Web.com Review – Is it Cost-effective and Trust-Worthy for Small Businesses?

In this article, we mainly review the service of web hosting offered by Web.com – the professional hosting provider with over 3 million of customers and 30 years of experience. This company claims in its official site that helping small businesses succeed online is the only reason for them to be in this industry. Now the question is whether it is a good option for small business websites? In order to come out the answer, we decide to carry out this review based on price, features, hosting performance and technical support.

Price

Web.com offers 3 web hosting packages which are called as Essential Hosting, Professional Hosting, and Premium Hosting, which have been charged for $9.96/mo, $13.29/mo, and $29.13/mo respectively. To be honest, the pricing set by Web.com is not the most expensive one in the market, but also cannot be seen as an affordable one, especially for budget-conscious businessmen.

Features

After reviewing the feature listing of Web.com, we have found that its 3 web hosting packages include different levels of basic features. Check the detailed comparison in the following.

In terms of advanced features like programming languages and some technologies, Web.com has done a good job. All of the 3 packages include free domain name, CGI, SSL, Perl, Python, Cron Jobs, PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, FTP Accounts or more.

However, in terms of the control panel, Web.com doesn’t make it clear which type and brand of control panel they have included in the web hosting packages.

E-Commerce Website Building

The company’s most shining aspect is that it provides customers with multiple powerful tools for building a truly successful e-commerce website with ease. Customers only need to choose from one of their professional templates, and then the built-in Setup Wizard will automatically walk them through every step needed to open a store. Some other tools include:

• Built-in design tool that allows customers to customize their e-commerce sites fully and freely
• PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant application guarantees safe and secure payments
• Store management tools help people manage products, orders, and customer information easily
• Built-in reporting and Google Analytics integration allow customers to track the progress of their online sales without any hassle

Hosting Performance

Web.com has indicated that it utilizes enterprise-class Sydney data center, which features top security, power efficiency and robustness, fast network connection, 24 hours a day and 7 days a weeks monitoring, and a range of value-added services. As the hosting performance is largely influenced by data center infrastructure, Web.com is able to guarantee fast page loading speed and no downtime theoretically. However, it does not make any boasts about speed and uptime, neither does it offers any guarantees.

Technical Support

Web.com customers can contact the support representatives standing by 24/7. All of these people are experienced in web hosting technical support, thus are able to deal with any issues raised by customers effectively and efficiently. However, the support channel offered by Web.com is quite limited. Customers can only ask for help through a phone line and an email address, but cannot start an instant online conversation with Web.com experts by simply clicking a live chat button.

Is Web.com Recommended?

Web.com is undoubtedly a professional and powerful business web host on the web, but we don’t think it is a good option due to the expensive price, limited basic features, lack of cPanel control panel, lack of uptime guarantee, and inconvenient technical support.

Instead, we’d like to recommend another well-known business oriented web hosting company called InMotion Hosting – one of the most reliable web hosts which has been trusted by millions of webmasters.

• Cheap Price – By going through this exclusive promotion link, customer can purchase starting at a cheap rate of $3.49/mo effectively.
• Rich Features – InMotion Hosting offers all the features needed to start and manage a business website successfully, such as unlimited disk space & data transfer, free domain name, free SSD, powerful cPanel control panel, SSH, SSI, 1-click shopping cart installer, free advertising credits, and the latest advanced technologies for some professionals and geeks.
• Hosting Performance – By leveraging the power of multiple cutting-edge data centers located in the East Coast and West Coast of US, quality servers, exclusive Max Speed Zone technology, and efficient network connections, InMotion Hosting claims to offer at least 99.9% uptime and fast page loading speed averages less than 1 second. As tested in the real world, this company has fully kept its promise.
• Technical Support – InMotion Hosting has done a great job in this respect. The support channel includes hotline, e-mail, live chat, and Company Blog, and support representatives are available day and night with the most patient and professional manner.