Web.com review

Web.com is probably not one of the first names you would think of when considering content management systems. However, it’s one on the market that aims to deliver high quality services to business customers. In this Web.com review, we’ll look to see if it lives up to its potential.

What Is Web.com?

Web.com is one of the oldest public hosting companies in the world. It was founded in 1997, and has grown to have more than 3.3 million subscribers. The company also owns Network Solutions and Register.com.

Their main aim with their content management system service is to offer small businesses an opportunity to cost effectively host and promote their business. They don’t want to make it too technical so their service is available to everyone.

Building Your Web.com Website

When you create your Web.com website you’ll be offered three pricing tiers to choose from. Each one of these will offer you access to a drag and drop website builder. Therefore, if you lack technical knowledge, it won’t matter.

Designing your site may take a little while if you’re not used to the process of building a site, but with the relative ease of making changes, mistakes are easily rectified on your website. The only steps needed in building your website is choosing a theme, selecting your colours and then adding content. It’s that simple.

One of the best features of the page builder is the inbuilt spell checker. How many times have businesses missed an obvious mistake?

You can also swap social media buttons, add documents, maps and other items. All the images available on the builder are also free to use. So you don’t need to take your own images. This can be very reassuring as image rights can be a costly aspect of any web project.

All of this for the small price they offer, plus a free domain seems like a good deal. But this is where the good vibes of Web.com end.

Developers will get frustrated with the lack of customization options in the website builder. You’re also less likely to get a stunning website design than with some other website builders available on the market.

Web.com Functionality

One of the major issues with Web.com is that it doesn’t offer you a Virtual Private Server or dedicated hosting options. This limits your traffic and the speed of your website. Server speed is so important and customers will more than likely abandon your website if it takes more than four seconds to load your page.

For this to happen, it only takes another user on your server to have more traffic than everyone else and they will consume the resources of your server, effectively slowing down your website to crawl.

What is impressive, is that Web.com is able to keep your website live almost continuously. Yes, sometimes there will be downtimes, but it’s so infrequent and for such a small amount of time, that it’s likely you or your customers won’t even notice when your website is not live.

One of the most attractive features of Web.com, is the Facebook Business Page. This is a free offer for new customers when they subscribe. This is specifically aimed at those who aren’t tech savvy. However, the value of this isn’t too much. It doesn’t take much to create a Facebook page and with online programs like Canva, creating images isn’t challenging any more.

If you are looking for something like ecommerce and taking payments on your website, then Web.com has some solutions. These are additional add-ons you can get from their marketplace, but you’ll have to pay for them in addition to what you already do for your hosting.

Once you have them, they are fairly easy to use. So if you don’t have the technical skills, you could be pleased with this solution.

Support is probably one of the best elements of Web.com. They have sites in the US and the UK and can offer your support at any time. This is a key feature as some small businesses don’t just work during the traditional 9 to 5 window.

The only advice we would give is to ensure you call them rather than use their live chat feature. The latter of these can be very frustrating and you’re better just going straight to your phone to get a good answer.

Another point is the security. You would expect security to be good, but it’s questionable as they offer a security upgrade.

Web.com Pricing

Web.com pricing is confusing and sometimes misleading. They have great introductory offers for you. The first month, for instance, is only $1.95. But after this it can be increased to $22 per month. If you look around their website, you might be able to find a hosting plan for $12.95 per month

This does include your domain for the first year, but after a year, your renewal will be $37 per year. This is more than double what other sites will charge.

In addition, for other items you will have to pay more. SSL certificates, which are an essential element for SEO nowadays will cost more, so will reporting, ecommerce abilities and payment solutions.

Some of their offers can also seem misleading. For instance, they offer everything you need for an online marketing service, which is essentially your web domain being published to online directories. While it is a valid service, it is not something that should be considered to cover all your online marketing needs.

With this in mind, you can quickly see how Web.com can become very expensive. When comparing the features you get from other CMS and web hosting services, Web.com looks very over priced.

Web.com Review: Pros

• Cheap introduction offer that includes domain name
• Easy to use website builder that even non-tech business owners can use
• Excellent up-time for all website on their servers

Web.com Review: Cons

• Misleading prices mean that you can pay a fortune for your website in the end
• Limited customisation options
• Shared hosting which can slow down your website
• Poor record with the Better Business Bureau

Web.com Review Conclusion

Our Web.com review conclusion is that while the CMS seems to offer a lot, it fails in many respects.  It can be overpriced and functionality can be poor. However, it does offer great up-time and support, which is comparable with even the best web hosts.