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If you are searching for an inexpensive way to build a website, you will likely stumble upon the provider One.com at some while searching. You can register domains and buy storage space for websites and emails, all in one package. The price depends on the amount of space you want, but to be honest, One.com is very generous in this. Each package always includes the One.com Website Builder. It allows casual users to create a website without any programming knowledge. In this One.com Hosting review, we will find out what the website builder has to offer.
Getting started
One.com’s website has been carefully designed to make exploring the company’s products as easy as possible, and that is fine by us. The plans are summarized on the front page – no separate ‘compare’ table is needed – and you can start the buying process with a click.
You will first be asked to specify the domain you need, and you can choose to register it now or transfer it – but that’s all. If you already own the domain, you can’t leave it with the current administrator and update your DNS, a real annoyance for experienced users. One.com requires more information than usual when creating an account: your name, email address, physical address, mobile phone number, and even your birth date are required.
Supported payment methods include credit and debit cards, PayPal, and bank transfers. You will be asked to check the terms and conditions before signing up. Below is a small bill explaining that your webspace will automatically renew and that your credit card is currently being debited.
We continued anyway, completed our purchase, and received a unique referral link. One.com offers a referral program. You can log into your account at any time and choose to refer a friend in exchange for money for you and the person you chose to refer.
One.com Hosting Review: Creating a website
At registration, we were informed about the codes and information about our new subscription by e-mail. This email arrived in less than 5 minutes and asked us to choose a password. We did this, and our confirmation email was in our inbox within seconds. At the second registration, we could click on a link to ‘Go to Control Panel.’ We did this and were asked to enter our registration email and new password.
The Control Panel was relatively easy to navigate with everything precisely. One.com uses its administration console instead of a standard like cPanel or Plesk, but although in principle, this is also very beginner-friendly. Email, Website Builder, WordPress, One Photo, Marketing, Advanced Settings, Files, and Security are all on the front page. You will also get free access to the ‘Online Shop’ for 14 days.
For example, the WebSite Builder is at the top of the page. This allows you to create simple sites of up to five pages, but there are some useful templates, and if your needs are simple, you can have something available within a few minutes.
One.com also offers a 1-click WordPress setup that is as simple and fast as we have ever seen. There are separate tools for setting up a primary blog and a photo gallery. A simple file manager, SSH, and FTP support enable manual management of a site by anyone who knows what they are doing.
One.com Hosting Review: Pricing and plans
The bottom-of-the-range Starter Package is available for a one-time setup fee of $11.85 for the first year, $2.08 per month (including VAT) after that. This includes 25GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, a domain, a database, 2 CPUs, a simple WordPress installation, unlimited email PHP, and FTP/SFTP access. You’ll even get several features listed elsewhere as premium, including a primary Website Builder and SSL.
The Professional Plus account is $6.57 per month and offers all the ‘Starter’ packages plus SSH support, 200GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, 4 CPUs site backup and restore. However, none of this is as good as it seems at first glance. Choose the $6.57 – which is currently offered for $3.27 per month Professional Plus account, for example, and you will find that One.com adds an $11.85 setup fee and insists on paying the first year in advance. That totals $53.96, much closer to the starting price of other budget holders, who may also allow monthly or quarterly payments.
Fortunately, there is also a 15-day money-back guarantee that seems to cover much more than most of the competition. Hosts usually allow one refund per customer and exclude the cost of the domain. One.com reimburses your full cost for the first canceled order and covers everything except the domain costs for further orders.
One.com Hosting Review: Customer support
We are always interested to see what level of support a host offers, and One.com’s answer is ‘just enough.’ There is no telephone support and no support ticket system, only 24/7 live chat and email support that promises a response within 24 hours. The best option for quick answers is probably live chat. We started a chat and asked a relatively simple question about the referral program.
Initially, a bot responded to our chat and provided some links to an article. When this didn’t satisfy us, we were referred to a live agent. They came online within two minutes. The agent was more than capable of answering our questions and was very friendly.
Final words
One.com’s Website Editor makes it possible for beginners to create a website with a budget. If you make a mistake somewhere along the way, you can always reverse your last few steps. The live support chat was beneficial during our One.com Hosting review and could answer all the open questions we had. However, the low price is a reflection of the limited functionality of One.com’s Website Builder. If you need an online store, you can add one at an extra cost.
The blog is also not an integral part of the website builder but needs to be added through a somewhat complicated process. But the most significant limitation is the page limit – using the regular website builder, you can only publish five pages. If you need more, then you should purchase Website Builder Premium. This increases the price to a level comparable to Weebly and Jimdo, who offer much more advanced products.