Namecheap Shared Hosting Review (October 2024) – How’s The Hosting?

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About Namecheap 

Namecheap is a US-based company located in Phoenix, Arizona. It was founded back in 2000 by Mr. Richard Kirkendall as a domain registration company. Today, they have registered over 11 million domains and are serving over 3 million clients around the globe!

They offer Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, and WordPress hosting services to their customers. Namecheap is unbeatable when we talk about domain registrations.

But does it offer the same level of features with its hosting plans? Let’s find out. 

Namecheap Overview

Namecheap Review Video

If you are a video person, you can watch my video review of Namecheap here. (It’s in Hindi with English subtitles)

Namecheap User Interface 

The user interface of Namecheap looks quite easy to use with a modern design and colors.

You get the standard cPanel, which is quite intuitive and loaded with a lot of interesting features. You can easily manage your emails, files, databases, domains, security, software, etc, from here.

All the features are separated into different categories. This makes it easy for beginners to operate. Overall, I found it quite user friendly and convenient.

Testing Parameters

For the testing purpose, I have purchased the Stellar plan of Namecheap with the US Servers. 

I have been using it for the last 308 days on my website kpnctest.xyz with the following configurations.

• Ocean WP Theme (Elementor based)
• Gym template (Elementor based)
• W3 Total Cache plugin (already installed with default settings)

Now let us look at the results of the various tests that we conducted on this website. 

Namecheap Server Response Time 

As you can see below, the Server Response Time was quite good in the US (19 ms) and Canada (80 ms) regions. Whereas it kept on increasing as we moved towards the Asian regions like Japan, Singapore, Mumbai, etc.  

Interestingly, they use both Apache and Litespeed servers on their Shared hosting plans, which is why we get to see good SRT on Namecheap!

Namecheap Speeds 

 I chose two different locations to conduct the speed test – Bangalore and the US. 

When I selected the Bangalore location, my website took over 4 long seconds to load, which is extremely disappointing! But I expected as much because I had opted for the US servers. 

However, when I switched the location to the US, my website loaded swiftly in 1.51 sec, which is quite decent. 

I really hope they expand their data centers and establish some in the Asian regions soon. This would improve speeds in India to a large extent.  

For lightning fast speeds, check out ChemiCloud or Cloudways!

Namecheap Uptime 

I have been monitoring the uptime of my namecheap website for the last 1 year using the Uptime Monitor tool. It keeps on checking the uptime of my site every 30 seconds. 

Namecheap Uptime Status Report (Last 12 Months):

Here’s the uptime report for “Namecheap shared hosting stellar plan” for last 365 days.

September 2024	99.92%
August 2024	99.99%
July 2024	99.68%
June 2024	99.99%
May 2024	99.42%
April 2024	99.79%
March 2024	99.76%
February 2024	99.98%
January 2024	99.96%
December 2023	99.99%
November 2023	100%
October 2023	100%
September 2023	99.86%
August 2023	100%
July 2023	100%
June 2023	99.98%
May 2023	99.89%
April 2023	99.97%
March 2023	100%
February 2023	99.99%

Namecheap shared hosting has had an uptime of 99.89% during the last 365 days, which is slightly below average for a shared hosting.

In the last 30 days, the uptime has been merely 99.89%, whereas it has been 99.89% in the last 365 days! This is quite disappointing for a company that claims a 100% uptime guarantee on Shared, Business, and Dedicated hosting plans. 

Note : I have an active plan of Namecheap Shared Hosting Stellar Plan. Every month, the uptime will be updated.

However, if the said uptime is not met, they offer compensation by extending their service cycle by one day for every hour of server downtime suffered by your website. 

Its competitors in the web hosting industry offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee and most of them live up to it. Thus, you cannot rely on Namecheap web hosting if you’re into some serious online business. 

If you want a hosting with unmatched uptime, you can check out Rocket.net, Cloudways, or A2 Hosting. 

Namecheap Load Handling 

Load Handling refers to exposing your website/app to real-life conditions in order to evaluate how well they handle load.

For testing the load handling, I sent 50 virtual users from the US region over to my website that made a total of 2521 requests.

There were no HTTP failures, which is a good thing. However, as you can see in the graph, it limited my requests to only 10 requests/sec. The average response time was 2859 ms with a lot of spikes!  

Overall, Namecheap could not handle the load test well. 

Namecheap Cache Plugin

Talking about Cache plugins, you don’t get any in-house caching plugin by Namecheap. 

However, the W3 Total Cache plugin comes installed on your WordPress by default on all hosting plans. 

Namecheap Data Centers

They have their data centers housed in limited locations, including the US, UK, and EU. The EU servers are the latest addition. 

Another point to note is that the pricing for the EU and UK servers is relatively higher than that of US servers. They should pace up and establish data centers in more locations, like Singapore, India, etc. 

Check out Cloudways for 65+ data center locations spanning the globe and offering swift speeds from any part of the world.

Namecheap Domains 

Because Namecheap has essentially been a domain name registrar since the beginning, you will find appreciable domain options here. 

New Domain

When you purchase a new web hosting plan, you automatically get a domain name of your choice free with it for 1 year. If you want to purchase a domain name separately, following are the prices for the most popular TLDs. 

TLD	Pricing for 1st Year
.com	₹709.66
.net	₹821.95
.org	₹664.75
.in	₹372.80
.xyz	₹74.86

Preview URL

They don’t offer a temporary domain name.

Namecheap CDN

A CDN (Content Delivery Network) caches your web content on multiple servers speeding up your website’s loading time. 

Namecheap offers its Supersonic CDN for free on all its hosting plans. It not only improves your website’s speed but also protects your site from DDoS attacks, lets you upload custom SSL, and handles 50 GB of traffic per month!  

As of now, it’s in early access. More improvements might be made to it gradually. I personally didn’t like it much. You can go with the free Cloudflare CDN, which performs comparatively better than this one!

Namecheap Security

Namecheap is concerned about its users’ security, which is why you’ll find a range of security features. Let’s see what they are.

• SSL: Free PositiveSSL Certificates for 1 year on all Namecheap Shared hosting plans. You can install up to 50 free SSL certificates in one cPanel account! 

• 2FA: It enhances the security of your hosting account by requiring a verification code while you login to your Namecheap account. You can use authenticator apps like Authy, Google Authenticator, etc.

• Domain Privacy: To protect your contact information listed on your domain name from frauds, spams, and identity theft, Namecheap offers a free-for-life domain privacy with new domains. 

• Leech Protection: It helps you specify the number of logins allowed within a 2-hour time gap. This helps prevent brute force attacks. 

• Firewall and Monitoring: Shared hosting servers are constantly monitored with their Centreon monitoring system that helps detect DDoS attacks and actively stops them. 

• Jellyfish Spam Protection: It is an anti-spam service that lets you block emails from a certain domain or email address, comprising a specific phrase or subject line. You can also create your own custom set of rules for preventing unwanted emails.

• Virus Scanner: It scans your home directory, mail, public FTP space, and public web space for viruses.

• Hotlink Protection: This feature restricts other users from directly linking to files on your website. Thus, it prevents uses on the Internet from stealing your bandwidth.

• SSH Access: It lets you securely transfer files or get access to your server and make changes to it.

Namecheap Backups 

Namecheap creates routine backups for their Stellar hosting customers twice a week. But you can only get your backups restored by submitting a support ticket to their team.

If you upgrade to the Stellar Plus or Stellar Business plan, you get an AutoBackup plugin that creates backups of your cPanel account with the following frequency.

• 6 daily backups
• 3 weekly backups
• 5 monthly backups

If you are running a serious online website, you can also opt for CodeGuard. It is an add-on service that offers to create daily backups, perform automatic restorations, and provide daily monitoring services for your website.

Its pricing plans start from $2.50/month/website.

Namecheap Customer Support

The support team of Namecheap is decent. They offer 24/7 support through email tickets and live chat. They also have a comprehensive knowledge base of articles meant to solve user queries. 

You can also discuss your issues with other users through their forum. 

In my experience, their live chat was quite fast, but the replies were not that satisfactory. Overall, the support is excellent for domain related queries but it didn’t impress me much for queries related to hosting.   

You can go with ChemiCloud, Cloudways, FastComet, etc for better quality of live chat support. 

Namecheap Inode Count 

Inode count refers to the total number of files stored on your hosting account. This includes all files, folders, emails, etc. 

Namecheap has the following inode count limit for its shared hosting plans. 

• Stellar Plan: 300k 
• Stellar Plus Plan: 300k
• Stellar Business Plan: 600k

If the number of inodes is your preference, you can check out Rocket.net that does not restrict the number of inodes on any of its hosting plans. 

Namecheap Pricing

Their Starter plan is priced at ₹118.28, where you get unmetered bandwidth, 20 GB SSD storage space,  access to free SSL certificate, CDN, and domain for 1 year, 1 free website migration, a decent website builder, staging capabilities, good developer tools, a 30-day refund policy, and more. 

Let’s look at the feature comparisons between the shared hosting plans.  

	Stellar	Stellar Plus	Stellar Business
Price/month	₹118.28	₹200.62	₹359.32
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

I was impressed by the fact that you could host up to 3 domains from a single hosting account even on their Stellar plan! Most other web hosts only let you host 1 website. 

Namecheap keeps on offering discount offers quite frequently. So, if you want to stay updated with the latest offers, you can join my Telegram Channel. 

Best Plan

In my opinion, the best hosting plan on Namecheap is its Stellar plan. 

When you purchase it for a year, it will cost you ₹1368, which is quite affordable! Check out Hostinger for the cheapest and most pocket friendly prices. 

Payment Options

Namecheap supports limited payment options that include International credit and debit cards, and PayPal. 

For Indian payment options like UPI, you can opt for Hostinger or Bluehost.

Namecheap Refund Policy 

They have a standard 30-day money-back guarantee, just like other web hosting companies. I prefer the pro rata-based refund policy of Cloudways and A2 Hosting.

Namecheap Affiliate Program

They also run an impressive affiliate program for their services. So, for every new user signing up on Namecheap with your referral link, you earn a 35% commission on hosting plans and 20% on new domain registrations and transfers. 

Namecheap Migrations

You get one website migration completely free of cost with any of the hosting plans you choose. 

If your priority is migrations, you can check out ChemiCloud, which offers 50 cPanel migrations and 10 non-cPanel migrations for free on its hosting plans. 

Namecheap Staging

Namecheap offers website staging through its cPanel and through plugins. I found it pretty easy to stage and test my website locally with its WordPress Manager application.

All you need to do is create a sub-domain and go to the WordPress Manager app on your cPanel or locate it under Softaculous. You will find a list of all the WordPress installations available. 

For your preferred website, click on ‘Create Staging’ option and install it on the sub-domain that you created. You can try and test infinite changes over the staged website. The changes would be made locally. 

Once you are happy with the updates, you can go to the WordPress Manager again and click on “Push to Live’. This will make all your changes live on your original website.  

Overall, I found the staging process quite effortless with Namecheap. 

Namecheap Website Builder

You get a basic website builder with Namecheap. It is a drag-and-drop builder which is helpful for quickly building your page and publishing. 

It also offers a few beautiful themes that you can use to enhance the design and appearance of your web page. 

Overall, the website builder was decent and easy to use. But I personally like the site builders of HostArmada, StableHost, and ChemiCloud more.

Namecheap Apps and Software

The Softaculous App Installer offers a wide collection of 100+ free apps spanning eCommerce, CMS, gaming, marketing, blogging, social networking, project management, and a lot more. 

If you are a software developer, you will be quite impressed with the features offered by the developer options provided on Namecheap.

You get support for Python, Perl, NodeJS, Ruby, PHP, etc, which is really helpful for professional programmers. 

Namecheap Pros

Good Speeds in US

They offer Litespeed servers on their Shared hosting plans. So, you will experience faster speeds on Namecheap hosting, especially in the US region. 

Free Domain Name

All the hosting plans come with a free domain name for a year!

Good Security

You get to see a variety of features including Virus Scanner, 2FA, SSL, Firewall, etc, that offer an all-round protection to your hosting account 

Affordable Prices

With the yearly Stellar plan priced at just ₹1368, Namecheap hosting proves to be quite an affordable and budget friendly option. 

Can Host 3+ Websites 

This is probably a unique feature of Namecheap. Even on its Stellar plan, you get to host 3 websites. This is beneficial if you manage multiple websites.

Good Developer Tools

Namecheap supports Python, Perl, NodeJS, Ruby, PHP, and many more tools that make it a developer friendly hosting solution. 

Namecheap Cons

Average Uptime

Even though they claim an uptime guarantee of 100%, in my experience it was around 99.9%, which was quite lower than its competitors. 

Poor Load Handling

Namecheap terribly failed the load test by only being able to handle 10 virtual users at a time. The response time was also unstable with a lot of spikes. Thus, Namecheap wouldn’t be a good option for a professional business. 

No Asian Data Centers

Sadly, you don’t get any data centers in the entire Asian region, let alone Indian regions. They only have 3 data centers in the US, UK, and EU, which are quite limited. 

No Backups

On their Stellar Shared Hosting plan, automatic backups are performed twice every week. Though you can create backups of your account, restoring them is not possible without their support team.

Average Support

Though their live chat support is quick, it lacks quality. Their support team wasn’t able to provide satisfactory replies specifically for hosting related queries, in my experience. 

Should You Buy Namecheap Hosting?

I had also reviewed Namecheap hosting last year and was expecting them to make some major improvements this year.

Well, guess what? The results are still disappointing. Though Namecheap performs exceptionally well as a domain registrar, I cannot recommend it for its shared hosting plans. 

However, you can look at it in the following scenarios: 

• If you only have a US-based audience.
• If you want to create a single-page website that has low traffic.
• If you are a beginner who wants to test out how web hosting works in general.

Namecheap offers you a free domain, email hosting, and a lot more features at affordable rates. Therefore, it might be a good option for absolute beginners who have never used hosting before!

Namecheap Alternatives

Hostinger

Hostinger is one of the most budget friendly web hosts with an outstanding list of features like great speeds, modern interface, advanced security, and Indian payment options.

One of its downsides is the slow customer support, but it offers relatively more features to cover up for that. Their hosting plans start from ₹79/month!

HostArmada

HostArmada is a new player in the hosting market. Along with a great customer support, it offers good speeds and 9 data center locations. It also has a data center in Singapore, which is good for the Indian audiences!

However, it still needs to work on improving its uptime and load handling capacities. Its pricing plans start from $3.99/month.

A2 Hosting

A2 Hosting calls itself a green web hosting company because of its aim of reducing its carbon footprint. It outshines other web hosts with its use of NVMe SSD and a prorated refund policy. 

Other than that, you get swift speeds, efficient load handling, remarkable security features and lots of developer tools. However, the live chat support is quite average and they don’t offer a free domain either. Their hosting plans start from $2.99/month. 

ChemiCloud

ChemiCloud is a renowned web hosting provider which offers impressive features to its users like lightning fast speeds, good load handling, free for lifetime domain, Indian data centers, 45 day refund, and 50 cPanel migrations for free!

The only cons of this hosting are limited disk space, average uptime, and no preview URL. Hope they will work on fixing them soon! Their hosting plans start from $3.9/month.

FastComet

FastComet is another renowned web hosting service offering good speeds, efficient load handling, and impressive customer support with all its plans.

The only downside is that you only get limited storage on its shared hosting plans. For example, 15 GB storage on the Starter plan is quite less! Its pricing plans start from $2.95/month.  

Namecheap Vs Hostarmada Vs A2 Hosting

Conclusion

Namecheap tops the list when we talk about domain registrations. However, when considering their web hosting services, they still have a long way to go!

I hope you found this Namecheap Review helpful in deciding if this is the right hosting solution for your website. You can check out my other hosting reviews to get a better idea as well. 

Anyway, this is Kripesh signing off. If you want to receive the latest updates on my posts, deals, and YouTube videos in your mailbox, you can join my weekly newsletter! Take care, and I’ll see you in the next article.

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