web.com
With nearly two decades of catering to businesses and professionals, Web.com(opens in new tab) is well versed in the art of getting you online, and noticed. Its website builder service includes hosting space, lucrative introductory offers on essentials such as domain name, daily automatic backups, and more have helped it become one of the most trusted hosting companies.
Unlike many other hosting companies that provide a range of plans for different hosting solutions such as shared, VPS or dedicated servers, Web.com only provides shared servers. On offer are two shared hosting plans aimed at novices and SMB’s and two plans for those looking to create an ecommerce platform.
HostGator and Bluehost are comparable in their services, and might be a better option if you’re looking for advanced features, better WordPress integration, or better support.
Pricing and payment methods
In addition to the website builder plans, Web.com also offers business email, domain registration, web hosting, and more. Each of these offerings has plenty to entice business owners and helps them build a memorable online presence. But this doesn’t mean that you have to individually purchase each of these. In fact, most of these offerings are interlinked. For instance, each Web.com website builder plan includes domain name as well as business email account, etc.
Web.com doesn’t offer any free trials, money back guarantees or refunds. You can opt for monthly billing to try its offerings, and the plans are priced lower for the first month of use for this very purpose.
| Period | Basic | Plus | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billed yearly | Intro: AU$2.95 /Month Renew: AU$9.99 /Month | Intro: AU$4.95 /Month Renew: AU$13.99 /Month | Intro: AU$6.95 /Month Renew: AU$16.99 /Month |
Website Essentials is the cheapest website builder plan on offer. As it is aimed for bloggers, or professionals, the plan lacks ecommerce, and SEO support, but offers surprisingly a lot including email, phone and 24/7 live chat support, website analytics, social media integration, business email accounts, and more. If billed annually, the plan will cost AU$2.95 /Month (renews at AU$9.99 /Month).
Business owners would be better served with the Business Essentials plans, which additionally offers marketing tools such as a logo builder and SEO tools and will cost you AU$7.95 /Month (renews at AU$14.99 /Month) if billed yearly.
The eCommerce Essentials and eCommerce Premium plans are aimed at users looking to deploy an online store and includes features such as unlimited products and categories, secure online payment options with Paypal and Stripe, custom discount codes, abandoned cart saver and more. You will have to shell out AU$13.95 /Month (renews at AU$25.99 /Month) if you subscribe to the yearly plan.
More advanced features, such as restock management, carcode generation, Amazon multi-channel fulfilment, automated sales tax calculation, etc. are reserved only for the costliest eCommerce Premium plan, which will set you back by AU$19.95 /Month (renews at AU$39.99 /Month) if billed yearly.
Web.com accepts payments through all major credit and debit cards as well as PayPal, but not through cryptocurrencies.
Even at first glance, it’s quite apparent that Web.com is considerably pricier than its web hosting peers such as Bluehost and Gator, and even website builders such as Wix and Zyro. While you might balk at the idea of paying more, consider that Web.com is more than a website builder. It prides in offering a wealth of expertise in business marketing and lead generation to best promote and grow your business, and this explains the price difference.
Support
Web.com offers expert support on a variety of hosting topics. Customers get access to an extensive knowledgebase of common user issues. Support is available via email, online, and by phone.
Like all the other features, Web.com’s support is designed to make your life as easy as possible. They use cutting-edge technology to constantly monitor all your websites, so they can let you know about any issues that arise early on – often before you even realise there’s a problem. Both tickets and calls to the hotline number (which is available 24 hours a day) are responded to by technical support staff who are delightfully quick.
The tech support is friendly and responsive, and they also have a knowledgebase which contains a wealth of information about the workings of web.com’s service, broken down into short clear, and well illustrated articles, which answered most of the queries we had.
In addition to technical support, they also offer a wide range of instructions and tutorials for those who want to learn about certain topics (such as updating or customising the website) themselves.
Ecommerce
Web.com now has a more advanced ecommerce website builder platform with more layout designs for product and category listing pages. There are more options for customization on the product details pages within the store.
The product is really easy to use and needs no technical skills. Web.com offers a single place where you can manage all the day-to-day tasks of running an online business with its ecommerce software.
On testing out the eccommmerce platform, we were able to list products for sale on our test website and on marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Bonanza, and Google, managing all customer orders in one place. You can also manage fulfillment, product listing updates, restocking, reporting and more.
Web.com also offers 24/7 automated inventory sync technology – your product quantities will show accurately everywhere they sell. You can also connect to suppliers via Web.com’s feed management system to automatically sync product data, order data and tracking details when suppliers fulfills an order.
The SEO tool integrated in Web.com’s ecommerce product offers monthly health checks, tracks keyword rankings, and creates a custom action plan to improve site visibility. Payment gateways offered include Paypal, Stripe and Web.com also offer the option for your customers to pay by cash on delivery.
Final verdict
We found web.com to be a very good website builder. Its features and blocks allow you to create a unique and visually interesting page (or series of pages) in minutes. Beefing up the blogging, and offer bulk product imports for the online store, would make it even better. It’s a simple, and affordable solution.
