Overview
Solid Services & Good Customer Support
If you are on the hunt for a mid-range service that provides all the functionality to be able to host a website at an affordable cost then it’s worth taking a look at Domain.com. As part of a bigger organisaiton that owns more than 30 other other hosting brands, they have the experience to offer the best but do fall short in a few areas.
Generally, the hosting, prices and support are all average and will help any basic user get their site online within minutes, through their main focus which is shared hosting plans.
Why Choose Domain.com Hosting?
- Focused mainly on shared hosting
- Good prices
- Solid support network for the USA
- Marketing Freebies
Want to know if Domain.com Hosting is right for you?
Reliability
Unclear Uptime Statistics
A bit of sticky area when it comes to reliability as its a mixed bag of feedback and details. Whilst the site itself does not offer any stats on uptime, uptime guarantees, or any kind of information or details regarding there data centre location, they do state they have a Tier 1 facility offering full redundancy and 24/7 monitoring, but there is no mention of backups for shared hosting.
Adding to this, there are a lot of online reviews that talk about poor uptime, whilst other state they have received excellent uptime, so its a bit unstable to say the least.
If you arent too fussed about having a 99.5%+ uptime and are more interested in the features and affordability range, then I wouldnt worry.
Features
Basic Features & Tools
Even the cheapest plans on offer with Domain.com come with some great features such as unlimited disk space and bandwidth, whilst the expensive tiered packages will offer a greater range of features from unlimited FTP accounts and email accounts. In terms of the variety of features, you won’t find many here as Domain.com tend to offer just the basics.
Even though CPanel is mentioned you can’t really see which plan this falls under or if it is a hidden cost. They actually have their own custom control panel which you will need to get accustomed to.
There are some extra freebies which include some marketing coupons that you can use on Google or Bing advertising platforms, you tend to get these when signing up for a hosting platform. You can also register a domain and install CMS systems such as WordPress into your site.
Support
Good Support Services if You Are Within The USA
The best ways to get in contact with the support team over at Domain.com is by use of a ticket system and a toll free number (if you are based in the US). Tutorials and helpful guides are avialable in the knowledge base, this includes a guide on how to use DomainCentral, which is Domain.com’s custom made control panel.
Live chat is available on the site, but its primary focus is for sales themed questions, so you are out of luck if you have a technical question that you want to ask. I would revert back to email or phone.
- 24/7 support
- Live chat for sales
- Knowledge Base
- Ticket System
- Live chat only for sales
- No support team location mentioned
Pricing
Your Average Pricing Structure
There are 3 different plans available under Windows and Linux setups, and each plan consists of some saving when you commit to longer periods. You can choose between 1,2 or 3 year terms and the cheapest option is the Linux Basic plan which starts off at $3.75 per month. If you are looking to take out a Windows hosted plan then you just need to add $1 to each plan, so the Basic Plan starts at $4.75 whilst the top plan comes in at $14.75 per month.
VPS plans start at $29.70 per month, and they regularly run promotional codes across the site to either help you make a saving or benefit from extra freebies, such as a free domain when signing up.
User Friendly
You Will Need to Get Used to a Custom Control Panel
Depending on which platform and plan you have decided to go with, you will come against a different Control Panel, which can confuse things a little. DomainCentral is the custom created control panel offered by Domain.com and you will see this run across all shared hosting options. As it is there own control panel you will need to get used to how it works and where to find everything.
This can be a bit of a nuisance for some people as you will need to either jump in and learn as you go, or read through a guide that can be found in the knowledge base section.
VPS users do get CPanel, but its worth checking if this is an additional fee as it doesn’t state.
Summary
Decent Hosting Provider For Basic Users
Domain.com is a fairly average hosting platform which can be the ideal solution for customers who just want basic features at a decent price. You will need to get used to a custom control panel is shared hosting is something that you require, and uptime cannot be guaranteed so you will be jumping in at the deep end here.
Support lines are pretty good with a solid service that offers phone, email, live chat and ticketing, but be aware live chat is only open for sales chatter so tech questions will need to be forwarded on through phone or email lines.
Pros
- Good price bracket
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage
- Freebies for signing up
- Part of a larger organisation
Cons
- No uptime guarantee
- No live chat for tech questions
- cPanel could come with a license
- Custom control panel
