123Reg Hosting- A Comprehensive Review of Its Features, Performance, and Pricing

123Reg Hosting was established in 2000, over 18 years ago. They are one of the biggest web hosting and domain registrars in the UK, boasting over 3.5 million registered domains. 123Reg use green energy to minimize and reduce their carbon footprint. This ultimately keeps the cost for energy down for 123Reg leading to reduced costs for their customers.

Since 2000, 123Reg has been racking up awards in web hosting and domain registering. Some awards they have gained are the best 10 web hosting award, Host Review award and the Best Domain Register award from your business magazine three times over from 2013 to 2015. In 2016 and 2017 they also won the best value web host from TechRadar.

123 Reg has become one of the most popular and widely-used web hosting providers in the UK. With over 800,000 customers across the country, they offer a range of hosting services tailored specifically for UK-based small businesses and online stores.

123 Reg is a founding member of the Internet Service Providers’ Association, demonstrating their long track record and influence in the UK hosting industry. As part of the Host Europe Group which owns several major European web hosts, 123 Reg also has access to extensive infrastructure and technology.

Some of the key benefits that 123 Reg provides its customers include:

Fast and reliable UK-based hosting infrastructure and support
Easy-to-use control panel for beginners with no IT experience
Scalable plans to easily upgrade as your site grows
Integrated domains and SSL certificates for one-stop convenience
Specialized ecommerce hosting plans and features
24/7 UK phone, email, and live chat support
30-day money-back guarantee

With plans starting from just £1.99/month, 123 Reg aims to be an affordable and accessible hosting provider for small businesses across the country. They have data centers located in both Maidenhead and Cambridge to provide redundancy and maximize uptime and performance.

In this full review of 123 Reg’s services, we’ll take an in-depth look across their key features including speed, uptime, support, security and value for money. By evaluating 123 Reg’s strengths and weaknesses, our goal is to provide helpful guidance for UK small businesses, online stores and developers considering 123 Reg as their primary web hosting provider.

123Reg Hosting’s WordPress plans;

Regarding WordPress hosting plans 123Reg is different from many other hosting companies. Two plans are offered for WordPress, the first one is called the business plan and the second is called the premium plan. Each plan comes with many features. Features to help your sites with security, support features and performance features are included.

You can also add some security features to your plan, for an added fee per month. The security features you can add is the SSL 123 and/or the SiteLock Fix feature.

hosting plans offered by 123 Reg:

123 Reg Basic Hosting

Pricing: £2.99/mo
Disk Space: 10GB SSD storage
Bandwidth: Unmetered, 100Mbps access
Features:
- 1 website hosted
- 50 email accounts
- Free SSL certificate
- Daily backups
- 24/7 UK support
- Free domain name
Suitable for: Very small sites and simple sites just getting started

123 Reg Unlimited Hosting

Pricing: £9.99/mo
Disk Space: Unlimited storage
Bandwidth: Unmetered, 10Gbit access
Features:
- Unlimited websites
- Unlimited email accounts
- Auto WordPress installation
- Free Website Builder
- Unlimited bandwidth and databases
- Free daily backups
- Staging environment
Suitable for: Growing small businesses and sites needing room to expand

123 Reg Cloud Hosting

Pricing: £19.99/mo
Disk Space: 100GB SSD storage
Bandwidth: Unmetered, 100Mbps access
Features:
- High performance cloud infrastructure
- Unlimited websites
- Marketing tools
- Advanced caching and security
- Integrated CDN for faster global delivery
- Server optimization monitoring
- Developer-friendly features
Suitable for: High traffic sites and web apps needing scalability

123 Reg Dedicated Hosting

Pricing: Custom quotes
Disk Space: 500GB+ SSD storage
Bandwidth: 10TB
Features:
- Fully managed dedicated servers
- High performance hardware: Xeon processors, ECC RAM
- Complete root access
- Managed firewall, DDoS protection
- Server optimization and tuning
- Option for branded servers
Suitable for: Large enterprises and organizations with mission-critical hosting needs

Comparison table summarizing some of the key pros and cons of 123 Reg Hosting versus competing UK web hosting providers:

Host	Pros	Cons
123 Reg	⦁ Affordable pricing from £1.99/mo ⦁ Easy control panel for beginners ⦁ Scalable hosting solutions ⦁ Free domain and SSL certificate ⦁ 24/7 support	⦁ Fewer advanced features ⦁ Slow peak-time support ⦁ Steep renewal price increases
HostGator	⦁ Fast and reliable performance ⦁ Multiple platforms supported ⦁ Advanced migration assistance ⦁ Knowledgeable 24/7 support	⦁ Primary servers located in US ⦁ Upsells and complex plans ⦁ High renewal prices
Bluehost	⦁ High performance and reliability ⦁ Free domain, SSL, email ⦁ Easy WordPress install and management ⦁ 24/7 support	⦁ Basic plan only supports 1 site ⦁ Slow support at times ⦁ Steep price increases at renewal

What support do you get with 123Reg Hosting?

For their WordPress plan, 123Reg have a community centre and expert support available for all users. The expert support is in two forms of communication: a ticketing system and a 24/7 telephone line. It is in 123Reg’s best interest to have experts man the phone lines a ticketing system for any sophisticated problems may have. That would mean the support should more than likely be able to find a way to fix the problem if they have great knowledge of the products 123Reg offer and issues.

123Reg also have a knowledge base. Within this knowledge base, there are hundreds of articles on different topics including web hosting. They also show their live server statues. This is a great feature because if a users website is down, checking here should be your first call. By checking the server status it means you can find out if its a problem with 123Reg or your site quickly. Any planned maintenance that may affect sites will also be shown here, to let users know in advance for any instances of downtime, or slower performance.

There is also a frequently asked questions part of the knowledge base. This is great as it will show questions that will get asked lots, so many other people will not need to go to the live chat.

Does 123Reg Hosting have good security features?

123Reg has many features that will keep your sites secure from spam, hackers, and malware. One of the features is the firewall protection they provide with both the business and premium plans. The firewall will keep your sites and databases alike protected from hackers and malware. It will also monitor your sites and databases for any vulnerabilities and protect your sites from them.

The WordPress packages also come with spam protection. Integrated blacklist and open proxy checkers are both built into each plan and they help to keep sites free any spam you may have received before.

Users are also able to keep regular backups of their sites in case anything drastic were to happen to them. By keeping backups, users are able to restore their sites easily by referring back to the latest backup or even an older one.

Security features such as SSL 123 and SiteLock fix can also be added to your plans for a small extra fee a month. The SSL 123 feature will cost an extra £1.25 a month and it will reassure visitors to your sites. Visitors will be reassured as all their data will be encrypted including their personal details and any card information.

The SiteLock fix feature will cost an extra £2.50 a month. This feature will scan your sites for any malware within your website and if any is found it will automatically be kicked right out of your websites.

(Article update – 24/09/2019 – Couldn’t find the added security features such as SiteLock and SSL 123.)

Does 123Reg Hosting have good performance?

One great performance feature 123Reg include in their WordPress plans in the SEO plugin. This plugin will increase the performance of your sites on search engines. All your pages within your sites are optimized to increase the chances of your sites being found on the like of Google or Bing.

123Reg also offer a guarantee of 99.99% for their WordPress packages. This means all your WordPress sites can only be down 53 minutes a year. That translates into around one hour a year and there are 8760 hours in a year.

Load balancing servers are also used by 123Reg. These servers mean all your sites are stored separately from the important databases you may have. This means your sites will be given all the power it needs and more to strive in the online environment.

All your sites can have as many visits and traffic to them as 123Reg offer all its WordPress users unmetered bandwidth.

Does 123Reg Hosting offer any other/unique features?

123Reg like to advertise many of their other features. The other features they include with their WordPress plans is free site migration. free domain and email, full user registration and more.

Users are able to get their website up and running quickly with 123Reg. 123Reg automatically install the latest version of WordPress, with their one-click installation. Free site migrations are also a feature offered by 123Reg alongside a free domain and emails. With the email accounts, your whole workforce can communicate with one another with emails using your site name/names.

Auto-updates are another feature included within the WordPress plans. This means your WordPress feature will always be up to date with all the new features within WordPress. This can also help the security of your websites.

You are also able to make all your websites in over 70 languages. So if you’re a website based in France or Germany, you can have your website in French or German easily. Making a website has also never been easier with 123Reg’s template-driven design feature.

123Reg also have a comments feature that can allow your users to leave comments on your posts. Comments can be disabled on certain posts. Also if you would like just authenticated comments to be left on your posts, there is also a full user registration feature. This feature means to leave a comment on a post you will need to be signed up to the site.

Benefits of 123Reg Hosting;

123Reg have many benefits to them. From their support and performance to their features. The support network 123Reg has, includes their knowledge base, a ticketing system and their live chat and telephone line. The support network 123Reg offer, give users a range of ways to contact them. This is great for different users as some don’t like to talk on the phone.

They are also a great choice of WordPress hosting for the UK and Europe. Since they are a company based within the UK, they will always be a great choice for European customers.

123Reg also has many features with their WordPress plans. The features range from helping your sites with SEO, comments on posts to features that help your sites with security.

Many features such as a free domain and emails are features other web hosting companies would charge their users for. So this is another benefit of 123Reg. They also offer free site migrations from another host.

Another benefit of 123Reg is their uptime guarantee. Like many hosts they have only, 123Reg have a guarantee of 99.99% instead of 99.9%. Many hosts guarantee covers 99.9% which means users can experience almost 10 times the amount of downtime than users on 123Reg.

Green energy is also used to power its data centres. So if you’re an environment-friendly person, 123Reg could be perfect for you.

Negatives of 123Reg Hosting;

As 123Reg have many benefits, they sure do have a few negatives also. One of which is about some of their security features. The security features SSL123 and SiteLock fix is an added cost if you would like them alongside your plan. The cost isn’t that much a month but many companies would give you similar features included their plans.

The prices on their website, also don’t include VAT, which is an extra 20% on top of the original cost. This is very unusual especially for a UK based company. Generally, the price shown on the site is the price including VAT.

My Thoughts;

Overall I believe that 123Reg is a nice web host. I would recommend at least looking at their plans because they could maybe suit you. All of the features they offer alongside each of the WordPress plans is another reason why I would recommend them as a host. Altogether the features offer your sites great security and performance, which are the two main factors to your sites running smoothly.

A great support network is also included if you’re a 123Reg customer. This is one thing that you will always need and want with your hosting.

FAQ

Is 123 Reg hosting good for small businesses?

Yes, with affordable pricing and easy to use controls, 123 Reg is a good hosting provider for small businesses without big technical needs. Their scalable plans also allow room to grow.

How does 123 Reg compare to other UK web hosts?

While not having as many advanced features as some competitors, 123 Reg excels in usability and providing basic hosting services at very affordable rates for UK small businesses. Their support quality varies.

Is 123 Reg hosting reliable?

Generally yes. With multiple UK data centers and strong underlying network infrastructure from their parent company, 123 Reg delivers fairly fast and reliable hosting. Their uptimes are on par with competitors.

What if I have problems with 123 Reg hosting?

123 Reg provides 24/7 customer support access via phone, email, and live chat. They also offer a 30-day money back guarantee on hosting plans if you experience issues in the first month.

Conclusion

For the needs of most UK small businesses and online stores, 123 Reg delivers competitively priced and fairly reliable web hosting. While their support quality can vary and advanced technical options are limited, their easy controls and scalable hosting solutions provide an accessible starting point.

Considering factors like pricing, usability, core performance and features, 123 Reg is on par or better than comparable low-cost UK hosting providers. Their long track record and large UK customer base also demonstrate their effectiveness for many sites. Overall, 123 Reg deserves strong consideration for small business owners with limited technical needs and budgets.

This article was last updated on 21 November 2023

*ALL PRICING WITHIN THIS ARTICLE WERE ACCURATE AT TIME OF WRITING. ALL STERLING (GBP) AND EURO (EUR) WERE CONVERTED FROM DOLLARS (USD) USING GOOGLE’S OWN CONVERTER.

*ALL PLANS AND PACKAGES MADE BY 123REG ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE BY 123REG THEMSELVES.

To find out more about 123 Reg and what they offer, check their site out; 123Reg

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Table of Contents