Imagine paying dozens or even hundreds of dollars for your website’s hosting only to have pages that take an eternity to load, unreliable uptime, and data corruption. This is one of the potential outcomes that could occur if you select an unsuitable web hosting service. Read this article if you’re having trouble deciding between Hostinger and Namecheap as your web hosting provider.
A comparison of the web hosting services provided by Namecheap and Hostinger, including key features such as performance, pricing, advantages and disadvantages, and more – to assist you in making a decision prior to signing up with either of these web hosting services.
Namecheap is a company based in Phoenix, Arizona that provides comprehensive solutions to expand your company’s presence online. The company specialises in domain name sales and web hosting services. Some of the features that are included are unmetered bandwidth, a free website builder, protection for your domain name and privacy, free automatic SSL installation, and a guarantee that you will receive your money back within the first thirty days. There are still a great many more.
Many people choose Hostinger because of how dependable their platform is when it comes time to launch their websites. They offer shared hosting packages that are suitable for both newcomers and companies that have been around for some time. Their prices are competitive, and the value packages they offer come with a wealth of extras.
Hostinger vs Namecheap
It should go without saying that you want your web hosting service to shine in the areas that are considered to be the most important. On the other hand, the additional features that it provides on top of the fundamentals might be the factor that determines whether or not it is the ideal solution for your requirements. When your service provider is able to find solutions to problems that are unique to your company and website, this is of even greater value. You will find that Namecheap and Hostinger are both able to assist you in a wide variety of different ways throughout your experience with them.
Highlights from Hostinger
In spite of the fact that Hostinger didn’t make its debut on the market until 2011, the company has roots that go all the way back to 2004. Hostinger was initially a small web hosting company with its headquarters in Kaunas, Lithuania, however, the company has since expanded to launch multiple different web hosting brands.
Through the use of this experience, they were able to develop the tools and the knowledge that they now use at Hostinger.com. They have over 24 million customers and over 15,000 new sign-ups each and every day, making them one of the web hosting companies that is expanding at the fastest rate.
Since its inception more than 15 years ago as a free web hosting service, Hostinger has come a long way since its beginnings. It is currently considered to be one of the best web hosting providers on the market, as it provides website owners with reasonably priced plans, high-quality hosting, and other benefits.
Highlights from Namecheap
Maintaining a functional website at all times is crucial to the success of any online business, and owners should make every effort to do so. Because we eliminated the possibility of it happening, there won’t be any problems with dependability at all. Namecheap ensures that your website will be accessible at all times as part of their service guarantee. Namecheap offers a guarantee in which the customer is entitled to a complete refund in the event that their website experiences any downtime at any point during the billing cycle.
If you already have a website, you might be hesitant to move it to Namecheap due to the potential complications that could arise as a result of the move. Namecheap is a website hosting service. Namecheap, on the other hand, will help you make the switch from the hosting provider you are currently utilising to one that is more suitable for your needs. As a further benefit, you won’t have to worry about incurring any additional costs as a direct result of making the adjustment.
Namecheap is one of the few companies that can offer a basic plan at a low cost without compromising the quantity or quality of the services it offers. As a consequence of this, it is a choice that is appealing for companies that have a limited budget for their websites because it enables these companies to maintain the level of service that they currently provide. You can also take advantage of the 30-day money-back guarantee that Namecheap provides, which means that there is no financial risk involved in giving it a try. You can find more information about this guarantee on the Namecheap website. This guarantee will remain in effect so long as you maintain an active status for your account.
Pros and cons of Hostinger vs Namecheap
We dug deep into Namecheap and Hostinger to show you exactly what each web hosting platform has to offer. Let’s compare their strengths and weaknesses so you can decide which one is a better fit for your company.
Pros of Hostinger
- Price: When you sign up for a plan with Hostinger, not only do you get blazing fast site speeds, but those plans also come at some of the most affordable price points available.
Shared hosting starts at $1.99 per month for a single site, with plans that support multiple sites or allocate more resources starting at $2.99 per month. WordPress and VPS hosting aren’t much more expensive, either, with monthly fees starting at $1.99 and $3.49, respectively.
Furthermore, Hostinger recently reduced the price of its Business tier, which now starts at $3.99 per month. This is an impressive price for a tier that can handle up to 100,000 visits per month on up to 100 websites. (The 100,000 visits are not a limit; rather, they are an estimate of the number of visitors your hosted site will be able to support successfully each month.)
When you consider that you get access to a lot of websites and a lot of storage at most price points with Hostinger, the value becomes even better.
For example, WordPress hosting includes up to 100 websites and up to 100 GB of SSD storage at the most popular pricing tier, which starts at only $2.79 per month. That’s impressive.
Keep in mind that these attractive rates require a 48-month upfront commitment. If you aren’t ready to commit to four years right away, this can be a problem. On the other hand, it means you can lock in that low rate for a long time. And, because it’s such a low monthly rate, you’re only looking at a payment of $96 for 48 months of shared or WordPress hosting.
If you don’t want to commit to four years right away, Hostinger has generously extended its best pricing for the Premium Shared Hosting plan to one-year commitments as well. That means you can get Hostinger’s most popular shared hosting package for a full year for just $41.88 today, which includes a free custom domain. (Hostinger also makes choosing a domain name easier.)
With that in mind, the following positives should put your mind at ease about committing to Hostinger and the value you’re receiving.
- Easy to use: One of the key features of Hostinger that helped it rank so high on our list is its ease of use, especially when it comes to getting everything set up. The hosting service’s clean interface, guided setup, and user-friendly dashboard make it simple for beginners; you don’t need to take a class to use it. Despite its simplicity, Hostinger does not skimp on powerful tools and dependable servers. For example, Hostinger offers its Auto Installer feature as part of hPanel. This installer greatly simplifies the process of installing apps for use with your accounts, allowing you to take advantage of the apps’ features more quickly. The ease of use continues after you’ve finished signing up for your hosting plan and into the actual site building process. You will be guided through each step to quickly and easily set up your fully functional website using Hostinger’s wizard.
- Moneyback guarantee: Not happy with your Hostinger purchase? No worries. You have 30 days to try it out and get your money back if your experience is not all you were hoping for. However, keep in mind that redemption fees, domain name renewals, and privacy protection are the only things that are not covered by the 30-day money-back guarantee, so keep that in mind.
Otherwise, within 30 days of purchase, hosting, domain transfers, and SSL certificates are all refundable.
- Website load time: It goes without saying that the loading time of your website is critical. If a visitor arrives at your website and has to wait for things to load, they will leave. Indeed, many people are unwilling to wait more than a few seconds for a website to load. That is why we appreciate Hostinger’s fast hosting speeds. We’re not just going on what they say on their website; we’ve tested them for shared hosting, VPS hosting, and WordPress hosting.
The use of LiteSpeed web servers is the key to Hostinger’s impressive speed (LSWS). Hostinger can use LiteSpeed to deploy its hPanel custom hosting panel. This combination outperforms the more traditional use of Apache web servers and the OpenResty hosting panel in terms of speed and performance. Furthermore, LSWS employs a cache to store copies of your web pages, allowing visitors to load everything more quickly.
Hostinger also operates data centres in North America, South America, Europe, the United Kingdom, India, and Asia.
- Free domain: You’ll need a domain to go with your hosting, and while you can get your domain and hosting from different companies, it’s easier to do everything in one place. It’s even better if you can obtain the domain for free. Those who choose any of Hostinger’s web hosting plans above the single-site tier have this option.
- Free website builder: With Hostinger’s acquisition of Zyro, you now have free access to one of the best website builders. Hostinger’s integration of Zyro’s simple builder into the Hostinger platform makes it ideal for quickly creating a company website, but it can also be used to create a fully functional online store. Begin with one of over 100 templates or drag-and-drop your way to a beautiful web home from the ground up. In any case, Hostinger provides a free site builder that does not limit your customization options.
Areas of Hostinger need to be improved(Cons):
- Missing features on entry level plans: While not for everyone, there are some useful features missing from Hostinger’s entry-level plans that we’ve seen on comparable plans from competitors. The most notable example is their WordPress hosting, which on the two cheapest plans does not include a content delivery network (CDN) or automatic daily backups.
- No phone support: Sometimes you need to talk to a real person on the phone to get help with a problem, and Hostinger does not provide that service. The only way to contact customer service is through a live chat, though it is convenient to have the chat available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Furthermore, Hostinger provides a number of tutorials, blog posts, and knowledge base articles to assist you with specific aspects of using Hostinger.
There’s also a Hostinger Academy, which is a YouTube tutorial series that you might find useful.However, as beneficial as these items are, they are not the same as a phone call to walk you through things when you are frustrated.
- Uptime on shared and WordPress hosting plans: The two sides of the web hosting quality coin are speed and uptime. Unlike speed, which refers to how quickly your pages load for visitors, uptime is a measure of server dependability. Hosting servers can go down for a variety of reasons, ranging from planned maintenance to unanticipated errors. Hostinger’s lower-octane plans haven’t fared well in comparison to their competitors. We’ve seen a lot of downtime with their shared hosting and WordPress hosting, in the range of one to two hours per month. That’s nearly a full day per year when your website is unavailable to visitors.
Fortunately, when we tested their burlier hosting offerings, we saw significant improvements. When we tested Hostinger’s VPS hosting in late 2021, it had only 17 seconds of total downtime.
Pros of Namecheap
- Simple to use: Depending on whether you need to transfer your website from an existing host, Namecheap makes it easier to start a website from scratch or move it from one host to another. It is completely free to transfer your website from another host to Namecheap. When you want to launch a new website, you can find a variety of help documents and tutorials that will walk you through the steps of creating your first website. Namecheap also offers a number of different templates. You will have a professional-looking website in almost no time, and you will be able to modify it as your needs change in the future.
- Versatile hosting plans: Namecheap’s more affordable plan options are built on shared hosting. However, if you want to look into other options for hosting your website, NameCheap has you covered there as well. As a Namecheap customer, you can select from WordPress hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting.
- Price: Because there is so much competition among web hosting companies, pricing is becoming increasingly competitive, which is great news for you as a customer. Namecheap, on the other hand, has a particularly appealing pricing structure. Even the most basic package from the company includes a surprising number of features, giving it an advantage over its competitors. Furthermore, while there is a price increase after the initial period, it is not as significant as the price increase offered by its competitors. This is one area where Namecheap outperforms its competitor.
- History: In a market that appears to be oversaturated with website hosting providers, it is not always easy to sign up with a company that has a long track record of success. Namecheap is a domain registrar that has been in business for over twenty years, making it one of the most established companies in this industry. Along the way, it added a number of other features and services. You can rely on Namecheap’s reliability and stability as a web hosting provider because it has more than 11 million domain names registered in its customers’ names.
Areas of Namecheap need to be improved(Cons):
- Customer support: If you use Namecheap and run into a simple problem, you should be able to find the solution in the service’s help documentation or through a chatbot session. Customer service responsiveness at Namecheap, on the other hand, will decrease as the difficulty of your problems increases. Namecheap does not offer telephone support to customers. Namecheap may be unable to assist you in finding a solution to a difficult problem in a timely manner.
- Security: While Namecheap has some desirable security features, it falls short in a few critical areas. Namecheap offers free SSL certificates that visitors to your website can use to validate its legitimacy. You will be responsible for carrying out these tasks on your own, which may be difficult for beginners. However, it does not scan your server or website for malicious software or viruses.
- Simple website building tools: Namecheap excels at providing customers with basic features at an affordable price, but the company struggles to meet the needs of customers who require more advanced services. This is especially noticeable when it comes to building your website, as Namecheap only provides a simple app and pre-made templates to assist you. Namecheap falls short if you require a website with more advanced capabilities than its standard offering.
Bottom Line
Hostinger is the clear winner here! It provides Live Chat, a Ticket System, and Email Support. Based on the data we gathered, Hostinger has a higher rating, indicating that it is a better match than Namecheap hosting. We hope you now have a clear understanding of Hostinger International’s and NameCheap’s hosting specifications, pricing, ease of use, and support service. Both hosting companies have advantages and disadvantages, and the decision is entirely dependent on your specific needs, budget, and so on.