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Namecheap web hosting review
10:54 pm | October 11, 2021

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: | Comments: Off

Namecheap is best known as a popular domain registrar, where you find and buy whatever dot-com or other name you'd like to use for your website. According to Domainstate, it handles more than 12 million domains: only GoDaddy has more.

But there's much more to Namecheap than domains. The company has a wide range of web hosting products, covering everyone from bargain-hunting first-timers to demanding business users. 

Recent additions include Namecheap's own CDN (content delivery network), a technology which accelerates your website speeds for visitors all around the world. The company even has a budget VPN to keep you safe on public Wi-Fi, and allow you to access regional content from other countries.

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.

WordPress hosting comes optimized for WordPress, adding valuable site management features and delivering extra speed. 

VPS and dedicated hosting gives you maximum performance. It's also more complex to manage, and normally a lot more expensive, making these a better choice for business users. But Namecheap does have some low-priced options which make the technology available to everyone (more on that below).

Next, we'll look at each type of hosting in turn, and find out more about what they offer, and which hosting type is best for various common uses.

Namecheap shared hosting homepage

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

Namecheap shared hosting

Opting for a shared hosting plan means your site will be hosted on a single server along with many others. That's great for speed, as the server costs are shared across multiple accounts. It hurts speed, because you're also sharing the server's CPU, RAM and network connection, but decent shared hosting plans can still often manage tens of thousands of visits a month.

Namecheap's shared hosting range looks, well, seriously cheap, with headline prices starting at just $1.88 a month over two years ($4.48 on renewal). 

A good set of core features includes a free domain, free migration, a bundled website builder, unlimited bandwidth and a minimum of 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.

The main catch is SSL only comes free for the first year with all the shared plans. After that, it's a chargeable extra. This isn't expensive at $5.99 a year ($6.99 on renewal), but it does mean Namecheap's shared hosting isn't quite as cheap as it looks. 

If that's a concern, consider Hostinger and HostGator. Both have starter prices under $3 a month, also with some compromises, but SSL comes free forever.

Namecheap WordPress hosting

(Image credit: Namecheap)

Namecheap WordPress hosting 

WordPress is a hugely popular website creation platform, easy for beginners to use, yet powerful enough to build huge business websites and leading-edge web stores.

As we've discussed above, you can explore WordPress hosting with Namecheap's shared account. If you're building a very simple website, you're looking for a bargain, or you'd just like to learn the WordPress basics and find out what it could do, the shared hosting route makes a lot of sense.

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

EasyWP Starter has 10GB storage, a free CDN (Content Delivery Network) to boost performance, and supports a single site with up to 50K visitors a month. It looks cheap at $2.08 a month on the annual plan, $2.91 on renewal, although there is one catch: there's no SSL, which adds at least $0.50 a month with Namecheap's most basic certificate.

The other EasyWP plans include SSL for the lifetime of the plan (not just the first year), and add more storage and resources. The top-of-the-range EasyWP Supersonic plan can manage a mammoth 500K visitors a month, but it's still good value at $4.57 a month on the annual plan, $9.07 on renewal.

The EasyWP range could be a smart choice for WordPress newcomers with simple websites and not much cash to spend. Even the monthly billing option is great value. Sign up with EasyWP Starter, the first month is free, and you'll pay only $4.88 a month after that. That's three months to learn WordPress and test the service, all for under $10.

The plans have some weaknesses, too. They support creating only one website, and you don't get the same range of WordPress-oriented features that we see with the best competition.

If Namecheap doesn't have the power you need, take a look at A2 Hosting's Managed WordPress range. The JUMP plan is more expensive ($22.99 on the annual plan), but gets you 250GB of fast NVMe storage, free SSL, premium backups, and support for five WordPress sites, a far more capable choice for advanced users.

Elsewhere, business WordPress users should check out Bluehost's WP Pro range, which adds marketing and SEO tools to the managed WordPress hosting mix. And if you're after the maximum hardware power, InMotion Hosting has WordPress products for VPS and dedicated servers.

Namecheap VPS hosting homepage

(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 huge 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 CPU core, 2GB RAM, 40GB storage and 1TB bandwidth system. 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 $15.88 billed monthly for a 4 core, 6GB RAM, 120GB storage and 3TB bandwidth system. Adding full server management and cPanel lifts the price to $50.76 (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 major 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 it only has three VPS plans, and they're not as configurable as the best of 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' basic VPS starts at $2 billed monthly, for instance. It's as basic as a VPS gets (1 core, 512MB RAM), but ideal as a cheap way to learn how the technology works.

At the other end of the market, Liquid Web's VPS hosting is crammed with features, with great support, and is mostly for demanding business users.

If you just need maximum choice, check out Hostwinds. It has both cheaper and more powerful plans than Namecheap, they're more configurable, and every VPS is available in Linux and Windows flavors. That's what we call comprehensive.

Namecheap dedicated hosting homepage

(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 44, more than many competitors. 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.

Namecheap website builder is bundled with shared hosting plan

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, products listings, payment buttons and more. It's not a bad product, especially for free, and provides an easy alternative to WordPress for simple site-creating tasks.

Namecheap also has a paid website builder called Visual. 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.

HostGator's Gator website builder and Hostinger's Zyro have more features, and support adding a web store. They're cheap in the first term, too (Zyro is priced from $2.99 a month), although the best deals require long-term contracts, and the prices jump on renewal.

Namecheap cPanel

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 Gator or Hostinger's Zyro website builders. Both make it easy to create a site, and have the option to add a web store. Bluehost's WooCommerce plans are a good mid-range alternative which add a bunch of useful business-friendly marketing extras, and Wix has great templates, piles of features, and the power to build almost anything.

Namecheap uptime score

(Image credit: Uptime)

How fast is Namecheap?

We measure a hosting provider's performance by signing up for a shared hosting account, installing a simple WordPress site, then putting it through a series of intensive tests.

First, we have monitoring service Uptime.com attempt to access our site every five minutes, logging the results and how long the server takes to respond each time. Namecheap scored a perfect 100% uptime, and its average response time was an acceptable 0.436 seconds (that's a very mid-range 8th fastest in our last 15 tests).

Namecheap's GTMetrix score

We used GTmetrix to test the uptime and response time of Namecheap's main site (Image credit: GTMetrix)

Next, we use GTmetrix to access a sample page and calculate how long it takes for the main content to load, a figure technically known as Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP. The lower the LCP, the faster your pages are likely to appear in the browser, and the happier your visitors should be.

Namecheap's LCP was a little slower than average at 0.789 seconds, ranking the company 11th in our last 15 reviews (most providers score around 0.6 to 0.8 seconds.) That's a little disappointing, but it's still an acceptable time, and way ahead of some of the budget competition (the last placed iPage scored 1.6 seconds).

One-off load times are important, but it's also important to know how a site copes when it's really busy. We used the stress-testing site k6 to unleash 20 simultaneous visitors on our test site and watch what happens.

Namecheap's results were a little below average, with the site handling an average 12 requests per second and a peak of 16.33. (Most providers averaged 14-16 requests per second and peaked at around 20.)

Our tests suggest Namecheap delivers at best lower mid-range shared hosting performance. But although it's trailing the speed leaders, Namecheap's times would be perfectly acceptable for many sites, and there's more than enough power here for many personal and small business sites.

(Keep in mind that our figures and comparisons only relate to shared hosting plans. If you're shopping for VPS, dedicated or other plans, you may see entirely different results.)

Namecheap web control panel

Easy to use cPanel (Image credit: Namecheap)

How easy is Namecheap to use? 

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.

Help Center

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

What is Namecheap's support like? 

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, but it could be a smart value choice for first-timers with relatively basic sites, or businesses who can make good use of its more powerful dedicated hosting range. 


Namecheap web hosting FAQs

What payment types does Namecheap support?

Namecheap accepts payments via card, PayPal and Bitcoin.

Namecheap refund homepage screenshot

(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. 

Namecheap cancel account page

(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.

GoDaddy review
12:37 am | September 5, 2020

Author: admin | Category: Computers Gadgets | Tags: | Comments: Off

GoDaddy is a giant Utah-based domain registrar and web hosting provider.

The company excels in the domain world, where (according to Domainstate) it manages more than 63 million domains. To put that in perspective, not only does that put GoDaddy at number one in the domain registrar top ten, it's also more than the next nine providers have registered put together.

Measuring hosting success is more difficult, but Datanyze gives GoDaddy another first place, with around a 14% share of the hosting market (that's ahead of AWS, IONOS, Google Cloud and HostGator). 

What hosting plans does GoDaddy offer? 

GoDaddy offers a wider-than-average range of plans, covering shared, VPS and dedicated hosting, a capable website builder, managed WordPress, and managed WooCommerce for building powerful web stores.

There's a vast catalog of supporting products, too, including SSL certificates, malware scanning, DDoS and firewall protection, a speed boosting CDN, business email hosting and more.

That's a lot to consider, but we'll explore some of the main hosting types here.

Shared hosting 

There are four shared Linux hosting plans, ranging from $5.99 to $19.99 a month on the three-year plan ($8.99 to $24.99 on renewal). The starter Economy plan supports one site, a free domain, 100GB storage and unlimited bandwidth. Paying to upgrade gets you support for unlimited bandwidth and storage, along with increased processing power and speed. All plans include one-click install for WordPress and other apps via Installatron (not quite as capable as Softaculous, but better than most.)

Unusually, there's also a Windows shared hosting range. Specs and prices are similar, with plans running from $5.99 to $12.99 a month over three years ($8.99 to $16.99 on renewal). Most hosts have no Windows option, or charge a premium, so GoDaddy's plans are a major plus.

Advantages of GoDaddy's shared hosting include fast SSD storage for extra speed. Every plan comes with backups (though beware, the cheapest allows you to restore the previous day only). A choice of data centers allows your site to be hosted in North America, India, Singapore and Europe. And when it's up and running, you can manage your site with the industry-standard cPanel, a major plus. 

Valuable extras include at least 2 Microsoft 365 mailboxes, free for a year. Plan lengths are more flexible than just about anyone else in the business, with the option to sign up for 1, 3, 6, 12, 24, 36, 60 or even 120 months.

The major disadvantage of GoDaddy's shared hosting is that there's no free SSL with the cheapest two plans. GoDaddy's SSL certificates start at $69.99 a year on the two-year plan ($99.99 on renewal), too, a chunky addition to the bill.

You may be able to avoid that by choosing another GoDaddy plan (see WordPress hosting, below.) But if you're only looking for shared hosting, there's plenty of money to be saved elsewhere. Hostinger's Premium Shared Hosting includes free SSL and is priced from only $2.99 a month in year one ($6.99 on renewal), less than the cost of GoDaddy's SSL certificate alone. GreenGeeks and iPage offer similar value.

GoDaddy's plans are capable, though, with valuable speedup technologies, easy management via cPanel, and a very unusual plus in the Windows hosting option. If you can live with the cost, the high-end plans may be worth a look.

GoDaddy WordPress hosting homepage

GoDaddy's website is plain but supremely easy to use (Image credit: GoDaddy)

WordPress hosting

Although GoDaddy's shared hosting range makes it easy to install and use WordPress, the company's managed WordPress range adds several useful features (and a huge plus at the end of this list) for minimal extra cost.

An automated migration tool imports your existing WordPress site with a click, for instance. This should cover most people, although complex sites with a host of plugins may need a little work.

If you're starting from scratch, the plans include thousands of themes, pre-built sites and a drag-and-drop editor. We browsed the themes, and although very few stood out, chances are you'll find several that suit your needs.

Practical benefits include automatic updates for WordPress, plugins, extensions and PHP versions, maximizing performance and ensuring you always have the latest security patches.

A comprehensive backup system saves your website every day, keeps each version for a month, and you can restore any backup with a click. That's a significant improvement on the cheapest shared hosting plan, which only keeps a single backup from the previous day.

The major advantage of GoDaddy's managed WordPress plans, though, is they include a free SSL certificate for as long as you keep your plan. That saves at least $69.99 a year compared to the cheapest shared hosting plans, yet the plans are only a little more expensive at $6.99 a month on the three-year plan ($9.99 a year on renewal.)

There are a couple of potential catches. Managed WordPress plans start with just 30GB storage, compared to 100GB for the baseline shared plan. And while shared hosting plans offer unlimited bandwidth, the cheapest managed WordPress plan is recommended for 'up to 25K monthly visitors', and GoDaddy will recommend an upgrade if you need more. 

Still, 30GB and 800+ visits a day is plenty for many personal and small business sites. If you're looking to host a WordPress website, GoDaddy's managed WordPress plans look much better value than its shared range.

Budget alternatives start with Hostinger's shared range, where you can create multiple WordPress sites, with basic managed WordPress tools, from $2.99 a month over four years ($6.99 on renewal). It's less polished than GoDaddy, but gives you loads of features, and could be a cheap way to learn more about WordPress.

Bluehost is a little more expensive than GoDaddy, but has a wider range of plans, including support for some very professional features (video compression). Some plans also include specialist WordPress support, where you'll get general advice on design and functionality, as well as solving problems. 

Liquid Web's managed WordPress has a higher price tag (even the starter plan is $15.83 a month on the annual plan), but it's super-fast and reliable, with some of the best support around, and could be a great choice for demanding, high-traffic sites. (There's a 14-day free trial available, too.)

VPS hosting 

GoDaddy's VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting plans deliver better performance and far more configuration options than shared hosting, but can also be more complicated to set up and use.

VPS prices start at only $4.99 a month on the three-year plan. Sounds cheap, but that's for a very basic setup: just 1 CPU core, 1GB RAM and 20GB storage, although you do get unlimited bandwidth and automated weekly backups.

There are effectively eight plans, and most support both Linux and Windows. The top range plan gives you 8 CPU cores, 32GB RAM and 400GB storage for $99.99 a month over three years. 

These prices are for unmanaged VPS, which means you're left to handle server and software updates, detect and solve crashes, and otherwise keep your system running smoothly. Even control panels are an expensive optional extra ($16 a month for cPanel or Plesk.)

If that sounds too much, you can pay for GoDaddy to manage the VPS for you. That bumps up the price by a chunky $95 a month, but it could be worth it if you're running a business-critical site. Opt for managed VPS and GoDaddy looks out for some hosting issues and fixes them itself, for instance: choose unmanaged, and that's left up to you.

GoDaddy's VPS plans stand out for offering unlimited bandwidth on even the cheapest plans. Windows support is a welcome plus, and the choice of data centers in North America, Europe and Asia could be a real performance advantage if your target audience is in a specific country.

The problem is there are competitors who do this better. At the budget end of the market, IONOS 4 core 8GB RAM VPS is only $2 a month for the first six months, $25 a month afterwards, a fraction of GoDaddy's price. And if you're looking for full management, Liquid Web has top-quality support, and is priced from $40 a month over two years ($106 on renewal) for a two core, 2 RAM setup. Choosing a GoDaddy VPS may still make sense if you already have some GoDaddy hosting products, but most people are likely to be better off elsewhere.

Dedicated hosting 

Choosing one of GoDaddy's dedicated plans gets you a full server all to yourself, for the maximum possible performance and configurability. But it's also relatively expensive, as there's no-one else sharing the cost. And just as with VPS hosting, dedicated servers take experience to set up and run yourself, so you might want to spend even more money on a managed plan and leave the support team to do this for you.

GoDaddy offers only four base servers, ranging from 4 to 16 cores, and 32GB to 256GB RAM. They're available with at least 2 x 4 TB HDD drives for capacity, or 2 x 500GB for speed, running Linux or Windows, and in unmanaged and managed flavors.

Prices are reasonable at $129.99 a month over two years for an unmanaged server, rising to $529.98 for a top-of-the-range managed model. All plans offer unlimited bandwidth, unusual in the dedicated server world.

GoDaddy's dedicated range stands out for its decent hardware specs. IONOS looks cheaper, for instance, with prices starting at $45 a month for the first six months, then $65. But that's because it has 8GB RAM, a less powerful CPU and a single 240GB SSD, against 32GB RAM and 2 x 500GB SSDs with even GoDaddy's most basic plan.

The problem is GoDaddy doesn't give you much choice over the hardware you'll actually get. If you like its specs, great; but if you're looking for a bargain and can live with a more basic setup, or you need something far more powerful, you're out of luck.

GoDaddy also sells its '99.9% server uptime' guarantee as though it's a major selling point, but we'd question that. That's a common figure for shared hosting, but Liquid Web offers 100% network and power uptime SLAs.

GoDaddy may still work for you if its default servers suit your needs, but shop around before you decide. Hostwinds has twelve dedicated server plans, all very configurable, giving you plenty of choice. Liquid Web has even more, and although it doesn't offer cheap unmanaged servers, its managed dedicated server plans can be better value than GoDaddy's range.

GoDaddy website builder template

(Image credit: GoDaddy)

Does GoDaddy have a website builder? 

GoDaddy has a capable website builder which makes it easy to build a good-looking, feature-packed online home, from $9.99 a month on the annual plan ($11.99 on renewal). It's more focused on businesses than personal users (even the most basic plan has social media marketing features and payment support), but could work for anyone.

There are plenty of templates covering all kinds of site and business types. A 'filter' system instantly tweaks layouts, fonts and colors to find the best fit for you, then you can start adding your own content (using the built-in image library, if you don't have any images of your own).

Template sites can be extended with a wide range of sections, pre-built blocks covering various types of content: blogs or newsletters, image galleries, contact forms, image galleries, embedded video and audio, downloadable file links, and more.

GoDaddy's high-end website builder plans include e-commerce tools, including an online store, PayPal support, gift cards and various product-promoting options. Custom restaurant sections include a menu and price list and reservation system, and there's a more general Appointments option which allows customers to book services, classes, events or whatever else you might be offering.

This is a powerful range of products, especially for users looking to create their first business site. No need to take our or GoDaddy's word for it: you can build a website for free, with premium features available for the first seven days, plenty of time to find out if it works for you.

Alternatively, Bluehost's website builder has a similar set of features, but a big introductory discount means the most basic plan starts at just $2.95 a month ($10.99 on renewal).

GoDaddy online store homepage screenshot

(Image credit: GoDaddy)

Can I build a web store with GoDaddy? 

GoDaddy offers several ways to help you build and run a web store.

GoDaddy's Website Builder, as we discussed above, is the simplest choice for first timers. Hundreds of mobile-friendly templates ensure you'll have a good-looking site right away. You can add sections like image galleries or price lists with ease, click and drag to reorganize them, then add whatever content you need.

You can try out the service for free, to get an idea of how your site might look. If you're happy, the Ecommerce plan ($16.99 a month on the annual plan, $24.99 on renewal) allows you to create product listings; create special discounts and promotions; take payments via card, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and use various shipping options to get your products delivered.

Unusually, there's even optional hardware to take payments in-store or on-the-go. Buy GoDaddy's card reader for $49, plug it into your smartphone, and you can start taking cash right away.

Experienced users might prefer GoDaddy's WooCommerce plans. These WordPress-powered solutions come with premium WooCommerce extensions to add all kinds of useful extras, covering everything from store layout and inventory management, to extra checkout and payment features, and marketing tools to keep your customers coming back.

WooCommerce isn't as straightforward to use as GoDaddy's Website Builder, but it's more capable, and prices are very similar at $20.99 a month on the annual plan, $24.99 on renewal.

If you don't need a web store right now, but might be interested in the future, another option is to buy a standard shared hosting account and use GoDaddy's auto-installer to set up WooCommerce for you. Although this won't get you any of GoDaddy's WooCommerce extensions, it'll give you time to explore WooCommerce and get a feel for how it works (and the shared hosting plans are cheaper, too).

There's plenty of choice here, but it's worth considering other providers. Bluehost also offers Website Builder and feature packed WooCommerce plans, for instance. Its high-end plans are a little more expensive, but it also gives you more choice, including a starter Business plan which supports unlimited products and costs only $9.95 a month on the annual plan ($14.99 on renewal.)

Creating a website

GoDaddy offers an uptime guarantee of 99.9% on shared hosting and most other products. That's not quite as good as it sounds, and could still allow for 40+ minutes of down time a month. 

Most providers quote the same figure for shared hosting, although a few go further with their high-end products; IONOS quotes 99.99% uptime for its VPS hosting, while Liquid Web has 100% network uptime and power guarantees. 

GoDaddy's uptime performance results

We used Uptime.com, Domain-tools' website speed tests and Bitcatcha to measure the performance of our GoDaddy site (Image credit: Uptime)

We use Uptime.com to monitor a test WordPress-based website during our hosting reviews. GoDaddy's results were a little disappointing, with five brief outages (41 minutes in total) giving an uptime of 99.11%. We can't come to any definite conclusions on this yet, because our testing time was short, and what really matters is how GoDaddy performs over the long term. But Uptime.com's monitoring will continue, and we'll update this review when we have more information.

GoDaddy's server response time was reasonable, starting at an average 520ms from our test sites. That's fractionally slower than Bluehost (433ms) and HostGator (388ms), but it's within the range we'd expect, and far better than budget providers such as iPage (1200ms) and Domain.com (1230ms).

GoDaddy's GTmetrix results

GoDaddy's GTmetrix results (Image credit: GTmetrix)

We also use GTmetrix to load our test site and calculate its Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), a measure of how long it takes to load the main content of a page. Even if the load process hasn't finished, LCP is still an important figure; the lower it is, the faster your site will feel, and the happier your visitors are likely to be.

GoDaddy's LCP for our test site was acceptable at 667ms. As with server response times, it's a little slower than competitors including Hostinger (607ms), Bluehost (603ms) and HostGator (551ms.) But it also outperformed the likes of Hostwinds (774ms), Namecheap (789ms), IONOS (1300ms) and iPage (1600ms), and overall, GoDaddy was within the range we’d expect for a decent shared hosting account.

GoDaddy cPanel

Installatron enables installing WordPress and hundreds of other apps (Image credit: GoDaddy )

How easy is GoDaddy to use? 

While many hosting providers dump new users into a complicated control panel and leave them to figure out what happens next, GoDaddy makes a real effort to point you in the right direction.

For example, our shared hosting control panel opened with a startup wizard to help us through our next steps: building a website from scratch, migrating an existing website or uploading website files.

We chose the Build option, and the wizard prompted us for our domain name and preferred data center should serve the site (North America, India, Singapore or Europe), then created a WordPress account, installed WordPress, and even displayed the DNS records we should add to domains managed elsewhere (that last step can be ignored if you’re buying your domain from GoDaddy).

This is an excellent startup tool which covers a lot of tasks, and should make the setup process far easier for many users.

Once the site is running, GoDaddy’s custom control panel makes it generally easy to manage. Choose a plan from your product list, and you can check your site’s files, databases and backups with a click, while an Action Center offers generally useful advice.

GoDaddy provides Installatron to automatically install WordPress and many other apps. We marginally prefer Softaculous for its features and wider app support, but Installatron is a reliable platform which does everything most users are likely to need.

It’s good to see cPanel is on hand for day-to-day site management tasks. If you’ve used several hosting providers then chances are you’ll already know your way around cPanel. If you’re new, there’s a lot of power here, but common tasks such as setting up emails are simple and straightforward.

GoDaddy help center

(Image credit: GoDaddy)

What is GoDaddy's support like? 

GoDaddy offers 24/7 support via live chat, telephone, a support website and online community (a simple web forum).

There's no ticket support, unfortunately. That's unlikely to be an issue if you've a simple product question, or just need to know how to perform a specific task. But if you've an ongoing issue, you may have to explain it every time you connect support.

The website has a lot of useful content, and a search engine makes it straightforward to find what you need. We tried the keyword DNS, for instance, and it immediately listed the articles most likely to help: What is DNS, Change nameservers for my domains, Manage DNS records and more.

Live chat and telephone support isn't always as speedy as we'd like. We tried a live chat session, and although an agent appeared very quickly, there were lengthy gaps between his replies. It took around seven minutes for him to accept the account support PIN and be ready to answer our question, for instance.

Once we were able to talk, though, the agents did a decent job of identifying our issues, and providing clear and accurate answers.

Final verdict

GoDaddy has a wide choice of products and decent phone and email support, but you may have to spend a lot on plans and add-ons to get the features you need.


GoDaddy FAQs

Does GoDaddy offer refunds?

GoDaddy's standard refund terms give you a 30-day money-back guarantee for many hosting plans of one year and longer, but there are lots of potential complications.

If you've opted for a subscription of less than a year, the refund period drops to only 48 hours.

GoDaddy is more generous with domains. Many hosts offer no refunds on domain purchases at all, but GoDaddy offers a five-day refund period on new registrations, and at least five days on auto-renewals.

Beware: a few products have no refunds at all (cloud servers, some hosting add-ons, domain transfers).

There may be special rules depending on your location. Brazilian customers get a seven-day refund period on all products. UK and EU customers are able to cancel within 14 days of signing up, allowing them to beat the 48-hour limit, but GoDaddy reserves the right to charge for any services provided (so you may not get all your cash back).

We've given you an outline of GoDaddy's refund rules, but if the details are important to you, check out GoDaddy's full Refund Policy for the big picture. 

Where are GoDaddy's data centers?

GoDaddy has data centers in North America, India, Singapore and Europe.

Sign up for a GoDaddy plan and you're able to choose which data center to host your site. 

Choose the location nearest your target audience and any website data has less distance to travel, improving website speeds.

GoDaddy custom control panel

(Image credit: GoDaddy)

What is my GoDaddy IP address?

There are some situations when it's useful to know your GoDaddy server's IP address. If you're using the web hosting plan with a domain managed somewhere else, for instance, you'll probably need to create a DNS 'A record' which connects your domain to your GoDaddy web space.

To find your IP address, log into GoDaddy's account dashboard and choose My Products (account.godaddy.com/products).

Find your web hosting plan, and click Manage.

Click 'cPanel Admin' to launch cPanel.

Your GoDaddy IP address is displayed as 'Shared IP Address' in the General Information panel on the right-hand side. (If you don't see a General Information panel, look for a Server Information link).

What are GoDaddy's nameservers?

You can find the nameservers assigned to your domain in GoDaddy's control panel.

Sign into the GoDaddy Domain Control Center and select your domain.

Select Manage DNS to view the domain's DNS records.

Find the NS (nameserver) records in the list, and make a note of the nameservers displayed in the Data column.

How do I cancel a GoDaddy product?

Log into your GoDaddy account, and click My Account, Manage My Products (or go to account.godaddy.com/products).

Choose the product you no longer need, and click Manage.

Click Account Actions, and choose Cancel from the drop-down list.

Click Cancel Renewal, and GoDaddy will cancel the product at the end of its term, without charging you again.

Canceling a product alone won't automatically get you a refund. If you think you qualify - you're canceling within 30 days of purchasing a one year or longer hosting plan, for instance - then contact support via live chat or telephone to see if you can get your money back.

How can I find my GoDaddy support PIN?

Contact GoDaddy support and the agent will ask for the PIN you chose when creating your account, to verify you're the account owner.

If you don't remember the PIN, you can access it from the GoDaddy account control panel (account.godaddy.com). Just click your first name, displayed at the top right of the screen, then View PIN. You can also edit the PIN from the same screen.

Review: iStorage diskAshur DT
7:02 pm | May 13, 2012

Author: admin | Category: Computers | Tags: , , | Comments: None

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