Namecheap is a web hosting company that has cemented its footing among the providers of affordable hosting services.

For the fact that there are much more popular players in the industry, Namecheap might not fall among the options in your list of top 10 hosting providers. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t stir up the impression that Namecheap isn’t worth choosing.

Generally, we think of Namecheap as a cost-effective alternative to many of the popular hosting providers whose (basic) plans appear somewhat expensive.

Probably, you’re starting to get curious about Namecheap and would want to know if it’s worth choosing. Helpfully, this post will walk you through a comprehensive review of Namecheap, with emphasis on its hosting categories, the plans under the categories and their prices. You’ll also learn about the pros and cons of Namecheap.

Namecheap Hosting Categories and Pricing

Namecheap offers a couple of hosting categories under which you’re pretty certain to find the ideal plan for your hosting needs. These hosting categories essentially include Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, VPS Hosting, and WordPress Hosting.

We’ll provide you with insight into all of the hosting categories offered by Namecheap. But before that, one interesting thing to note is that Namecheap has got the exactly ideal hosting plans for high-traffic sites, personal sites, start-up sites and so on.

Namecheap Shared Hosting

With Namecheap’s shared hosting, you could pick one of three hosting plans, depending on what you think is the perfect fit for you. While the three plans here include Stellar Business, Stellar Plus, and Stellar, the third plan (Stellar) is actually the cheapest and most basic plan you can get from Namecheap.

Irrespective of the plan that you pick, the features you’re certain to enjoy with Namecheap’s shared hosting include:

• Free SSL installation
• Privacy protection
• cPanel
• Domain name
• 24/7 support
• E-mail service
• Free website builder

Stellar Business

As the costliest option among Namecheap’s shared hosting plans, Stellar Business comes at a price of $4.80 monthly. This plan could be your best bet if you’re willing to dedicate a website for your business. And if it’s a small (business) website you have in mind, you’ll especially find Namecheap’s Stellar Business suitable. Some of the plan’s beneficial features include free CDN, (support for) auto-backup, 50GB SSD, free domain name, cloud storage, and (ability to host) unlimited websites.

Stellar Plus

This shared hosting plan costs $2.68 monthly, and it’s a good plan for somebody looking to secure adequate hosting for their small website. If you subscribe to Stellar Plus, the features Namecheap will offer you include free domain name, unlimited SSD, free CDN, auto backup, (ability to host) unlimited websites, etc.

Stellar

Just as mentioned earlier, Namecheap’s Stellar is the most basic plan that you can get from Namecheap. At a relatively low fee of $1.58 monthly, this shared hosting plan lets you enjoy several exciting features including a free domain name (though only for the first year), (the ability to host) three websites, free CDN, and 20GB of SSD.

Namecheap Reseller Hosting

This is the hosting category specifically targeted at those looking to cash in on the resale of hosting packages. Namecheap’s reseller plans all offer you a couple of great features including WMH control, unmetered bandwidth, efficient reseller servers, cPanel management, account management tools, and unlimited domains/sub-domains.

While Namecheap’s reseller plans come at varying prices, you’ll spend between $17 and fairly above $51 per month if you must subscribe to one of these plans.

Universe Pro

This is unarguably the biggest reseller hosting plan you can get from Namecheap. It’s also the best Namecheap plan for anyone willing to make the most of hosting resale. While Universe Pro costs as much as $51.88 monthly, the plan offers 150 cPanel accounts and up to 150GB of SSD.

Galaxy Expert

At a monthly price of $33.88, this reseller hosting plan offers a lower number of cPanel accounts and reduced SSD, compared to what you’d get with Universe Pro. Precisely, Galaxy Expert offers you 100 cPanel accounts and 90GB of SSD.

Nebula

Of course, Nebula is the recommended Namecheap plan for those looking to start hosting resale on a rather low budget. This is because the plan costs as low as $17.88 monthly. In terms of features, Nebula’s key highlights are 25 cPanel accounts and 30GB of SSD.

Namecheap Dedicated Hosting

While the plans here are pretty huge, the good news is that they are worth subscribing to especially if you want the best of Namecheap’s hosting features for your company or website.

One great thing about dedicated hosting is that you could have a high-powered dedicated server that matches your specific needs. To subscribe to one of the plans in Namecheap’s dedicated hosting, get ready to spend in excess of $600 per month. In fact, the lowest plan here costs $671.88 monthly while the highest plan comes at a monthly price of $1,188.

If you want dedicated hosting but do not wish to spend in excess of $600 monthly, you might need to make further enquiries about Namecheap’s dedicated hosting packages. Do well to contact Namecheap’s customer service to know if there are relatively affordable alternatives.

Namecheap VPS Hosting

With Namecheap’s VPS hosting, there are two packages from which you can select. While each of these packages offers you lots of bandwidth, VPS hosting plans generally allow you sizeable flexibility and control as regards web hosting.

Quasar is the higher option among Namecheap’s two VPS hosting packages. It comes at a monthly price of $13.88 and offers the following features: 3000GB bandwidth, four CPU cores, 120GB of SSD RAID 10, and 6GB of RAM.

Pulsar is Namecheap’s lower VPS hosting plan, and it costs $7.88 monthly, which is fairly above half of Quasar’s price. With Pulsar, you’ll get all of what Quasar offers but at lower values. Pulsar, therefore, offers 1000GB bandwidth, two CPU cores, 40GB of SSD RAID 10, and 2GB of RAM.

Namecheap WordPress Hosting

This is the Namecheap hosting category targeted at WordPress sites. So, we suggest you look here if you’re keen to select the ideal hosting plan for your WordPress site.

Namecheap offers three WordPress hosting packages namely EasyWP Starter, EasyWP Turbo and EasyWP Supersonic. At a monthly price of $22.88, EasyWP Starter is obviously the cheapest option here, and according to Namecheap, it is an ideal pick for you to start and “build your first (WordPress) website.” With EasyWP Starter, you’ll get 50,000 visitors monthly in addition to 10GB of SSD.

EasyWP Turbo, in second place, offers more value than EasyWP Starter. This plan guarantees you 200,000 monthly visitors in addition to free CDN and free SSL. Namecheap claims that EasyWP Turbo further guarantees 1.5x more RAM and 1.5x more CPU. As for SSD, EasyWP Turbo gives up to 50GB. Since it’s expected to cost more than EasyWP Starter, EasyWP Turbo is priced at $34.44 monthly.

Billed as Namecheap’s highest WordPress hosting plan, EasyWP Supersonic costs $49.88 monthly. This plan guarantees you 500,000 monthly visitors in addition to free CDN and free SSL. Namecheap claims that EasyWP Supersonic further guarantees 2x more RAM and 2x more CPU. As for SSD, EasyWP Supersonic gives up to 100GB. Besides offering the added advantage of an almost 100% uptime guarantee, EasyWP Supersonic is probably the perfect fit to “scale up your (WordPress) website.”

With the comprehensive information we’ve provided thus far about Namecheap’s hosting, it’s pretty clear that you now know the ideal Namecheap hosting plan for your website(s). Your web hosting budget is always a key factor when choosing hosting packages. But if the most ideal Namecheap plan fairly outprices your budget, it could be worthwhile that you up your budget to meet Namecheap’s pricing.

Pros and Cons of Namecheap

Every hosting provider does have its pros and cons, and that is why we’ve taken time to analyse the positives and negatives of Namecheap. While there’s a lot to say about the pros of Namecheap, there isn’t much to say about the downsides of this hosting provider.

Here Are the Pros of Namecheap

Guaranty of 100% Uptime

Excellent uptime is one of the topmost things anyone should look out for while deciding the hosting provider for their website. Nobody wants to pose the risk of (prolonged) downtime to their website. There’s no denying that a website with a high downtime is bound to lose traffic.

In terms of uptime guarantee, Namecheap is so reliable that users of the hosting provider are certain to get refunded their money if Namecheap fails to deliver its guaranteed percentage of uptime. While you can definitely count on Namecheap for a guarantee of 100% uptime, Namecheap’s average uptime goes as high as 99.97%.

If you expected 100% but got 99.97% instead, you could still claim to have enjoyed excellent uptime in return for your bucks. Although Namecheap recorded instances of uptime decline in the past, there wasn’t ever a time the provider’s uptime went far below the 100% score. Since Namecheap guarantees that you could get back your money if you failed to get the guaranteed (100%) uptime, you have nothing to lose by making Namecheap your choice of hosting provider.

Excellent Value for Money

Namecheap is most definitely one of the hosting providers to choose if you want a whole lot of excellent offerings, while still spending less. This is why we’re pretty sure that Namecheap offers you excellent value in return for your money.

More often than not, hosting providers do not seem to offer exciting features along with their cheapest (i.e. basic) plans. This is just why customers would more than likely have to subscribe to higher plans before they can reap anything reasonable from the hosting services purchased. If you’ve ever subscribed to the basic plan of a random hosting provider out there, you might want to attest that basic plans are generally not enough.

With most hosting providers, the basic plans are only suitable for starting and running your website probably as a newbie. They’re simply not enough to serve advanced hosting needs, such as unmetered bandwidth and lots more.

If you’re just starting out as a website owner and would like to stick to the basic plan in the meantime, Namecheap could be the best hosting provider for you. This is because Namecheap’s basic plan offers certain benefits that you’re unlikely to get with the basic plans of most other providers.

For instance, Namecheap’s basic plan guarantees you a two-time free backup every week. Namecheap trumps many competitors in this regard because the basic plans of most other hosting providers would entitle you to a free backup only once per week. There’s a clear difference between enjoying a free service once weekly and enjoying the same service two times a week.

Another unusual perk that places Namecheap’s basic plan above the stack of competing for basic plans is the offering of multiple website hosting. Unlike other providers, where the basic plan lets you host only one website, Namecheap offers a basic plan with which you can host up to three websites.

One more way in which Namecheap’s basic plan outperforms those of most competitors is the number of MySQL databases and email addresses. If you subscribe to the cheapest (i.e. basic) plan of a random hosting provider out there, you could get just one email address and very few MySQL databases. But the case is absolutely different with Namecheap as its basic plan provides you 50 MySQL databases and 50 email addresses.

With all that’s been said, it’s hard to deny that Namecheap’s cheapest plan guarantees excellent value for money.

Efficient Load Time

As per the Google-suggested website load time, Namecheap’s average page speed of 458 ms is highly remarkable.

One of the qualities that place a website above competitors is efficient load time. If the website averagely loads in less than two seconds, visitors will most likely find it worthwhile. Such a swift load time (of less than two seconds) is even better than the Google-suggested load time of fewer than three seconds.

Money Refund Policy

Money-back guarantee is one of the exciting offerings you might want to find out about a given hosting provider. Interestingly, Namecheap adopts a great money refund policy that allows you to get your money back within 30 days of a service purchase.

If your experience with Namecheap doesn’t prove satisfactory within 30 days of subscribing to one of its hosting plans, you’ll be able to request a refund of your money. This money-back guarantee is such a great way for you to first place Namecheap on trial before actually making it your choice of hosting provider.

Great History

Reliability is something you earn by building and sustaining trust with customers over a long period. Interestingly, this reliability combines with certain other qualities to earn you a great history.

Namecheap has been operating for more than two decades, and over the years, the hosting provider has catered to 3 million+ customers, making it one of the trusted players in the web hosting industry.

Ease of Website Migration

The task of having your website migrated to Namecheap is pretty easy. This, in other words, means switching from a different hosting provider to Namecheap. One of the reasons for this ease of website migration is that Namecheap doesn’t charge you a dime for having your website migrated to it.

How about the Cons of Namecheap?

Our findings about Namecheap’s downsides clarify that there isn’t much to worry about. In fact, the only snag we can point out as the downside of Namecheap is that its customer support doesn’t seem absolutely reliable. Especially in terms of responding to customers’ queries, Namecheap’s support service –through the live chats provided –doesn’t prove satisfactory.

A customer might have to wait for a considerably long period before they can get answers to the queries submitted via Namecheap’s live chat. Were there a phone number Namecheap customers could call to get swift responses, we might want to consider Namecheap reliable in terms of customer support. But unfortunately, customers cannot contact Namecheap’s customer service via a phone call.

If your issue with Namecheap seems like a common one that some other customers may have encountered in the past, you can simply head to Namecheap’s Knowledgebase.

The knowledgebase is a Namecheap-provided resource where you can find solutions to the common issues that Namecheap users may encounter.

FAQs

What Is Namecheap’s Cheapest Plan and How Much Does It Cost?

Stellar is Namecheap’s cheapest plan. It’s the lowest level of the plan you can subscribe to if you want to buy Namecheap’s hosting. While this plan –Stellar –costs $1.58 monthly, it offers the following features: free CDN, (ability to host) three websites, free domain name, and 20GB of SSD.

Is Namecheap Worth Choosing?

In our own view, Namecheap is worth choosing, and the major reason is that if compared to what you’d get with the basic plans of most competitors, Namecheap’s basic plan offers more value for money.

Are There Reliable Namecheap Alternatives?

Namecheap itself is a reliable hosting provider on several grounds except for its customer support (service), which we consider unreliable. If you’d like to look in the direction of alternative hosting providers, we suggest you consider these options –Bluehost, SiteGround, A2 Hosting, DreamHost, and HostGator.

Conclusion

We’re hopeful that this post has covered everything you were willing to find out about Namecheap. And with the thorough attention, we devoted to the discussion of Namecheap’s pros and cons, we hope you’ve been able to figure out if Namecheap is really the ideal cost-effective hosting provider for you.

If you however have questions that you think our FAQs section doesn’t answer about Namecheap, endeavour to ask us in the comment section below.

Reference:

https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/namecheap-review/