Editor's opinion
Sean Thompson
I am a full-time web developer & IT professional with more than 18 years experience. I have been working with numerous hosting companies over the years.
First impression
123 Reg is a British domain registrar and web hosting company founded in 2000 by brothers Jonathan Brealey and Tim Beresford-Brealey, who before this also set up Heart Internet and Webfusion. This established UK brand, acquired by Host Europe in 2003 and ultimately ending up under the ownership of GoDaddy in 2017, has received numerous awards during the two-decade reign and boasts to have registered over 3.5 million domains and hosting a million + websites worldwide from their eco-friendly data centers, all running on hardware from the world’s leading manufacturers, including the latest HP and Dell servers along with the latest generation of Intel processors.
Their initial focus was primarily on domain registrations but has shifted more towards hosting services over time, and they currently offer Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Dedicated Server Hosting packages to their predominantly UK client base.
Short customer review about 123-reg.co.uk
Comparative table of the main characteristics of the TOP-10 hosting providers
Company name
Cheapest shared hosting plan
Most expensive shared hosting plan
WordPress hosting
Website builder
Dedicated servers
Cloud hosting
Additional features
Uptime for your website
Hostinger.com
$1.99
$8.99
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Minecraft Hosting
excellent
A2Hosting.com
$1.99
$11.99
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
excellent
AccuWebHosting.com
$3.99
$7.99
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Forex VPS Hosting
excellent
FastComet.com
$1.79
$3.74
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No
excellent
Kamatera.com
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
No
excellent
UltaHost.com
$3.29
$12.99
Yes
No
Yes
No
MineCraft - Game Server, 7 Days To Die - Game Server
excellent
Scalahosting.com
$2.36
$11.96
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
medium
InMotionHosting.com
$2.29
$11.91
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Minecraft Server Hosting
excellent
Name.com
$6
$13
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
very bad
123-reg.co.uk
£2.99 ($3.74)
£7.49 ($9.47)
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
excellent
Trial Period
123 Reg offers a 30-day full money-back guarantee on all their hosting services. To qualify for a refund, cancellation requests must be made within 30 days of placing the initial order and no later than that. This must be done by telephone at +44 (0)345 450 2310, or by raising a support ticket via their control panel. It probably goes without saying, but I think it is important to mention that there are no refunds on domain registrations.
Billing Cycle
All their products have a monthly, quarterly, or yearly payment option, however, their shared hosting packages offer the ability to pay for multiple years at a time, while their VPS allows only one year at a time. 123 Reg offers generous discounts on longer commitments, and depending on the size of the order placed, you could get up to 20% off, or at least a minimum of 10% discount as this is all tailored around the packages you choose. They will accept all major Credit and Debit cards, as well as PayPal as a payment method.
Control Panel
123 Reg makes use of the ever-popular cPanel on all their plans. If you are not familiar with it yet, it allows non-savvy users and experts alike to easily manage their websites, domains, emails, and other aspects of their hosting account from one user-friendly web interface. VPS users will also have Plesk as an option.
Limits
On their Shared Hosting, they offer customers 4 options, namely Starter, Standard, Pro, and Ultimate, none of which offers much to write home about. The Starter plan comes with a decent amount of hosting space, 100GB in total, and although about 20GB of that will be used for preinstalled content like the Operating System, cPanel, and more, it should be sufficient. The problem comes in with the allocated CPU and RAM. Users will only get 1 CPU and 512MB RAM - which is shared between multiple users on the same server. Bear in mind that they don't mention the storage to be SSD, let alone NVMe SSDs, so I assume it will still run on slow and outdated HDDs. For me personally, this plan is a tad too basic.
Starter doesn't offer much more, except for a couple more MySQL databases that you probably won't need and unlimited storage. The Pro plan comes bundled with 2 CPUs and 1GB RAM, and the Ultimate plan has 2 CPUs with 2GB RAM (not shared RAM).
VPS Hosting also comes in four options, Starter, L, XL, and XXL. All that sets them apart is the allocated disc space, CPUs, and RAM allocated on each, with the Starter Plan featuring 1CPU, 512MB RAM, and 25GB Hosting space, whilst the XXL boasts 3 CPUs, 3GB RAM, and 150GB space.
All plans, whether Shared or VPS, come with unlimited Bandwidth.
Website Builder
123 Reg has its own, easy-to-use website builder that comes at an additional monthly cost. There are 4 options that range from £5.59 to £34.99, each with a few more value-added features than the previous one. Customers can choose from dozens of pre-built, mobile-friendly templates, all of which can be easily customized with drag-and-drop tools. They also have a selection of copyright-free content available, including images, icons, and video backgrounds, should you not have your own materials. Simplicity does come at the cost of the flexibility and options allowed, so if you’re looking for something more complex, Managed WordPress might be the way.
Security
Security comes in the form of web application firewalls (WAF), database firewalls, and DDoS protection. Their shared hosting Pro packages and higher come standard with a free SSL certificate, while the Premium plan comes with AutoSSL, a program that allows you to add an SSL certificate automatically, free of charge.
As for the VPS plans, they are completely blank slates and don’t come with SSL certificates or AutoSSL. For the packages that do not offer SSL certificates, customers have the option of buying one at an additional cost, with the cheapest one being an eye-watering £47.88+ VAT per year.
All their Virtual Private Servers are backed up once every 24 hours. So, in the unlikely event of hardware failure, your VPS can easily be recovered with very little downtime.
OS
123 Reg uses the Linux Operating System on their shared and premium hosting packages. Their VPS Hosting plans allow for both Linux and Windows, so Microsoft products can be incorporated into websites more easily.
Support
123 Reg offers 24/7 support in the form of a Live Chat that is available from 9 AM to 7 PM daily, a Ticketing System, and Phone support that is available for all users from 8 AM to 10 PM on weekdays and 9 AM to 5 PM on weekends.
Their support is entirely UK-based and customers need to be logged in to log a fault or to use The Live Chat function, as those options aren’t available otherwise. This could make things tricky to get urgent help if you are based in another time zone.
The agents are friendly, and knowledgeable and do respond quickly (within 6 minutes in my case) should you contact them within their normal support hours.
Conclusion
Pros
Cons
Free Domain on Shared Plans;
30-day money-back guarantee;
Unlimited Bandwidth.
Phone support is restricted to the UK;
Poor Uptime;
Entry-level plans are too basic;
No SSD storage;
More expensive than most.
For a company that's been around for more than 20 years, I expected a bit more, to be honest. The impression I get is that they just do the bare minimum to keep going, and lack that spark that some of the up-and-coming hosting providers have. Their plans are basic, their support average and they don't have the best reputation when it comes to server reliability and uptime. They might be an option for someone that is UK based and looking to host their personal blog or website, but for businesses, there are better providers.
Plans
Note! Some companies do not include VAT in their prices. Prices are indicated for one month’s pay. If you pay for a longer period - discounts are possible. Domain prices are indicated for new domains registration.
123 Reg is one of the Top most services providers in the UK. Their all-in-one services are the very best where you can get Domain, Hosting, and Website Builder together so you won't need to consider going anywhere else. Being the best services provider in the UK they always maintain their reliability, good values, and fast services which makes them stand tall among their other competitors. Their support staff is not only friendly and helpful, but they also assist you personally in resolving your issue if you are stuck to inputting any code or process. Thank you for the great services.
I'm thoroughly impressed with 123 Reg Hosting! They made it incredibly easy to set up my website and gave me a ton of resources to help me get started. The customer service is outstanding - they are always available to help me with any questions I have.
Hosting rating
verified
Pawan Singh VIP-Review
CEO
14 nov. 2022
I have used 123-reg for my UK clients and its really great. Their dashboard design is user friendly and they provide a cPanel so you can easily manage your website. Their customer support is awesome. You can ask them anytime if you face any issue and they will help you.
Hosting rating
verified
shiela saballa
Philippines
20 apr. 2019
Pros:
- They have 99.99% uptime rate as they use load balancing which means your website will be hosting on multiple servers so if anything happens, your website will remain live.
- Performance is great since their data centre is in UK as well.
- They have great tech/cust support!
Cons:
- Not all their hosting packages offer free SSL. Most of the hosting companies offer this already.
- They only have 1ftp account for each hosting which isn't good especially if you have a lot of websites and you have few developers working on each site.
- There are limits to the number of subdomains you can create on each package.
Hosting rating
verified
Nathan Kerridge
United Kingdom
7 june 2019
Reasonable pricing, clear laid out without hidden costs. Easy to navigate and clearly laid out, they only offer free ssl with their unlimited and premium plus plans. There support team is very good and relatively quick to respond to and the site speeds are good if you are within the UK.
Hosting rating
verified
Russell Pearce
United Kingdom
24 nov. 2020
I have used 123-Reg for many years, mostly as a domain registrar and DNS.
The DNS manager is really simple to use and the any changes are propagated immediately. The UK based support team are extremely helpful and they have loads of useful help articles and support forums. They did recently have an issue with their DNS manager but this was managed well with frequent updates.
Some of the out of the box products are aimed more at small businesses who do not have their own IT team and are "out of the box" services, but if that is what you are looking for then the support is great and they will help you if you get lost.
Server hosting is pretty expensive for what you get, and they do not promote it as a product all that much, domains and web hosting are more their bread and butter.
Would definitely recommend if you are looking for a good domain registrar and DNS provider.
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We highly recommend not to purchase the cheapest hosting package. Usually, they come with a row of issues: the server is often down, the hardware is outdated, lousy and slow support, registration and payment errors, etc.
For your convenience, we have created a tool that can help you to choose the right hosting package for you just by answering a few simple questions.
CMS is a content management system. A lot of hosting providers offer so-called CMS optimized packages. However, this is a marketing trick because most CMSs do not have special software or hosting requirements.
Bulletproof hosting - it’s a type of service that allows to host almost any type of content, even the restricted one (adult content, warez, spam etc). Bulletproof hosting providers do not remove your content in case someone reports an abuse.
Unlimited hosting - refers to companies that provide packages with unlimited disk space, bandwidth, number of domains, databases or email accounts, etc. This is usually a marketing trick but sometimes you can find something worth a try.
Secure hosting - it’s a type of service when the hosting provider is mostly responsible for the security of the user’s account: updates the software installed on their servers, provides an antivirus and malware scanner, firewalls and basic anti-DDoS protection, etc.
DDoS-protected hosting - companies that provide packages that include anti-DDoS protection. These packages are considerably more expensive than regular ones. Nevertheless, they’re totally worth their price because the company will ensure that your website is secured from cyber attacks.
The more comfortable the control panel is, the easier will it be for you to change the website and hosting account settings.
Most hosting providers that are in TOP20 in our rating offer user-friendly control panels, such as cPanel, Plesk or DirectAdmin. That’s why we recommend to pay attention to other, more important parameters, while choosing a hosting provider.
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