Namecheap doesn’t have its own WYSIWYG site builder. Many web hosting will allow you to build a simple site for free, but this hosting does not offer that. The hosting accepts payment options from PayPal, credit and debit cards. Upon completion, a clear and detailed display of what you have just bought will be displayed by Namecheap.
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Creating a website on Namecheap
Beginners will not find it easy accessing the hosting for the first time since Namecheap’s dedicated server hosting account is managed from a standard cPanel console which is not as friendly as some custom front ends. However, experienced users will not have any problems and novices will quickly figure out the key basics. Namecheap doesn’t have its own WYSIWYG site builder. Many web hosting will allow you to build a simple site for free, but this hosting does not offer that. Instead what you will get is Softactulous, which is one of the best 1-click install tools around. This tool supports more than 100 popular open source applications, including WordPress. It then organizes them into neat categories such as Blogs, Forums, Calendars, E-commerce and more. Each category has a brief description, a user rating, and a demo page to give you a glimpse of what your website will look like. Setting up will take a lot of effort but you’ll easily use them elsewhere if you switch hosts. Another plus is the Google Apps integration, which provides a quick way to set up your domain for mail, documents or a calendar. You can also set up your site manually via FTP or its own file manager. As with any host, some of these may take time, but the “welcome” email gets you off to a very good start. This includes your server hostname and IP address, Namecheap’s nameservers, a server cPanel URL that works even if your DNS hasn’t yet resolved, default FTP and SFTP login details, and more. It offers the cheapest way to buy domain names.
Namecheap pricing
The baseline Value plan – This plan is available at £8 ($10) for year one, £31 ($39) a year afterward. This price will get you 20GB of hard drive space, unlimited bandwidth, and notably up to three websites and fifty subdomains. You also get fifty MySQL databases and one-click install of WordPress plus many other applications. The package has only 50 email accounts which are enough for most users. You get a free .name domain but anything else is extra.
The Professional plan – This plan will cost you £16 ($20) for the first year, £63 ($79) a year afterward. It doubles the storage space to 50GB and allows up to 10 websites with 100 MySQL databases. It also adds PostgreSQL support as well. The plan only supports 100 email accounts unfortunately and sharing those across all 10 websites could get difficult. The Unlimited plan – This plan costs £24 ($30) for year one, £103 ($129) suitable for managing many websites. It will give you up to 50 domains with no limits on web space, subdomains, FTP users, email accounts, MySQL or PostgreSQL databases. That’s great value for anyone who needs to host lots of domains.
Namecheap hosting also has other packages including Business SSD – at £16 ($20) a month – which gives you higher performance hosting on servers with fewer users, VPS Hosting from £16 ($20) a month, and dedicated servers from £47 ($59) a month. You can also get reseller hosting. The plans don’t include SSL – and 1&1 even gives you that with its most basic account. But this doesn’t have to be an expensive extra. Basic PositiveSSL certificates are available for £1.60 ($2) in the first year if you buy one with your hosting, or you can add one later from £7 ($8.75) a year. All plans give you the choice of hosting in the UK or US data center. That’s an unusual plus, although the UK hosting will cost you around £10 a year extra. Namecheap offers cheap VPS hosting. The hosting company guarantees a 99.9% uptime with every purchase which doesn’t cover scheduled maintenance or server issues. It has a 14-day money-back guarantee if you are encountering connectivity problems.
Namecheap Account setup
Namecheap domain setup process begins by selecting your domain name. You can create a new one or use one you’ve already registered. You can transfer it to Namecheap.com at the same time, which is not compulsory. There’s no option to skip your choice of the domain name until later. You can set up the hosting with Namecheap’s free .name domain, and later change it to something else whenever you like. The purchase process is pretty simple actually. The only add-on offered is a PositiveSSL certificate available at $2 (£1.60) in year one surprisingly. This should be more visible on the main site for such a good value. Creating a Namecheap account requires entering all your contact details: name, physical address, email address and phone number. There’s a welcome extra in the form of a two-factor authentication option which requires phone verification as well as passwords.
The hosting accepts payment options from PayPal, credit and debit cards. Upon completion, a clear and detailed display of what you have just bought will be displayed by Namecheap. You will be given links to tutorials on how to use your hosting account and uploading an existing account. You will then receive a clear, detailed and very readable email later welcoming you to the hosting service. Rather than receipts and web links, the hosting will send you 700 words of essential information on server names, IP addresses, login information, FAQs and more. You can refer to this mail later if you encounter certain problems.
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Performance
What can really annoy the user are the unexpected website issues that can really damage your business in extreme cases. Therefore it is important to for your hosting company support to deliver when the need arises. Support from Namecheap starts with a searchable knowledge base that is neatly organized into sensible categories. It covers everything from beginner-type FAQs to expert-level issues. The articles have lengthy details and Namecheap customers can add their comments to support the documents. Namecheap has a service status page that tries to keep you updated with major issues, but it’s presented poorly. Phone support is not provided, but Namecheap does have live chat and a support ticket system. The server speed is exceptional, with Bitcatcha and other benchmarks regularly scoring the host’s performance which is above-average.
Final verdict
Like I always say finding a perfect web hosting is not possible. What you can try to do is try to find one that suits your needs. This will vary for every business and what works for you will not work for others. Namecheap doesn’t have as many specialist plans as some hosts, but if you’re looking for general hosting – or can handle any site-building tasks yourself – it offers real value and some helpful extras. I believe that this Namecheap review has been helpful to you.
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