Do you want to choose the perfect hosting for your website? If yes then this review of Bluehost Vs Namecheap can help you.
We are going to compare both features and prices provided by both the hosting providers side by side for a similar type of plan. We are going to share the speed of the website on both the providers and the experience.
Bluehost vs Namecheap
Bluehost and Namecheap both are widely used by designers and bloggers they are well-established companies when it comes to domain and hosting providers.
However, Bluehost has been around before Namecheap started providing hosting services. Bluehost has provided hosting for many years, where Namecheap used to focus on domain providing but recently they started focusing on creating the best hosting services tools and slowly improved the range of the packages in comparison to the Bluehost.
Both Bluehost and Namecheap provide shared hosting plans to users which is the basic requirement for beginners to start with WordPress. It is the most reliable source for most of the users that why plans are really compatible with the CMS.
Bluehost Feature
Bluehost provides both shared and managed WordPress hosting Plus they provide VPS server and cloud hosting as well. Below are some features you will get if you go for the shared hosting plan of Bluehost.
Most beginners usually go with shared hosting which is the easiest and the most economical way to get your website on the internet.
- Websites: Unlimited Websites (Excluding Basic Plan).
- Storage: Unlimited Storage.
- Domain: Free Domain For 1 year.
- Certificate: Free SSL Certificate.
- Free CDN Included.
- Free office 365 for 30 days.
- Easy to do WordPress Staging Sites.
- Automatic backups for 1 year.
- Domain privacy (Won’t let the world see the private address details that you entered with the domain).
The above option is provided by Bluehost if you select the shared package of the hosting. There are Four plans provided, basic, Plus, choice Plus and Pro. The most useful plan is the choice Plus which provides a sufficient tool for the seamless functioning of the WordPress site but you can also try the other packages as well.
NameCheap Feature
Namecheap also has both shared and managed WordPress hosting plans for the users you can choose anyone. In shared hosting, there are three plans Stellar, Stellar Plus, and Stellar business. Below we have mentioned the specs of the shared hosting plan.
- Unmetered SSD (Storage for website data).
- Unlimited Websites (Contain up to 3 websites in Stellar plan).
- AutoBackup (Excluding the Stellar plan).
- Domain Name.
- Free CDN.
- Unmetered bandwidth.
- Free website builder.
- Domain privacy protection (To keep the information of the domain owner public).
- Free automatic SSL installation.
- 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Website Migration (Free migration for First Year).
However, if you want to have some extra features with specific tools for WordPress you can check out managed WordPress hosting service EasyWP provided by Namecheap especially for what’s WordPress users.
#1. Bluehost vs Namecheap: Features
As we compared providers we found that Bluehost certainly offers more storage than but Namecheap also has some useful tools that come along with the service.
Bluehost shared a basic plan offer 1 website with 50 GB SSD storage and a free domain for 1 year with 5 email account, while NameCheap Stellar plan which is the cheapest plan provides you 3 website with 20 GB SSD storage and 30 email account.
Namecheap also offers things like spam expert with their all shared hosting plans and the free migration tool service for the first year.
In the below table, you will find side by side comparison of the features of the two service providers.
NameCheap | Bluehost | ||||||||
Websites | 3 website | 1 website | |||||||
Free Domain |
Yes | Yes | |||||||
SSL Certificate | Yes | Yes | |||||||
Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | |||||||
Disk | 20GB | 50 GB | |||||||
Automatic Backup |
Yes | Yes | |||||||
cPanel | Yes | Yes | |||||||
Email Account | 30 Email Acc. | 5 Email Acc. | |||||||
CDN | Yes | Yes | |||||||
Free Migration | Yes | No |
#2. Bluehost vs Namecheap: Users Experience
As we discussed the features provided by Bluehost and NameCheap, now let discuss the User experience one can expect after signing up for these providers.
Bluehost Experience
Bluehost has a user-friendly interface that built-in cPanel for seamless access. With the WordPress shared hosting plan Bluehost will automatically provide installed WordPress which makes our process easier.
After the WordPress installation Bluehost will provide you with the options to set the site much faster and efficiently.
Below are the options that Bluehost will provide you in order to set up the site:
- You can immediately create blog posts and pages.
- You can manage the menu from the navigation menu option.
- Directly install the woo-commerce plugin.
- Activate cookies and caching.
Bluehost also provide a market place to buy themes and plugin. When a user using a Bluehost hosting service they can install a WordPress website seamlessly easy and quick which is perfect for beginners.
Namecheap Experience
As we scrolling down in the Namecheap dashboard we found a very user-friendly dashboard where users can easily locate and navigate through the options, the user interface is completely different in comparison to Bluehost.
In the main dashboard, you can view and manage your account plus you have your domains and hosting plans within your menus.
However Namecheap does not provide you with the installed WordPress unlike Bluehost, so you need to set up uninstall the WordPress software through the Softaculouse App Installer in the cPanel.
However Softaculose app installer is very simple to install but sometimes beginners get confused in the installation that’s why Bluehost provides automatic WordPress installation which is very good for beginners.
As you move forward with the installation of WordPress it starts the wizard with the W3 total cache plugin in order to improve the speed of the website but the Bluehost does not provide any side of startup wizard.
One of the most important beginner-friendly features which are in Namecheap offers the free website migration service for the first year so suppose if you have an existing website hosted on some different web host, Namecheap will move the website to their server without any service charge this particular service is not offered or provided by Bluehost web hosting.
As we conclude both the service provider in terms of User experience we would say that as a beginner you will have more benefits and a friendly experience with Bluehost. Namecheap also provides a good experience but Bluehost been around for a very long time and their service strength is strong in comparison to Namecheap.
#3. Bluehost vs Namecheap: Speed Uptime
The speed up time at the performance of the website will matter the growth in the earning of the user. The performance and the fast loading time are really essential for the success of a website.
Therefore we have the stats from both Bluehost and Namecheap to provide you with an idea of what you can have from these providers in terms of speed and uptime.
These are the stats by using Pingdom which is a popular speed testing tool for websites.
Washington D.C: 2.85s | |||
London: 3.54s | |||
Sydney: 3.31s | |||
Tokyo: 2.12s |
Bluehost
New York: 1.0s | |||
San Jose, CA: 595ms | |||
Melbourne: 2.98s |
Namecheap
As you can see from the stats we can all agree that Namecheap is faster than the speed of Bluehost.
#4. Bluehost vs Namecheap: Price Plans
Most of the users that are starting as a beginner want some affordable options from the service providers.
Although both Bluehost and Namecheap offer an affordable range of plans with good features they also have some slight differences in their price plan which suits different uses according to their need.
As you can see in the screenshot Bluehost cheapest shared hosting basic plan starting from $2.95/mo. And this price is only available when you sign up for 36 months, which in total gets up to $106.20. After the 36-month plan expires the plan will review at the rate of$ 7.99/month.
Namecheap’s basic plan which is the Stellar plan starts at the rate of $1.58/mo at the yearly plan, Which for one year gets up to the total of $18.44. After the 1-year plan gets expires it will renew at the rate of $2.88/month.
Also, Namecheap provides its user with the option to pay month to month. So if you don’t want to pay the full upfront cost then Namecheap will be the perfect option for you.
If the user wants to buy hosting both the service provider offers almost similar terms in terms of pricing although Namecheap provides flexible payment method as well as the lower cost of their uh beginners plan which is really affordable for beginners.
Both the service provider provide a money-back guarantee of up to 30 days keeping this in mind you can always refund your money if you decided that the service is not worth your money.
#5. Security
Both the server provides you with the free SSL certificate and their server also secured with DDoS protection. Bluehost does provide security features on the top of their basic plan but those features come with a more expensive plan cause this feature comes as a paid add-on.
Features like:
- Domain privacy protection protects the identity of the domain against any sort of Identity theft or brute force attack.
- A feature like Sitelock prevents the website from malware injection.
- Codeguard creates daily backups of the website, case something goes wrong.
- And some spam protection.
Namecheap does provide all the security features with its standard plans. A feature like an account security feature that provides custom security notifications password recovery is and dynamic pin numbers which protect your account from brute force attempts of password unlocking to access your account.
Namecheap also provides the domain lock system which is almost similar to the feature of Bluehost domain privacy which essentially protects the identity of the domain, Namecheap also provides two-factor authentication to secure the accounts.
Bluehost vs Namecheap: Which One Is The Best Provider?
Go With Bluehost If:
Go with Bluehost if you are a beginner or you want a user-friendly and very intuitive dashboard where you can navigate through options easily with already installed WordPress so you can just start right away without hassle and start putting out product or content.
Bluehost also provides the best-unlimited bandwidth with storage as well as unlimited websites and domains, it comes with the Perfect Combination sources. Although, you need to choose the plan from plus or choice plus packages.
Go With Namecheap if:
Go with Namecheap if you want affordable hosting packages with sufficient tools to get started and the ability to pay monthly at a small cost. So suppose if you’re looking for a low cost and full stack of features and you don’t want to pay a large upfront cost then the Namecheap is the wise option for you.
Namecheap also comes with a 100% of uptime guarantee as advertised with the free migration service for the first year, there are two of the most important features when selecting the hosting provider that you will not find with Bluehost anytime soon.
Namecheap also has a faster speed compared to Bluehost so it’s really good for the growth of the website and a good sign for search engine indexing.