Can’t decide between Namecheap VS Siteground for your next web project? Let me save you some agony… Namecheap lost my website after a server was hacked, they cost the same as Siteground as far as pricing goes, and Namecheap was one of the slowest hosting companies I have ever used.While they might be great for domain names, their web hosting flat out sucks… and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone, nor will I ever use them again myself. Sure you could say I am biased, but I’ve used over 32 web hosting companies over the last 8 years, hosted over 2,200 domains, and have a lot of experience with tons of shared hosts. Siteground is the only one that doesn’t get slow even on shared hosting, and a lot of that is due to their built in caching (Supercacher) that you normally have to know how to setup yourself. Not to mention they now have a true one click wordpress install at checkout… meaning when you signup up, you check a box and wordpress is automatically configured for you. (no one click auto installer bullshit, no fantastico, no softaculus, etc..)

Namecheap VS Siteground: Which Is Better For The Money?

Summary: Siteground Is 10X Faster (for the exact same price)

Not to mention, my horrible experience with Namecheap web hosting… losing my website, my server got hacked, there was no backup even though backups are included, and yada yada… Long story short, I will never use Namecheap again for web hosting, and have even stopped using them for domain name because Namesilo is so good.

There is no shortage of Web Hosts out there for anyone looking to publish their website or blog. However, not all web hosts and web-hosting are created equal. Some web hosts are more suited for basic websites with minimal traffic and are, therefore, highly simple and affordable. Other web hosts are more suited to hosting sites that experience a high number of daily visitors, which means they provide more advanced and powerful hosting, which again translates into higher costs. When it comes to the types of web-hosting itself, there are various types such as managed WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated server hosting, shared hosting and VPS hosting, to name a few, and customers can have a really hard time picking out the right type of hosting. Once that’s done, the challenge is picking out a web-hosting service that provides the best performance when it comes to your choice of hosting!

Just to give it a little context, let’s take a minute to quickly discuss what to look for in a good web host, so that you get the best value and performance, save money and also don’t have to depend completely on third parties to fulfill your website needs:

• Look for a host that gives you the features you need. Some hosts have great plans but may lack in performance on the whole as a web host, and vice-versa. Thus, don’t rely on price alone; look for other features such as good customer support, industry experience, and user-friendly technology.

• Many companies offer a lot of “unlimited” things: unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage, unlimited emails and so on. However, these offers are sure to almost always have a catch or accompanying terms and conditions, so read the fine print! Many shared accounts claim to be unlimited but are actually limited and can limit things such as your CPU resources, site backup speed and I/O speed.

• Generally, low prices on WordPress websites means slow performance, which means your website takes a beating when Google decides to increase its weightage in their search engine’s algorithm!
• If you’re running a site that experiences high traffic or manage multiple sites, try to opt for a private server instead of shared servers. Though they may cost a lot more, they’re faster and more secure than using shared hosting.
• If shared hosting is what you’re after, choose an established site that offers good plans at reasonable prices, such as SiteGround or Namecheap.

Keeping these points in mind, we’ve picked out two great web hosts to review today: Namecheap and SiteGround. However, every battle must have a winner and so it goes with these web hosts as well. Read on to find out which web host emerges the victor in this war of the web hosts!

Meet the Contenders!

Based in Bulgaria, SiteGround, founded in 2004, is an industry leader when it comes to web hosting, having hosted over 800,000 domains since its inception. SiteGround provides various types of hosting plans for shared, cloud, dedicated and WordPress hosting at highly reasonable rates; their shared hosting plans start at $3.95 per month!

The company is known for its great uptime and speed; not surprising considering that they have data centers in 5 locations around the world! The best part of the web host, though, is that it’s impressive enough to please the experts while also being user-friendly enough to thrill the amateurs, with excellent customer support available at all times.

Namecheap, on the other hand, is an ICANN-accredited registrar that provides services related to the registration of domain names, the sale of domain names and web hosting services. Based in Arizona and founded in 2000, Namecheap is believed to manage more than 7 million domain names for its 3-million-large customer base. In fact, Namecheap was also voted the best domain name registrar in November 2010 by a poll in “Lifehacker”, as well as the most popular domain name registrar in September 2012.

SiteGround vs Namecheap: Hosting Plans

Both web hosts offer a variety of differently-priced plans for different types of hosting, such as shared, VPS and dedicated hosting. Despite the variety of plans they offer, both web hosts are well-known for their shared hosting.

SiteGround’s shared hosting plans are popular for their amazing prices, as the first shared hosting plan (the StartUp plan) starts at a really great price of $3.95 per month. This plan offers users one website with 10 GB of web space and a capacity of 10,000 monthly visits. The GrowBig plan is priced at $5.95 per month for multiple websites, 20 GB of web space, and 25,000 monthly visits. This plan includes all the essential as well as most of the premium features the web host offers. The last shared hosting plan, the GoGeek plan, is priced at $11.95 per month for multiple websites, 30 GB of web space and 100,000 monthly visits, with all the essential, premium, as well as advanced features. These plans cater to a variety of audience, as beginners can start with the StartUp plan and easily upgrade moving forward when their site gains more popularity and traffic.

Namecheap, on the other hand, offers users 4 different plans to choose from: the Value plan (at $9.88 per month), the Professional plan (at $19.88 per month), the Ultimate plan (at $29.88 per month), and the Business SSD plan (at $19.88 per month). The Value plan gives you unmetered bandwidth, 20 GB of disk space, and the power to host 3 websites. The Professional and Ultimate plans give you unmetered bandwidth, 50 GB and unmetered disk space respectively, as well as the ability to power 10 and 50 websites respectively. The Business SSD plan only offers 5000 GB of bandwidth and 20 GB of disk space but hosts an unlimited number of websites.

One of the biggest differences in terms of the plans between SiteGround and Namecheap is that where SiteGround only hosts 1 website in its starting plan, Namecheap hosts 3. Namecheap also offers more storage and has 1 more plan to offer to users, than SiteGround. However, SiteGround’s prices are hard to beat not just for Namecheap but for other competitors as well. Additionally, SiteGround’s prices are for a plan term of 3 years, whereas Namecheap offers plans at their current rates annually.

Lastly, signing up with SiteGround means you get a free domain name that lasts you for life, whereas with Namecheap, you’ll have to pay $10.69 a year for a domain name.

SiteGround vs Namecheap: Features

SiteGround offers the following features:

• Levels 1-3 of SuperCacher
• HTTP/2 enabled servers for fast loading
• Free CDN to increase site speed
• Full SSD storage
• A customized server setup
• Unlimited MySQL databases
• Free drag-and-drop builder
• LXC-based stability
• Security in the form of anti-hack systems

Namecheap offers the following features:

• A standard cPanel
• SSD-accelerated disk space
• CloudFlare CDN
• FTP Users
• Standard security through virus scanners and spam protection tools

We take a few of the standard features and compare both web hosts:

• Backups: SiteGround performs daily backups whereas Namecheap performs backups every few days.

• Free Site Migration: Both web hosts offer free site migration.
• Money-back Guarantee: SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee whereas Namecheap offers only a 14-day money-back guarantee.

• Unlimited Features: Namecheap offers unlimited data transfer, as well as unlimited data storage and emails as part of its Ultimate plan. SiteGround offers unlimited data transfer and emails but not unlimited data storage.
• Uptime Guarantee: Both web hosts offer an uptime guarantee of 99.99%.
• SSD Storage: Both web hosts offer SSD storage.
• cPanels: Both web hosts use cPanels for easy hosting.

Additionally, SiteGround offers features such as the CloudFlare content delivery network (CDN), and free backups and private SSL certificates for a year (except with the StartUp plan). Namecheap offers SEO tools, which don’t seem like much in comparison with SiteGround. However, it offers more storage and hosts more websites than SiteGround’s plans.

SiteGround vs Namecheap: Customer Service

Though both hosts offer great customer support, SiteGround offers support through live chat, ticketing systems, email and telephone, whereas Namecheap only offers support through the first 3 media. At a time when so many web hosts exist, good customer service can really set apart a web host from its competitors.

SiteGround nails it with its customer support, with a well-informed and well-educated staff, especially with regard to their WordPress hosting (they hire WordPress experts for the same). Their support is available 24/7 and the fact that they offer phone support makes it easier to contact them in the case of an emergency, as sometimes, live chat, tickets and emails can result in waiting time (even though it may be only 10 minutes or less, though the company claims immediate response time). Oh, and did we mention that SiteGround over-staffs shifts? This should be a good indicator of just how devoted these guys are to resolving customers’ issues and their preparedness to face worst-case scenarios.

Namecheap, on the other hand, also offers pretty decent customer support, but we really miss the fact that they don’t have phone support; a factor whose importance we’ve just explained to you! And that’s why when it comes to customer support, SiteGround gets our vote. Not only do they have extensive resources that are easier to use, they offer more support options and the fact that they have over-staffed help desks has us helplessly won over!

SiteGround vs Namecheap: Speed

Both web hosts have different data centers around the world, due to which their speed varies based on the location. Thus, we compare the speed of both web hosts based on a series of factors that affect overall speed and performance.

• Desktop Speed: This test is based on how long it takes for a website hosted by a particular host to completely load using the internet browser on your desktop. SiteGround offers a desktop speed of 1.4 seconds, as compared to Namecheap’s 1.7 seconds.

• Uptime: Like we already mentioned earlier, both web hosts offer an uptime guarantee of 99.99%. Of the two hosts, Namecheap experienced more downtime than SiteGround, though the downtime was of short duration. Through 6 months of testing, SiteGround experienced a downtime of only 16 minutes.
• Server Response Time: Namecheap’s server response time is around 560 milliseconds, compared to SiteGround’s 300 milliseconds.

Based on these factors, it’s evident that SiteGround gets the nod here.

SiteGround vs Namecheap: Easier Setup

Namecheap offers Softaculous, a third-party setup wizard, for easier installation of different CMS and web applications, such as WordPress. SiteGround, on the other hand, has their own custom-built WordPress installer, as well as Softaculous, to give users more setup options. They also offer a step-by-step guide to a manual installation of WordPress.

The Bottom Line

Sometimes, you’re faced with a situation where you’ll probably have to pick between the plain chocolate cake and the chocolate cake with the delicious icing. Though plain old chocolate cake is as delicious as any other food, icing is hard to ignore! The point we’re trying to make is that though Namecheap offers some pretty good web-hosting services, SiteGround’s great! Though Namecheap is great for domain names, its web-hosting is pretty average, prone to slowness, hacking and even cases of lost websites due to the lack of daily backups. Namecheap may offer some cheap plans for shared hosting but nothing that SiteGround cannot beat.

To put things into perspective, here’s a list of the cons associated with using Namecheap:

• Namecheap places several caps on its plans, which in itself is not so bad. However, these caps often overlap and ultimately, can trigger the need for upgrades. For example, SiteGround places a cap on the number of websites per plan, whereas with Namecheap, a cap is placed on the number of sites, the number of images and videos on your site and even the amount of disk space.
• A slow server response time which leads to slow backing up, downloading and storage of site data.
• No phone support is offered, due to which it is hard to contact the company in case of emergencies, as opposed to SiteGround.
• Namecheap doesn’t specialize in hosting; it is a domain registrar, which is also its primary focus.
• Short time period for its money-back guarantee.
• Overpriced upgrades, such as $24 a year for dedicated IP addresses, where most companies charge only $2 or include it in their plans.

Additionally, SiteGround offers excellent customer support, speedy servers and easy-to-use features; all factors that Namecheap cannot hope to beat currently. However, all things considered, Namecheap is still one of the good web hosts out there, but when SiteGround comes into the picture, SiteGround takes the victory.

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