Domain.com web hosting review | IT PRO

Domain.com provides comparatively inexpensive shared and managed WordPress hosting plans, and ranks among the many finest web hosting providers out there available on the market for sure use instances.

Domain.com review: Snapshot

Domain.com provides comparatively inexpensive shared and managed WordPress hosting plans. The firm’s websites had glorious uptime and pace throughout our testing, and it was simple to get in contact with the client assist workforce by telephone or reside chat.

However, our Domain.com review discovered that this hosting service is lacking quite a lot of issues that we anticipated it to have. Managed WordPress websites don’t embrace an SSL certificates, for instance, and e mail is an costly add-on for each shared hosting plan. In addition, the corporate makes use of its personal ad-filled hosting software program as an alternative of offering customers with cPanel.

Another problem is that Domain.com isn’t very versatile. You have to enroll in hosting one yr at a time and there aren’t any VPS or devoted hosting choices if you wish to improve your web site. Domain.com may make sense for some primary web sites, however we don’t assume it’s the very best web hosting service for many websites.

Score: 3/5

Read on for the complete Domain.com review.

Domain.com’s opponents

How does Domain.com examine to its foremost opponents?

Domain.com: Key options

Domain.com is a budget-friendly hosting supplier that gives each shared and managed WordPress plans. The firm doesn’t have quite a lot of bells and whistles, but it surely does stand out in a couple of key methods.

One necessary function to Domain.com is that every one shared hosting plans embrace 24/7 buyer assist. You can get in contact by telephone or reside chat, and in our expertise the wait was by no means various minutes.

It additionally has dozens of video tutorials designed that will help you arrange your new web site with WordPress or Domain.com’s web site builder. We additionally discovered tons of guides for extra superior administration duties, like creating and archiving MySQL databases.

The web host provides managed WordPress hosting plans which might be competitively priced and pretty easy to make use of. All managed WordPress websites include limitless storage and pre-installed plugins and themes.

Domain.com’s extra superior WP Essential plan additionally comes with a built-in safety suite referred to as SiteLock. SiteLock consists of day by day web site scans, automated malware elimination, and DDoS safety. Just notice that Domain.com doesn’t supply web site backups with any of its WordPress plans.

While most shared hosting suppliers use cPanel as their back-end administration software program, Domain.com has developed its personal customized management panel.

We have combined emotions about this. On the one hand, it’s fairly easy to get began with since there aren’t as many choices as you’d discover in cPanel. On the opposite hand, the dearth of choices makes it more durable to handle your web site. There aren’t any one-click installers, and there’s no built-in system for working web site backups.

Domain.com hosting plans don’t embrace e mail, however you should purchase e mail hosting as an add-on. The web site provides each Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace integrations, which is good since most companies already use these productiveness suites in some capability.

You can arrange e mail by Domain.com’s management panel, however after that you just’re free to make use of the way more user-friendly Gmail and Outlook platforms. The Domain.com management panel allows you to add and take away e mail addresses out of your area, however not a lot else.

Domain.com: What’s new in 2022?

Not a lot has modified since we final reviewed Domain.com’s service. In reality, the corporate’s plan choices, pricing, and add-ons have been the identical for a number of years now. We had hoped to see some extra instruments added to Domain.com’s customized management panel, however the assist choices there are nonetheless the identical.

The largest modifications to Domain.com are in its e mail providers, however that’s primarily as a result of Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have been present process modifications. Managing your lively addresses with Domain.com stays as simplistic as ever, though that’s not essentially a nasty factor for those who’re trying to get on-line shortly.

Domain.com: Pricing

Domain.com provides shared hosting plans and managed WordPress plans, all of that are pretty low-cost. The firm additionally provides website builder plans, which embrace Basic shared hosting plus entry to Domain.com’s web site builder.

One factor that we discovered uncommon about Domain.com is that you’ve got to enroll in a full yr at a time. You additionally gained’t get a reduction for signing up for a number of years directly—the annual worth is identical whether or not you subscribe for one yr or three. In addition, none of Domain.com’s hosting plans embrace e mail, an add-on which begins at £2.45 per person a month.

Domain.com’s pricing plans

*Cost per thirty days based mostly on the annual worth

Testing Domain.com

In order to comprehensively examine Domain.com to the competitors, we analysed a collection of its options and instruments to see the way it carried out. This included creating a web site with its built-in web site builder, and checking its server response instances.

How do you create a web site with Domain.com?

Domain.com provides a customized web site builder that you should utilize to create easy web sites in minutes. To make sure, this isn’t a complete web site builder from among the many finest web site builders, like these provided by Weebly or Wix. However, we discovered that it was very simple to make use of, and enabled us to get a primary web site on-line in below an hour.

One factor that we discovered uncommon about Domain.com’s web site builder is that you just don’t get to select from a set of themes. Instead, you merely select amongst a couple of web site colours, fonts, and layouts. The lack of themes means there’s extra structure work to do later, though this isn’t an enormous problem.

Once we received the essential structure of our web site down, we have been pleasantly stunned by how customisable the builder was. You can add web page sections and content material blocks freely, so it’s easy to fill your web site with textual content, pictures, and extra. Some of the content material blocks out there embrace contact kinds, testimonials, movies, and social buttons.

Depending in your chosen plan, it’s also possible to arrange weblog and ecommerce pages. The weblog submit editor may be very simplistic, and doesn’t supply many formatting choices. It can be good for those who might create a weblog submit utilizing the identical instruments and content material blocks that the location builder provides, however that isn’t the case. 

The ecommerce instrument can also be simplistic, however we discovered that it will get the job completed for those who solely have a couple of merchandise. You can arrange delivery and cost choices, in addition to a calendar for reserving appointments. However, don’t anticipate extra superior options like built-in stock administration.

How does Domain.com carry out?

The most spectacular factor about Domain.com is the efficiency of its shared hosting plans. For the value, we expect you’ll be hard-pressed to discover a hosting supplier that gives related speeds and consistency.

To take a look at our Basic shared hosting web site, we pinged it each 5 minutes for per week. Over that point, the location had a median response time of simply 215ms—much better than the 300ms response instances that we sometimes see from shared hosting suppliers. Even extra spectacular, response instances by no means exceeded 365 ms. That degree of consistency provides us quite a lot of confidence in Domain.com’s servers.

Alternatives to Domain.com

Domain.com is in a crowded area of budget-friendly shared and managed WordPress hosting suppliers. The platform doesn’t supply extra substantial VPS or devoted hosting plans, so that you’ll wish to look elsewhere if it’s good to host a big web site or anticipate quite a lot of visitors.

Compared to different finances hosting providers, Domain.com’s pricing is aggressive. Namecheap provides barely extra inexpensive shared hosting plans, whereas well-known suppliers like GoDaddy are dearer.

However, Namecheap provides a significantly better worth in your cash in our opinion. A primary shared hosting plan provides you entry to cPanel in addition to a customisable web site backup instrument. You also can host three web sites as an alternative of only one. Another good factor about Namecheap is that for those who join a multi-year plan, you’re rewarded with a reduction.

While GoDaddy is dearer than Domain.com, you additionally get some advantages for the added price. Most necessary, GoDaddy has an unlimited vary of hosting choices, together with devoted Linux and Windows servers. So, it’s simple to improve your hosting plan sooner or later as wanted.

Domain.com’s options in comparison with the competitors

Domain.com: The verdict

Domain.com excels in two key methods. The first is that it’s very inexpensive. While you’ll find cheaper shared hosting plans (for instance, from Namecheap), Domain.com provides fairly good worth in your cash. Just needless to say you’ll pay further for issues like e mail and the web site builder.

The second means wherein Domain.com stands out is that it’s dependable. Our testing discovered that Domain.com’s shared hosting plans supply higher than common response instances, and have been extraordinarily constant over per week of testing.

Beyond these two strengths, although, we discovered ourselves wishing for lots extra from Domain.com. One main problem is that the corporate doesn’t supply VPS or devoted hosting plans, so that you’ll be compelled emigrate to a different supplier if you wish to develop your web site sooner or later. On prime of that, annual plans lock you into the service, and there aren’t any reductions for signing up for a multi-year subscription.

We additionally aren’t large followers of Domain.com’s customized management panel. It’s simple to make use of, but it surely severely limits your management over your web site relative to cPanel. Likewise, for those who arrange e mail by Domain.com, you don’t have very a lot management over it. 

With all that in thoughts, Domain.com generally is a sensible choice for some primary web sites. However, in case your aim is to develop your web site over time, otherwise you need the flexibility to develop the again finish of your web site, you’ll be higher served by one other hosting supplier.