DomainKing has been providing domain registration, hosting, and website design services since 2008. It claims to be Nigeria’s number 1 domain registration and hosting company, and it manages more than 18,000 domains for over 10,000 customers.
DomainKing was founded in Nigeria but now operates in at least four countries. Its website is in English.
Features and Ease of Use
DomainKing offers shared web hosting, but there are no VPS, cloud hosting, or dedicated server packages. The simple shared hosting provides you with most of the essentials you’ll need to host your website, including;
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Free domain registration for the first year (for .com or .com.ng domains)
- Multisite hosting with (up to) an unlimited number of sites
- Free SSL certificates
- Between 1 GB and unlimited SSD storage
- Unmetered monthly bandwidth
While DomainKing provides the hosting essentials such as domain registration, SSL certificates, and the cPanel control panel, you don’t get some semi-essential features such as automated backups (which you’ll have to set up yourself).
Similarly, there are two sides to the storage and bandwidth story. While the unlimited bandwidth will let you grow your audience indefinitely, the minimal storage could prevent you from expanding your website. It’s unfortunate that the WordPress hosting doesn’t come with unlimited storage options. However, you can pay more for greater resources on higher plans, and the uptime guarantee should at least give you confidence in this host’s reliability.
Pricing and Support
DomainKing offers incredibly cheap shared hosting. Although your storage is slightly limited with most plans, the still-inexpensive “King” plan comes with unlimited storage, and all plans have unmetered bandwidth.
You benefit from a 20% discount when you commit to annual or longer billing, but this “offer” is a little bit misleading since you can’t even sign up for a shorter period on the lowest plan. If you do decide to sign up for a long stretch, you can take comfort from the 30-day money-back guarantee that should get you out if anything goes wrong within the first month.
Freebies include a free domain (for the first year), free SSL certificate, and free cPanel license (which includes free DNS management and free Cloudflare).
You can access DomainKing’s supposedly 24/7 support via email/tickets and live chat. I say “supposedly” because you are only guaranteed a ticket response within eight hours, and the live chat is limited to Nigerian office hours. However, I received a very courteous and comprehensive email response within a few hours.
Although DomainKing’s website has a link to a set of FAQs, you’ll find that this knowledge base doesn’t actually provide any useful information.
How much does DomainKing cost?
DomainKing offers plans from $1 to $4. The price depends on which type of hosting plan you choose. You can see the updated pricing table (updated weekly) below.
Which DomainKing plan should I get?
My recommendation is to start with a cheaper plan. You can always upgrade later on. DomainKing can help you with the migration to a more expensive plan. The increase in visitors many times takes longer than expected and you shouldn’t pay a lot of money until the need arises. Of course, your needs may vary, and you can consult with a hosting expert from DomainKing here.
How good is DomainKing’s customer support?
DomainKing is not ranked as one of our top web hosts. But that can also be a result of DomainKing being a small, under the radar, hosting provider. There are advantages to a small hosting company – as a customer, you are more important to them. You can also check out our comparison of the most popular web hosting services here.
