Namecheap honest review

Fast and Easy to Use, Perfect for Beginners and Basic Websites

Namecheap is widely known for its discounted domain names, but like many other registrars, it has also branched out into hosting. Are the hosting solutions on par with the best of the best the internet has to offer? I signed up to find out.

Namecheap has been in the business since 2000 and has over 10 million active domains registered. It’s website hosting plans cover most hosting types and include shared, managed WordPress, VPS (virtual private server) machines, dedicated servers, and even private email hosting. All services are available in English.

Now, while it’s extremely tempting to purchase your domain name and hosting plan from the same provider, you should be wary of doing so. An all-in-one solution simplifies everything – from management to support and billing – but a jack of all trades is (usually) a master of none.

Laughing in the face of danger, I took the risk upon myself and signed up for managed WordPress hosting. To my surprise, I found a managed WordPress platform like few others, seamlessly designed and providing a fantastic user experience.

Still, does that ease of use come at the cost of features? Can the service really answer advanced needs, or will you find yourself limited and unable to grow? Well, read on and see for yourself! 

PERFORMANCE: Blazing Fast and Extremely Reliable

So my EasyWP was super easy to set up, and it’s packed with some great features – while also limited in terms of advanced possibilities. That’s all ok. In the end, I got a working WordPress website in about a minute and a half. It’s time to take it for a drive.

I started by using Sucuri Load Time Tester to check my page loading speeds across the globe:

Vavoom! Without any optimization whatsoever, my test website got an A+ performance grade and is in the green almost all over the globe! 

It is a bare-bones WordPress installation, containing only the Twenty Nineteen theme and boosted by EasyWP’s caching, but this is impressive. From the US and South America to Europe and even Singapore, everything in the green!

After uploading pictures and content to your website, it will be slower, but this is one of the best starting points I’ve seen for shared hosting. Unless your audience is located in East Asia, I’d say you’re good to go.

Let’s see what GTmetrix has to say about our website:

I don’t know what to say – the people at Namecheap are doing their job. All server optimizations have been done beforehand, the caching plugin is working overtime, and the only points off are for the lack of a CDN (content delivery network).

Pros of Using Namecheap Hosting

Namecheap starts strong with a free domain name, speed,  migrations, and extra plan features like backups.

Here are the full details:

PROS OF NAMECHEAP HOSTING

Namecheap is popular for its free domain, easy-to-use migrations, and additional plan features like copies. Read more for complete details.

1. FREE DOMAIN NAME AND MIGRATION

When it comes to domain names, Namecheap is an excellent choice. They are primarily known for being a leading domain registrar, after all.

Therefore, it only makes sense that they will happily throw you in if you register for their web hosting plan. If you currently have a website set up somewhere else, they will also help you migrate your website for free of charge. Don’t you think that sounds like a good deal?

2. PRICING

When comparing different cheap web hosting services, Namecheap hosting takes pride in its pricing. It is shockingly inexpensive. However, just because a service is cheap, does not mean it comes with great worth. This is why it is very important for you to observe how a hosting service is priced and organized.

As you might already know, all web hosting companies are basically selling the same thing. 

They sell a house for your website. Of course, they have different strategies with different bonuses, various caps, and distinct renewal rates; but if you look closely, you will notice the difference between one service provider with another. 

This difference will help you determine which cheap web hosting services will work the best for you and your interest.

Let’s break things down to Core hosting features and Bonus hosting features.

The Core hosting features will consist of the 3D which stands for domains, databases, and disc space. The Core goal of a hosting server would be to function site files when somebody types in your domain.

• Domains are the number of domains that you will be able to point to your hosting accounts. If you would like to have many websites, you are going to want to have several domain names enabled. You will also have to appear at email addresses on each domain — sometimes these can also be restricted.
• Databases are the number of parts of web site software that is possible to run on your own hosting server.
• Disk distance is how many documents you can put in your own server. These include pictures, text, PDFs, etc..
• Other attributes could consist of anything from site builder applications to marketing credits to backend software, etc..

3. STRONG BACKUP AND SECURITY FEATURES

It’s easy to forget about backing up your website and keeping it stable. It is always a great idea to conduct your personal copies no matter what the situation might be. 

However, with all the things that are needed to construct a site, it’s easy to overlook backing up your website. That is why it’s good to have Namecheap’s copies as a backup.

Regardless of which Namecheap hosting package you select, the backups run two times every week. Normally, this can be an add-on provider, or the copies are rather limited. However, Namecheap’s copies are astoundingly in-depth.

Now, what about maintaining your website security?

You can find Namecheap offering:

• IP blocker tool
• HotLink protection
• Leech Protect
• SSL Certificate

However, the SSL certificates are not available in any of the Namecheap hosting packages as part of the deals. It is something that you will need to buy separately. But in certain cases, you might find Namecheap running a special deal where they offer a free SSL certificate when you register for an account.

 4. BACKUPS & DATACENTER CHOICES

Namecheap also offers a few bonus features as well.

At sign up, they provide a choice involving their US data center or UK information center. This makes them a fantastic pick for non-US customers that are serving web traffic nearer to this UK compared to the United States.

Namecheap hosting additionally does two times weekly copies of your hosting accounts. It is very beneficial that you use Namecheap’s copies service as it is a fantastic safety net to get. The best part is that copies are also included for free with Namecheap hosting packages.

Normally, copies are considered a limited bonus feature at other web hosting services like Internet Hosting Hub, Dreamhost, or even HostGator.

2. Decent Load Time

After the uptime, the second most important criteria is speed. The reason it’s so important is that speed has been directly correlated with visitor happiness.

Google recently found that the probability of someone bouncing increases over 100% if your pages take up to six seconds to load.

So yes, you need your site to stay alive. If that site is slow, then it’s almost as bad. Your site might as well be down because people will be leaving in droves.

Namecheap has been able to post an average page speed of 687ms over the past 24 months. This number is almost twice as slow as our other favorite hosts like A2 Hosting and HostGator Cloud. However, it’s still a better result than our industry-standard.

Namecheap average speed:

NameCheap average speed 2020-2021 | See stats

3. 30-day Money-Back Guarantee

Namecheap does offer a rock-solid 30-day money-back guarantee. You’ve got a full month to see if their service is right for you. Otherwise, it’s not too late to back out and try something else.

4. Fully-Loaded Value Plan

We’ve reviewed over 30 web hosts to date.

And for each one, we typically sign up for the most basic plan to set up our test website.

The reason is twofold:

1. We want to be able to base these reviews on real data and performance figures.
2. Most ‘base-level’ plans at each hosting company are pretty similar.

In other words – this allows us to compare apples to apples (for the most part). Each shared offer is fairly similar, with the same features offered on each.

Namecheap surprised us, though.

First, they offered unmetered bandwidth on their cheapest plan. They also give you access to standard features like cPanel access and apps like WordPress.

Their cheapest plan also includes a free SSL certificate for the first year. (Read: After that year’s up, you’ll have to pay.)

You also get twice-a-week backups, just in case things go haywire while updating your new site.

The best part about their cheapest offer is that you get 50 MySQL databases (which is way more than what most companies offer on a similar tier).

Plus, you can set up three websites on this plan. Most base-level hosting plans only allow you to host one single website. This is a great value if you have several sites, like a business and a personal one.

They also give you up to 50 email addresses right out of the gate, too.

This can add up to huge cost savings over time.

5. Third-Party Reviews Are Excellent

We always like to get a pulse from existing customers to make sure each review isn’t just based on our own isolated experience.

We’ll admit:

We were pleasantly surprised at some of the customer reviews online.

For instance, they have a solid 4.6-star rating on Shopper Reviewed. Supposedly that’s based on over a million reviews.

This initial view got us excited.

We already liked seeing the ‘extra’ plan features they threw in for free (that most other companies would charge you for).

So we were excited to get the test site up and running. And see the performance stats roll in.

Unfortunately, the results that did flow in weren’t inspiring.

Cons of Using Namecheap Hosting

There are three major categories we look at when considering a new web host:

1. Uptime: Can this host keep my site live the vast majority of the time?
2. Speed: Can this host deliver a good experience for visitors so they’ll want to come back?
3. Support: And can this host help me when things spin out of control?

Unfortunately, Namecheap dropped the ball in two of the three areas.

Take a look for yourself.

1. Poor Uptime – 99.87%

Namecheap delivered a stellar 100% uptime the first month we signed up. That gave us plenty of excitement to see what was to come.

But things only got worse from then on.

The next few months hovered well below the industry average 99.93%, eventually producing an uptime of only 99.80% in August 2018. It’s not bad on the surface. Nevertheless, keep in mind that this equates to over an hour of downtime each month.

What if that downtime were to happen during a busy sales season? You’re potentially looking at tons of lost revenue.

Here is the month-by-month comparison over the last 12 months:

Last 12-month average uptime:

• January 2020 average uptime: 100%
• December 2019 average uptime: 99.96%
• November 2019 average uptime: 99.96%
• October 2019 average uptime: 99.97%
• September 2019 average uptime: 99.97%
• August 2019 average uptime: 99.97%
• July 2019 average uptime: 99.82%
• June 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
• May 2019 average uptime: 99.77%
• April 2019 average uptime: 99.96%
• March 2019 average uptime: 99.87%
• February 2019 average uptime: 99.97%

Namecheap Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

Here’s a quick overview of the hosting plans offered by Namecheap:

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	Stellar Plan	Stellar Plus Plan	Stellar Business Plan
Pricing	$1.44/month Renews at $2.88/mo	$2.44/month Renews at $4.88/mo	$4.44/month Renews at $8.88/mo
Websites	3	Unlimited	Unlimited
Bandwidth	Unmetered	Unmetered	Unmetered
Storage	20GB	Unmetered	50GB
Email Accounts	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Other Features	–	• AutoBackup	• AutoBackup • Cloud Storage

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Quick Facts

• Free domain?: Yes, the first year is free.
• Ease of Signup: Easy signup process.
• Money-Back: 30-days money-back guarantee.
• Payment Methods: Credit cards, PayPal, Dwolla, and Bitcoin.
• Hidden Fees and Clauses: There are two important disclaimers to keep in mind:
  • “This offer is available for new hosting purchases only. The promotional price is valid for the first 12 months on annual payments, after which the hosting service will renew at the regular rate as indicated in the package specs. Upgrades/downgrades will be performed at the full renewal price.”
  • “Unmetered disk space is offered with our Ultimate package. This disk space is solely intended for your website and not for other storage purposes. This space must be used in accordance with our AUP, particularly paragraph 10.2.”
• Upsells: A few upsells along the way.
• Account Activation: Fast account activation.
• Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
• Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): 1-click installation tool to easily install popular apps and CMSs.