Network Solutions Review 2026: One Login to Run Your Whole Business, But Is It Worth It?

Network Solutions has shared web hosting that’s a good choice for small business owners running a single website who want to manage their entire operation from one place. As long as you purchase a domain name to go along with your hosting, you get a range of marketing tools that can significantly streamline your day-to-day workflow.

When it comes time to build your website, you’ll also have plenty of options: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and many other content management systems (CMS) are all available on every Network Solutions plan. I found the native website builder to be easy enough for first-timers but granular enough to build a complete, customized site.

If the company toned down its aggressive upselling and strengthened its contract terms, it would be an even easier recommendation for the small-business owner use case. Outside of that, most other needs are better served elsewhere, including with Network Solutions' sister company, Bluehost.

In this Network Solutions review, I'll walk you through my own experience building a site with the company's native website builder. Then I'll cover its hosting plans and pricing, its features, and its performance based on three tests that I ran to give you a comprehensive overview of what you can reasonably expect if you sign up for a Network Solutions hosting plan.

Network Solutions review at a glance

Starts at	$2.99/mo
Money-back guarantee	No — with some exceptions*
Uptime guarantee	99.9%
Monthly visits	15K - 200K
Number of websites	1 - 10
Storage	10 - 40 GB
Free SSL certificate	No — but Essential and Premium plans give you the first year free
Free domain for a year	Starting at Essential (tier-two) plan
Backup frequency	Daily and on demand on all plans
Migration assistance	$174.99 / migration
24/7 support	On all plans
Learn more	Get Network Solutions

Star rating summary

We last tested Network Solutions on April 13th, 2026.

My experience

I began my journey with Network Solutions by signing up for its entry-level Starter plan and purchasing a domain name. The entire experience — from navigating the control panel to building my test site to trying out the various business tools — was smooth and enjoyable. The only minor exception was the occasional upsell pop-ups, which were admittedly annoying.

The control panel

When I first logged into my account, what struck me immediately was how user-friendly the control panel dashboard was. From a design perspective, it felt slightly dated, but from a usability standpoint, it was easy to find what I needed. Other than the misleading “Websites” button in the navigation menu, which was just an avenue for upsells, everything else had a clear purpose.

Getting started with the website builder

I quickly found the Network Solutions website builder and didn’t waste any time launching into it. The first thing I encountered was a standard “get started” wizard, typical of most website builders. It asked me some questions to narrow down which templates to offer me:

After choosing my template, I was taken to a screen that strongly reminded me of a stripped-down version of the WordPress Customizer. Here, I adjusted my global font settings and chose the color scheme for my website. The builder also allowed me to upload a logo and create a custom color scheme based on the logo’s colors:

Although I ended up using one of the suggested preset color schemes for my actual site, I enjoyed playing with this feature. It went beyond the bare minimum I was initially expecting and served as a prelude to the advanced customization features I would encounter in the next phase.

Granularity on overdrive

After locking in my global settings, I proceeded with the most time-consuming part of the design process: fully customizing the homepage of my test site. Once again, it felt eerily like WordPress. More specifically, the interface felt like using a WordPress page builder plugin. Everything was intuitive.

As I crawled my way around, my general feeling about what I was seeing escalated from “oh, it has that, too” to the realization that you can actually build a professionally tailored site with this website builder. There were so many minor details that listing them all here isn’t practical, but below are a few highlights that stood out:

• Per-page SEO settings with title, meta description, social share image, and live SERP preview
• Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Site Verification, and reCAPTCHA integration
• Custom code injection in the HTML <head> and <body>
• Automated sitemap.xml and robots.txt generation
• Unsplash photo library built in, searchable by keyword or category
• Cloud photo import from Instagram, Facebook, Dropbox, Box, and Flickr
• Background effects, including parallax, fixed, and animated options
• Native privacy and analytics controls, including cookie consent banner

Compared to the many other website builders I’ve used in the past, I would rank Network Solutions' rendition highly. To borrow from WordPress again, it hits the sweet spot between Brizy and Elementor. The former is too rigid, while the latter gives you so much control that you get pulled into time-wasting rabbit holes, spending hours adjusting rounded corners from 12px to 13px. Network Solutions sits right in the middle. It empowers you, but stops at the point of diminishing returns.

If I were to go back in time to when I first began building websites, I’d definitely consider starting with Network Solutions' web builder.

Network Solutions prices and plans

The cost of Network Solutions’ three shared web hosting annual plans ranges as low as $2.99/mo on the entry-level Starter plan to $6.99/mo for the Premium. However, contract lengths range from month-to-month to every 5 years, with per-month rates progressively decreasing as you scale up the time commitment ladder.

All three plans come with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, unmetered bandwidth, daily malware scans, and daily backups with the option to create an on-demand backup as well.

The Starter plan is true to its name and supports one website with 10 GB of storage. It’s designed to handle up to 15,000 visitors per month and includes five email inboxes.

The Essential and Premium plans both increase storage space to 20 GB and 40 GB, and the monthly visitor limits are bumped up to 50,000 and 200,000, respectively. Plus, to help you get started, you get a free SSL certificate and a free domain name — both for 1 year.

	Starter	Essential	Premium
Price*	$2.99/mo	$4.99/mo	$6.99/mo
Number of websites	1	3	10
Monthly visits	15K	50K	200K
Storage	10 GB	20 GB	40 GB
Email inboxes	5	1,000	Unlimited
Free domain for one year
Free SSL certificate for one year
Learn more	View plan	View plan	View plan

Compared to other web hosts at similar price points, Network Solutions offers lighter specs and fewer hosting-specific features.

For example, for only $1 more per month, Bluehost’s Starter plan includes a free CDN, a free SSL certificate, a free domain in the first year, modern AI tools, and, if you use WordPress, a free staging site as well. Network Solutions gives you none of those on its Starter plan.

Network Solutions does gain back some ground, though, with its well-rounded set of business and marketing tools. These include an app to manage linked social media accounts, a CRM for handling inbound website leads, and a calendar to manage appointments. If you plan to take advantage of these, the Starter plan can be a good value. Otherwise, the renewal costs become unreasonably expensive.

​Of the three plans, the Starter makes the most sense for the use case for which Network Solutions is best suited: a single small business website looking to manage its operations under one roof. The only minor nuisance with that plan is the lack of an SSL certificate, but you can always get a free SSL directly from Let’s Encrypt.

Network Solutions features

In lieu of the more standard hosting features typically found among competitors, Network Solutions has carved out its own lane in the hosting ecosystem. You won’t find any AI site-building tools here, nor will you see a CDN, a free ongoing SSL, or DDoS protection.

What you’ll get instead is a set of features designed to serve as an all-in-one business management system. Not for enterprise-level operations, but for small business owners where the CEO is also the sales manager, the social media manager, and whatever else their business needs them to be at any given moment. Here’s an overview of what to expect:

• Your web hosting choice of standard shared or shared hosting optimized for WordPress
• Numerous web building options, including all the popular content management systems like WordPress and Joomla, but also a built-in website builder
• A feature-rich domain registrar service with all the basic registrar functions combined with numerous specialty services for advanced users
• Business tools like the Customers app for lightweight customer relationship management, and the Social Booster app for consolidated scheduling across social media accounts

Types of web hosting available

Network Solutions keeps its offerings simple with only two types of hosting on the menu: shared web hosting and WordPress hosting. 

When I tested the service, I signed up for the Starter web hosting plan, which I found to be adequate. The plan lets you build a single site, which is all I planned on doing, and I accomplished that with almost no friction.

Web building features

With the exception of modern AI-powered site-building tools, which are sorely lacking on its platform, Network Solutions has a solid array of web building options.

To begin with, there’s the exceptionally good in-house website builder that exceeded my expectations when I used it to build the test site I discussed earlier. Before starting, I mistakenly assumed it’d be nothing more than rigid templates with only basic customization options.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by stylish prebuilt sites that resembled some of the better WordPress themes that I’ve come across over the years. More importantly, the builder had enough depth to let me customize beyond the surface level, and the interface was designed so that even a first-timer could chisel away at their vision without hitting an impasse. To put it bluntly, I was blown away at how good it was.

However, if the native builder isn’t your thing, Network Solutions offers plenty of traditional content management systems: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and others can all be installed via the Softaculous app installer, which sits right inside the control panel on all plans.

I didn’t use any of those for this review because I’ve used them all in the past and was specifically interested in testing the Network Solutions web builder.

Lastly, there is also an ultimate do-it-for-you option, where Network Solutions builds you a website. It’s not free, but if you have the budget and you prefer to rely on a professional design service, then you have it at your fingertips without having to browse through Upwork to hire a freelancer.

WordPress integration

As covered above, Network Solutions lets you install WordPress via Softaculous. This is the same installer you'd find on most cPanel-based hosting, but it is noticeably absent from hosts that use their own proprietary control panel.

Network Solutions stands out because it gives you the best of both worlds. You get a more approachable interface, but you still get access to advanced installation tools typically found in cPanel hosting. Again, I didn't personally use it for this review, but I did navigate through the control panel far enough to confirm it's there and accessible.

Web migration

There is no native website migration tool available on any Network Solutions plan. If you have an existing site that you’d like to migrate over, customer support confirmed for me that you have two options: do it yourself or pay the Network Solutions team $174.99 per migration to do it for you.

Domain registration

On the domain services front, Network Solutions holds a unique place in internet history as the world's oldest domain registrar. That longevity speaks for itself, but its present-day domain-related features do a lot of talking, too.

The standard domain plans include domain privacy, forwarding, expiration protection, and bulk search. There's also an AI-powered domain name generator, which is one of the very few AI features offered by Network Solutions. On top of that, every purchased domain unlocks a business tool suite that includes a CRM, a social media management app, and a marketing calendar.​

I used the basic domain search feature to get a feel for what it's like to search for and buy a domain, and found the process smooth. I particularly appreciated how the UI surfaced alternative TLDs that matched my original search, making it easy to protect my brand identity across multiple extensions without running separate searches.

For businesses that need more comprehensive brand protection, Network Solutions also offers GlobalBlock, which lets you simultaneously block your trademarked name from being registered across more than 780 extensions.

The one persistent caveat is cost. Network Solutions’ decision to charge for domain privacy just feels like price gouging when there are plenty of other registrars that include it for free. If all you need is a domain name without the bells and whistles, there are cheaper options available.

Customers app (a built-in CRM)

The Customers app is automatically included with every domain name purchase and integrates seamlessly with the Network Solutions website builder.

To test it out, I inserted a contact form onto the homepage of my mock website. Then, I switched to a different browser, filled out the form, and submitted it. After that, I jumped back to the Customers app inside my dashboard. Sure enough, my submission was immediately visible, and I was able to edit the contact in various ways. For example, I could add a tag or mark the contact by their status as a new lead, engaged lead, stale lead, and so on.

Additionally, I saw an option to manually add contacts and import/export lists, so I manually added another version of myself as a separate contact and exported my list of two. Everything worked smoothly.

Based on my observations and previous experience using commercial CRM tools, this Customers app isn’t meant to be a full-on replacement for a dedicated CRM. However, for a small business owner who wants basic pipeline visibility and contact organization without adding another subscription, it gets the job done.

Social Booster app (a native social media management tool)

Another tool included with every Network Solutions domain name is the Social Booster app. It lets you connect your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X accounts and manage them all from one dashboard.

Similar to the Customers app, I found this one easy to use as well. The setup process to connect my accounts involved nothing more than tapping a few buttons. It was standard boilerplate authorization in which I agreed to give the app access to my accounts and make changes. From there, I was able to navigate and see options for:

• Creating and scheduling posts
• Responding to messages and reviews
• Tracking performance metrics like engagement, impressions, and top-performing content

If you’re a small business owner who is already wearing many hats, you can immediately see the time-saving value of having a lightweight Hootsuite or Buffer equivalent available under the same login as your domain, website, and CRM.

Network Solutions performance

We conduct performance testing as part of our review process for any web host. Network Solutions is no exception, and as part of this review, I ran three separate tests to gauge how well my mock website would respond.

The first test was a performance test, and I used dotcom-tools.com to run it. After that, I looked at uptime, which I measured using UptimeRobot.com. Lastly, I wanted to see how well Network Solutions would fare if I bombarded my site with 250 visitors in 1 minute. For that, I used a freemium service called Loader.io.

Speed test

A previous Google study found that if a page takes between 1 and 3 seconds to load, the probability of a visitor bouncing increases by 32%. Increase that to 5 seconds, and the number nearly triples to 90%.[1] Needless to say, speed has a measurable effect on user experience.

There are two performance metrics commonly used to test a webpage's speed: first contentful paint (FCP) and large contentful paint (LCP). FCP tells us how fast the first element on a web page loads, and LCP tells us how fast the largest element on the page loads. The dotcom-tools.com website gives both. I used it to test my mock website, and the results are below:

Product	Performance score	FCP	LCP
Network Solutions average*	92	0.6 s	1.7 s

Looking at the numbers, we can see that my site loaded quickly in the U.S. and reasonably quickly in Canada. However, when it came to Europe, the test timed out. I ended up running it two more times to see if perhaps it was a fluke, but all three times the Strasbourg location timed out.

This left me with two valuable takeaways. First, Network Solutions could solve this problem by including a CDN on all plans. Second, until that happens, I would be cautious about signing up for a Network Solutions hosting plan if your primary audience is based outside the U.S.

To complement the dotcom-tools.com test, I also briefly browsed my mock site for a more hands-on experience. I found that most pages loaded in 2-ish seconds with some outliers in both directions — though nothing extreme.

Uptime and response

Uptime measures the reliability of your website, or rather, the servers on which it is hosted. If the servers go down, they take your site down with it, and if it happens when a potential customer is trying to access your site, then that’s money walking out the door.

Product	Uptime	Average response time	Minimum response time	Maximum response time
Network Solutions average	100%	201 ms	116 ms	285 ms

To test Network Solutions’ uptime, I used a freemium tool called Uptime Robot. It continuously checked my mock site every 5 minutes for 3 days and recorded a flawless 100% uptime throughout. In addition, when checking manually, the site was always available.

Stress tests

• Stress test results: Network Solutions passed the stress test with no failures.

A stress test measures how well a website performs under abnormally high traffic. Knowing this is useful because your website can experience traffic spikes for any number of reasons, and you want to be confident that it won’t crash when that happens. Fortunately, there is an excellent freemium tool called Loader.io that lets you run stress tests on your site. We use it for all our stress testing.

To put Network Solutions through the ropes, I instructed Loader to send 250 visitors to my mock site within 1 minute. It handled the spike with no reported errors and recorded an average response time of 594 milliseconds, with a maximum of 3,088 milliseconds.

For perspective, when I reviewed Hostinger, its average response time was 14 milliseconds, with a maximum of 607 milliseconds. In general, Network Solutions’ response time numbers were slower than what I’ve seen with other web hosting companies.

However, perspective is also key here: we’re looking at milliseconds. In practical terms, Network Solutions' average response time was still fast. It’s only the upper-end outlier that was mildly concerning. In a real-world scenario, a 3+ second load time could cause some visitors to bounce from your site.

Network Solutions security features

Security isn't always the first feature people consider when searching for a web host, and on some level, that makes sense. Cybersecurity professionals notwithstanding, nobody gets excited about using a firewall the way they get excited about using a cool website builder.

The reality is that many people just assume "the host will take care of it." The problem is that hosts don't always take care of it, and it's only when they don't that the cool website builder takes a back seat, and the web application firewall that your plan didn't include gets all your attention. By then, you've got problems, though.

For its part, Network Solutions provides its customers with daily malware scanning. It happens in the background, so you don’t see it. When I asked a customer service representative about it, they assured me that if malware is detected during a scan, Network Solutions will send a notification email and lock the account down until the malware is removed. It’s up to you to remove it, but if you need help, Network Solutions offers a premium support service called MyTime Support. It’s free for the first month.

Unfortunately, this is the extent of Network Solutions’ security offerings. There are no additional security measures on any plan. For features like a web application firewall or automatic malware removal, you must purchase a separate SiteLock plan.

Network Solutions customer support and reputation

Support type	Network Solutions customer support
AI chat	Yes
Human chat	Yes — 24/7
Phone	Yes, 7 am–midnight ET — 1-866-908-3442
Email	No
Knowledge base	Yes — with built-in AI chat that pulls from the knowledge base to answer questions

Network Solutions customer support is mostly adequate, with a good mix of self-service and direct help options.

On the self-help side, there is a knowledge base with many articles organized by topic. It is useful, but it also hasn’t been updated in a while, and there are still posts that reference outdated information.

Compounding the problem is the built-in AI chat feature, which pulls directly from the knowledge base articles when answering questions. I had the chatbot tell me, with utmost confidence, that Network Solutions offers VPS plans because no one at the company bothered to unpublish the no-longer-relevant VPS posts after the VPS plans were discontinued.

For problems you can’t fix yourself, humans are available in two formats: phone support and live chat support. I relied on the latter three separate times while testing the host. In most of the interactions, I received solid responses to my questions, but I did catch an agent providing me with misleading information about the MyTime support program. It was presented as being free, when in reality it’s free only for the first month:

In terms of wait time, the longest I experienced was about 7 minutes, while the shortest was roughly 2 minutes.

Network Solutions user reviews

• Trustpilot rating: 4.4 / 5

User reviews on Trustpilot are mixed, but Trustpilot is an anomaly. On other platforms, be it G2, Capterra, or Reddit, the reviews are overwhelmingly negative.

This partly stems from the extensive track record of shady practices and scandals that Network Solutions has built over its decades in business.

To be fair, the majority of those incidents and certainly the worst ones happened under previous ownership. Since Newfold Digital took over the brand, there haven't been any serious issues. The only major negative headlines have been due to periodic DNS outages, which are normal and affect even larger companies than Network Solutions. For example, Cloudflare experienced one in July of 2025.[2]

That said, Newfold Digital could do much more to instill confidence in potential customers by strengthening the terms of its customer contracts. Some of the current wording can be reasonably interpreted as concerning from a customer’s perspective.

For example, there is a clause that allows the company to automatically turn on auto-renewal on your account at any time. There’s also a section stating that they can contact third parties to obtain your updated payment information so they can continue charging you — even if the credit card on file has expired. The correlation between these clauses and many of the complaints is obvious:

If Network Solutions wants to overcome its checkered past and send a strong positive signal to the market, modifying the service agreement with a press release is the lowest-hanging fruit.

Top Network Solutions alternatives

If you’ve read this far, then you already know that for the right type of user, Network Solutions can be a good one-stop shop for domains, hosting, and customer relationship and social media management.

For most other needs, Bluehost, Hostinger, and Namecheap are arguably better choices. From a pure hosting features perspective, all three offer more value for their respective asking prices. Let’s examine them more closely.

Bluehost

As a sister company to Network Solutions, Bluehost is the more popular sibling, and it’s easy to see why: its plans are much more comprehensive, and are packed with the traditional hosting features most users are looking for and that are lacking on Network Solutions.

These include AI site-building tools, a CDN, a WordPress staging site, a free ongoing SSL certificate, and a free site migration tool. SiteLock is also available for purchase for enhanced security, but even without it, all Bluehost plans include DDoS protection, malware scanning, and a web application firewall.

Learn more in our Bluehost review.

Hostinger

If you’re looking for a more modern control panel and stronger hosting features, then Hostinger is it. For a quick comparison, consider the two hosts’ entry-level plans, which are priced identically at $2.99/mo in the promo period. Network Solutions supports one website, gives you 10 GB of storage space, and supports up to 15,000 visitors per month.

In contrast, Hostinger gives you three websites, 20 GB of storage space, and has historically advertised that plan as supporting up to 25,000 visitors per month. In other words, Hostinger gives you higher amounts across all base-level specs for the same price.

Learn more in our Hostinger review.

Namecheap

For the best price-to-features ratio on any shared hosting plan, it’s really difficult to beat Namecheap. Consider its entry-level Stellar option, which starts at $1.98/mo in the first year. It supports up to three websites, includes 20 GB of storage, and comes with 30 email inboxes. That’s in addition to an AI site builder, free website migration, a free CDN, and a 100% uptime guarantee with unmetered bandwidth.

Network Solutions’ Starter plan charges a dollar more per month, but supports only a single site, offers half the storage, 25 less email mailboxes, and a slightly lower uptime guarantee than Namecheap’s Stellar plan. Not to mention it doesn’t include a CDN or any of the other aforementioned Namecheap features.

Learn more in our Namecheap review.

Bottom line: Is Network Solutions good?

Network Solutions is good, but only for very narrow use cases where someone is seeking a solution that consolidates domain, hosting, customer relationship management, and social media account management into one place.

The Customers (CRM) app and the Social Booster app are genuinely great tools, and if you would otherwise be buying separate subscriptions for comparable services, then Network Solutions can actually save you money. It’s also just flat-out more convenient to have one login screen and a single dashboard to manage all these aspects of your business.

Outside of that niche use case, though, Network Solutions is generally overpriced and under-featured. If you don't need the CRM or the other marketing tools, the value just isn't there. For a slightly higher cost on most plans, other providers like Bluehost and Hostinger offer better specs and more hosting features across the board. Some companies — Namecheap, for example — will charge you even less while giving you more.

In the final analysis, Network Solutions can be the right call for the right buyer, but the main thing holding it back from a stronger recommendation, even for its ideal use case, is its contract terms. They should’ve been edited years ago. The second-best time to do it is now.

FAQs