Hover vs 123-reg
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Hover and 123-reg.
Quick Verdict
3.2/5
Hover
0 reviews
3.0/5
123-reg
0 reviews
Hover is rated higher (3.2 vs 3.0). Hover is known for having the cleanest checkout experience in domain registration — no upsells, no bundled hosting pitches. Flat pricing, free WHOIS privacy, and email forwarding included. 123-reg registers .uk and international domains with integrated hosting options. Designed for UK small businesses and individuals seeking bundled services at competitive introductory prices.
Hover Clean domain registrar — no upsells | 123-reg UK domain registrar with hosting bundles — cheap first year, materially higher renewals | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.2 (0 reviews)✓ | 3.0 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | paid | paid |
| Starting price | From $2.99/mo | From $0.01/mo✓ |
| Best for | Individuals and small businesses holding a few important domains who want a clean, upsell-free registrar experience and will pay modestly more for it | UK small businesses and individuals registering .co.uk/.uk names who want domains, email, and hosting bundled under one control panel and are comfortable budgeting at renewal prices. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ✓ | |
| Automated backups | ✓ | |
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Tags | ||
| Tags | — | eu datacenter |
| Visit Hover → | Visit 123-reg → | |
Hover
Pros
- + Flat registration/renewal/transfer pricing on mainstream TLDs (.com $18.99/yr)
- + WHOIS privacy included free; $0.20 ICANN fee is the only surcharge
- + Clean checkout with no upsells or pre-checked add-ons
- + ICANN-accredited registrar backed by Tucows' wholesale infrastructure
- + Straightforward DNS and portfolio management, plus email forwarding
Cons
- - Above budget-registrar pricing on .com and other legacy TLDs
- - Public review scores are poor (Trustpilot 1.3 across ~120 reviews)
- - Promo-then-jump pricing on newer TLDs (.online $2.99 → $36.99 renewal)
- - No hosting, no notable reseller programme, thinner tooling for large portfolios
123-reg
Pros
- + Established UK registrar since 2000 with 400+ extensions and consolidated domain, email, and hosting billing
- + Transparent first-year and renewal prices published together on 123-reg's own pages
- + Free .co.uk/.uk transfers in and free Nominet WHOIS privacy on UK domains
- + cPanel on hosting, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and DDoS protection with 24/7 monitoring on VPS
- + Bundles (domain + email + hosting + SSL) suit non-technical UK small businesses
Cons
- - Renewals jump sharply — .co.uk from £3.99 to £12.99/year, Economy hosting from £1.99/mo to £251.64 per 3-year term
- - WHOIS privacy for gTLDs costs extra (around £4.99/domain/year), compounding portfolio costs
- - UK-hours-only support with no published response-time SLA; phone support restricted to the UK
- - Backup advertising says daily; terms say files weekly and databases daily
- - April 2016 mass site-deletion incident across 67 servers remains on the reliability record
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