Companies that offer web hosting are widely available in the current market, which is good and bad. It’s good because you have a large number of choices and options. It’s bad because it’s extremely difficult to compare all those options without losing your sanity. We’re ready to help you by comparing Namecheap and GoDaddy.
Namecheap lives up to its name by offering plenty of affordable pricing plans. As an additional benefit that we greatly appreciate, Namecheap doesn’t bombard you with upselling options like some of its competitors do. It just works hard to give you a lot of desirable features at a good price. You can try out Namecheap during a free trial period.
GoDaddy is among the most well-known web hosting services, giving it a level of name recognition that many of its competitors wish they had. GoDaddy’s prices are reasonable, and its features are easy to use, so it’s a good option for beginners. You can start the process of using GoDaddy and begin searching domain names for free.
Namecheap and GoDaddy Compared to the Best Web Hosting Services
Although GoDaddy and Namecheap have advantages in the web hosting market, neither brand made our list of the best web hosting services. As mentioned, web hosting services are extremely plentiful. Through our in-depth research, we found several other services that we like better than Namecheap and GoDaddy.
We chose Hostinger as the best web hosting service for most people because it offers incredibly low prices while remaining extremely easy to use, giving customers a great level of service. Start building your site with Hostinger with the peace of mind of its 30-day money-back guarantee.
When you need your website to carry one of the highest uptime guarantees in the industry, SiteGround is the service that our researchers trust for maximum reliability. Try SiteGround today and enjoy a free site transfer for your existing website.
If your web hosting needs are minimal now, but you have plans to grow steadily, we like HostGator as the best web hosting service for scaling your services. When you sign up with HostGator, you can receive a free domain for a year.
Namecheap Compared to GoDaddy
Certainly, you want your web hosting service to perform the basics well. Ultimately, though, the features it offers beyond the basics may be the key to perfectly fitting your needs. When your service provider can solve problems unique to your business and website, it becomes even more valuable. Namecheap and GoDaddy each can help you in a few different ways.
Namecheap Highlights
When you are running a business, your customers rely on having constant access to your website. Reliability problems simply can’t happen. With Namecheap, you receive a 100% uptime guarantee. If Namecheap has some downtime during the month, its guarantee means you receive a refund for any time your site was unavailable.
If you already have a website, you may be leery about the hassle of trying to transfer the site to Namecheap. However, Namecheap provides help with migrating your current site to Namecheap. It also allows you to make the switch for free.
For businesses that have tight budgets for their websites, Namecheap offers a reasonable price for its basic plan without skimping on the services it offers. Plus, you can take advantage of Namecheap’s 30-day money-back guarantee, so there’s no financial risk to giving it a try.
GoDaddy Highlights
Simply having a well-known brand name is not enough to guarantee a high-quality experience for you. Fortunately, GoDaddy offers quite a few key features that solve problems and deliver results for customers, starting with an easy-to-use interface. Novices will have very few issues creating a sharp-looking website in a short amount of time.
Should you run into problems while building your site with GoDaddy, you can access its customer service team relatively easily versus its competitors. GoDaddy gives you a live phone support option 24 hours per day and seven days per week.
Once your site is up and running, you want a high level of performance and responsiveness for your visitors. GoDaddy offers data centers spread across the globe, which delivers excellent load times for your visitors. GoDaddy’s site loading speed from various locations consistently ranks among the best in the website hosting market.
Namecheap vs. GoDaddy: Pros and Cons
We have a keen understanding of the web hosting service marketplace. We study these companies constantly, looking for the advantages and disadvantages they provide. Through our research, we found several areas where GoDaddy and Namecheap provide excellent results and where they struggle.
Where Namecheap Shines
Pricing: With so much competition among web hosting companies, pricing across the board is beneficial for you as the end user. However, Namecheap has an especially favorable pricing level, as its cheapest plan delivers a surprising set of features, giving it an edge over competitors.
Additionally, while its prices increase at the end of the introductory period, they don’t increase as much as competitors’ prices. This is one area where Namecheap especially outshines GoDaddy.
Add-ons: Namecheap outperforms GoDaddy for the pricing on its add-on and extra features, too. With Namecheap, you will receive a WHOIS privacy package and one email account tied to your website for free. GoDaddy charges you for both of these items on a monthly or annual basis.
This is just more evidence that Namecheap delivers a pricing structure that will save you quite a bit of money versus what GoDaddy will charge you for similar features and services.
Versatile hosting options: Namecheap’s least expensive plans revolve around shared hosting. However, if you want some other options for hosting, Namecheap has you covered here as well. You can select WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting as a Namecheap customer.
Easy to use: Whether you are trying to start a website from scratch or you need to transfer a site from an existing host, Namecheap makes the process easy. Migrating your site from a different host to Namecheap is free to boot.
When you want to start a new site, you can access numerous help documents and tutorials that will walk you through the steps required to build that first website. Namecheap gives you multiple templates as well. You’ll have a professional-looking website in almost no time that you can tweak later as your needs change.
Long history: In a market where website hosting providers seem to sprout up everywhere, subscribing to a company that has a significant history of success isn’t always easy. Namecheap carries one of the longest histories in this market, as it formed more than two decades ago as a domain registrar. It added other features and services along the way.
Namecheap has more than 11 million domain names registered, giving you peace of mind about its trustworthiness and stability as a web hosting company.
Where Namecheap Needs Improvement
Customer support help with complex issues: If you run into simple problems while using Namecheap, you should be able to find the solution through help documents or through a chatbot session. However, as the complexity of your issues increases, Namecheap’s customer service responsiveness decreases.
Unlike GoDaddy, which has full-time customer support via phone, Namecheap does not offer a telephone support option. If you need a challenging problem solved quickly, you may be out of luck with Namecheap.
Simplistic site-building tools: While Namecheap excels in delivering basic features for a great price, it struggles to match the needs of customers who require advanced services.
This is especially noticeable when building your site, as Namecheap relies on a basic app and templates to help you create your site. If you need a site that goes beyond the basic features, Namecheap is going to be a disappointment.
Security shortfalls: Although Namecheap has some desirable security features, it is lacking in a few areas that are concerning.
Namecheap provides free SSL certificates that verify your website for visitors, which is vital. However, it doesn’t monitor your server and website for malware or viruses, so you’ll have to perform these functions on your own, something novices may struggle to do.
Where GoDaddy Shines
Very easy to use: GoDaddy makes every aspect of starting and running a website an extremely easy process. It’s easy to see why GoDaddy is so popular, as novices will have few issues creating a website that looks great and runs reliably.
Additionally, GoDaddy provides increased functionality through the installation of third-party apps. You can install these apps with a single click, saving time. Both GoDaddy and Namecheap are easy to use, but GoDaddy is just a little better in this area.
Customer support options: Another reason why GoDaddy is so appealing to those new to building websites is because of its strong customer service options. Versus Namecheap, GoDaddy is a far better choice in this area.
The fact that GoDaddy offers 24/7 telephone support service options would be impressive enough on its own. But GoDaddy also has plenty of self-help documents, instructional blog posts, tutorials, help videos, and chatbot help options to deliver the answers you need whenever you need them.
Introductory pricing: It’s common for web hosting services to deliver low pricing in the first year or two, as they compete for customers. GoDaddy has excellent introductory pricing, including the ability to receive a free domain for the first year, as long as you subscribe to GoDaddy’s hosting service.
Should you be purchasing a really expensive domain, this could be quite the first-year savings amount. Just understand that you will be charged the full amount for the domain in the second year and beyond.
Trustworthy brand: You don’t have to worry about GoDaddy suddenly disappearing from the web hosting landscape. It dates back to 1997, and it became the largest domain registrar several years later. It continues to have one of the most popular brand names in the industry, and it has roughly 60 million domain names registered.
Multiple hosting options: Like Namecheap, GoDaddy gives you a wide range of options for your hosting needs. You can select among shared hosting, WordPress hosting, business hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. As your site’s needs change while you are growing your business, you can move from one hosting service to another under the GoDaddy umbrella.
Unlimited bandwidth: GoDaddy provides unlimited bandwidth for your hosted website, even when you are using one of the lower pricing tiers. This is a benefit for sites that have quite a bit of traffic. (However, if GoDaddy determines your site is using too much bandwidth, it may try to convince you to move to a higher pricing tier.)
Because of the locations of GoDaddy’s data centers in the United States, Europe, Asia, and India, it delivers fast loading speeds for the majority of your website visitors. This allows you to take full advantage of the unlimited bandwidth.
Where GoDaddy Needs Improvement
GoDaddy will upsell you: If you dislike receiving constant requests from your service providers to purchase add-ons or to migrate to a higher-priced service tier, GoDaddy may frustrate you. GoDaddy starts the suggestions for upsells from the first time you sign up for your account, and it continues after you become a full-fledged customer.
Sometimes, GoDaddy will even add some extras to your cart, based on your responses to questions, without seeking your permission. It can almost feel like you must stop every few minutes and check your shopping cart for things you didn’t order to avoid unwanted purchases. Namecheap doesn’t participate in upselling tactics like this.
Some basic items have add-on costs: Unfortunately, those upsells may be necessary to match the needs you have for your website, because GoDaddy doesn’t include some basic items as part of your subscription price.
For example, GoDaddy charges you extra for WHOIS privacy, site-related email accounts, and an SSL certificate. Namecheap offers these items as part of your subscription more often than GoDaddy does. When the items aren’t part of the subscription, Namecheap charges far less for them than GoDaddy does.
Big price jumps: After your introductory period ends with GoDaddy, you may receive some sticker shock regarding the regular prices you will be paying. Every web hosting service that offers introductory pricing increases the prices pretty significantly in year two and beyond, but GoDaddy has greater-than-average price increases.
The Last Word on Namecheap Compared to GoDaddy
GoDaddy and Namecheap find themselves in a highly competitive market with other web hosting providers. Both of them offer reasonable price points versus their competitors, and they both are among the longest-running hosting services providers.
Those who use GoDaddy appreciate its ease of use, as even novices can begin using it quickly. GoDaddy offers reasonable introductory prices, but you will see significant price increases once the intro period ends. Namecheap maintains its highly desirable price points versus competitors both at the time of signup and well into the future. But it sacrifices customer support performance to give you the below-average pricing options.
If you want to research more options in this market, our researchers provide the information you need in our list of the best website hosting services. We like Hostinger as the best hosting service for most people, but there are quite a few strong options that may better fit your particular needs on our list.
