The overwhelming journey of looking for the right hosting provider for your website can be a truly exhausting experience. With thousands of providers to choose from, it can be challenging to find a specific web hosting service that will provide you with everything that you need.
Each provider offers a variety of hosting solutions packaged with different resources and at different prices. Hence, finding hosting for your website can take a lot of your time.
To make this process slightly easier for you, we will introduce you to a hosting company called Namecheap.
Why Namecheap?
Namecheap is a company that has been in the business of hosting for more than two decades. They have managed to build a solid reputation and become a popular choice for many website owners.
Namecheap could be a great option worth considering, especially for those who are looking for a web host on a budget. It provides affordable pricing plans with a free domain name, fast loading speed, good uptime, free migrations, and extra plan features like backups.
The company started as a domain registrar in 2000 and today has over 11 million customers and hosts over three million domain names. This shows that Namecheap is a good competitor in the web hosting industry. If you want to dig deeper and learn more about Namecheap and the services it provides, continue reading.
This article will analyze the Namecheap plans, pricing, features, support, and security and provide you with everything that you need to know before you decide whether it is the right option for you and your website.
As a side note, you can also go to HostAdvice and check out the rating of this hosting provider.
Location
Do you know the location of your web hosting server has a significant impact on how your website performs?
Well, now you do. Even seasoned website owners are unaware of how it may affect the speed, loading times, SEO rankings, and even legal compliance of their website.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that despite the fact that your website uses a US data center, the majority of your clients are located in Europe. When people in Europe access your website, it must first go through the US data center of your web hosting company to get to them. As you can expect, connecting across continents takes time. And always keep in mind that time is money.
Luckily Namecheap has data centers in US, UK, and Europe. So your website will function perfectly from anywhere in the world.
Uptime and Speed
Namecheap offers hosting solutions for all types of web hosting, including shared, WordPress, reseller, VPS, and dedicated hosting. It has a long history of high uptime percentages. Currently, the average uptime is 99.82%, and the average downtime is 31 minutes. The average response time is 1.05 seconds. Meanwhile, the average page speed on Namecheap is 319ms which puts them among the fastest hosting providers out there. Their data centers are located in the USA, United Kingdom, and Europe. However, you do need to pay $1.00/month extra if you choose the UK and Europe data center.
Pricing
The pricing on Namecheap is one of the best on the market, with prices starting as low as $0.82 per month for the first year. The shared hosting plans start from just $1.58 a month and $2.88 a month for renewal. With the basic plan you get three websites, 20GB storage, unmetered bandwidth, one free domain name, and access to a free website builder. The WordPress hosting plans start at just $3.88 a month and come with 10GB and support up to 50,000 visitors a month. The VPS hosting plans start at $7.88 a month, and the dedicated servers start at $48.88 a month. It is easy to switch over hosting plans, free migration is included in all hosting plans. There is also a free trial run of 30 days where you can try their services and see if their services are right for you. If you are not satisfied, you can unsubscribe anytime and get your money back. Payment is available through Credit cards, PayPal, Dwolla, and Bitcoin.
Features
Namecheap offers a wide variety of advanced features that can help you improve your website’s overall performance. Namecheap provides entirely free website migrations, a domain registration portal, a free website builder, and an app market where you can find extra features for functionality. Namecheap also allows you to use free and paid integrations with third-party platforms. The website builder is easy to use and great for beginners. Namecheap uses a cPanel control panel. The account activation is very fast and easy you can use the 1-click installation tool to install popular apps and CMSs easily.
Security
Namecheap is a very trustworthy web hosting provider with over 20 years of experience. It provides multiple layers of security features that can protect your website from all kinds of unwanted attract. Some of these features include two-factor authentication, free domain privacy, and free SSL certificates for authenticating your website. They also provide full DDoS protection, Domain Vault, Premium DNS, Cyber Insurance, and Anti-Spam Protection. Free with every hosting plan come two-factor authentication, DDoS protection, Domain Lock security, and free domain privacy for life. For the other ones, you will have to pay extra.
Support
Namecheap offers two live customer support methods via live chat and email support. The customer support team is available 24/7. They also have an extensive knowledge base where you have a decent selection of self-help resources, and there are even numerous tutorial videos that can help you solve your issues. The live chat response time is actually very good, it does not take more than a couple of minutes for someone to respond. Once you are connected, the agent replies instantly.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a solid provider that is affordable, Namecheap is just for you. They have great offers, and sometimes they even have discounts which make their plans extremely cheap.