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The story of Mochahost began in 2002, when its future founders recognized a profound need for high-quality web hosting companies and decided to launch one of their own. Founded in San Jose, Mochahost’s key objective was to strike a balance between “top-of-the-line” services and a pocket-friendly price, and, at the same time, cover everything from personal blogs to large businesses.

Today, their main office is in New York, and they seem to have expanded beyond a US-centric strategy. In the past, their only data centers were in Texas and Illinois. Now they offer a choice of eight locations covering Texas, Canada, the UK, India, Singapore, Germany, Mexico, and Australia.

We first reviewed Mochahost in 2021, and a lot has changed since then. Where a visit to their site then was like a blast to the past (as in, the early 2000s), it's now caught up with the times and sports a simpler look in trendy colors.

• Want to try Mochahost? Check out the website here
• Also check out our roundup of the best WordPress hosting

Plans and pricing

Like most other hosting companies, Mochahost offers potential customers a range of plans to choose from. Unfortunately, while its website may be more up to date, its hosting plans seem to lag a bit further behind.

Mochahost's primary offerings are shared and VPS hosting, with a couple of WordPress-specific plans thrown in. There are no Cloud hosting plans nor dedicated servers available here.

Yet being somewhat entrenched in the past isn't always a bad thing, since it means Mochahost is also one of the few remaining service providers that still offers Windows web hosting in both the shared and VPS space. Because of this, Mochahost can offer relatively niche hosting solutions, such as Java Tomcat hosting.

Shared hosting

Shared hosting at Mochahost isn't cheap but comes with ample resources and cPanel access. (Image credit: Future)

Shared hosting plans at Mochahost start with the Soho plan at $3.99/mo on a 1-year term, with renewal prices on that plan hiking up to $12.99/mo. At the high end of that spectrum is Mocha, costing $9.99/mo and $20.99/mo on renewal. These prices aren't exactly low, but Mochahost is relatively generous with resources and provides cPanel access, Imunify 360 security, free SSL, free weekly backups, and free site migrations.

The problem is that several competitors are offering similar freebies and resource levels at much lower prices. For example, with just a bit less storage space, HostPapa comes at a much better price point. Personally, unless Mochahost offers stunning performance figures for its hosting plans, these prices seem a bit too high to be excellent value for money.

WordPress hosting

(Image credit: Future)

As if in retrospective shame of its high shared hosting prices, Mochahost throws $1/mo WordPress hosting plans in your face. The problem is that the dollar deal is only valid for the first month and renews at $14.99/mo (Lite) to $99.99/mo (Business).

Most of the freebies on Mochahost's WordPress plans are similar to those on its shared hosting plans. The only advantage beyond those is that if you sign up for the Starter or higher plans, you get WP Rocket included. That's about $59/year in value, which isn't enough to offset the monthly hosting charges here.

To put things in perspective, Cloudways hosting plans start at around $14/mo for cloud hosting ($11/mo if you're willing to forego their premium servers), with a custom server management dashboard. It also doesn't restrict you to a specific number of WordPress sites. At Mochahost, you'll need to be on their Pro plan or above to run more than a single site.

Windows shared hosting

(Image credit: Future)

Windows shared hosting plans at Mochahost range from $4.45/mo to $8.45/mo. We won't debate this pricing, since, as we all know, a considerable portion will go to Microsoft for its operating system license.

Resource allocation is similar to the Linux shared hosting plans we discussed earlier. You also get the comparable Windows hosting tech stack, meaning Plesk instead of cPanel, plus MS SQL/MariaDB, and all the .NETs you could want. The one point you'll want to be aware of is the relatively low memory allocation. On the cheapest Soho ASP.NET plan, all you get is 300MB.

Plus, since these are relatively niche plans (yes, it sounds a little weird to consider Windows hosting as niche, even today), you also have a narrower range of data center locations to choose from: either in Europe or the US.

VPS hosting

(Image credit: Future)

As with its shared hosting plans, VPS at Mochahost comes in both Linux and Windows variants. The same price adjustments apply, with Linux VPS plans slightly cheaper. The lowest-tier Linux VPS costs a mere $24.38/mo for a 1-year term, renewing at $48.75/mo thereafter. For that, you get 2 CPU cores, 4 GB of RAM, 80GB NVMe, and unlimited bandwidth/mo.

Impressively for the price, Mochahost also throws in cPanel (most hosting companies today charge separately for this on a VPS). For specs, the VPS plans at Mochahost seem like a relatively good deal, especially for managed plans.

There's also a lot of leeway for scalability since their top-of-the-line VPS comes with a whopping 64 CPU cores, 128GB of RAM, and 960GB NVMe storage.

Ease of use

Mochahost offers its users either Plesk of cPanel to help manage their hosting plans (Image credit: cPanel)

When creating an account with Mochahost, the first step is to select a hosting type, operating system, and a plan, and there are a whole lot of them. The next step is choosing a billing cycle, and this is where you’ll see details on the price and the plan’s key features. There, you can choose whether you want to be billed monthly, annually, biannually, or triannually.

To finalize the creation of your account (and your order), you’ll be required to provide Mochahost with some standard personal information. Then you’ll set a password, choose a preferred payment method, and complete your purchase.

The best part about Mochahost plans is that they all come with recognizable control panels, either cPanel or Plesk. These are industry-standard and help you manage your hosting server easily and quickly.

Speed and Reliability

For testing, we put the spotlight on Mochahost's Soho plan, which is the entry-level tier on its shared hosting list. We then uploaded a standard test WordPress website and ran WordPress core benchmarks and a load test to see if it holds up well under stress.

Aside from speed, it's notable that Mochahost offers separate uptime guarantees of 99.9% and 99.95% for its shared and VPS hosting services, respectively—nothing super-impressive, but just about meeting industry norms.

WordPress benchmark test (Soho)

CPU & Memory

Operations with large text data

6.82

Random binary data operations

8.38

Recursive mathematical calculations

4.71

Iterative mathematical calculations

7.18

Floating point operations

7.11

Filesystem

Filesystem write ability

3.55

Local file copy and access speed

4.79

Small file IO test

8.4

Database

Importing large amount of data to database

6.52

Simple queries on single table

8.79

Complex database queries on multiple tables

7.2

Object Cache

Persistent object cache enabled

0

Wordpress core

Shortcode processing

6.33

WordPress Hooks

8.45

WordPress option manipulation

9.06

REGEX string processing

7.95

Taxonomy benchmark

7.69

Object capability benchmark

7.89

Content filtering

3.47

JSON manipulations

7.85

Network

Network download speed test

10

Overall

Your server score

6.8

On WordPress core tests, Mochahost shared hosting did reasonably well with an overall score of 6.8 (out of ten). The scores were not dragged down in any specific area, meaning it offers a relatively well-rounded experience across CPU and memory, the filesystem, the database, and other elements.

The key takeaway here is that while these are relatively strong results, they aren't the best we've seen by far. As an example, SiteGround is a host with comparable shared hosting prices to Mochahost and scores much better in core WordPress benchmarks.

Siege test (Soho)

Concurrent users

5

9

15

Transactions

2253

3524

5503

Availability

100

100

100

Elapsed time

299.1

299.48

299.23

Data transactions

66.29

102.44

147.04

Response time

0.66

0.76

0.81

Transaction rate

7.53

11.77

18.39

Throughput

0.22

0.34

0.49

Concurrency

4.99

8.98

14.95

Successful transactions

2253

3525

5503

Failed transactions

0

0

0

Longest transaction

2.67

11.22

12.21

Shortest transaction

0.07

0.07

0.07

Mochahost also performed well under Siege, a tool we use to send an increasing user load to hosting servers. At 5, 9, and 15 concurrent users, Mochahost held its own and achieved a 100% success rate on every transaction attempted. This is pretty impressive, since most of the hosts we test start indicating some degree of failed transactions even at the 9-user mark.

One notable point, however, is that despite a 100% success rate, the longest transaction time increased from an initial 2.67 seconds at the 5-user load to 12.21 seconds at the 15-user load. This means that while all requests were processed, users on a real-world site would likely experience longer wait times as load increases.

Still, it's a fair cop overall and one that somewhat justifies Mochahost's steeper-than-typical price tags on its shared hosting plans.

Customer Support

Mochahost offers several support channels including a phone support line (Image credit: Future)

Like most web hosting companies today, Mochahost uses a chatbot as its first line of defense in customer support. From what we've seen, the chatbot scans a knowledge base and, if an answer isn't found, hands you over to a customer support representative.

We tested the process and were impressed that the handover from the chatbot to a real-live agent took just a minute. This stands in stark contrast to some hosts, where it took hours for a real human to respond to queries.

Aside from live chat, you can also get assistance by submitting a support ticket (for existing customers), or calling a phone support line.

Mochahost's knowledgebase is presented as a wiki-style site (Image credit: Future)

Aside from the support channels that allow you to talk to them, Mochohost also offers a relatively decent knowledge base. It's wiki-style and easy to navigate, but primarily covers how-to documentation. That means you can easily find out how to get things done, but you'll likely need to contact their support team if you're facing an actual problem.

The competition

HostGator is Mochahost’s fellow US-based rival, with data centers within the USA. With a full range of hosting options and features, competent support, and pricing, both can offer a bit of something to suit everyone’s needs. However, HostGator's pricing is lower even on renewal.

Bluehost and Mochahost are both suitable for newcomers and veterans alike, although neither host is without its flaws. With Mochahost’s cheapest plan, you won't get as many valuable features as with Bluehost.

Final verdict

Mochahost isn't one to promise you the moon and stars, and its plans are certainly not in the cheapest tier. However, its hosting servers perform well even under load, assuring potential customers of a firm, but a steady-performing website, so long as you don't create problems with your own designs and code.

There is a shortcoming in the lack of cloud and dedicated server plans. Yet Mochahost more than makes up for this with robust VPS offerings that go beyond the dedicated server plans offered by some hosts.

Finally, if you need Windows hosting for some reason, then Mochahost is one of the few places where you can still find these plans.

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In recent years, we've seen several hosting brands attempt to expand their services and challenge the envelope of the best web hosting services. Spaceship is the result of one such effort, with the parent company being Namecheap.

Granted, Spaceship offers a slightly more futuristic site design and interesting product names (e.g., Starlight, Hyperlift). However, even this is subjective, since one man's meat can be another's poison. Additionally, the superficial design differences don't affect the performance of the core products themselves.

In some instances, the product offerings are also identical in many ways. For example, the cloud WordPress hosting offered by Spaceship is EasyWP, which is another product that Namecheap has tried to spin off as a standalone offering.

(Image credit: Future)

• Want to try Spaceship? Check out the website here

What types of hosting does Spaceship offer? 

Spaceship offers an extensive product range that includes domain name services, web hosting, and associated services like a CDN, VPN, and domain name-based communication services. And because it's stripped out some essential services from hosting, these can also be considered other services, such as email hosting and auto backups.

Spaceship shared hosting

(Image credit: Future)

Spaceship's shared hosting plans start at $1.21/mo and top off at $2.87/mo on two-year cycles. They all begin with a 30-day free trial before any charges are due. The lowest-tier (Essential plan) comes with 20GB NVMe storage, free SSL, SiteJet AI website builder, and security services from Imunify360.

As you move up the plan tiers, storage space increases, and you also get the inclusion of AI tools that can help you write content for your site.

The kicker is that email services are free for only 30 days or one year, depending on the email plan you choose during sign-up. You'll also have to decide if you want auto-backups, which start at $11.76 for 5GB on the two-year plan. Added together, that initially low hosting price doesn't feel so low anymore.

Spaceship Cloud WordPress hosting

(Image credit: Future)

With WordPress sites driving much of the internet today, it's unsurprising that Spaceship also offers cloud-based WordPress hosting. These plans include the same 30-day free trial option as Spaceship's shared hosting plans. Thereafter, prices range from $28.88/year to $48.88/year, depending on which plan you choose.

Likewise, email services on these plans are free for a year, after which you'll have to pay separately for them, outside your hosting fees. At least you get HackGuardian for free, along with MalwareGuardian Autoclean protection on the two higher-tier WordPress plans.

Spaceship VPS hosting and App hosting

(Image credit: Future)

Spaceship offers a range of Virtual Private Server (VPS) plans called Starlight Virtual Machines. These come in three flavors: standard, CPU-optimized, and memory-optimized. The prices are also similar to Spaceship's cloud plans and are available on a monthly, quarterly, yearly, or pay-as-you-go basis.

For example, the standard VPS offers 1 CPU core, 2GB of RAM, 25GB of NVMe storage, and 1 TB of bandwidth. This is priced at either $4.90/mo, $13.88/3 months, $42.44/yr, or $0.007/hr.

You can also add on block storage of between 50GB and 500GB to these plans, of course, for an additional fee. Block storage plans cost between $30.44/year and $302.44/year, and you can attach up to 3 blocks to each virtual machine.

(Image credit: Future)

App hosting comes in the form of Starlight Hyperlift plans, which are essentially micro VMs. These allow you to connect to GitHub, then pull and build your code for deployment. It's a convenient and super-cheap way of deploying apps quickly. Hyperlift plans cost between $30.88/year and $453.88/year.

Can I build a web store with Spaceship?

Since Spaceship comes with the SiteJet AI website builder and supports WordPress, you can technically build an online store. That means you either create one from scratch or run WooCommerce.

There are no ecommerce specific features at Spaceship, so you'll have to find all your ecommerce needs elsewhere, such as payment gateways, specialized plugins, and so on. However, most of what you'll need is available with the Softaculous app installer (free at Spaceship).

If you want a dedicated ecommerce or online store, consider a service dedicated to this, such as Shopify or Squarespace. Or if you're planning to build for extreme traffic, a more scalable option like Cloudways or ScalaHosting.

How fast is Namecheap?

To measure Spaceships' performance, we uploaded our standard WordPress test site. This site sports a relatively simple design with online store functionality and a handful of products.

We then run two key tests: One to assess how well the hosting server handles WordPress in general, and the other to see whether it can withstand increasing user traffic over set periods.

WordPress benchmark test (Essential plan)

CPU & Memory

Operations with large text data

9.57

Random binary data operations

7.64

Recursive mathematical calculations

5.82

Iterative mathematical calculations

9.1

Floating point operations

6.05

Filesystem

Filesystem write ability

3.6

Local file copy and access speed

4.86

Small file IO test

8.59

Database

Importing large amount of data to database

4.03

Simple queries on single table

7.44

Complex database queries on multiple tables

5.38

Object Cache

Persistent object cache enabled

0

WordPress core

Shortcode processing

5.79

WordPress Hooks

8.29

WordPress option manipulation

8.94

REGEX string processing

0

Taxonomy benchmark

8.17

Object capability benchmark

7.63

Content filtering

3.38

JSON manipulations

7.1

Network

Network download speed test

8.72

Overall

Your server score

6.4

It's interesting (and yet unsurprising) to see that Spaceship shared hosting servers offer nearly identical performance characteristics to Namecheap servers. In core WordPress performance areas, Spaceship servers held up well under scrutiny, with results slightly above average.

Siege test (Essential plan)

Concurrent users

5

9

15

Transactions

10483

11535

12814

Availability

100

100

100

Elapsed time

299.83

299.8

299.68

Data transactions

53.43

58.8

65.34

Response time

0.14

0.23

0.35

Transaction rate

34.96

38.48

42.76

Throughput

0.18

0.2

0.22

Concurrency

4.95

8.99

14.96

Successful transactions

10484

11539

12815

Failed transactions

0

0

0

Longest transaction

5.08

5.11

5.16

Shortest transaction

0.02

0.02

0.02

The siege load testing tool we use is the more critical of the two since it best reflects how well a site hosted on Spaceship will perform in real-world scenarios. Unsurprisingly, performance here was also similar to Namecheap, with Spaceship successfully processing all transactions even at 15 concurrent users.

Even better, the longest transaction times were consistent, meaning your website users won't have to deal with overly long wait times, even when many users are on your website. While it may sound like something all web hosts should be capable of, this delicate load-balancing act isn't always present among hosting brands.

How easy is Spaceship to use?

The Hosting Manager at Spaceship allows you easy control over your web hosting plan. (Image credit: Future)

Right on its About Us page, Spaceship states that its "primary mission is to redefine speed and simplicity." This is about half right since we've already seen that Spaceship offers above-par performance. However, the usability factor is a separate ballgame altogether here.

After you've signed up for a Spaceship plan, the site attempts to take you through what it calls an "unboxing process," which initially worked well for us. However, after completing the final step, we were unceremoniously booted to the website's main page with no explanation. After that, we were on our own and had to follow the standard experimentation process. Not an altogether smooth transition.

User dashboard at Spaceship (Image credit: Future)

The user dashboard at Spaceship is also a little hard to use, especially for those new to web hosting. Sure, it looks cool (subjective), but it doesn't offer much of a different experience from cPanel. You'll still have to plod through the options one by one and figure them out on your own.

The bigger problem is that our default WordPress installation didn't work. This ended up in a chat with support, which took around 30 minutes to resolve. The strange thing was that the issue was caused by a misconfiguration in the .htaccess file, which the system itself created. Not an entirely great experience nor first impression if you're a new Spaceship user.

What is Spaceship's support like?

You can find some how-to guides in Spaceship's knowledge base. (Image credit: Future)

Spaceship offers 24/7 support via a knowledge base, live chat, and email (there's no telephone support).

The web knowledgebase is a modest collection of how-to articles organized into several categories. Sometimes, even the categories don't make much sense. For example, although Spaceship offers the SiteJet AI website builder, there is a knowledge base category that covers the Alf website builder instead. At the same time, Alf is what Spaceship calls its automated support chatbot, so you can understand our confusion.

Aside from the knowledge base, you can also choose to chat with their AI agent (and get transferred to a human) or email them for support. The process of getting in touch with them is smooth. We tried the process, and it took us just a few seconds to connect to a real support agent.

Final verdict

Spaceshop hosting plans start at pretty unbelievable prices, but you'll quickly realize that if you need all the regular features a hosting plan comes with, those low prices will soon balloon. At the same time, stripping them out offers a good deal if you don't want email or backups with your plan.

While their server performance is decent, we're concerned about the failure of their automated WordPress installation system. For new users, this can be a breaking point and lead to a disastrous first impression.

Spaceship web hosting FAQsDoes Spaceship provide free SSL?

Yes, Spaceship does offer free SSL certificates for most of its hosting products. Spaceship also protects custom-redirects with SSL for better data integrity. These features are part of an all-round security suite that helps keep you safer at Spaceship.

How secure is Spaceship?

Aside from SSL, Spaceship comes with many security features that protect everything from their servers to your apps. This includes suspicious login monitoring, passkey logins, virus and malware monitoring, strict firewall rules, and robust encryption on its email services.

Does Spaceship support ecommerce sites?

You can build an ecommerce site on Spaceship using the provided tools, such as the Softaculous app installer. However, Spaceship doesn't offer some features you'll need, such as payment processing. For that, you'll have to source a third-party provider from elsewhere.

Is Spaceship hosting reliable?

Spaceship hosting offers an impressive 99.99% uptime guarantee across all its web hosting plans. The industry standard is around 99.9% for shared hosting and 99.99% for VPS and cloud plans. However, Spaceship does not explicitly state what happens if it fails to deliver on that uptime guarantee, unlike some other providers that specify compensation tiers in the event of a breach of the service level agreement.

Spaceship hosting offers low prices and decent performance, though it has a few quirks.

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Namecheap is known as one of the best domain registrars where you can find and buy whatever dot-com or other TLD you'd like to use for your website. According to Domainstate, it handles more than 14 million domains: only GoDaddy has more.

But there's much more to Namecheap than domains. The company has steadily been increasing its range of the best web hosting products, covering everyone from bargain-hunting first-timers to demanding business users.

Recent additions include Namecheap's own content delivery network (CDN), which accelerates your website's speed for visitors worldwide. The company even offers a budget VPN to keep you safe on public Wi-Fi and let you access regional content from other countries.

• Want to try Namecheap? Check out the website here

What types of hosting does Namecheap offer? 

Namecheap's range starts with low cost and easy-to-use shared hosting, a perfect choice for first-timers and less demanding websites. There are Namecheap promo codes for bringing the cost down even more too.

Namecheap also offers EasyWP, a managed WordPress hosting option with valuable site management features and more resources delivering extra speed. If you need more power and freedom than that Namecheap' also offers VPS and dedicated hosting.

Namecheap's shared hosting plans start off incredibly cheap though they do increase in price upon renewal (Image credit: Namecheap)Namecheap shared hosting

Using a shared hosting plan means your site is hosted on a single server along with many others. That's great for value, as the server costs are shared across multiple accounts, but it can hurt speed and reliability. Sharing a server's CPU, RAM, and network connection with other sites can disrupt your services because they may experience traffic spikes that consume shared resources. There's no sign that Namecheap's shared hosting is overloaded, but it's always something you need to keep in mind when choosing a shared hosting service.

Namecheap's shared hosting range looks, well, seriously cheap, with headline prices starting at just $1.98 a month over two years ($4.88 on renewal).

A good set of core features includes a free domain, free migration, a bundled website builder, unlimited bandwidth, and at least twice-weekly backups. Softaculous is on hand to speedily install WordPress and 150+ other apps, and cPanel has all the power you'll need to manage your web space.

Even the cheapest plan supports hosting three websites, too (the others allow unlimited sites). Most providers only allow a single site on their starter shared plan.

All shared hosting plans come with 50 free SSL certificates for the first year. If you do not want to pay the $6.99/year to renew one, you still get free SSL through cPanel.

Prices before and after renewal (1 year plan)

Plan

Starting price

Renewal price

Stellar

$1.98

$4.88

Stellar Plus

$2.98

$6.88

Stellar Business

$4.98

$9.88

(Image credit: Namecheap)Namecheap WordPress hosting 

WordPress is a hugely popular website creation platform with over 40% of the world's sites using the CMS. It's easy for beginners to use, yet powerful enough to build huge business websites and leading-edge web stores.

Namecheap's EasyWP plans are more expensive than its shared hosting plans, but they offer more resources and are specifically optimized to deliver faster WordPress speeds (Namecheap says they're at least three times faster than regular WordPress on its shared hosting account).

EasyWP Starter offers 10GB of NVMe storage, a free CDN to boost performance, and support for a single site with unlimited monthly visitors. It looks cheap at $3.24 a month on the annual plan and $5.74 on renewal, though there is one catch: the SSL is free only for Namecheap domains. This is where the price can start to increase: Positive SSL for 5 years is $5.99 and renews at $6.99 per year. If you want to manage all your hosting and services in one place, Namecheap is a good option, but if you want to distribute your services across multiple providers, hosting with Namecheap might not be the best option.

The other EasyWP plans add more storage and resources. The top-of-the-range EasyWP Supersonic plan comes with the most goodies, but still offers fair value at $6.57 a month on the annual plan and $11.57 on renewal.

The plans have some weaknesses. They support creating only one website, and you don't get the same range of WordPress-oriented features as some of its top competitors offer.

If Namecheap doesn't have the power you need, consider SiteGround's WordPress hosting range. These start at $3.99/mo with relatively modest resources. However, SiteGround also offers advanced WordPress and AI-based tools for you to play with.

Namecheap's WordPress yearly plans

Plan

Starting price

Renewal price

EasyWP Starter

$3.24

$5,.74

EasyWP Turbo

$5.16

$9.57

EasyWP Supersonic

$6.57

$11.57

(Image credit: Namecheap)Namecheap VPS hosting

Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting is faster and more configurable than shared hosting. But it's also relatively expensive, and more complex to set up and manage, which means it's not an ideal choice for novice users with simple, low-traffic sites.

If you're an expert or have a more demanding website, though, it's a very different story. A good VPS can give you massive control over your server, and the power to handle hundreds of thousands of visits a month, sometimes for less than the cost of high-end shared hosting.

Namecheap's VPS hosting starts at $6.88 a month, billed annually, for a 2-core CPU, 2GB RAM, 40GB NVMe storage, and 1 TB bandwidth (renews at $9.88). While that looks cheap, keep in mind that it's an unmanaged system, which means you're left to run the server yourself (add, install, and update software, restore a failed server, and more). You don't even get a control panel.

Managed VPS is easier to use, but also more expensive. The unmanaged Quasar plan is $12.88 billed monthly for a 4-core, 6GB RAM, 120GB storage, and 3TB bandwidth system. Adding complete server management and cPanel lifts the price to $54.76 (and you can add $1.50 a month if you need Softaculous to install WordPress or anything else).

Namecheap's top-of-the-range Magnetar VPS plan is more powerful, with 8 CPU cores, 12GB RAM, 240GB storage, and 6TB bandwidth. It's $28.88 billed monthly for an unmanaged system, rising to $63.76 with the managed option.

The significant advantage of Namecheap's VPS range is its price. We often recommend Hostwinds' extensive VPS range, but what do you get for $29 a month there? Two CPU cores, 6GB RAM, and 100GB storage, a far less capable system.

The problem with Namecheap is that it offers only three VPS plans, and they're not as configurable as the best in the competition. If Namecheap's choices don't suit your needs, you'll find far more appealing deals elsewhere.

If you're on a budget, IONOS' cheapest VPS plan starts at $2 billed monthly, for instance. It's as basic as a VPS gets (1 core, 1GB RAM), but it's ideal for learning how the technology works.

At the other end of the market, InMotion Hosting's VPS hosting is crammed with features, with great support, and is primarily for more demanding business users.

Namecheap's unmanaged VPS plans after renewal

Plan

Starting price

Renewal price

Pulsar (2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB storage)

$6.88

$9.88

Quasar (2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB storage)

$12.88

$15.88

Magnetar (2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM, 40 GB storage)

$24.88

$28.88

(Image credit: Namecheap)Namecheap dedicated hosting

Opt for shared or VPS hosting and you're forced to share your web server with others. Sign for a dedicated package, though, and it's entirely yours. RAM, CPU time, the network connection, it's all reserved for your website only, so you'll never again be slowed down by what's happening with other accounts.

Namecheap used to offer only a handful of dedicated server deals, but right now there are 58. There's something for everyone, with prices starting low at under $50 billed monthly for an unmanaged 4 core, 8GB RAM system, rising to around $250 for a 16 core CPU with 128GB RAM and fast-as-it-gets 4 x 1.92TB SSD NVMe storage. All plans include free site migration and a 99.99% uptime guarantee.

As with VPS hosting, the lowest prices are for unmanaged systems (you must run the server yourself.) Choosing the Complete Management option (Namecheap maintains the server for you) with a cPanel Solo license adds around $65 to the server cost (billed monthly.) But that's still great value, especially as there's no setup fee, and you can pay significantly more elsewhere.

The main issue with Namecheap is the lack of configuration options. You can't take a base server and pay extra to add more RAM, or an extra backup drive, for instance: what you see is more or less what you'll get. There's still no Windows hosting option, and servers are only available in the Arizona data center: you can't choose the UK or Netherlands.

If you don't have any special configuration needs, and you're looking to run a high-traffic or business-critical site where speed and reliability are vital, then Namecheap's lengthy list of base servers and great value should earn it a place on your shortlist.

Also consider IONOS. It doesn't have as many server plans, but there are some very cheap managed and unmanaged deals, and other options you won't find at Namecheap (Windows hosting on some servers, storage servers with up to 48TB storage and US or Europe data centers).

Elsewhere, both A2 Hosting and InMotion Hosting have a wide range of managed and unmanaged plans, with unusually flexible billing to keep costs down (1, 3, 6 and 12 months.) And if you're looking for real power, check out Liquid Web. Its high-end servers can handle just about anything, and the company's 100% uptime and power guarantee (and excellent support) should get you an ultra-reliable service.

Bundled with shared hosting, Namecheap's no-code website builder allows you to easily create a website thanks to the inclusion of over 200 templates (Image credit: Namecheap)Does Namecheap have a website builder? 

If you don't have a website yet, and WordPress looks too complicated, a website builder could be the answer. Choose a starting design from a site gallery, then add content to a page by dragging and dropping text, images, maps, contact forms and more.

Namecheap includes a free website builder with its shared hosting packages. This has 230 templates of various types (business, blogs, food, more), and a decent selection of widgets allows you to add plenty of content to your site: image galleries, maps, forms, blogs, product listings, payment buttons, and more. It's not a bad product, especially for free, and it provides an easy alternative to WordPress for simple site creation.

Namecheap also has a paid website builder called Site Maker, which is part of the Visual suite of design tools. Answer a few questions, upload an image or two, choose a color scheme, and Visual automatically creates your site. You can then replace the default text with your own and add pre-built blocks to insert new content, such as forms and photo galleries.

Namecheap doesn't stop with the website. Bonus free tools allow you to create a logo, design business cards, and more.

This isn't the most powerful of website builders (there's no web store support, for instance), but it's enough for simple personal sites, and the price is right. Visual is $3.88 billed monthly, with a free SSL certificate, 99.99% uptime, and support for creating a single site. There's a free .contact, .design, or .xyz domain, too, though beware, .com, .net, and other top-level domains must be purchased separately.

Sign up for Namecheap's shared hostin and you'll get a copy of Softaculous (Image credit: Namecheap)Can I build a web store with Namecheap? 

Namecheap doesn't have any specialist ecommerce products, at least yet (we suspect the new Visual website builder will add something soon), but you're free to build a web store using any of the company's shared, dedicated or VPS hosting plans.

Sign up for shared hosting, for instance, and you'll get a copy of Softaculous. It's a capable platform which can help you install OpenCart, PrestaShop, WooCommerce or other ecommerce systems. Namecheap doesn't give you any special tools or store-building support to point you in the right direction, so you'll have to learn the basics yourself, but it's not too difficult (if you know your way around WordPress, you can learn WooCommerce.)

If you're looking for something simpler, try HostGator's website builder, which has the option to add a web store. Bluehost's WooCommerce plans are a good mid-range alternative that add a bunch of useful business-friendly marketing extras, and Wix offers great templates, a wealth of features, and the power to build almost anything.

How fast is Namecheap?

To test Namecheap shared hosting performance, we uploaded a pre-created WordPress website, then ran core benchmark and load tests. This enables us to see a snapshot of how the server should perform for WordPress websites and how it can cope with increasing user loads.

Reliability is also a factor in a hosting provider's performance, so, as a side note, Namecheap offers a 100% uptime guarantee for many of its hosting plans. That includes much of its shared hosting range, VPS, and Dedicated server accounts.

WordPress benchmark test (Stellar Business)

CPU & Memory

Operations with large text data

4.91

Random binary data operations

5.28

Recursive mathematical calculations

3.61

Iterative mathematical calculations

6.84

Filesystem

Filesystem write ability

3.6

Local file copy and access speed

4.85

Small file IO test

8.59

Database

Importing large amount of data to database

3.88

Simple queries on single table

7.38

Complex database queries on multiple tables

1.31

Object Cache

Persistent object cache enabled

0

Network

Network download speed test

8.25

Overall

Your server score

4.7

Unfortunately, Namecheap's shared hosting didn't do quite as well as we would have liked. The overall score is 4.7, which wasn't dragged down by any particular WordPress key performance segment, but showed overall weakness across the board.

There are several other hosts in the best cheap web hosting space to have this lacklustre performance in shared hosting. It's only unfortunate that some cheap yet high-performance solutions also exist, such as Hostinger, which scored an impressive 8.1 for its WordPress core benchmark test.

Siege test (Stellar Business)

Concurrent users

5

9

15

Transactions

1677

2903

4917

Availability

100

100

100

Elapsed time

299.15

299.02

299.78

Data transactions

72.19

129.47

216.13

Response time

0.89

0.92

0.91

Transaction rate

5.61

9.71

16.4

Throughput

0.24

0.43

0.72

Concurrency

4.99

8.97

14.97

Successful transactions

1677

2903

4917

Failed transactions

0

0

0

Longest transaction

7.25

7.16

8.95

Shortest transaction

0.63

0.63

0.63

Given the not-so-great results in core WordPress benchmarks, we weren't too hopeful about Namecheap's load test. This is where we were proven wrong, and Namecheap pulled a whopper on us.

As user loads increased, Namecheap's shared hosting server maintained a 100% successful transaction rate and a reasonably low longest transaction time of 8.95 seconds. While the overall transaction volume was middling, it does mean that Namecheap's servers are highly reliable under load.

Based on these results alone, we can definitely recommend them if you're in the market for a reasonably priced host that can run a steady WordPress website.

How easy is Namecheap to use? 

Easy to use cPanel (Image credit: Namecheap)

Namecheap's account control panel looks a little cluttered at first glance, with lists, and sidebars, and menus and icons everywhere you look. But spend just a moment exploring, and it begins to make a lot more sense.

There's a list of your domains over here, for instance, hosting panels over there, and some of these pages are hugely useful. Visit your hosting plan's Manage panel, for instance, and you'll find its disk space and bandwidth allowance; server hostname, IP address and data center; cPanel Launch button and shortcuts; usage stats, auto-renewal settings, a Cancel button and more.

That's a huge improvement on many providers, where key settings and options are scattered around, and you can spend an age trying to find the features and details you need.

You'll probably spend more time managing your website rather than your hosting plan, of course, but Namecheap scores here, too. While IONOS, iPage and some other hosts try to cut corners by providing their own custom management tools, Namecheap uses industry standards such as Softaculous to install and manage WordPress, and cPanel to set up your domains, emails and just about everything else.

This is good news, for a couple of reasons. First, it's a guarantee of quality (that's how these tools got to be industry standards.) But mostly, it makes life easier for everyone. If you've ever used cPanel or Softaculous before, you'll feel at home here immediately. And even if you haven't, the time you spend learning the cPanel basics won't be wasted. If you move from Namecheap in a few years, there's a good chance your next provider will also use cPanel, and you'll already know how to do all your most important hosting tasks.

What is Namecheap's support like? 

You can find how-to videos, guides and more in Namecheap's help center (Image credit: Namecheap)

Namecheap has 24/7 support via its website, live chat and ticket (there's no telephone support).

The web knowledgebase is a vast collection of articles organized into common hosting categories: email, SSL certificates, domains, EasyWP (Namecheap's WordPress range), and more.

Choosing a section like WordPress displays articles in subsections: Getting Started (Dashboard Overview, How to create a website etc.), WordPress migration, plugins and themes (How to install a new theme), database access, domains and more.

It's both hugely comprehensive, and also surprisingly easy to use. Just scrolling down the WordPress category page reveals articles that many users will want to read: 'What's the different between managed WordPress hosting and shared hosting?', 'How to access your WordPress dashboard?', 'How to improve WordPress website security', and many more. This isn't just a place for troubleshooting specific issues; it's somewhere we might happily visit just to learn about a product.

Sometimes you need to solve an immediate problem, of course, and that's where live chat comes in. This worked well for us: chat was always available, the longest we waited for a conversation to begin was around three minutes, and the agents did a good job of identifying our issues, and clearly explaining what to do next.

Our test ticket left us waiting for a little longer, but we still had a reply in around 90 minutes. It was helpful, summarizing everything we needed to know in a single paragraph, and providing a link if we needed to know more.

The lack of any phone option might be an issue for some, but overall Namecheap's support worked well for us, especially considering the (very low) prices you're paying. If this is a key priority for you, check out the support site for yourself; you don't have to be a customer to view it, and just browsing the categories and articles will give you a good idea of how the service could work for you.

Final verdict

Namecheap’s hosting doesn’t quite have the power or features you’ll see with the best of the competition. Still, it could be a wise value choice for first-timers with relatively basic sites, or businesses that can make good use of its more powerful dedicated hosting range.

While the plans we tested didn't offer blazing-fast speeds, we did note that they're steady workhorses that can pull along just fine even at somewhat heavy loads. Combined with their "all-in" services, Namecheap is as good as it gets if you want decent hosting and everything else in one service provider.

Namecheap web hosting FAQsWhat payment types does Namecheap support?

Namecheap accepts payments via card, PayPal and Bitcoin.

(Image credit: Namecheap)Does Namecheap offer refunds?

Namecheap's refund policy is far more complicated than most providers, with all kinds of special clauses and exceptions. Scala Hosting describes its money-back guarantee in under 140 words; Hostwinds, under 180; Namecheap needs more than 1,500.

If we summarize that, as a general rule, Namecheap offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for most shared and VPS hosting packages, and 7 days for dedicated hosting. Add-on products and services mostly aren't covered, with a few exceptions (some domain name renewals are refundable if you make a request within five days of purchase, for instance).

Although we'd prefer a policy that's a little simpler to follow, Namecheap's 30 day refund period is standard for the industry. If you need more, HostGator offers 45 days, InMotion Hosting an exceptional 90 days on many plans.

Does Namecheap have an uptime guarantee?

Namecheap has a 99.9% uptime guarantee for its VPS and reseller accounts, and, unusually, a 100% uptime guarantee for its other shared and dedicated hosting plans.

For every hour of unscheduled maintenance or downtime you experience in a month, Namecheap will offer you a day for free, up to a maximum of one month's free hosting.

This isn't quite as good as it sounds. Other providers typically have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which translates to an acceptable downtime of 43.83 minutes a month. Although Namecheap specifies a 100% uptime guarantee, it won't begin to pay out until your site has been down for a total of one hour: the company is allowing itself more downtime, not less.

Despite that, Namecheap's deal is still better than we see with many providers. GoDaddy has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, for instance, but if it doesn't meet that, you can only receive a maximum 5% credit for your monthly fee.

Where are Namecheap's data centers?

Web hosts run and maintain their servers in buildings called data centers. A good web host should have plenty of web hosts around the world, and allow you to choose which one will host your site. If your audience is in California, say, selecting a US data center will get you much better performance than something in Australia.

Namecheap has data centers in the USA, UK and Netherlands. There's a catch in an unusual extra $1 a month for choosing the UK or Netherlands locations for some plans (look carefully in the shopping cart when you pick a data center, to be sure you're not caught out.) But if you can live with the price, that should deliver good results for both North American and European customers.

Namecheap's locations aren't much help if you're in Asia, though, and some providers have a more global reach. For example, GoDaddy has data centers in North America, India, Singapore and Europe.

What is my Namecheap IP address?

It's sometimes useful to know the IP address of the server hosting your website. For example, this can help you point a domain you've registered elsewhere to point at your Namecheap web space. Whatever the reason you need the IP, it only takes a moment to locate. Here's what to do.

Log into your Namecheap control panel (ap.www.namecheap.com).

Click 'Hosting List' in the left-hand sidebar.

Find your plan in the Hosting Subscription list, and click its 'GO TO CPANEL' button on the right-hand side.

Look at the General Information box on the right-hand side. Your server IP is listed as the 'Shared IP Address'.

(If you don't see a General Information, find and click the Server Information link).

What are Namecheap's nameservers?

If you have a Namecheap shared hosting package (Stellar, Stellar Plus or Stellar Business), you must use the nameservers dns1.namecheaphosting.com and dns2.namecheaphosting.com.

With other plans, check Namecheap's 'How to connect a domain to a server or hosting’ support document for more information.

(Image credit: Namecheap)How do I cancel a Namecheap product?

Log into your Namecheap control panel (ap.www.namecheap.com).

Click 'Hosting List' on the left-hand side.

If you'd like a plan to expire when its subscription ends, click Auto-Renew to turn it off.

To cancel a plan right now, click the arrow to the right of the 'GO TO CPANEL' link and click Manage.

Click Cancel Service to open the cancellation page and complete its various steps. Be sure to read everything carefully, because there are important details here. You may be told if you can (or can't) get a refund, for instance, and if there's anything else you need to do to cancel the account.

Where can I find my Namecheap support PIN?

Contact Namecheap support with any account-related question and the agent will ask for a support PIN, a secret number which verifies that you're the real account owner.

If you can't remember your PIN, log into the Namecheap account panel (ap.www.namecheap.com), then hover your mouse over (or just click) your account name top-left of the screen. The Security page appears, and your support PIN is listed on the left, in the Access section.

Alternatively, to access the Security page directly, click Profile, Security in the left-hand sidebar.