Expert 123 Reg Review
Jonathan Griffin. Editor, Hosting Expert, SEO Developer, & SEO Consultant.
“123-reg is the United Kingdom’s largest domain provider and belongs to the Host Europe Group. The company hosts more than 1. 4 million websites and has registered over three million domains.
On paper, 123-reg look pretty ordinary. The only thing we really like about their shared hosting is the ability to scale up the resources with their Managed Premium hosting plans.”
- Largest UK-based Domain Registrar.
- Telephone, Live-chat, and ticket-based support available.
- Windows and Linux plans available.
- Easy to uses custom control panel.
- Shared, VPS, WordPress, and Premium Hosting available.
- Marketing add-ons available, including SEO Optimizer.
4 Reasons to use 123-reg Shared Hosting for your website or Blog
#1. Choice of Windows or Linux hosting
There is a distinct lack of high-quality hosting providers that offer both Windows AND Linux hosting. Most just offer the standard Linux hosting, which is what you should choose unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise (i.e. you require ASP hosting).
#2. Their Managed Premium (VPS) plans provide an excellent upgrade path
As you have seen, 123-reg are one of the few web hosting providers to have such large resources available for their shared hosting plans. If you like the simplicity of shared hosting, but know that you soon may outgrow the traditional shared hosting plans more likely to be offered at other providers, then 123-reg is a real option.
Of course, another option is a fully managed Cloud, but even then some providers are more fully managed than others.
#3. Some positive reports around the web of their UK telephone, live chat, and ticket support.
It is surprising how many web hosting companies now don’t have the full range of support contact methods. 123-reg have them all, and this is a big plus.
This is something that can be tough to determine if you haven’t used the hosting for any length of time, and as such you are better looking at the User Reviews at the end of this Review to gauge their levels of Uptime and Support.
#4. Install Apps such as WordPress, Drupal or Joomla with their one click installer
Whether you choose their Windows or Linux plans, you will be able to install all the common apps with just a few clicks via their simple admin. interface. This is a common feature with many web hosting providers, but always worth mentioning.
6 Reasons why you might not want to choose 123-reg for your web hosting
#1. Custom Hosting Platform & Control Panel
When we were researching 123-reg via the trusty “Google search”, we found various references to them offering cPanel (Linux) and Plesk (Windows) as a control panel. However, when looking at their website this detail was suspiciously absent. In order to seek clarification on this point, we opened a support chat (which was answered swiftly).
After a short minute or so pause (it seemed they were seeking clarification themselves from a more senior person) they clarified that cPanel and Plesk are only available on their VPS plans and that they use a custom control panel for their shared hosting.
With control panels such as cPanel, Plesk or DirectAdmin offering excellent features and migration automation we do recommend web hosting providers that provide them. The 123-reg control panel looks fairly basic, and lacking some of the more advanced features that they offer, such as SpamAssassin.
You can get a glimpse of what their control panel looks like in the screenshot below:
A side effect of the custom control panel is that you won’t get any help migrating your websites to 123-reg, and equally, when you move away from them to another provider, any new provider would not be able to help with migration either. With established control panels such as cPanel hosting providers can automate the migration process and things like emails, SSL certificates and other settings can all be transferred in minutes. This is why many hosting providers offer free migration when using cPanel.
They do, however, offer a guide to talk you through the steps of migrating your website.
#3. Charged to Move Domain?
One of the things that concern us the most is that apparently if you need an IPS tag to move your domain away from them, then you may be charged $20.
I’ve been with 123-reg for like ten years. If my client wants to leave, I move it to the new provider. Now - 123-reg with zero customer loyalty wants me to pay 20 bucks to leave their service (change the IPS Tag). Surely its not legal to add this charge with no warning or no acceptance. This disgraceful business. No one else charges for this.
We know of no other hosting provider that does this and quite frankly are shocked that they choose to do such a thing. This almost wants us to scream “stay away” when considering them for domain registration.
#4. Limited time Money Back Guarantee
They offer a 14-day unconditional money back guarantee, although this does not apply to domains or other add-ons. This is significantly less than any other web hosting providers, with many providing between 30 and 90 days money-back guarantee. It is therefore important to make up your mind whether you wish to stay with them relatively quickly.
That being said, you should be able to make up your mind about a web hosting provider within two weeks, especially if you put them through their paces with some support requests early on.
#5. Requirement to give 30 days notice of cancellation or you will be charged automatically
After the money back guarantee period has run out, there are no refunds. If you wish to cancel at the end of the term, you should note that you need to give 30 days written notice, and there are a few complaints around the web of credit cards being charged automatically. You can find the relevant terms here:
12.1.1 the Client upon serving 30 days’ written notice on 123-reg following completion of 123-reg’ prescribed template procedures for terminating the whole or any part of the Agreement They clarify that the written notice can be made via support ticket.
While many web hosting providers have a habit of automatically renewing hosting at the end of the term, the 30 day notice requirement is quite draconian. If you sign up with 123-reg, just make sure that if you do not wish to renew at the end of the term that you give the correct notice and this will be no issue.
#6. Their lack of expertise \ disaster planning when major problems occur is worrying.
2016 has been a terrible year for 123-reg.
First, in April 2016, they deleted many of their VPS Servers with over 50 percent of the data permanently lost resulting in many customers losing their websites (always make off-site backups ok?!?).
Secondly, in May 2016, they suffered from major email outages affecting customers on around 67 web servers. To give some credit, this is only a small number of the 115,000 servers their parent company has across Europe.
Lastly (at least for now), in August 2016, they suffered from major outages due to a relatively large 30 Gbps DDoS attack. Fortunately, at least in the latter case, they managed to recover fairly quickly.
Ultimately the second two items are not overly serious, but nevertheless, the trend is worrying. The VPS data deletion, though, should never have been allowed to happen.
Jonathan Griffin. Editor, Hosting Expert, SEO Developer, & SEO Consultant.
“The more we looked at their website builder, the more we were impressed. While it doesn’t have all the add-ons that a specialist website builder company has, we feel their modern designs and inSite features will be more than adequate for small business users.
They do, however, seem a little overpriced and lacking in features for their e-commerce plans. "
- Easily Upgradable, both with their Shared Hosting, and Cloud Hosting.
- Responsive Mobile Ready Themes that adapt seamlessly to any device.
- Modern design interface that is extremely easy to use.
- A large number of great looking templates to get you up and running fast.
- Quickly add slideshows, galleries, fully customizable forms and more.
- Built in search engine optimization tools.
4 Reasons to use 123-reg Website Builder
#1. Their website builder is very easy to use, with no technical experience being necessary.
Their design interface is really good. It is modern, and extremely easy to use allowing you to easily implement many different features. The only problem is going to be your imagination, but fortunately they have some great templates you can start from too.
#2. Get up and running quickly by customizing one of many professionally designed templates that look good across desktops, tables or mobile.
We were very pleasantly surprised how great some of the basic templates looked. Quite often web hosting providers who offer their own website builder (as opposed to reselling a mainstream builder such as Weebly) will showcase some outdated, and quite frankly horrible designs.
You can choose templates from a variety of different professions or styles, which can then be adapted to make them unique, including:
- Business - Multiple professions are included; Laundry, Handyman, Luxury transport, consulting, app, plus many more.
- Restaurant - They have five different restaurant themes, of which at least two look really great.
- Portfolio sites - Whether you are a designer, or just want to visually showcase your services or products, they have some great designs.
- Beauty - Choose from lifestyle types themes, to beauty products or fitness.
An example of one of their latest designs is below:
#3. An extensive set of standard features and widgets to make your website look professional.
You can easily and quickly add the following features:
- Social icons - Display links to your social media accounts with smart icons.
- Image sliders - Easily add a swipeable image slider to your website to showcase your products and services.
- Google maps - Let people find you by integrating Google Maps in to your website; include step by step directions to your store.
- SEO functionality - Get found by more of your customers with our simple to use, built in Search Engine Optimization tools.
- Photo Galleries - Include a photo gallery on any page to showcase your products, customers or services and ensure they appear in the results for Google’s image search so they can be easily found by potential customers.
- Click to call - Website Builder connects your online and offline business. Your visitors can call in one click from a mobile device which can be limited to office hours. Great for shops, restaurants and professional services who want their customers to call.
- Blogs - Website Builder allows you to share your knowledge and establish a community with your visitors by creating a blog that integrates smoothly with your website.
- InSites - Improve engagement by personalizing your website based on how customers found you, where they are, the date, time of day and more.
- Contact forms - Drag and drop a contact form onto your website to give customers a safe and secure way to contact you.
- YouTube video - Embed any YouTube video by dragging this widget into place and take advantage of the internet’s fastest growing search engine.
#4. inSites widgets allow you to create custom content for specific visitors, such as custom offers or greetings. This is one of our favorite features of the 123-reg website builder. With inSites you can provide custom content or styling to specific sets of visitors. This is great for providing custom offers to say, returning visitors, or even completely changing the look of your website depending on their location (i.e. celebrate specific holidays from certain countries).
Examples of some of the changes you can make are as follows:
- Special promotions that run each year for a set period (i.e. Christmas or New Year)
- Notification bars that display on specific pages only once per visitor (i.e. welcome message)
- Add out of office message to contact page.
- If a visitor is on a mobile or tablet and say in the local area, display a map.
- Make sure your website is updated each day for the specific lunch time special
You can see a screenshot of just how easy it is to configure the inSite with their easy to use wizards below:
5 Reasons why you might not want to choose 123-reg for your website builder
#1. Even though you are able to pay monthly, you are still tied to a 12 month contract.
The billing terms are quite unusual. Not only is there no visible money-back guarantee period, but there appears to be a minimum 12-month contract when you sign up, even if you choose to pay monthly.
When using a website builder, quite often you will want to try it out first to make sure it is suitable. While you can play around with one of the templates to check out the amin area, and get a feel for it, it does not appear that you can save or publish the website without first signing up.
#2. As with any website builder, you are pretty much tied to that hosting provider so if you decide to move, you will have to rebuild your website.
This is self-explanatory, and applies to almost all website builders.
#3. Charged to Move Domain?
Their terms and conditions state:
5.5. The Client accepts that the transfer of a gTLD Domain may require 123 Reg to carry out a manual transfer. In such event, the Client agrees to pay the applicable manual transfer fee to 123 Reg as stated on 123 Reg’s website and as updated from time to time.
It didn’t take much to find users that were charged $20 to move their domain away.
#4. Limited time Money Back Guarantee
They offer a 14-day unconditional money back guarantee, although this does not apply to domains or other add-ons. This is significantly less than any other web hosting providers, with many providing between 30 and 90 days money-back guarantee. It is therefore important to make up your mind whether you wish to stay with them relatively quickly.
#5. Requirement to give 30 days notice of cancellation or you will be charged automatically
After the money back guarantee period has run out, there are no refunds. If you wish to cancel at the end of the term, you should note that you need to give 30 days written notice, and there are a few complaints around the web of credit cards being charged automatically. You can find the relevant terms here:
12.1.1 the Client upon serving 30 days’ written notice on 123-reg following completion of 123-reg’ prescribed template procedures for terminating the whole or any part of the Agreement They clarify that the written notice can be made via support ticket.
While many web hosting providers have a habit of automatically renewing hosting at the end of the term, the 30 day notice requirement is quite draconian. If you sign up with 123-reg, just make sure that if you do not wish to renew at the end of the term that you give the correct notice and this will be no issue.
Users Reviews
The user ratings to the right reflect the total rating score of all 1 VPS Hosting Reviews left by our readers.
The user ratings to the right reflect the total rating score of all 1 Dedicated Hosting Reviews left by our readers.
123-reg really sucks!
The server default settings are for the log files to keep growing infinitely. I’m not a server guru, so I didn’t know that something like that would have to be set different from what the default setting is. So after a couple months of using it, the log files get so gigantic that the server just keeps running and never stops. I sent in a support ticket, but still didn’t have a response after several hours. So then I had to wait for the support phones to open up at 9 am. That sure was a lot of fun. The server didn’t work all day long, and my tickets only got answered after harsh messages left on the their Facebook page or having long drawn out phone calls. Lots more fun. Then night time comes and I’m told all of the admins have left for the day, and they will look into it in the morning. So by the next morning my server will have been offline for 24 hours, and then they will just be starting to attempt to fix the problem! What a disaster. That’s not support. They have many unwitting customers. When you have a small business like I do, this really is a huge disaster.
If it is important for your server to be online, then don’t use 123-reg!
You know what’s really funny? The last support person (Luke) that I talked to, said the server really isn’t offline, it just isn’t working. That’s just unbelievable!
I’m off to find more review sites so that more people can be warned.
Frequently asked questions
Jonathan Griffin Editor, SEO Consultant, & Developer.
Jonathan Griffin is The Webmaster's Editor & CEO, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all our publications. Jonathan writes about Development, Hosting, and SEO topics for The Webmaster and The Search Review with more than nine years of experience. Jonathan also manages his own SEO consultancy, offering SEO developer services. He is an expert on site-structure, strategy, Schema, AMP, and technical SEO. You can find Jonathan on Twitter as @thewebmastercom.