NameCheap Introduction:

NameCheap are a very well known domain name provider. However, they also provide web hosting solutions from just £1.17 per month. NameCheap’s hosting plans offer a lot of features, as well as some pretty impressive server performance. NameCheap are one of the FEW web host’s that offer a 100% uptime guarantee on shared hosting.

All of our web hosting services are backed by Namecheap’s Hosting Guarantee. This guarantee represents the highest quality you can expect from Namecheap and underlines our commitment to providing excellence in our hosting division.

Visit NamCheap.com (£1.17/Month)

So far, NameCheap sounds absolutely awesome. But of course, something in the back of my mind was niggling. Does this sound too good to be true? Before using my own tests, I thought it would be a good idea to check out what existing customers thought of the web host.

NameCheap’s TrustPilot reviews seemed really balanced (both good and bad). Roughly the same amount of people thought NameCheap were excellent and bad. I put my investigative hat on to find out what people were saying about their web hosting.

The positive reviews showed NameCheap to provide good web hosting. Customers were saying their support was very good and reported no issues with their web hosting service itself. However, there were equally some bad reviews about the company as a whole (as opposed to their hosting specifically).

Despite some poor reviews, NameCheap seem confident in their ability to provide a good service. Their social media channels like Twitter are very active, and customers are reporting INSTANT replies from them which is a relief to see.

NameCheap Server Speed & Uptime

Offering a 100% uptime guarantee is a bold statement. With all my reviews, I sign up to the web host in question and monitor my site’s performance with them. I was even more anxious to do this with NameCheap as I had high hopes for their server’s performance. A web host doesn’t offer a 100% uptime guarantee if they’re not confident in their ability to honour it.

NameCheap offer their own uptime monitoring tool. Once you start hosting your website, you can monitor it using NameCheap website monitoring which checks your site’s status every 5 minutes.

Namecheap’s Uptime Monitor is all about helping you to keep your websites up. It monitors your websites every 5 minutes and logs the performance right to your dashboard

Using Pingdom’s website monitoring tool, I recorded a total uptime of 99.94% which obviously is nowhere near the 100% uptime guarantee NameCheap offer. Needless to say, I was very disappointed in this! NameCheap state they will credit a customer’s account if their uptime doesn’t meet their 100% SLA.

Unfortunately, this seemed very common with other customers too. I also monitored my website’s response time. Upon signing up, I could choose a data center in the U.S. or in the U.K. (at a higher cost). My response time maxed out at 1.37s with an average of 500ms. The average is decent, but the maximum response time is concerning to say the least.

Visit NameCheap.com (£1.17/Month)

NameCheap Features

Moving aside from their performance, NameCheap offer a lot of features. We have to remember too, these features are offered on ALL of their hosting plans (from £1.17 per month). It’s quite a steal if you ask me!

Some of the main features included across their shared hosting board are:

1-click application installer
cPanel included
Free website builder
Free SSL certificate
24/7 support including live chat

Considering you’re paying peanuts, I’d say the above is very generous. Their SSL certificates include 50 FREE SSLs to be used for 1 year. That’s absolutely insane! They also have a choice of 2 data centers when you sign up to their web hosting, including the U.S. and the U.K.

As well as the above, their hosting plans also include:

• Unmetered Bandwidth: Whether you sign up to their cheapest or most expensive plan, you’ll get unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth refers to the data transfer between your website and it’s visitors.
• Backups: Stellar customers can enjoy 2 backups on a weekly basis. If you’re a Stellar Plus or Stellar Business customer, you’ll get daily and weekly backups as well as auto-backups via cPanel.
• Money-back Guarantee: NameCheap offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on all of their hosting plans. If you’re not satisfied with NameCheap, you can get a full refund within 30 days, no questions asked.
• AWStats: This tool gives you an overview of who is accessing your website. It will display hourly, daily and monthly statistics which are presented in graphs for you to view.

NameCheap Customer Support

NameCheap offer 24/7 support to all of their hosting customers. They have a variety of support options, including a support center, live chat, knowledgebase, status updates, and a ticket system. Considering their cheapest plan is £1.17 per month, I’d say their support channels are very plentiful.

NameCheap’s support center offers lots of ways you can get in touch with them. There’s lots of articles, blogs, and quick answers/questions to popular topics. I had a good look through their information and found that most of it was really helpful.

NameCheap’s ticket system is really easy to use. What I love about their support so far is that there’s ALWAYS access to their customer support wherever you are. Unlike some hosts who make it difficult to get in contact, NameCheap continuously prompt you with live chat options which is a breath of fresh air. Now it was time to test out their live chat to see if they were any good.

Their live chat system was quick to load up, as well as their agent’s being quick to respond. I asked my question and the agent was able to respond in minutes as well as answering my question.

I continued to ask more questions and press for more answers. The live chat agent never seemed flustered and always responded to be politely, helpfully, and accurately. All in all, I couldn’t really ask for more from a live chat service.

NameCheap Pros and Cons

NameCheap gave me quite a conundrum when I signed up to them. I felt there was such mixed reviews about them, which I agreed with myself. NameCheap offer some awesome features at a low price, but at the same time their performance and uptime wasn’t quite what they advertised.

For this reason, I felt it really important to weigh up the pros and cons of NameCheap. I’ve taken into consideration their pricing, features, and service as a whole. Hopefully this will allow you to make an informed decision about NameCheap’s web hosting.

Pros

Support: My experience with NameCheap’s customer was support was great. Their support center provides plenty of information, including questions, answers, and a knowledgebase. Their live chat was fast, efficient and helpful.

Features: When you weigh up the cost of NameCheap’s web hosting, their features are insanely good. They offer 50 FREE SSL certificates for 1 year, backups, and a free website builder, as well as much more.

cPanel: NameCheap’s web hosting includes cPanel for free. This means you can access your favourite 1-click installs like WordPress which makes life much easier.

Cons

Uptime: I was quite disappointed with my site’s uptime results. Monitoring my website over a 6 month period left me with an uptime of 99.94%. This was way off their guaranteed SLA of 100%.

Data Centers: Although it’s great that NameCheap offer 2 data center locations, it was frustrating to learn that choosing a U.K. data center would cost extra.

NameCheap Pricing

* (prices are quoted on a yearly basis)

Hopefully there’s plenty of pricing information to give you a good understanding of what NameCheap offers. When I look at their pricing plans, it’s easy to see they offer a lot compared to other web hosts.

Their features are very broad and give a distinction between their pricing plans. For those of you starting or running a blog, their Stellar plan is ideal and is only £1.17 per month. If you want to push the boat out a little more, I suggest the Stellar Plus or Business plan (for eCommerce customers).

Do I Recommend NameCheap?

Again, NameCheap have put me in a situation where I’m struggling to answer this. For this reason I’m going to say YES and NO. If you’re starting a small website or blog, then I’d say NameCheap would be a suitable option. They offer very affordable pricing plans with plenty of features to get you started.

However, if you mean business and you rely on having a stable performance, I’d check out our other recommended web hosts like SiteGround. For me (and others), their uptime and server performance wasn’t enough to convince me that they could offer a reliable service.

Here’s a quick summary of NameCheap:

Lots of FREE features (including a website builder, cPanel, and 1-click installs)
A huge support center full of information (as well as a ticket system, live chat and FAQs)
Great customer support (available 24/7 and very helpful)
Affordable pricing (from just £1.17 per month, you couldn’t even buy a sandwich for this)

Poor uptime (99.94% isn’t good enough to reassure me of their reliability)
Data centers cost more for the U.K. (nearly the price of their web hosting)