When most people hear “Namecheap” they think of “domain names” – at least, I know I do. So what about Namecheap’s hosting offering?
I’ve always been a big believer in keeping your hosting and domain name providers separate in order to keep the barrier to switching providers low. For this review, I decided to break my own rule on account of the fact that Namecheap keeps hosting and domains separate in their interface, unlike most hosting companies.
As it turns out, I was right to break my rule. To my surprise, my experience with Namecheap was quite positive.
Things I Like:
- If you only need to host five domains, you can get hosting for around $20 for the first year (with a coupon). It’s hard to beat that price.
- They’re loaded with different packages, including shared, reseller, VPS, and dedicated servers.
- They use the standard cPanel.
- My average uptime was 99.86% – pretty fantastic.
- Really prompt and knowledgeable customer support. Some of their support team is definitely outsourced, but in my experience, their English has been solid. Tickets normally take around an hour to get a response.
- Live chat support is available and it’s actually pretty good, which is unusual for a chat.
Things I Hate:
- They’ve been a domain registrar since 2000, but they’ve only been selling hosting since 2007. While it may be too early to say, I have some doubts about how well they will be able to scale their servers as more people start buying their hosting.
- The billing dashboard seems to run a little slow and there is no way to directly get to the cPanel. Normally when you’re in a host’s “billing area”, there’s a link to go directly to your cPanel or a button where it’ll log you right in. This is just kind of nitpicking, but that’s the worst thing I can say at this point.
- No phone support.
- Lots of plans available, including VPS and shared hosting
- Standard cPanel
- Good value in the package deals available
- Strong uptime (99.86%)
- Excellent customer support
- No phone support
- Dashboard runs a bit slow and it’s tough to navigate to the cPanel from the billing area – but that’s pretty minor.
Final Take
Whether you’re buying a domain name or setting up your hosting Namecheap is a great company whom I have a ton of confidence in. You can’t go wrong with them – so shrug off the bias and give them a go!
Thanks for reading my Namecheap hosting review! Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments!
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