Have you been searching for a reliable hosting provider for your WordPress website but can’t seem to find the perfect fit? With so many options out there, it can be overwhelming to choose the right one. Well, look no further than Namecheap! In this review, we’ll take a close look at the features, pricing, and performance of Namecheap’s hosting services to help you determine if it’s the right choice for your website’s needs. So, sit back, grab a cup of coffee, and let’s dive in!
Namecheap: General Infor
Namecheap is a leading and prevalent web hosting provider that was founded in 2000 by Richard Kirkendall. This company is famous for its affordable price, user-friendly interface and reliable customer support. While initially focused on domain registration services, Namecheap has since expanded its offerings to include various hosting solutions, email hosting, SSL certificates, and other online services.
One of the significant advantages of Namecheap is its commitment to affordability. They strive to provide competitive pricing while maintaining high-quality services. Namecheap often runs promotions and discounts, making it an attractive option for individuals and businesses on a budget.
However, many users are wondering whether the truth about Namecheap is right with its popularity. In today’s blog, we will provide you with a detailed Namecheap review to help you get more insights about this provider before purchasing it.
Namecheap’s Key Features Review
User interface and Cpanel
When it comes to creating a WordPress website, having a user-friendly interface is essential. And that’s exactly what you can expect from Namecheap. With its straightforward and intuitive interface, anyone from beginners to professionals can navigate their way around it effortlessly. The web builder is designed to be user-friendly, allowing you to easily build your website in a matter of minutes, without any knowledge of coding required.
Additionally, its user-friendly interface helps you easily access file managers, databases, and email settings through the Cpanel.
Ease of use
As we mentioned above, Namecheap has a user-friendly interface, so it doesn’t cause any serious trouble regardless of your technical skills. Hence, all processes can be handled within a few clicks.
The account registration process is streamlined, and once you’ve created an account, you can easily navigate through their website to manage your domains, hosting, and other services. The account dashboard provides a centralized hub for accessing and managing various aspects of your hosting and domain-related tasks.
In addition, Namecheap also helps you simplify the process of installing popular web applications through its one-click installation feature. With just a few clicks, you can set up applications like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and more. This eliminates the need for manual installations and reduces technical complexity, especially for beginners.
Storage and Bandwidth Limits
Namecheap provides a decent quantity of storage capacity for saving emails, databases and files. Its starting package includes a 20GB SSD while its highest-tier option contains a 50GB SSD.
One thing that stands out about Namecheap is that they provide unrestricted bandwidth to their users, allowing them to use a specified amount of bandwidth. Even though the speed of the server is restricted, there are no limitations on the amount of data that can be transferred between a website and its visitors.
On the other hand, an unlimited bandwidth hosting plan allows for an unrestricted flow of data between a website and its visitors. This plan differs from those that have a limited or restricted bandwidth, where users face additional fees for going beyond a specific threshold.
Drag and drop Website Builder
There is no denying that website builders are becoming increasingly popular for creating websites, especially for beginners in website building. These online tools make it incredibly easy to create a website with their user-friendly interfaces and drag-and-drop functionality. And Namecheap is no exception. This hosting provider offers a range of features and extras to help users create their ideal website.
With Namecheap’s Website Builder, users have access to over 200 customizable templates and various design elements to simplify the website creation process. You can take advantage of these pre-built templates to customize them to match your branding needs instead of building from scratch.
However, from our point of view, these pre-made templates are quite old-fashioned compared to modern templates in the market. This can result in a lack of variety and options, potentially leading to websites that look similar or generic.
Another drawback is that its website builder is not as smooth as you expected. Namecheap only offers basic customization options, while some users have expressed a desire for more advanced features and flexibility in terms of design and layout. As a result, this limitation can be restrictive for those who require highly tailored or unique website designs.
Security
Security is regarded as one of the most crucial criteria that you need to consider when choosing a good hosting provider. Thus, Namecheap takes the security of its services and customer data seriously, implementing several measures to ensure a secure environment. We realize that Namecheap completely focuses on protecting users’ data.
Here’s a review of the security measures provided by Namecheap:
- SSL Certificates: Namecheap offers SSL certificates to encrypt data transmitted between websites and visitors. SSL certificates help protect sensitive information, such as login credentials and personal data, from being intercepted or accessed by unauthorized individuals.
- Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Namecheap supports two-factor authentication, adding an extra layer of security to user accounts. By enabling 2FA, users are required to provide a second verification factor, typically a code generated on a mobile device, in addition to their password when logging in.
- WHOIS Privacy Protection: This feature helps to prevent unwanted solicitation, spam, or identity theft by keeping contact details private. Especially, it is free for all clients who are getting a domain name from Namecheap.
- DDoS Protection: Namecheap employs distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection to safeguard websites against large-scale malicious attacks that attempt to overwhelm servers and disrupt services. This helps ensure website availability and uptime. However, you have to turn it on yourself.
- Data Protection: Namecheap implements different measures to protect customer data, including regular backups and secure storage practices. The Stellar plan offers backups twice a week. If you find it not guaranteed, it is necessary to upgrade to the Stellar Plus and Stellar Business plans that offer daily automatic backups.
Despite the fact that Namecheap has implemented several security measures, online website owners also need to use strong passwords and keep software and plugins up to date.
Performance
We have read a lot of reviews about the performance of this hosting provider. The majority of users are not really pleased with Namecheap’s performance. Most reviews complained that the provider is unstable and uptime is not very reliable. In addition, Name also performs below average in terms of speed. In order to check these statements, we conducted various tests on our website to help you get better insights.
- Namecheap Server Response Time
Here is a table displaying Namecheap’s Server Response Time :
Regions | US(W) | US(E) | London | Singapore | Sao Paulo | Mumbai | Sydney | Japan | Canada | Germany |
Server response time | 19 ms | 71 ms | 142 ms | 195 ms | 183 ms | 254 ms | 215 ms | 131 ms | 80 ms | 148 ms |
As you can see, the server response time reaches the best results in the US (19 ms) and Canada (80 ms). And it keeps on rising when we moved to the Asia areas such as Singapore, Mumbai, etc because Namecheap’s data centres are located primarily in the U.S. and U.K.
- Namecheap Speeds
Regarding Namecheap’s speed, we also implemented the speed test in two different regions. Of course, the result will not let you be surprised. It only takes 1.51 sec to load our website once we selected the US servers.
On the contrary, when we chose the India location, our website took over 4 sec to load, which is extremely disenchanting. However, we have to accept that the date has to travel longer distances, so it naturally takes a long time to load.
- Namecheap uptime
Namecheap boasts a strong uptime record, which refers to the percentage of time that their servers and hosted websites remain online and accessible to visitors. They have implemented robust infrastructure and redundancy measures to minimize downtime.
Namecheap promises a 100% uptime guarantee on their Shared, Business and Dedicated hosting plans. Nevertheless, the result we followed during 12 months is 99.82%. It is quite disappointing.
In case the promised amount of time that the server is up and running is not achieved, they provide reimbursement by increasing the length of their service schedule by one day for each hour that your website has faced server downtime.
Customer support
Currently, Namecheap provides you with 2 methods to get assistance, including live chat 24/7, email and Ticket support. Most people prefer to chat with the support team to tackle their issues since it takes them a few minutes to get helpful support from experts.
In addition, if you don’t have time to chat, dropping a quick mail is a perfect way. Your problem will be handled within just two hours in most cases.
Although it doesn’t offer support by phone, you can use its valuable knowledge base to solve your problems. Namecheap maintains a comprehensive knowledge base that includes a wide range of articles, tutorials, and guides. This resource can be extremely helpful for users who prefer to troubleshoot problems on their own or seek guidance for common issues. In addition, the knowledge base is regularly updated and covers various topics related to domains, hosting, and website building.
Moreover, Namecheap is active on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Users have reported positive experiences when reaching out to Namecheap through these channels, with timely responses and helpful assistance provided.
Overall, Namecheap is known for providing quality customer support, and many users have commented positively on the promptness and helpfulness of their support team. From our perspective, we are really satisfied with the quality of their support team. They are knowledgeable, enthusiastic and helpful in assisting us with our queries and concerns.
Pricing plans
Namecheap offers a range of pricing plans for its services, including domain registration, hosting, SSL certificates, and more. However, in this blog, we will mainly focus on shared hosting.
The Shared Hosting of Namecheap has 3 flexible plans. All plans provide you with unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, CDN, and domain for 1 year, 1 free website migration, a decent website builder and staging capabilities.
Here is a table comparing the differences between plans:
Stellar | Stellar Plus | Stellar Business | |
Price/month | $1.48 | $2.38 | $4.98 |
SSD Storage | 20 GB | Unmetered | 50 GB |
Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
RAM | 2 GB | 3 GB | 6 GB |
Hosted Domains | 3 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Sub Domains | 30 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Inode Count | 300k | 300k | 600k |
Generally, Namecheap offers competitive and affordable pricing plans for domain registration, hosting, SSL certificates, and email hosting. Their pricing provides good value for the features and resources provided, making them a popular choice for individuals and businesses seeking reliable and budget-friendly services.
Additionally, Namecheap offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for most of its hosting services. This guarantee allows customers to try out Namecheap’s hosting plans and, if unsatisfied for any reason, request a refund within the first 30 days of their purchase.
Pros and cons of Namecheap
Pros | Cons |
Have competitive pricing Offer a Good premium DNS service Have excellent chat support Offer a wide range of hosting plans Offer reliable performance with high uptime and fast loading speeds Have a variety of additional services such as SSL, certificates, etc |
Have limited resources on Shared Hosting Does not offer Windows hosting options Have limited data centre locations |
Namecheap review: the final verdict
To sum up, for small-scale businesses and self-employed individuals who require an economical yet effective hosting solution, Namecheap is an impeccable choice. It provides reasonably priced hosting packages that come bundled with a multitude of functions such as a simple interface, a resilient website designer and a convenient content management system (CMS) platform installer.
If you have used Namecheap hosting, don’t hesitate to leave your opinion in the comment below.
Besides that, you can visit our website to discover tons of stunning, free WordPress Themes that help you build an eye-catching appearance for your website without effort.
We’re a Digital Team from EngineTemplate with 5 content experts. Our team has 5 years exp in open source Joomla and WordPress, we make daily blogs and build useful resources for everyone who is having issues with open source while using it.