Namecheap is Good for Domains but Not Good for Hostings. When you visit, then you will know; let’s Dive into a Detailed Namecheap Review.
Richard Kirkendall founded Namecheap in 2000. Over the past 18 years, they need reportedly amassed three million clients.
The name of the Namecheap game, with over seven million under its control, is domain names (sorry, I couldn’t help it).
But here’s the thing:
We have seen this story before; Hosting A is sweet at X in order that they leverage their name and their pockets to power the new Y service. It doesn’t actually mean it’s healthy for them.
So what is the Namecheap effect?
Have you been able to replicate the success of your name during a replacement arena? Or are they only trading on your name only? (Pun definitely intended).
In November 2017, we decided to look for it. We signed up for his or her hosting service, bought an upscale plan for the smallest amount possible, and even discovered a test website.
Then to trace comprehensive performance stats like uptime and rpm, we used Pingdom. You will find them here.
Let’s get to the heart of the matter, delving into your proposal’s functionality.
But first, let’s specialize in some of Namecheap’s best features:
Table of Contents
General Info & Hosting Overviews:
| ⭐Rating: | 3.6 ★★★☆ |
| 💵Price: | Prices start at $1.48/mo |
| ▶️ Uptime: | 99.82% |
| 🏘️ Hosting types: | Shared, WordPress, VPS, reseller, and dedicated server plans |
| 🌎 Server locations: | The US, the UK, and Amsterdam (EU) |
| 👨💻 Support: | 24/7 live chat and ticketing system |
| 🔥 Offer: | Namecheap Up to 67% OFF (Starts at $1.48/mo) |
Pros of Namecheap Hosting
With a free domain name, pace, migrations, and extra plan feature such as backups, Namecheap starts off solid.
The full descriptions are here:
1. FREE Domain and Migration
Namecheap excels at domain names. So it stands to reason that you will be happily given one if you sign up for your hosting plan.
If you have already found an Internet site elsewhere, they will also help you migrate the service for free.
A little sorta. We’ll get to the present in the Cons section below.
2. Decent Load Time
The second most critical criterion after uptime is rpm. The reason it’s so important is that pace has been closely related to traveler satisfaction.
Google recently found that if pages take up to six seconds to load, the risk of someone bouncing increases by more than 100 percent.
So yes, you would like your site to stay alive. If that site is slow, it is almost as bad. Your site may also be down because people will be leaving in droves.
Namecheap has been ready to publish an average page speed of 687 ms for the last 24 months. This is about twice as sluggish as our other favorite hosts, such as HostGator Cloud and A2 Hosting. However, it is still a much better result than our industry standard.
Namecheap average speed:
3. 30-day Money-Back Guarantee
Namecheap offers a rock-solid 30-day money-back guarantee. You have a full month to see if your program is right for you. Otherwise, it is not too late to go out and look for something else.
4. Fully-Loaded Value Plan
The reason is twofold:
- We want to be prepared to base these reviews on real data and performance figures.
- Most of the “entry-level” plans at each hosting company are quite similar.
In other words, this allows us to match apples to apples (in the main part). Each shared offering is quite similar, with equivalent features offered in each.
However, Namecheap surprised us.
Second, on their cheapest package, they provided unmetered bandwidth. They also offer access to simple features like cPanel and applications like WordPress.
Their cheapest plan also includes a free SSL certificate for the elementary year. (Read: after a year, you will have to pay).
You also get backups twice a week, just in case things get crazy while you update your new site.
The best part of their cheapest offer is that you get 50 MySQL databases (which is a lot of what most companies offer at an identical level).
Also, you will discover three websites on this plan. Most entry-level hosting plans only allow you to host a single website. This is usually an excellent value if you have multiple sites, one business type, and one private site.
They also offer you up to 50 email addresses right out of the box.
Over time, this will lead to significant cost savings.
5. Third-Party Reviews Are Excellent
Our goal is always to know the pulse of existing customers to ensure that each review doesn’t just support our isolated experience.
We will admit one thing:
That is, we were pleasantly surprised by the number of customer reviews online.
For example, they need a solid 4.6-star rating on Reviewed Buyers. Supposedly that is supported by more than 1,000,000 reviews.
This initial view excited us.
We already liked seeing the “add-on” features of the plan that they offered for free (for which most companies would charge you).
So we were able to have the test site up and running. And watch the performance statistics appear.
Unfortunately, the results that flowed were not inspiring.
Cons of Namecheap Hosting
There are three main categories that we examine when considering a replacement web host:
- Uptime: Can this host keep my site up the vast majority of the time?
- Speed: Can this host deliver an honest experience for visitors to make them want to return?
- Support: Can this host help me when things get out of hand?
Unfortunately, in two of the three regions, Namecheap dropped the ball.
Take a look for yourself.
1. Poor Uptime – 99.82%
Namecheap offered a stellar 100 percent uptime the first month we signed up. This gave us a lot of enthusiasm to see what was coming.
But from then on, it just got worse.
The next few months hovered well below the industry average of 99.82%, eventually producing an uptime of only 99.80% in August 2018. It’s not bad on the surface. Nevertheless, bear in mind that every month this equates to over an hour of downtime.
What if the downtime were to happen during a busy sales season? You’re looking at thousands of missed sales theoretically.
For the last 12 months, here is the month-by-month comparison:
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%
2. Lackluster Customer Support
Namecheap provides a pretty solid forum for frequently asked questions (FAQ). It provides detailed solutions to the most important challenges you face, and that can help you overcome them.
To get an idea of their support, we really enjoyed watching the chats live.
Things started off pretty well, with the quick link from a good help rep.
He also transferred us to the ‘Concierge’ department because he couldn’t support us.
In general, we love the idea of a “concierge” department in a company. You recognize some top manager in a hotel who is ready to personally assist you with almost any request.
But that is not exactly what happened during this conversation.
Instead, the second rep from “Concierge” basically copied and pasted a knowledge domain article for us.
This was annoying for a couple of reasons:
To begin with, we were not posing as a test of the method. We asked if they would do us the service. That’s a common advantage that most web servers will happily help you with.
Second, how is it that it is remotely bordering on a “concierge service”? They are just throwing us a link and telling us to fix it ourselves.
And third, why did it take us several repetitions and 10 minutes of our life for this solution?
The whole experience left us disappointed, to be honest.
This exchange didn’t leave us with much confidence – if our site crashed and we had to believe in their customer support team to help us, where should we turn?
Namecheap Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
A short overview of the hosting plans offered by Namecheap is given here:
| Stellar Plan | Stellar Plus Plan | Stellar Business Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $1.48/month (Renews at $4.48/mo) | $2.38/month (Renews at $6.48/mo) | $4.98/month (Renews at $9.48/mo) |
| Websites | 3 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Un-metered | Unlimited |
| Storage | 20GB | Unmetered | 50GB |
| Email Accounts | Unlimited | Un-limited | Unlimited |
| Other Features | – | • AutoBackup | • Auto Backup • Cloud Storage |
Quick Facts on Namecheap Review
- Free domain ?: Yes, the primary year is free.
- Ease of Registration: Simple registration process.
- Money back: 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Methods of payment: credit cards, PayPal, Bitcoin, and Dwolla.
- Hidden fees and clauses: There are two important disclaimers to consider:
- ” This deal is only available for new hosting acquisitions. The promotional price is valid for the first 12 months in annual payments, after which the hosting service will be renewed at the normal rate as indicated in the package specifications. Upgrades/downgrades will be done at the full renewal price. “
- ” With our Ultimate kit, you can get storage space without metering. This disk space is used solely for your website and not for other storage purposes. This space must be used in accordance with our AUP, in particular, paragraph 10.2 “.
- Upsells: In the way, a few upsells.
- Account Activation: Quick account activation.
- Dashboard Control Panel and Experience: cPanel.
- Application and CMS installation (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): 1-click installation tool to install popular applications and CMS.
Do We Recommend Namecheap?
Not really … Here’s why:
They started out quite a bit. Existing customers seem to love them, and thus the incontrovertible fact that their cheapest plan compares favorably to most higher-tier ones from most other companies looked promising.
Despite that, the fact that your renewal rates are increasing by over 200% is hard to digest. Especially once low uptime and lazy customer support limit are taken into account.
There are many better options that provide better service for an equivalent price (or less after the primary year).
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