Network Solutions Review – Pricing, Details, & Features

As a client of Network Solutions, you can choose from fully-managed websites or shared hosting accounts to meet your needs. This review will provide additional feedback to help you make your choice.

With more than 40 years of experience as a domain registrar, Network Solutions is known for its longevity. Several web hosting-related services are available through this company, such as domain registration, shared hosting, website design, E-commerce services, and SEO.

When it comes to hosting services, Network Solutions has varying reviews. This is what made me curious about this hosting provider. I thoroughly evaluate NS’s ease of use, performance, and security.

Network Solutions Overview

Since 1979, network solutions have helped businesses stay connected and grow online. They provide 24-hour customer service—most people in the hosting industry trust and respect Network Solution (NS). A brand you can trust.

Types of hosting available	Web Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Cloud-based shared hosting
Price Range	Cloud shared hosting plan at $ 5.69 /mon to Premium plan $ 21.62/mon
Free SSL Certificate	Yes
Free Professional Email	Yes
Storage	15 GB (Starter) to Unlimited (Premium)
Specific Offers	SiteBuilder, Unlimited Domains, Weekly Backups, 1-Click Installs for 400+ Cloud Apps, 99.9% Uptime Guarantee, 256-Bit encryption, Unlimited Email Accounts, Unlimited Storage.
Speed and Uptime	99.99% uptime guaranteed with adequate speed
Best for	All types of small websites, simple shared hosting from beginners to professionals

Network Solutions Features

Network Solutions Cheap Hosting

The Hosting packages offered by Network Solutions are solid but not spectacular. This company’s cheapest shared hosting plan costs less than low-cost hosts. Network Solutions doesn’t seem like the best choice beyond the entry-level plan, even with enough storage and unlimited bandwidth. It costs only $21 a month for the Premium Plan.

Network Solutions provides enterprise-class features like solid-state drives, automatic backups, DDoS protection, and above-average 99.99% uptime. Many popular programming languages work with Network Solutions, such as PHP, ASP.NET, JSP, and Ruby on Rails.

Additionally, the hosting company offers dozens of one-click installations for popular applications, a convenient service that competitors usually do not provide.

Network Solutions Ease of Use

Although Network Solutions isn’t user-friendly, it is still easy to use. For hosting management, the provider uses a dashboard and control panel. Despite being outdated, the control panel and dashboard perform well. In addition to being easy to install, WordPress does not come with the latest version.

The main dashboard of Network Solutions looks a bit old-fashioned, but it is clean and well-organized. In the menu on your left, you can choose a domain name, email address, and more. The hosting packages tab is where you’ll find the control panel. Here you will find all the tools for managing your hosting.

Reliability and response time

During a 2-week observation period, I evaluated Network Solutions’ reliability and response time. A total of 3m of downtime occurred during those two outages. In comparison to 99.9% uptime, 99.98% is quite impressive.

However, this is when the whole thing started to go south. With an average response time of 4.43s, Network Solutions was over 7 times slower than the market average. Although this could be considered a periodic maintenance issue, Network Solutions does this frequently. A slow response time is inevitable. The uptime of the provider is usually consistent.

Expert Website Builder

Network Solutions offers a website builder and hosting package for relatively low prices in the web design world. Compared to other drag-and-drop builders, Network Solutions’ website builder isn’t particularly innovative. As a result, they offer professional yet affordable web design services.

A friendly, professional site from Network Solutions is perfect for those looking to get online quickly.

Add your logos and colors
Registrar offers FREE domains and email
Wizard-driven site builder
Personal and business templates

User-friendly Control panel (cPanel)

Network Solutions uses its custom control panel. There aren’t as many tools or features as cPanel, but it has the necessary tools. The user interface appears old, but even a novice can navigate it.

The panel will come in handy for the following:

Website builder. You can find the website builder under Content Management and FTP. You can use this tool to create a website quickly and easily. The builder, however, only has fundamental features.
Email. Creating a mailbox with a username and password is the first step to receiving your emails. You need to follow the prompts on the screen.
App installation. One-click Network Solutions app installer is necessary for WordPress and other applications. You’ll find it under Site Enhancements under Open Source Applications.
Domains. You can manage your domains effortlessly in the panel. You can point, assign, and add subdomains to a domain name.

Network Solutions Security

There are many areas where Network Solutions’ security falls short. There is not much protection on the basic plan. The other 3 plans include Sitelock malware removal and scanning. The Premium plan is the only one to offer an SSL certificate. All other services are extra. Security-wise, you can expect:

SSL certificate encryption is only available through the Premium plan. Only the most expensive plan comes with SSL certificates. Generally, SSL comes with most plans.
SiteLock will be available in every plan except the basic one offered by Network Solutions. SiteLock Premium is included with the other two plans, while the Essential plan receives only malware detection. A SiteLock Premium subscription provides malware detection and removal for up to 500 pages daily and vulnerability scanning.

Network Solutions only offers that for free. Paid security add-ons like CodeGuard are available.

A CodeGuard monthly plan costs $1.99 to $9.99.00, offering daily backups, monitoring, one-click restores, and two-factor authentication. Additionally, you can perform on-demand backups, scan your network for vulnerabilities, and log your IP addresses. It’s that simple.

As a whole, Network Solutions offers extremely minimal security protection. Basic security measures like SSL, firewalls, or automated backups are lacking.

Network Solutions Speed

This Network Solutions review involves a test on a fully-built empty WordPress site. According to the test results, the host is slow as well.

Here are two main measures I evaluated to understand my test results better:

Fully Loaded Time – The moment the site is fully loaded. Under 3 seconds is the ideal time to increase user satisfaction and reduce bounce rates.
The largest Contentful Paint (LCP) counts when Google ranks websites. WordPress sites should have an LCP under 600ms for a blank site and under 2.5s for a built site.

Beginning with an empty site, I tested it in 3 countries: India, the US, and the UK. There were delays of 1.1s, 1.9s, and 1.5s in all three locations’ LCPs. Undoubtedly a setback. Further, Network Solutions does not allow you to pick the server’s location. Additionally, it does not provide its support team with the location of its data centers.

However, this data suggests that my site resides somewhere in Asia. The LCP for MUM took the shortest time, so it makes sense.

As for a fully built WordPress site, the LCP took 3.3 seconds. Still not bad, but definitely above the recommended 2.5 seconds. In terms of fully loaded time, it took 4.7 seconds. A long load time may significantly increase the bounce rate, which isn’t ideal.

Overall, Network Solutions’ performance was below average.

Network Solutions Support

Web.com, the parent company, handles some support issues. You can also contact specific departments via email or phone. Response times (up to a day) are decent but not great, and the staff is polite and helpful but not exceptional. Nevertheless, they are usually quite knowledgeable as they are themselves, developers. Occasionally, they fail to respond to all support queries.

Traffic management assistance

To determine how well Network Solutions can handle traffic on the site, I’ve conducted a stress test.

Initially, I set up 100 virtual users. For your information, 100 VUs consistently on the site is equivalent to 100,000 monthly visitors. The server may be under a lot of strain and even crash. The server was unable to handle 100 VUs, as expected. Slowly, it failed. 100 VUs is too much, but I’m still curious how much is too little. Because of this, I reduced the VUs by 10.

It was a success for Network Solutions with 10 Users. Every request failed due to the website being down. The host still faces a lot of challenges, even with low traffic. Small sites are best suited to it.

The uptime of the Network Solution was excellent, and the reliability was excellent. Although it was fast, its server responsiveness and ability to cope with traffic let it down.

Network Solutions Pricing and Plans

Network Solutions offers affordable pricing. The company’s most popular cloud-based shared hosting service starts at $5.69 per month. Network Solutions also offer a website builder and WordPress hosting. Hosting Plans include:

Cloud-based shared hosting plan is suitable for beginners and small businesses who want to create blogs, portfolios, or small websites.
Cloud-based WordPress hosting is best for Small to mid-sized WordPress websites.
Newbies and those looking to get a website online should choose Network Solutions’ website builder.

Network Solutions offers four pricing plans. Starting at $5.69/mo and going up to $21.62/mo. Every plan comes with a free business LLC formation and numerous emails from 1 to 800 accounts. Only two similarities exist between these plans. Considering the resources of each plan, let’s see how they differ:

The starter starts at $5.69/mo for a single website, 15GB of storage, and 5 email accounts.
Essential starts at $9.96/mo for three websites, 300GB of storage, 1000 email addresses, and SiteLock for one domain.
Professional starts at $15.78/mo with a domain name, unlimited storage, email accounts, and SiteLock Premium. It can host up to 10 websites.
Premium starts at $21.62/mo, including an SSL certificate and everything in Professional.

The Starter plan at Network Solutions is quite resource-constrained. Adding more storage gives you a free custom domain, SiteLock, and a better storage plan. Then again, Network Solutions offers its priciest plan a free SSL, which is absurd, especially for that price.

Pros and Cons of using Network Solutions

Pros

Money-back guarantee for 30 days
Designed for beginners
Offer a free website builder
99.99% uptime guarantee
Billing periods are flexible
Growth potential and flexibility
Excellent knowledge base
Offer 24/7 customer support
Cloud hosting is affordable

Cons

Few hosting options
No Windows servers are available
Customer service is slow
Only top plans include free SSL

Network Solutions Customer Support

For beginners, working with a web host that provides 24/7 technical support is crucial. An excellent hosting company should provide 24-hour customer support. For those looking for a host for this purpose, Network Solutions fits the bill.

Customer support and technical support are available from Network Solutions in the following ways. Support is available via phone and online forums 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A single click is all it takes to access Network Solutions Support through their website.

A few basic questions in the FAQs section will help you get to the bottom of the issue. You can still find answers to most of your inquiries by visiting https://www.networksolutions.com/knowledge.

Network Solutions’ customer support is highly responsive. The task of the team is to identify and solve your problems. A live chat feature and a toll-free number are available 24×7 to solve any problem.

Contact number: 00 1 570-708-8788

Availability Hours: 7 a.m. ET to midnight, 7 days a week

Top 3 Alternatives of NetworkSolution Hosting

Hostinger	Read Review	Visit Website
Site Ground	Read Review	Visit Website
BlueHost	Read Review	Visit Website

Final Thoughts

With its cloud-based packages and access to affordable domain registration, Network Solutions is trying to make a name for itself in the web hosting industry. Everything may be fine on the surface, but complaints from past customers caused us to think twice.