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.
I have experienced using 123-reg.co.uk with one of my freelancer client from PPH marketplace which I built a basic but professional pet care website around 10 webpages max. Using their Starter managed wordpress hosting plan, and still the website loads very fast as they have a free CDN and free SSL certificate, even though it's just a shared starter plan and we've got a lot of contents on the website specially on the homepage, and not to mention it has some animations to it, it still loads very fast.
Pricing also affordable compared to other Managed wordpress hosting servers. I haven't tested out their technical support as of that time they don't have Live support yet, you can only contact them through email or call their support phone numbers which is also not that convenient as I am on different time zone.
But overall, their service and hosting server is great, very fast and and affordable.
Hosting rating
verified
Adeel ALI
Pakistan
24 apr. 2019
123-reg-co-uk is very popular web hosting service in the U.K. I am using their service for 10 years Their service is affordable and reliable .Good for hosting small wordpress websites.
Like other European web hosts their dashboard is not so good.
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
Jordan Donegan
Greece
19 sept. 2020
I purchased services from 123Reg to start an online grocery site, their order process was easy and their control panel was very simple to navigate. Their pricing is at the market rate, so definitely good value for money. Shortly after signing up, their team gave me a call to see if I needed any assistance with anything, which is rare in this day and age.
Hosting rating
verified
Scott Rigby
United Arab Emirates
14 aug. 2021
123 has been a go-to host for me for several years now. The pricing is great but I do find the offering a little lack-lustre compared to other hosts, Eg the £5 plan only allows 2 mailbox's which I find low compared to other hosts.
Their support is good but sometimes it can take a few hours to get a reply. Their interface can be a little confusing, I much prefer a full cpanel but they give me a more limited view.
In terms of where it matters I find the speed of 123 reg sites more than acceptable, I have had a lot scoring high on google pagespeeds, with the heavier wordpress websites not doing so well (to be expected)
The added bonus with 123 is their account switch service, I can build a website for a client and then get it moved to their own hosting account effortlessly
Hosting rating
verified
Tariq Ahmed
Turkey
4 nov. 2022
123-reg is like a one-stop shop for pretty much everything regarding website hosting or domain. I use this hosting for one of my clients and found some pros and cons. I will start with the cons. 95% there live support is extremely busy therefore, they will show a contact number and believe me, it is also busy. So connecting them is a big problem. 2nd they mention 100 GB space, but it's not 100GB. You will get a lot less space well; on the other hand, 90% of the website is under 5GB. The good part is that prices are excellent, almost 2 pounds monthly. You will get a free domain if you pay yearly. about speed, it's quite good, but they are not using Litespeed so it's not very fast, but it fast enough that you will not feel any major different
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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.
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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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