Register.com: What Are The Online Small Business Tools They Boast About?
As its name implies, Register.com offers a full suite of domain name registration services. However, the company is much more than that — Register.com offers user-friendly web hosting solutions, aiming to provide resources typically reserved for larger organizations to small businesses.
Does Register.com live up to its promises? Can small businesses find enterprise-grade products that are easy to use and budget-friendly? Read on to find out.
Contents
About Register.com
Register.com was founded in 1994 by Peter Forman as Forman Interactive Corporation to offer its clients website building software. Over the next five years, the company would pivot toward domain name registration and web hosting services. By 1999, these offerings would be such a big part of the firm that company leaders decided to re-brand as Register.com.
Today, the company (which is based in New York City) offers over 50 distinct products to its customers. It manages over 2.9 million domain names and serves hundreds of thousands of customers.
Web.com acquired the company in 2010.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Extensive domain services
- Web design and development services
- Linux and Windows hosting options
- Developer-friendly
Cons
- Not the cheapest hosting
- No advanced web hosting
- Website difficult to navigate due to a large number of product offerings
Register.com is more than just a domain name registrar — they also offer web hosting, professional design, and marketing assistance.
If a domain name is what you’re interested in, you can’t go wrong with Register.com. The company offers a full suite of such services, including new domain registration, transfer services, privacy management and more.
Register.com also offers shared hosting options, and if you’re looking for a plan that runs the Windows operating system, you’re in luck.
Do note, however, that Register.com does not offer any advanced hosting options, such as VPS hosting or dedicated servers.
Register.com also offers a variety of professional services, including website design and marketing assistance, which means that you can add these items onto your domain name or web hosting purchases — you don’t need to go elsewhere for these options.
Web Hosting Plans
Register.com offers several hosting plans from which you can choose. There are the general-use shared hosting plans, but some of their offerings (e.g,, Websites) come with web hosting as well.
All shared hosting plans are available with Linux or Windows operating systems.
Register.com offers three standalone shared hosting plans.
The cheapest hosting plan is called the Essential Hosting Plan and it gets you 300 GB of storage and support for an unlimited amount of data transfer. You’ll also get a free domain name, up to 10 email inboxes, 25 FTP accounts, and 25 MySQL databases (300 MB max).
The mid-range Professional Hosting Plan gets you 500 GB of storage and support for an unlimited amount of data transfer. You’ll also get a free domain name, up to 25 email inboxes, 50 FTP accounts, and 50 MySQL databases (300 MB max).
The high-end Premium Hosting Plan gets you unlimited storage and data transfer. You’ll also get a free domain name, up to 25 email inboxes, and unlimited FTP accounts and MySQL databases (with no size restrictions).
All options come with your choice of Unix (which is what Register.com recommends for most users) or Windows operating system. Unlike many other hosts, Register.com does not charge more for Windows hosting.
Websites
Register.com offers a variety of Websites plans, which gets you a website (or the tools to build one) and the hosting you need to get your site online.
The Do-It-Myself option is a website builder plan. It gets you everything you need to create a website yourself:
- A domain name
- 1 email account
- 5 GB storage
- Web hosting
- Web development tools
- Web analytics functionality
- Access to web design templates that you can build off of
- Access to a stock image library.
The Do-It-Myself plan comes with a drag-and-drop website builder.
To build your website, you’ll get access to an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop editing interface. You can make a site from scratch, or you can use one of the provided templates that you can modify to suit the needs of your website. You’ll also get access to the stock image library and starter text in case you need a bit more content for your website.
For those who want assistance in building their website, Register.com offers the Do-It-For-Me option. The staff at Register.com will create and build a fully custom website for your business that includes photos and copy specially designed for your business. Register.com will also help you with SEO, monthly updates, and more.
Those who want to build an online store, however, would be best served by the E-commerce Website option. Prices begin at $9.95 per month and include:
- Website builder tools and templates
- Online product catalog with inventory management tools
- Support for mobile shopping and checkout.
If you already have a web hosting package that doesn’t include email (or you need additional email inboxes), Register.com offers email-only plans. These hosting plans allow you to receive messages at an address that matches your website’s custom domain name.
Register.com offers three email-only packages, and the best option for you depends on how many inboxes you need, as well as how large you want each inbox to be.
Domain Names
With Register.com, you can:
- Register a new domain name (including premium domain names)
- Transfer a domain name
- Establish domain name privacy, which hides your information from the WHOIS lookup directory
- Set up website forwarding if you have multiple domain names you want to use for a single site (or if you’ve changed your domain name)
- Protect yourself from losing your domain name if you don’t re-register it before it expires
- Perform a WHOIS lookup if you want to research who owns/administers a specific domain name.
How To Transfer a Domain Name
Transferring a domain name from your current registrar to Register.com requires the following steps:
- Provide the domain name to Register.com
- Complete the purchase of domain name management services on Register.com
- Authorize the transfer of your domain name to Register.com
- Accept the transfer of your domain name.
Register.com Features
We’ve taken a look at specific products offered by Register.com, but here are some other features you might want to consider before finalizing your purchase.
Uptime Guarantee
Register.com advertises a 99.99% uptime reliability for those with Unix hosting, while those with Windows hosting can expect 99.9%. Uptime calculations exclude scheduled maintenance windows, as well as downtime caused by events outside of the company’s control.
We were unable, however, to find out what compensation (if any) you would receive if Register.com doesn’t meet this level of service.
Money-Back Guarantee
Register.com offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, but it does not apply to premium domain names or hosting services. (Regular domain names come with a 5-day money-back guarantee.)
The downside, however, is that this guarantee doesn’t cover many of their offerings; the upside is that Register.com is one of the few companies offering monthly billing at the shared hosting level.
Development Tools
Register.com is fairly developer-friendly, offering support for the following website development apps, frameworks, and technologies:
- Ruby on Rails (Unix only)
- PHP 5
- Zend Libraries (Unix only)
- Python
- JSP (Unix only)
- ASP/ASP.NET (Windows only).
Customer Service and Technical Support
Register.com offers technical support via telephone or email in the US Eastern time zone:
- Monday through Friday between 9 AM and midnight
- Saturday and Sunday between 9 AM and 10 PM.
The company promises to respond to all inquiries within 24-48 hours of receipt.
Register.com maintains some FAQ pages and a basic knowledgebase, but unfortunately, we found it to be spartan and not much help beyond the basics.
User Ratings
There are 70 reviews written by actual Register.com users. They give the host a rating of 2.2 out of 5, with many complaints about the customer service team, pricing, and issues with uptime.
Register.com vs GoDaddy
If you’re interested in a company like Register.com, but this specific company isn’t the one for you, consider GoDaddy instead.
| Register.com | GoDaddy | |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | 300 GB | 100 GB |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unmetered |
| Websites | 3 | 1 |
| Advanced Hosting | No | Yes |
| Price | $5.95 | $5.99 |
| The data is from each host’s basic shared hosting plans. | ||
Like Register.com, GoDaddy offers a variety of web hosting- and website-related services that will appeal to small businesses.
GoDaddy also provides a broader array of web hosting options, along with an abundance of professional services.
GoDaddy promises a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a service level that the company seems to meet from our prior testing.
GoDaddy requires lengthier contracts with its customers, but the company does offer fairly robust money-back guarantees to compensate.
GoDaddy isn’t the only viable option for those interested in Register.com, however; other options you should look into include HostGator, Network Solutions, and SiteGround.
Special Register.com Deal
If you’re ready to get started with Register.com, use our link to receive a discount off your purchase. Visit Register.com now.
Summary
Register.com is more than just a domain name registrar — the company also offers web hosting services, professional design services, and marketing assistance. Register.com doesn’t provide the most comprehensive array of services around, but its selection of over 50 products makes it appealing to many small businesses.
Not sure if Register.com is right for you? This company is one of the few that offers monthly billing cycles, so you can get started today without worrying about annual contracts.
Visit Register.com now.
Your Review of Register.com
Are you a current or past customer of Register.com? Would you recommend them? Please leave your comments below and let our visitors know what you think of their speed, features, and customer service.
Contributing writer: Katie Horne. Contributing editor: Frank Moraes.