Web.com is a terrific URL and a big name for a web hosting company to live up to.
Web.com provides decent web hosting, but it's a mixed bag at best.
Good shared hosting plans, strong phone support, and excellent uptime are unfortunately counterbalanced by uptime problems in testing, and the lack of many features found in competing services, such as cloud, reseller, dedicated, VPS, and optimized WordPress hosting.
Our three overall Editors' Choices, DreamHost, HostGator, and Hostwinds, are suprior to Web.com in that regard.
Shared Web Hosting
Web.com offers three tiers of Linux- and Windows-based shared hosting: Essential Hosting, Professional Hosting, and Premium Hosting.
Each includes a website builder, unlimited monthly data transfers, access to open-source applications, site backup, and a free domain name.
The plans' feature sets differ in other areas, however.
See How We Test Web Hosting Services
For example, Essential Hosting ($5.95 per month with an annual plan) includes 300GB of storage, 25 FTP accounts, and 100 email addresses.
Professional ($7.95 per month with an annual plan) ups the specs to 500GB of storage, 50 FTP accounts, and 500 email accounts.
Premium Hosting ($9.95 per month with an annual plan) stands at the top of the hill with unlimited storage, unlimited FTP accounts, and 1,000 email addresses.
Those are decent shared hosting plans, but they can't touch the excellent offerings from HostGator ($2.64 Per Month + Free Domain Registration at HostGator) .
This Editors' Choice for shared hosting has varied and powerful packages that include Linux- or Windows-based servers, as well as unlimited storage, monthly data transfers, and email addresses across all plans.
Many Omissions
Sadly, Web.com isn't the web host to turn to if you wish to sign up for anything more than shared hosting.
The service lacks cloud, dedicated, reseller, VPS, and optimized WordPress hosting plans.
Please check out the various linked roundups to view our recommendations in each category.
In fact, a Web.com customer service rep suggested that people should take a gander at Network Solutions, the company's sister site, if they are looking for those types of hosting plans.
Building a Website
You build a website by launching the Neo website builder, choosing a design and color scheme, and then editing the site content, images, and pages.
I like that the web builder has spell-check, and it's easy to replace images and swap out social media buttons.
You can also add documents, maps, contact forms, search bars, and HTML snippets.
Alternately, you can venture into Web.com's Open Source Library and install the WordPress content management system, or sign up for template-based hosting starting at $1.95 per month.
That's a dirt-cheap option, but it offers far fewer customization options than traditional hosting; it's more along the lines of a website builder like the Editors' Choice award-winning Wix ($14 Per Month for Combo Plan at Wix) .
E-commerce Options
There are a few ways to accept payments using your Web.com site.
You can add the $9.95 Take-a-Payment widget, but that doesn't include a store.
If you want to get serious about your business, you should sign up for eCommerce Express or eCommerce Standard ($29.95 or $59.95 per month, respectively).
Express lets you sell 20 products, gives you unlimited email addresses, and hits you with a 2.5 percent transaction fee.
Standard lets you sell 500 products, gives you email marketing tools and the ability to submit products to Google search, and it charges a 1.5 percent transaction fee.
The Matrix website builder has much more functionality than Neo, offering more guidance and an improved dashboard.
I chose a theme and started building a store using the easily accessible help information.
Email marketing is available as an add-on, too.
Its plans start at $14.95 per month for 500 recipients, with tracking software and unlimited email messages.
Security Options
To safeguard your site, Web.com offers spam protection via CatchGuard, as well as email virus protection and removal.
You can get a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate starting at $24 per year, which should be considered an essential purchase if you plan to sell products.
Note, however, that HostGator offers a free SSL certificate with some of its plans.
In addition, Web.com's email supports the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) authentication technology for added security.
So-So Uptime
Website uptime is one of the most important aspects of a hosting service.
While your site is down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services—and they might not come back.
For this testing, I used a website monitoring tool to track the uptime of my Web.com-hosted test site.
Every 15 minutes, the tool pings my website and sends me an email if it is unable to contact the site for longer than one minute.
I looked at the data for the most recent 14 days for each site's review.
In my latest tests, Web.com went down four times, albeit very briefly.
Of course, zero downtime is the ideal situation, and this doesn't help the service's overall score.
Good Customer Service
I called the 24/7 customer service on a weekday evening for an explainer regarding Web.com's shared web hosting plan.
In just a few seconds, a person transferred me to the relevant department.
Very soon after that, I chatted with a very helpful representative who gave me a thorough explanation of Web.com's shared hosting plans and how I should visit Network Solutions for any other plan.
The next day, I fired up the web chat to get details on Web.com's security features.
The helpful customer service representative explained several available features in an easy-to-understand manner.
Web.com has a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is par for the course in the web hosting space.
That said, DreamHost ($2.49 Per Month for Shared Starter Plan at DreamHost) tops it with an impressive 97-day refund.
Competitors Offer More
Web.com's customer service and shared hosting plans are commendable, but the service had some uptime issues in our testing, and it lacks many features and advanced hosting plans found in competitors, such as DreamHost, HostGator, or Hostwinds.
If you're in need of cloud, dedicated, reseller, VPS, WordPress plans, turn to those Editors' Choice award winners for better-rounded web hosting packages.
