123-reg.co.uk review

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

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

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.