packing containers. Bluehost and WP Engine, the co-Editors’ Choice picks for WordPress internet hosting, have superior WordPress plans. The former presents limitless web site internet hosting, month-to-month knowledge transfers, domains, subdomains, and storage with every tier; the latter presents wonderful specs and options (akin to web site staging and enterprise-friendly customized plans).

E-Commerce Web Hosting

If you are trying to launch an internet retailer, Network Solutions has you coated with its e-commerce plans. Starter is $7.95 per 30 days (renewing at $29.95 per 30 days), and consists of 5 e mail accounts and the power to promote 25 totally different merchandise. Standard is $9.95 per 30 days (renewing at $54.95 per 30 days), and comes with 50 e mail accounts and a 300-product catalog. The $19.95-per-month Premium plan ($99.95 per 30 days after renewal) enables you to create 100 e mail accounts, retailer 100,000 merchandise, and arrange all the pieces with product administration instruments. In distinction, the superb InMotion Hosting has e-commerce plans that begin at $6.99 per 30 days (renewing at solely $11.99 per 30 days), and supply a free area, two web sites, no product restrict, limitless bandwidth, and a free SSL certificates.

Network Solutions gives e mail advertising and marketing instruments ($20 per 30 days) as an add-on, however you possibly can pattern the products with a prolonged, 60-day free trial. The add-on gives over 400 ready-made e mail templates to make use of in newsletters and e mail blasts, and real-time monitoring and reporting on who clicked hyperlinks and opened messages. The different choices embrace the $49-per-month Simple search engine marketing add-on that improves search engine optimization, and the $9.95-per-month Business Directory service that tracks what persons are saying about what you are promoting throughout social media channels.

The e-ommerce plans include a management panel to handle the catalog, prospects, orders, and delivery choices. You also can create a service provider account with Bank Card Services Worldwide to simply accept fee playing cards, or use PayPal, Google Checkout, or different choices. There can also be a separate web site builder to design the storefront, but it surely does not supply many customization choices apart from a Facebook advertising and marketing device, an search engine marketing optimization add-on, and a buyer relationship administration platform.

Reseller Web Hosting

If you are trying to get into the hosting enterprise, however do not wish to cope with infrastructure issues, try Network Solutions’ reseller hosting packages by way of the corporate’s SRSPlus(Opens in a new window) web site. There aren’t any annual charges, paper contracts, or quantity necessities, and the plans include e mail, e-commerce instruments, and different anticipated options.

Setting Up a Website

Network Solutions enables you to set up greater than two dozen open-source functions, together with WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Owl, SugarCRM, Magento, phpBB, WebCalendar, PHPWiki, and Tikiwiki. Setting up WordPress (or another software) is a reasonably easy affair. You click on the appliance’s Add button, and stroll via the setup wizard to outline the weblog URL, and the administrator username and password. It’s easy, however the choice to create the weblog is buried within the interface.

A Network Solutions subscription comes with the corporate’s website builder, which allow us to rapidly construct a snazzy-looking web site in a short time. We dragged and dropped components from the menu, uploaded photos, entered textual content, and embedded YouTube movies. You also can drop in varieties, social media hyperlinks, Google Maps, and a picture gallery. In a pleasant contact, you possibly can embed JavaScript and primary HTML code. Network Solution’s web site builder is not as feature-rich as some do-it-yourself web site builders from companies (Duda, Wix), but it surely’s free with each service plan. It’s a bit annoying that Network Solutions does not supply a free trial so you will get a really feel for the web site builder and total service earlier than you make a dedication.

We have one criticism with our web site. Even although we registered our URL through the signup course of, the web site we created did not level to our area. Network Solutions did not ask what our web site’s deal with must be, and it defaulted to a sub-domain underneath netsolhost.com. This wasn’t a giant deal, since we merely switched to My Domain Name and used the drop-down menu to level the URL to the web site listing. People who aren’t used to web site administration want higher directions.

Network Solutions presents 256-bit, secure-socket layer (SSL) safety beginning at $59.99 per yr (with a two-year time period). You also can add nsProtect Assured trusted web site seal ($69 per yr), SiteLock Premium (beginning at $9.99 per 30 days), and Small Business Cyber Security Protection (beginning at $4.16 per 30 days, with an annual plan).

Dependable Uptime

Website uptime is an important component of the hosting expertise. If your web site goes down, shoppers or prospects might be unable to seek out you or entry your services or products.

We use an internet site monitoring device to trace uptime at a take a look at websites over a 14-day interval. Every quarter-hour, the device pings our web site and sends an alert if the positioning is darkish for at the least a minute. Our testing revealed that Network Solutions went down as soon as for a couple of minutes, however in any other case demonstrated reliable uptime.

Helpful Customer Service

If you encounter a internet hosting downside, you possibly can search Network Solutions’ FAQs for solutions (although we stumbled throughout just a few 404 pages, which isn’t a superb signal). The net host presents 24/7 e mail and phone help, too. That mentioned, the e-commerce technical help is just out there weekdays from 9 a.m. to five p.m. EST. We examined customer support by inserting an 8:30 p.m. Eastern weeknight name to seek out out the distinction between common hosting and WordPress internet hosting. We held for 5 minutes earlier than a customer support rep fielded my name.

The consultant defined we could not set up different functions on the WordPress internet hosting plan, however assured us that we might at all times change plans if we needed to. We spent about three minutes discussing updates—Network Solutions would obtain, however not set up them—and storage necessities. We thought we noticed the choice for dwell buyer help net chat at one level, however could not discover it once more later. It was additionally tough to seek out an e mail kind to submit a query. We requested easy methods to import a WordPress weblog into our account round 9:30 p.m. on a weeknight, and obtained an in depth reply the following morning. Overall, Network Solutions has respectable customer support choices, and a stable, 30-day, money-back assure.

Is This Your Solution?

Network Solutions is a combined bag. Hosting begins out low cost, however its upsells rapidly add up. Domain administration is simple, but it surely’s not well-integrated with the hosting. Streamlined providing make it simpler to pick out a internet hosting kind, however the interface could confuse novices. If you need a extra feature-rich hosting service, try Bluehost, DreamHost, HostGator, or any of our different Editors’ Choice picks.

For extra on hosting, level your browser towards 10 Easy But Powerful SEO Tips to Boost Traffic to Your Website and How to Register a Domain Name for Your Website.