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Nowadays, if you aren't opting for a cloud-hosted CMS or website builder, there are a few key names that (should) spring to mind when it comes to website hosting.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.bluehost.com/">Bluehost</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.inmotionhosting.com/">Inmotion</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.godaddy.com/">Godaddy</a> for example are three capable companies. 123-Reg.co.uk? Not so much.And yet, I've come across more than one web design client in my time who, to my frustration, relies on 123-Reg for their website hosting needs.In my personal experience with the company, I have been left disappointed. And it's safe to say that I'm not alone.<h2>Who are 123-Reg?</h2>123-Reg is a web hosting company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 2000, it's technically the largest domain provider in the UK. Which is some feat.But sometimes the numbers can tell a misleading story, because on top of a relatively dated user dashboard, 123-Reg has a few issues.Here's three reasons to steer clear.<h2>Reason #1: The Horror Stories</h2>Most website hosting companies have their fair share of disgruntled ex-customers ranting about their services, but 123-Reg's share is beyond what one might call fair.Some of the stories online are enough to make you run for the hills. I can't testify that the following claims are true, but what I do know, is that they're common:<ol><li><a target="_blank" href="https://webdesignfromscratch.com/blog/how-123reg-almost-crippled-my-business/">How 123-Reg Nearly Crippled My Business</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://paulnrogers.com/review-123-reg-hosting-services/">[Stay] as far away from 123-Reg as possible!</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="http://0lly.uk/2013/11/01/123-reg-lost-my-domain/">123-Reg lost my domain</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="http://0lly.uk/2008/05/07/123-reg-stole-my-money-auto-renewal-nightmare/">123-Reg stole my money</a></li></ol>Now those are some grisly tales, to say the least.<h2>Reason #2: Iffy Marketing Packages</h2>If you've had a look through 123-Reg's website and decided that it's geared towards those who aren't so tech-savvy, you would be correct. And their marketing packages give it away big time.They have something called, “Instant Traffic” which is supposed to bring your website traffic from Google, simply by 123-Reg submitting your site to the search engine. Anybody who knows anything about SEO knows this is utter garbage.It's worth noting that, upon investigation, there doesn't seem to be a way to sign up to InstantTraffic anymore, but it is still present in customer's dashboards<h2>Reason #3: Poor Customer Service</h2>123-Reg boasts a notoriously poor customer service.Firstly, they have a phone line for sales, but not for support. Live chat is available, but only during UK working hours.That lack of 24/7 support is a huge issue, and one which I discuss in my article, “Why You Shouldn't Use Your Friend's Website Hosting Company“.Imagine your website goes down at 9pm London-time. You'd have a 12-hour wait before you can actually chat to your website host. That's a long time to wait if your website is anywhere near successful.<h2>Avoid, Or Jump Ship</h2>Quite frankly, you can pay the same money (or even less in some cases) for a web host that doesn't have an awful reputation, doesn't promote bogus SEO schemes, and has a decent level of round-the-clock customer service.Based on all of the above, I'd strongly recommend that you avoid 123-Reg for hosting your website. Try either one of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bluehost.com/">Bluehost</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.inmotionhosting.com/">Inmotion, </a>or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.godaddy.com/">Godaddy</a> instead, all of which have far better track records.And if you're already using 123-Reg, I'd think about moving to one of those names above, even if its only for the 24-hour support – which is an industry-standard when it comes to web hosting.Update by Mike J: On April 16th, 2016 a major issue occurred at 123-reg, the details of which are outlined in this email that was sent out to their customers:<blockquote>Dear Customer.I am writing to you to explain what happened to some VPS services on 16.04.16. This email is to detail what our steps have been. I am committed to open communication with all customers and would like to take this opportunity to explain in detail.So what happened to some services? As part of a clean-up process on the 123-reg VPS platform, a script was run at 7am on 16.04.16. This script is run to show us the number of machines active against the master database. An error on the script showed ‘zero-records' response from the database for some live VPS. For those customers, this created a ‘failure' scenario – showing no VM's and effectively deleting what was on the host. As a result of our team's investigations, we can conclude that the issues faced having resulted in some data loss for some customers. Our teams have been and continue to work to restore. What have we done? We have been working with an extended team of experts and have left no stone unturned. Our teams have been working long into the night to restore as much as we possibly can. We have also invested in external consultants to recover, in the best way possible.We have recovery running on the VPS servers and some are restoring to new disks. We have also begun copying recovered VPS images to new hosts and we expect some VPS to be back up and running throughout the night and into tomorrow.Our teams have worked for more than 24 hours and will continue to do so. No stone is being left unturned.As the technical teams come back with updates for individual VPS we will communicate updates to customers.For those customers with their own backup of their settings and data, if you wish to restore services yourself you can do this by issuing a reimage command through your 123 Reg control panel, this will give you a freshly installed VPS on a new cluster, where you can restore your service.I understand that some customers may have lost some confidence in the service that we offer. So, I want to explain what we have done to prevent this happening again. We have started an audit on all cron-jobs and scripts controlling the platform, and associated architecture, so that no script will have ability to delete images, only suspend. For image deletion for those suspended over 28 days we will have a human eye to double check. A new platform will be available by the end of the year for customers which we will provide self-managed and automated snapshot backups, in addition to architecture technology to backup the whole platform, something that is not available on the current platform. I hope this goes some way to win back your confidence.Richard Winslow, 123 Reg Brand Director</blockquote>Following this email, Twitter has gone absolutely nuts with furious customers who have not only lost their websites but, in some cases, their businesses as well. This type of experience is the nightmare of every business owner that relies on their website and our hearts go out to the poor people who have been affected by this horrible hosting nightmare.I don't know about you, but I can't imagine how 123-Reg is going to win back anyone's confidence after this debacle. If I was a customer, I'd be insulted by the suggestion that they could. We will be staying on top of this story and updating this post with any developments. In the meantime, however, please let us know about your experiences in the comments below.

Why You Should Avoid 123-Reg At All Costs

mike-johnston

—– Website Building with BlueHost &amp; WordPress
A web hosting provider should give you more than just web hosting.
Uptime, speed, and customer support are all important, but what about the tools you need to kick-start a new website? After all, your new website idea is precisely why you needed a web host in the first place.
Starting from just $4.95 per month, BlueHost – CMS Critic’s <a href="/bluehosts-4th-july-sale-professional-web-hosting-for-just-3.95-per-month/" target="_blank">web host of choice</a> – is a hosting provider which gives you those tools in the form of quality content management systems and website builders. Fifty-five of them in fact.
The best part? They can all be installed on your domain name within minutes. Maybe even seconds.
Here are some quick guides on how to do that with WordPress, <a href="https://www.weebly.com/">Weebly</a>, and GoMobi Mobile, along with a look at the easy installation for the other fifty-two CMS that work so seamlessly with BlueHost. 
<img style="max-width:151px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/download.jpg" alt="BlueHost" />
<h2>Website Building with BlueHost &amp; WordPress</h2>
With BlueHost, your website can be up and running on the worlds most popular CMS/blogging platform – WordPress.
WordPress is used by over 60% of all the websites whose content management system we know. That's over 22% of all websites on the Internet. So, your website would be in good company if you decide to go with WordPress as your platform of choice.
After signing up with Bluehost, you'll have access to your hosting control panel. There, you’ll see WordPress listed under “Website Builders”.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wp700x0.png" alt="Bluehost WordPress" />
Selecting WordPress will bring you to a new page, where you can click the “Install” button.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wp1700x0.png" alt="Bluehost WordPress" /> 
Then, it's time to select which domain name you want BlueHost to install WordPress on. You can choose from any domain name on your BlueHost account.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wp2700x0.png" alt="Bluehost WordPress" /> 
Finally, you will then have the chance to fill out some of the details of your new website, like the website name and tag line. These fields are all optional though, so if you like, you can go ahead and click “Install” straight away.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/w3.png" alt="Bluehost WordPress" />
After that, all you need to do is sit back and relax for a few seconds as BlueHost builds the WordPress website for you. Before long, you will be prompted to visit your website, which will now be running WordPress, enabling you to dive into the world's most popular website building platform.
Sign up with BlueHost
—– Website Building with BlueHost &amp; <a href="https://www.weebly.com/">Weebly</a>
Don't worry if WordPress doesn't float your boat, because <a href="https://www.weebly.com/" target="_blank"> Weebly</a> is one of many other website builders supported by BlueHost.
Weebly is renowned for its friendly user interface and drag-and-drop page builder. It powers millions of websites across the web.
Weebly is actually a hosted website builder, which means you can use Weebly as a web host when you sign up with them. However, if you're running multiple websites on BlueHost's shared hosting plan, or you simply want the added functionalists that BlueHost brings, you can opt for BlueHost instead of Weebly to host your Weebly website.
After signing up with Bluehost, you'll have access to your hosting control panel. There, you’ll see Weebly listed under “Website Builders”.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/web1700x0.png" alt="BlueHost Weebly" /> 
This will take you to the Weebly plan selection page. You can choose between the free, professional and eCommerce plans. To get started with the free plan, you only need to assign it to one of your existing domain names.
Then, you simply click “Use Weebly”.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/web2700x0.png" alt="BlueHost Weebly" />
You will then be presented with the Weebly user interface, which allows you to immediately start building pages for your website. It's that easy.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/web3700x0.png" alt="BlueHost Weebly" />
—– Website Building with BlueHost &amp; GoMobi
The last of the “big three” website building platforms which BlueHost displays to its users within their control panels, is GoMobi.
GoMobi is an easy-to-use mobile website platform that enables you to create premium mobile websites. Its friendly interface makes it easy to create feature-rich mobile websites that are quick to load and easy to use. Plus, you need no technical knowledge to make it work.
As with WordPress and Weebly, you'll be able to see GoMobi via your hosting control panel after signing up with Bluehost. You can find it listed under “Website Builders”.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mob1700x0.png" alt="BlueHost GoMobi" /> 
You will then be taken to a page asking you to agree to GoMobi's terms and conditions. GoMobi will set you back $2.99 per month. If you're happy with that, you can go ahead and click “Get Started”. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mob2.png" alt="BlueHost GoMobi" /> 
This brings you to the checkout page, where you will need to follow the instructions in order to complete the purchase.
To cut a long story short, you'll end up with your GoMoi control panel as seen below, ready for you to start building a mobile website.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/mob4700x0.png" alt="BlueHost GoMobi" /> 
GoMobi is certainly not the fanciest platform on the market, but it's one that BlueHost pushed alongside WordPress and Weebly on the front page of its control panel. But there's plenty more where they came from, as I'm about to show you.
—– The Full List: 55 Integrated BlueHost Website Builders
WordPress, Weebly, and GoMobi are three platforms displayed on the front page of BlueHost's control panel, but there are actually fifty-two more – all just as easily accessible.
Here's the complete list of BlueHost integrated website builders:
<ol>
<li>WordPress </li>
<li>Weebly </li>
<li>GoMobi </li>
<li>Xoops </li>
<li>Joomla 2 </li>
<li>Joomla 3 </li>
<li>Drupal 7 </li>
<li>Drupal 6 </li>
<li>B2evolution </li>
<li>Croogo </li>
<li>OCPortal </li>
<li>MODx </li>
<li>Concrete5 </li>
<li>LiveSite </li>
<li>phpwcms </li>
<li>PHP-Nuke </li>
<li>Textpattern </li>
<li>PyroCMS </li>
<li>e107 </li>
<li>Geeklog </li>
<li>AnchorCMS </li>
<li>Chyrp CMS </li>
<li>Noah's Classified </li>
<li>Open Classifieds </li>
<li>ShopSite </li>
<li>PrestaShop </li>
<li>CubeCart </li>
<li>OSCommerce </li>
<li>Magento </li>
<li>OpenCart </li>
<li>TomatoCart </li>
<li>ZenCart </li>
<li>AgoraCart </li>
<li>Moodle </li>
<li>Chamilo 1 </li>
<li>Chamilo 3 </li>
<li>LimeSurvey </li>
<li>Simple Machines Forum </li>
<li>Vanilla Forums </li>
<li>My BB </li>
<li>phpBB </li>
<li>PunBB </li>
<li>Coppermine </li>
<li>Piwigo </li>
<li>Zenphoto </li>
<li>Gallery </li>
<li>4Images </li>
<li>Oxwall </li>
<li>Elgg </li>
<li>Pligg </li>
<li>MediaWiki </li>
<li>PmWiki </li>
<li>Tiki Wiki 9 LTS </li>
<li>Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware </li>
<li>DocuWiki </li>
</ol>
Every single one of the above website building tools can be installed just as easily as the previous demonstrations of WordPress, Weebly and GoMobi.
All you need to do is visit your control panel after signing up with Bluehost, and find Simple Scripts, which is listed under “Website Builders”.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ss1700x0.png" alt="BlueHost Website Builders" /> 
Then, click “Install New Scripts”.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ss2700x0.png" alt="BlueHost Website Builders" /> 
You should now see all fifty-five website building platforms (along with an array of other useful applications), all ready to be installed with a few clicks each. Not too shabby, if you ask me.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/ss3700x0.png" alt="BlueHost Website Builders" /> 
So there you have it. Fifty-five BlueHost website builders, all waiting to be installed in a matter of minutes.
This brilliant flexibility is what makes BlueHost the <a href="/bluehosts-4th-july-sale-professional-web-hosting-for-just-3.95-per-month/" target="_blank">web host of choice here at CMS Critic</a>. It's the perfect way for web experts and web newbies alike to get their hands on the best CMS for their projects. Fast.
<a href="https://www.bluehost.com/hosting/shared#pricing-cards">Sign up with BlueHost </a>

55 Ways to Build a Website with BlueHost

Choosing a content management system for your project is paramount to the success of your venture. The primary reason CMS Critic exists is to help our readership stay informed about which CMS are to be trusted and used.
However, choosing a content management system is only half the battle to getting a project up and running. The other half is all about selecting the best web host.
As a result of this realization, CMS Critic has selected <a href="https://www.bluehost.com/" target="_blank"> Bluehost</a> as their web host of choice – and we recommend them to all our readers.
<h2>Why Bluehost?</h2>
There are countless web hosting solutions on the market, but we believe Bluehost is the best all-around solution for startups, seasoned web property developers, and everybody in between.
Founded in 1996, Bluehost is an award-winning web host that powers over 2 million websites across the globe. Bluehost offers shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and reseller hosting.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/bluehost700x0.png" alt="Bluehost " /> 
Bluehost's price plans are second to none when the quality of the control panel and support system are both taken into account. They offer a one-click install for WordPress, automated backups, unlimited domains, unlimited storage space, a free domain name, and 24/7 support – all of which is included in their shared hosting plan, starting from just $4.95 per month.
Their VPS and dedicated hosting plans are equally impressive and offer great value for money. So impressive in fact, that preparations are now being made for CMS Critic to migrate to the Bluehost.
<h2>4th July Discount</h2>
Bluehost is about to roll out a 4th July special discount, coming down on their already impressive monthly price of $4.95 per month. Details of the offer are as follows:
<ul>
<li>Special 3.95/mo Promotional Pricing</li>
<li>Starts Friday, July 4, 2014 @ 12:01 a.m. MDT</li>
<li>Ends Monday, July 7, 2014, @ 9 a.m. MDT</li>
</ul>
So, be sure to grab your Bluehost discount this Friday, 4th July 2014.

Bluehost: CMS Critic's Web Host of Choice (Plus a Special 4th July Bluehost Discount)

Explore a wide range of informative articles on BlueHost, insights, and industry updates. Stay informed and ahead of the curve with our diverse collection of news and posts covering the latest trends and developments in the industry

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Why You Should Avoid 123-Reg At All Costs

55 Ways to Build a Website with BlueHost

Bluehost: CMS Critic's Web Host of Choice (Plus a Special 4th July Bluehost Discount)