Domain.com
Domain.com's origins existed as part of the Dotster brand founded by George DeCarlo in 1998. A graduate of the University of Portland, DeCarlo launched Dotster as a project of the Columbia Analytical Services before being purchased by Baker Capital in 2004.[1][2]
Domain.com
In 2005, Dotster introduced a new domain technology which provided relevant search results based on domains or keywords entered by its users.[1] It was awarded the Domain Pioneer Award from Verisign at the "25 Years of .com Gala" in 2010.[3]
In 2011, Dotster and its subsidiaries, My Domain and Netfirms, were acquired by Endurance International Group.[2] Among the domain names owned by Dotster was www.domain.com, which was determined by leadership to be the strongest branding for their attempt to put more emphasis on the domain registration growth.[4] In 2012, Dotster began migrating domain accreditation[5] to Domain.com, LLC, making it the official registrar for the company's domain business.[6][7]
Domain.com currently powers more than 1.2 million websites worldwide.[8] Although they are known predominantly as domain registrar, the company also offers resources for shared hosting, WordPress hosting, and SSL certificates.[9][10] They also are responsible for launching the .xyz top-level domain to increase the number of short, brandable URLs available to the public.[11]
Domain.com is a popular domain registration and web hosting service. They make it really simple to search and register domain names. Domain.com also offers domain protection, SSL certificates, VPS hosting, web designing, a WHOIS lookup tool, and more. They value your security, and that's why domain privacy is recommended with each domain. The best part is that WPBeginner users can get 25% OFF domains (and on extras and addons like domain privacy and protection) using our exclusive Domain.com coupon code. So you get a .com domain name for just $7.49/year instead of $9.99!
Normally, a .com domain name will cost you between $9.99 and $14.99. The price varies depending on where you register it. With our Domain.com deal, though, you can get a 25% discount. That means you can buy a .com for just $7.49/year.
Free SSL Certificate: Domain.com offers free website SSL certificates. These certificates are an essential security investment for any modern website, and Domain.com uses Lets Encrypt Free SSL to provide them.
Domain Privacy and Protection is an Extra Cost: While Domain.com offers domain privacy and protection, that protection comes at a cost. This service costs $8.99 per domain, which can quickly add up if you have multiple domains.
Premium domains cost significantly more. For example, the BestDomainHosts.com costs $9.99 to register for the first year, then renews at $13.99 after its initial purchase. While this premium pricing is steep, Domain.com does provide alternative domain suggestions that are more affordable.
These different plan options mean that not only can you register a domain, but you can also easily host it in one central location. Domain.com can accommodate most users with plans suitable for the most basic startup to the more ambitious business websites.
Domain.com also automatically installs and configures your site with popular plugins. These plugins include W3 Total Cache and Jetpack, giving you a more functional site and saving you from manually installing these plugins.
Domain.com is easy to use and offers affordable domain registration plans. Perks like a free SSL certificate and optional domain privacy and protection allow you to customize the plans to suit your needs.
Domain.com offers cheap but basic shared hosting for personal and (very) small business sites. If price is top of your priority list, and features, performance and usability are right at the bottom, it might be good enough. But below par speeds, some down time, the lack of VPS and dedicated hosting and limited control panels make Domain.com a poor choice for demanding or business-critical sites.
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Domain.com offers easy-to-use and low cost shared hosting (opens in new tab) plans in various forms: WordPress hosting (opens in new tab), a website builder (opens in new tab), an online store builder, and general-purpose do-everything shared hosting plans to cover everything else.
Domain.com's plans should be powerful enough to handle most personal and business sites. But if your traffic is 100,000 visitors a month or more, rather than 10,000, or it's vital that your site has consistently high speeds, then its shared hosting plans are unlikely to be a good choice.
Domain.com's shared hosting range is refreshingly simple. There are only three plans, all with the same core features: free domain, free SSL (opens in new tab), unlimited bandwidth, 1-click WordPress install and a free website builder (opens in new tab). Upgrading only adds more resources, so there are no extra features to weigh up. Prices start at $3.75 a month on the annual plan, $4.99 on renewal, but there's no complex discounting scheme if you sign up for longer. Choose a one, two or three-year contract, it's still $3.75 a month.
We signed up, but quickly ran into problems. Domain.com doesn't use any of our favorite hosting management platforms (cPanel (opens in new tab) for its all-round tools, Softaculous (opens in new tab) to install and manage WordPress and other apps.) We found its replacements have fewer options and aren't always organized logically, often leaving us struggling to find key functions.
If you're running a basic site, with few visitors, and long-term prices are your top priority, then Domain.com might, just about, be acceptable. Although many providers have lower prices in the first term, they tend to jump on renewal, and Domain.com's 'from $4.99' renewal price is very low.
Domain.com's shared hosting supports installing WordPress, perhaps enough if you just want to explore what it can do. But if you've something more serious in mind, Domain.com's WP range extends the range with a handful of extra features.
Domain.com does have one unusual extra in its WP Live support service. Priced from $29.95 to $149.95 a month, this goes beyond troubleshooting problems to giving advice on all kinds of design and optimization issues: social media strategies, creating an online store, making sure your site works well on mobile devices, more.
Domain.com has three website builder plans, ranging from $1.99 a month (billed monthly) for a limited product which supports a maximum of six pages, to a $12.99 a month ecommerce plan with product listings, inventory tracking, integrated shipping, order and tax management, and more.
As with Domain.com's WordPress plans, though, the lack of VPS or dedicated support is a problem for more demanding projects, such as a web store. If your site outgrows Domain.com's basic shared hosting infrastructure, you can't upgrade to anything better, and could be forced to move somewhere else.
We check reliability by using Uptime.com to access a test site every five minutes over a two week period. We expect hosts to show 100% uptime with this short a test, but Domain.com managed a disappointing 99.11%. That puts it last in our last 15 tests (11 hosts hit 100% uptime, even the next-to-last host managed 99.63%.)
Uptime also records the response time of each test web server. Domain.com came bottom of the list here, too, with an average response time of 2.97 seconds (nine of our last 15 averaged less than 0.5 seconds.)
Domain.com's LCP was relatively disappointing at 1.5 seconds, far slower than providers such as Bluehost (0.8 seconds), GoDaddy (0.7 seconds) and Hostinger (0.6 seconds.) Although 1.5 seconds is still acceptable, keep in mind that's based on launching our very simple template site. If yours has any significant content or features then it could be much slower.
Finally, we use k6 to measure website performance when it has many visitors loading pages at the same time. Our Domain.com site handled an average 22.67 requests per second, but with a price. Response times became even longer and more unreliable as the site load increased, and the overall test response time was a lengthy 1.591 seconds. Most providers were at least a second faster, and Hostinger (opens in new tab), HostGator, InMotion Hosting (opens in new tab) and Bluehost managed response times of around 100ms or less.
Buying a Domain.com plan is easier than usual. There are generally only a few plans, and the site only displays the bare minimum features for each. Pricing is clear and there are no misleading discounts to catch you out (a '$4.99' starter price which leaps to $14.99 after a year, say).
Managing your plan isn't as straightforward. Domain.com doesn't use standard tools such as cPanel or Softaculous, opting for its own custom control panels, instead. We found them relatively basic, with fewer features. These don't seem as intuitive or well organized as more standard control panels, either, and we spent longer than expected trying to carry out some tasks.
Domain.com offers support 24/7 via telephone, live chat and a web knowledgebase. There's no ticket support, though. That can become a problem if you've a long-term issue, as you'll have to explain the situation from the beginning whenever you talk to an agent.
The web knowledgebase has plenty of useful content, and its search engine does a good job of displaying the most relevant articles at the top. We noticed that some content appeared to be cut-and-pasted from iPage, (both iPage and Domain.com are owned by Newfold Digital), and no-one had remembered to replace the 'iPage.com' references with 'Domain.com.' That looks a little clumsy, but as iPage and Domain.com use the same technology, the articles should hopefully apply to both hosts. 041b061a72