Aplus.Net Domain Registrar Review: A-
Aplus.Net Prices Pros Cons
Current Promotion
.com: $7.40
.net: $6.95
.org: $7.95
.biz: $15.95
.info: $1.95
.us: $7.95
.mobi: $13.95
Transfers: $7.95
Aplus.Net has the lowest .info price, as well as competitive .com and .net price
Free domain name with any hosting package
Customizable domain name parking page with a choice of over 30 template styles and a simple design tool
Best-in-class domain name research and generation tools
Free email account with up to 100 email forwarders
24/7 toll-free, customer support
Customers have registered over 400,000 domains through Aplus.Net
Aplus.Net is Cnet's Editor's choice for best domain name registrar
WHOIS privacy costs $8.95 per year
Domain forwarding costs $8.95 per year
Aplus.Net's prices do not take into account ICANN's 20c registration fee
Currently, Aplus.Net has the worst .biz domain price of any of the popular, discount registrars
Aplus.Net's webmail software lacks IMAP and POP3 support



Home Page Domain Control Panel
Aplus Domain Name Registrar Review
Aplus Domain Name Registrar Review



Company Info Full Review
Hosting Package

Name
Aplus.Net is a division of Abacus America
Web Site
www.aplus.net
Founded
Overland Park, Kansas 1992
Country
USA
Email Support
support@aplus.net
Phone Support
(877)275-8763


Visit Aplus.Net
Summary

Aplus.Net has won numerous awards from Cnet (as of the time of this writing, Aplus.Net has been ranked the #1 registrar/web host by Cnet's readers for 312 weeks in a row!), as well as a variety of other hosting review sites for its easy to use domain name/hosting control panel. Frankly, we think that the control panel is spectacular if you host only a few websites or manage only a couple parked domains. However, similar to Yahoo, if you park a large number of domains with Aplus.Net, it is a nightmare, because the control panel lacks basic, bulk management control features (imagine manually switching 500+ domains' name servers individually). Aplus.Net has some of the best, discount domain prices, and similar to GoDaddy, it usually has a deep discount for at least one TLD.



Services

You can register all of the primary domain extensions at Aplus.Net (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us and .mobi), as well as one international TLD: .bz (not sure why they picked the TLD for Belize of all of the options globally!). Aplus.Net offers deeper discounts on the primary TLDs than nearly all of its rivals with .coms priced at $7.40 and .nets priced at $6.95. While these prices may not be as good as Netfirm's, there is no quantity restriction at this price level and domains should renew at a similar price. Each domain comes with a free mailbox with 100 email forwarders, which is a great deal; however, customers do need to pay Aplus.Net additional fees for both WHOIS privacy and URL forwarding (OUCH!).

The domain control panel is great, if you have a relatively small number of domains (e.g., less than ten), but it can be a headache, if you have more. If you plan to build a large domain portfolio or if you are planning to consolidate a large portfolio with a particular domain registrar, then we would suggest that you manage your portfolio through GoDaddy or Moniker.

Aplus.Net's email interface is extremely usable, and similar to its counterpart at Netfirms, enables users to manage multiple email folders for distinct domains. That said, again, there is no IMAP or POP3 support.

Lastly, it bears mentioning that Aplus.Net offers topflight domain generation and research tools. We have some experience with the domain generation tools used by NameMedia, as well as some of the other large domain name resellers, and honestly, Aplus.Net lets its users utilize tools of similar quality for free.



Size

While not quite as large as GoDaddy or Netfirms, Aplus.Net is also one of the larger domain name registrars and web hosts. It has over 200,000 customers globally who have registered over 400,000 domains through it. Additionally, Aplus.Net hosts over 6,000 dedicated servers and has designed over 13,000 websites.



Customer Support

Service and support is an Aplus.Net strong suit. In addition to providing the requisite toll-free phone number that's available 24/7, the company posts chat links to live representatives on most pages of its site. We experienced rapid responses via both phone and chatting each time we initiated contact. If you would rather search for an answer to a problem yourself, then you can peruse Aplus.Net's active public forums or over 50 pages of searchable FAQs.



Room for Improvement

(1) While it offers a free mailbox with each registered domain, Aplus.Net charges users for many features that you can receive elsewhere for free, such as WHOIS privacy and URL forwarding.

(2) Aplus.Net needs to incorporate bulk, domain name management tools into its domain control panel. Although Cnet's editors and users love Aplus.Net's control panel, we would hazard a guess that very few of the voters in Cnet's surveys are domain name resellers.