Pricing:  

As mentioned above, the Essential hosting package is pretty basic, the three year plan averages out to $8.95/month, the 2-yr $9.95/month and the 1-yr $14.95/month.
This includes 5GB of storage and 250 GB of transfer for one website.

Other services are priced as follows:
Professional Hosting: $14.95-19.95/month for 250GB/1000GB storage/data, 10 FTP/MySQL
Premium Hosting: $29.95-44.95/month for unlimited storage/data, FTP/MySQL and websites
Ecommerce Hosting: $39.99-199.99/month
Additional Domains: $35/yr
Domain Privacy: $11/yr
SEO Services: $20-$300/month
Email Packages: $14.95-$149.95/year
Website Creation Packages: $12.95-$55/month
 

Hosting Features:  

The Essential package comes with very little storage, but you can upgrade. It also comes with website stats provided by Webalizer and Awstats, which are free services. It also comes with all of the programs included in Fantastico and it also includes things like blog software, YaBB bulletin board, phpMyChat, gallery and a guestbook, as well as eight CMS choices and three shopping carts.

In order to get webpage building tools you have to use something you purchase like Dreamweaver, or use an opensource program from Fantasitico, they do not offer basic page building tools of their own with the Essential package, however, they do offer website creation packages.

They say they offer 100% up-time, though we are not sure how they can guarantee that, as most services report something like 99.9% to give themselves a little wiggle room.

Domains:  

With Register.com you get one domain or transfer with the Essential package, they offer quite a few types including some international domains such at .uk and .eu. You also support subdomains and you can purchase additional domains for $35/yr and add domain privacy for $11/month.

Ecommerce Hosting:  

Through Fantastico and Register.com’s software package you can get a few shopping carts including Agora, OSCommerce, ClickCartPro, Cube and Zen. However, ecommerce hosting is offered as a different hosting package. Also things like PayPal compatibility also extra. Ecommerce hosting is offered at $39.99-199.99/month and includes things like an online store builder, more email accounts, affiliate program tools, sales and vendor management tools and more.

Email:  

As mentioned above the Essential package comes with one POP3 type email account; however, Register.com offers quite a few email packages. The have three email packages and offer different scenarios with their ecommerce and hosting packages. However, we did not see a package that offers unlimited storage. From what we can tell advanced email features are only offered with the email packages.

Access:  

Register.com requires that you set up your own FTP service, such as through SmartFTP or CuteFTP. Each hosting packages offers a different number of FTP accounts. If you want your own SSL secure certificate it is $19.95/month. The services that are easier to use, set up the FTP automatically so you can easily load web pages, files or images to your site effortlessly and quickly.

Programming / Multimedia:  

The Essential package is compatible with Php, Cron Jobs, FrontPage Extensions, MySQL, PostegreSQL and of course you can load HTML files created with Dreamweaver or other website creation tool. The Essential package does not include very much transfer, so streaming media would not be a good choice. You can, however load media files such as video and audio.

Support & Service:  

Register.com reports to offer 24/7 email, telephone and chat support; however, every time we tried to use the chat service it would not work. We even tried logging in to our account and then clicking the chat link, thinking that it might make a difference, but it did not. We also tried using the chat service during “normal” business hours and we got as far as entering our name and email address before the chat conversation terminated; this was extremely frustrating.

Online they post a few FAQs and through your control panel you can access a list of help topics, ranging from getting started to CMS help to website stat support. We would have liked to have seen more thorough information though. For example, the FTP support page only had eight support topics and website statistics only seven. However, you can access more answers through their online customer support section. Online they also post video tutorials and a fairly comprehensive glossary that could prove helpful to novice website builders.

We also thought it was not one of the easiest services to use. Often new windows opened for procedures instead of being able to control everything through one interface, you have to set up your own FTP and it does not come with its own easy to use website creation tool, such as what Yahoo Small Business offers.

Register.com offers all kinds of hosting packages and ecommerce support solutions, from basic hosting to business email to SEO services. However, we thought their basic or Essential package included much less than their competitors, especially when it came to storage and email accounts. They also cost a bit more, which over a year or three year term adds up. Register.com reports to have customer support that stands out and a service team that gives expert advice, but we could never get their chat service to work to test that out.

Overall, Register.com is decent enough, but just isn’t compelling enough to really compare with some of our higher ranked solutions.