Founded in 1999, Web.com has worked its way up to become one of the leading web hosting technology companies as well as one of the largest providers of online marketing services in the United States. They are part of the Web.com group, which also owns an entire portfolio of brands including Network Solutions and Register.com. Their main goal is (or so they claim) “to help clients of all sizes build an online presence that gets results.” Since we have yet to find a company that doesn’t accept clients of all shapes and sizes, we think what they had in mind was their business goals, which is companies of all sizes.
In any case, Web.com Group currently employs about 3,500 people and manages over 9 million domain names for customers worldwide. Web.com is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, where one of their data centers is also located. The other is also located in the United States, but in Atlanta.
Similarly to the other offspring of the Web.com Group, the main Web.com website looks fresh with its user-friendly layout, nice balance of text and images, and a crew of people who obviously specialize in laugh-out-loud issues. We mean this literally, since the images on Web.com’s website (and their blog) are saturated with young people having fun while watching their computers, mostly. Let’s assume the message is that hosting with Web.com equals happiness, which is something we need to put to the test.
The blog itself is vivid and features many new articles and offers (among other things) as well as some helpful tips on tricks for running small businesses. Their social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram) are still in the land of the living, posting new content quite frequently and interacting with customers.
Plans and Prices
Web.com’s services aim to cover all the bases when it comes to hosting, website design and the issue of security. In addition to shared hosting, they provide domain registration (and transfer) services, their own website builder and WordPress optimized hosting (managed and unmanaged).
At first, the price seems cheap and cheerful, but if you decide to dig a little deeper you will reveal that the displayed price is only valid for the first month. From the second month onwards, the price will more than double and if you haven’t read all the way through, you might feel like you’ve been taken for a ride. For example, the cheapest hosting package (labeled as “Essential Hosting”) is priced at $5.95 per month, but that only applies to the first month and the second will cost you $14.95, which is daylight robbery in comparison. Well, at least you should get a “free” domain name registration with each package in addition to their beginner website builder.
As for supported payment methods, they accept all major credit/debit cards and PayPal. If you’re wondering what their refund policy is, they’re pretty strict about not providing any, although you can cancel their services at any time.
Web.com gives you access to a website builder and even an online store
Ease of use
To kickstart your website, you first need to decide which hosting solution is right for you and whether you want to build your website yourself (there are several ways to do this) or prefer to put it in the hands of experts (opting for the “Build It For Me” option). If the latter is what you want, you should schedule a call with the Web.com team to get a consultation on it (at no cost).
Either way (sooner or later), you’ll need to choose a plan, and since they’re well presented, it should be as easy as anything else. If you’re new to all of this, the FAQ section below may help you out. After adding this plan to your cart, you’ll be asked (as expected) to register a new domain (all are free for one year, except for “.co”) or use the one you have. However, keep in mind that after the renewal period, your domain can cost you up to $38 per year, which is a nice sum of money. There, you can apply a promo code (if you’re lucky enough to get one), enter your name, email address, and password, and proceed to create your Web.com account.
With all shared hosting packages, Web.com provides its users with access to cPanel, which is great news. With its intuitive, beginner-friendly interface and one-click installer (for about 25 open source applications), your website will be on fire in no time. If you don’t have much experience with coding and yet wish to develop your website yourself, Web.com offers a drag-and-drop website generator for beginners that should do the trick.
Speed and Experience
Although Web.com is quite eager to present itself in the best possible light, it (curiously) does not emphasize incredible speed performance as one of its greatest assets. However, after putting Web.com’s main website to the test, we learned that they have nothing to worry about in this regard. After taking all vital web metrics into consideration, GTmetrix (our speed testing tool) rated Web.com’s website speed performance with a B (95%), which is a pretty good result.
Web.com promises an industry standard uptime of 99.9%. However, after constant monitoring of Web.com’s main website for a month, we got a less favorable result with a 99.83%. There were four downtimes and together they lasted 67 minutes, with the longest one lasting 28 minutes straight. While this isn’t the most terrible performance we’ve seen, needless to say we were hoping for better results.
Support
If you need help, go to Web.com’s “Online Support Center,” which has familiar features of a knowledge base. There, articles are divided into eight categories of adaptation, and each is rated by a system involving stars, from one to five. Most of these are geared toward beginners and offer solutions to various potential problems described in great detail, more often with pictures than without. Using the search box should get you a good amount of results, although some of them may be rather loosely related to the actual problem.
In addition, there is a FAQ section on the Web.com website for each type of product featured and provides some useful information for all newcomers.
As a more human-centric alternative, you can contact Web.com’s technical team via phone, ticket and live chat, all of which should be available day and night. On top of that, you can get in touch with them via text messages on Facebook and Twitter, which is a nice touch for all the users out there.
