NameCheap Reviews

NameCheap has been around for the better part of two decades offering a suite of services that range from domain registration to SSL certificates and web hosting. Although NameCheap is known more for their affordable domain registration services, this NameCheap review will focus on NameCheap, the web hosting provider, highlighting the plans, features, and pros and cons of this budget-friendly hosting.

NameCheap.com Company Overview

NameCheap was founded in 2000 by Richard Kirkendall. Throughout the years, NameCheap has gained tremendous popularity, and today it’s a household name when it comes to domain registration. In 2011, NameCheap joined forces with Reddit users and sparked a mass exodus from registrar and web hosting companies that haven’t shown support for a free and open internet. The company continued its support for an open and free internet hosting an annual Move Your Domain Name Day and raising funds for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

NameCheap has multiple data centers operating in North America and Europe with fully redundant key systems (network, power, security and climate control). The company manages 7,000,000+ domains and serves over 3 million customers worldwide.

NameCheap Plans & Pricing

Undoubtedly, pricing is one of NameCheap’s biggest selling points. NameCheap offers shared, VPS, dedicated and reseller hosting plans that come with powerful tools, security and reliability. Except for the dedicated hosting plan, all plans come with a free .website domain name.

Shared Hosting

NameCheap rolls out 4 shared hosting plans: Value, Professional, Ultimate and Business SSD. All shared plans, but the Business, have yearly billing. The Value plan is the cheapest shared hosting package starting at $9.88/year, which is less than the price of a domain. The renewal rate is $38.88/year, which still comes down to just $3.24/month. This price will get you hosting for 3 websites, unlimited bandwidth, and 20 GB SSD-accelerated disk space.

The Professional plan is Namecheap’s most popular shared hosting package, which starts at $19.88/year (renewal rate is $78.88/year). This plan includes hosting for 10 sites, unlimited bandwidth, and 50 GB SSD-accelerated disk space.

Unlimited shared hosting packages include the Ultimate plan, which costs $29.88/year (renewal price is $129.88/year) and includes unlimited SSD-accelerated disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and hosting for up to 50 websites.

The Business SSD plan has a selling price of $19.88/month. If you choose bi-annual billing, the price drops to $18.98/month, while the annual billing comes out to $17.98/month. The Business SSD plan includes 20 GB Pure SSD disk space, 5000 GB bandwidth, and hosting for unlimited websites.

VPS Hosting

NameCheap’s VPN offerings feature the XEN virtualization platform with full root access, and a choice of operating systems. You can choose to pay for your VPS plan on a monthly, three-monthly, bi-annual or annual basis, and the prices vary according to your commitment time.

The VPS Lite – Xen is Namecheap’s entry-level VPN plan that starts at $19.95/month or 16.95/month if you choose the yearly billing option. The VPS Lite includes 512 MB (+512 MB burst) RAM, 1 CPU core, 15 GB HDD (SAS RAID 10) disk space, and 100 GB bandwidth.

The most popular VPS plan at Namecheap is the VPS 1 – Xen and costs $29.95/month or $26.95/month if you commit for a year. This package comes with 1 GB (+1 GB burst) RAM, 1 CPU core, 30 GB HDD (SAS RAID 10) storage, and 250 GB bandwidth.

Next in line is the VPS 2 – Xen plan, which packs a bit more oomph in terms of resources: 2 GB (+2GB burst) RAM, 2 CPU cores, 60 GB HDD (SAS RAID 10) storage, and 500 GB bandwidth. The monthly plan for the VPS 2 costs $49.95/month, while the yearly plan costs $44.95/month.

The most robust VPS plan at Namecheap is the VPS 3 – Xen plan, which costs $69.96/month or $63.95/month if you choose the yearly plan. The VPS 3 comes with the following specs: 3 GB (+ 3 GB burst) RAM, 2 CPU cores, 100 GB HDD (SAS RAID 10) storage, and 750 GB bandwidth.

Dedicated Hosting

Namecheap offers multiple dedicated hosting options with prices ranging from $58.88/month for a single CPU multiple cores (Intel Xeon E3) server to $379.88/month for multiple CPUs, multiple cores (Intel Xeon 5) server.

There are at least 14 server configurations customers can choose from, with up to 64 GB DDR3 RAM, 4 x 240 GB SSD HW Raid 10 hard drive, 100 TB bandwidth, Xeon E5-2620 v2, and 12 Cores x 2.1 GHz.

Most of these dedicated hosting plans come with 100% uptime guarantee.

Reseller Hosting

As with any good full-service hosting provider, NameCheap’s hosting spectrum includes reseller hosting as well. You have the option to choose from 4 reseller tiers, which allow you to choose the datacenter location (US vs UK), include free cPanel/WHM, and tier 3 and 4 reseller plans include WHMCS as well.

Thus, reseller plans have the following construction and pricing:

• Reseller 1 ($16.95/month or 14.41/month with 2-year commitment time): 25 resold accounts, 25 GB disk space, 1000 GB bandwidth;
• Reseller 2 ($26.95/month or $24.53/month with 2-year commitment time): unlimited resold accounts, 75 GB disk space, 2000 GB bandwidth;
• Reseller 3 ($36.95/month or $34.37/month with 2-year commitment time): unlimited resold accounts, 150 disk space, unlimited GB bandwidth;
• Reseller 4 ($46.95/month or $43.66/month with 2-year commitment time): unlimited resold accounts, 300 GB disk space, unlimited GB bandwidth.

It’s clear that NameCheap’s pricing system is advantageous, perhaps absurdly so, especially when it comes to their shared hosting package. While there are plenty of options available in terms of server resources, let’s see what other hosting features can you expect with NameCheap’s hosting plans.

NameCheap Features & Value

Here is an overview of the hosting features offered by NameCheap:

• Choice of data center: option to choose between UK and US data centers available with shared and reseller hosting plans;
• Choice of OS: CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu available with VPS and dedicated hosting plans;
• Free .website domain with all plans: save dedicated hosting plans, all other plans include a free .website domain name;
• WhoisGuard with shared hosting packages;
• 100% uptime SLA with most plans: NameCheap issues account credits should it fail to meet its 100% uptime SLA;
• Money-back guarantee: 14-days money-back guarantee with most plans;
• Dedicated IPs: up to 2 dedicated IPs included with VPS plans;
• cPanel/WHM comes standard with most plans (except dedicated hosting plans), some plans also include WHMCS;
• Self-managed, managed, and fully managed server options;
• Backups: Namecheap performs regular backups, thus, you can request the latest backup should you need it;
• Reliable servers with latest software and hardware technology;
• Softaculous application installer: 1-click WordPress installation as well as 100+ other apps.

Namecheap has very low introductory prices, making their services a true bargain. After the first year, the renewal rates even things out, making prices closer to those of other budget hosting providers. There is a minimum of 4 plan iterations for every hosting type, allowing customers to choose the configuration that best matches their website’s requirements.

Next, let’s see how good NameCheap’s customer support is.

NameCheap Customer Support

You can reach out to NameCheap’s customer support via live chat or you can submit a ticket. Technical support on both support channels is available 24/7. Those open to a little self-study can research Namecheap’s vast knowledgebase that offers help on a variety of topics (Getting started guides, SEO, cPanel management, DNS settings, MySQL, SSH access, etc.).

While phone support used to feature among Namecheap’s support channels, at the time of writing this NameCheap review, there is no phone support available. This is unfortunate since text-based support can be quite tedious when faced with a complicated issue. Nevertheless, the majority of customer supplied online reviews have rated NameCheap’s customer support team as knowledgeable, helpful, and responsive.

Pros & Cons of NameCheap

Apart from affordable pricing, let’s see what are the other advantages and disadvantages of NameCheap.

Pros

• Low introductory prices;
• Good support;
• 100% uptime SLA;
• Lots of features;
• cPanel control panel;
• Expandability thanks to multiple hosting plans.

Cons

• Free domain name is only a .website domain;
• No phone support;
• Few specialist plans;
• Only 14-day money-back guarantee;
• Overcharges on some add-ons.

NameCheap is primarily a domain registrar company, hosting is only a complementary service. Usually, when domain registrars try to offer hosting services, they don’t quite meet the standards for running a word-class hosting infrastructure. While NameCheap’s hosting plans do have some shortcomings, we can’t say that their performance lags behind the performance of other budget hosting providers, so if you want to have all the components of your online presence under the same roof, NameCheap is a good place to achieve that.

NameCheap Review Conclusion

NameCheap is an ICANN accredited registrar that offers other complementary services, allowing customers to handle all their domain registration, hosting and email hosting related needs at a single company. NameCheap also offers a range of security tools for domain and website owners including SSL certificates, WhoisGuard protection, and a Premium DNS service.

Whether you’re looking to host your website with your domain registrar, or you’re looking to become a hosting reseller, NameCheap has all the necessary tools and services for you to get started.