Are you wondering who is better between BlueHost and Namecheap?
Then, you just need a comprehensive head-to-head BlueHost vs Namecheap comparison like this that will surely help you decide the one which is best for you.
If you are in this league, then you must know that it’s easy to fall for predatory marketing tactics and go for the wrong web host, and then having week-long remorse.
That is why you need perfect guidance and here it is!
We have spent hours and hours researching and evaluating each and every aspect of it to help you out. The comparison includes several categories from features and pricing structure to performance and support, enabling you to reach a best decision regarding them.
So, let’s get started!
If you don’t wish to read the detailed version and directly want to reach a conclusion, then go through this short summary section below.
Comparison (Quick Glance)
1. Features
Winner: BlueHost. It offers several phenomenal features making it a better option when it comes to features. While it offers greater resources, Namecheap offers more freebies and even considering the pricing structure of Namecheap, its features are good too.
2. Uptime
Winner: BlueHost. Bluehost provides better uptime and also beyond average whereas uptime of Namecheap is below average.
Speed
Winner: Namecheap. It defeats BlueHost in this battle as its speed almost lies within the ideal loading speed whereas the speed of Bluehost is comparatively slower.
3. Pricing
Winner: Namecheap. Its pricing structure is too cheap and offers greater value of money while Bluehost’s offers an affordable pricing structure considering the features it provides. Its domain pricing along with the features is also simply stunning.
4. Hosting options
Winner: BlueHost. It comes with a plethora of options to choose from offering better scalability and flexibility. But both of them do not offer Cloud hosting options.
5. Customer Support:
Winner: BlueHost. It provides excellent support and leaves NameCheap behind in this. It has better support agents, response time, and they are quick to resolve your problems.
6. User Interface
Winner: BlueHost. Both of them provide simple and well-organized UI, but on the basis of better user experience, BlueHost takes the lead here.
1. Features
Namecheap is primarily known for its domain registration but additionally, it even offers to host plans. It provides a very simple domain registrar experience as within minutes you can find and purchase a domain.
It even provides free-lifetime domain privacy while also providing Whois protection by WhoisGuard to keep your information private which is not offered for free by the majority of domain registrars.
On the other hand, BlueHost’s main source of income is web hosting but aside from that it even offers domain registration. For Domain privacy you will have to pay while in some high-tier plans it’s for free.
Pricing is never all that matters. If you just buy the cheapest option without checking out its features, then you might regret it as it may lack many essential features.
Both of the web hosts offer unmetered bandwidth, a free domain name for 1-year when you sign up for their plans, and also get SFTP access in order to keep your data secure. Likewise, you will also get MySQL databases, a free SSL certificate, DDoS protection, and unlimited data transfer on the majority of the plans.
They even provide you with the option of installing more applications and content management systems which include one-click installation of WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and much more.
Namecheap offers spam experts and free CDN with some of its WordPress hosting options whereas BlueHost offers free Cloudflare CDN for all its plans along with spam experts add-on.
Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee only on web hosting costs whereas Namecheap offers it for 14 to 30 days from the day of subscription for which they do not refund money for add-ons. Their refunding process is relatively slower as well.
BlueHost grants additional eCommerce plugins, multiple CMS integrations, and even one-click installation of WordPress. It creates backups that you download and restore but if you want an on-demand backup or any other extra backup features then you will have to purchase an add-on.
Unlike in Namecheap, you can also have SEO tools but they’re for around $2 a month.
In addition to that, Namecheap provides easy WordPress plugins that are aimed at increasing your site’s performance and boosting its speed. You can also backup your whole site with just one click and even download site files to your local machine.
Unlike Bluehost, it even grants free migration of sites which is something worth noting.
In nutshell, if you want better features and resources you should go for BlueHost.
2. Uptime
It determines the amount of time your site is available for users. Of course, you won’t want your users to be unable to find your site as, if prolonged, it could bring disastrous consequences.
When searching for a web host, you must look for the one having an average uptime of 99.95% or higher.
BlueHost:
When we carried out several tests on BlueHost to determine its authentic uptime, we found it to be an average of 99.96%. They do not offer an uptime guarantee so no compensation even if their uptime drops far below.
NameCheap:
Namecheap guarantees a 100% uptime but the reality is that they just made a bold claim without actually proving it. We ran similar tests on NameCheap and its uptime appeared to be at an average of 99.92%.
This is neither too near to 100%, nor crosses our good average uptime mark.
BlueHost on the other hand provides a good uptime.
Speed
When the topic of speed comes, you should know that here, every second counts. A second delay could result in losing a large proportion of potential customers leading to a loss in revenue and trust of users as well.
BlueHost:
To test its speed, we ran several tests on GTmetrix, Pingdom, and Webpagetest. Its average speed was 3.2 seconds.
As you can see, it is not the best of loading speeds and does not even lie in the ideal range of 2 to 3 seconds of loading speed.
Namecheap:
When we examined its loading speed through numerous tests, we found out that its average loading speed is 3.04 seconds.
In short, Namecheap outperformed BlueHost here with a better loading speed.
Hosting options and pricing structure:
BlueHost:
The most famous shared hosting option is offered by it for which you will have 4 plans to choose from Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, Pro.
The basic plan allows 1 website and domain along with 50 GB of storage and 20 databases. The other 3 plans allow unlimited websites, domains, storage, and databases of 5 GB of maximum size.
The Pro plan stands out for High performance, max files amount that jumps from 200,000 of other plans to 300,000, and advanced backup options like the Choice Plus package.
The first term prices are $4.95, $7.45, $7.45, and $18.95 per month respectively if you sign up for a 12-month plan. But the renewal prices skyrocket, which are $9.99, $13.99, $18.99, and $28.99 per month respectively. Signing up for a 2 or 3-year plan will reduce the cost which will start at $2.95 and renew at $8.99.
Next in the line is WordPress hosting which paves the way for the easiest hosting of WordPress sites.
If you have a WordPress site and are looking for a web host for it, then BlueHost is one of the top options to consider.
Don’t believe it?
Then you might believe it when you know that out of thousands and thousands of websites out there, WordPress recommends only three of them out of which one is BlueHost.
This option comes up with automatic WordPress installation making the setup a piece of cake for you. It offers both shared WordPress hosting and managed WordPress hosting. Three plans are offered for Shared WordPress hosting for $2.75, $5.45, and $5.95 respectively whereas the renewal prices are $8.99, $11.99, and $16.99 respectively.
The managed WordPress hosting has 3 plans that are Build, Grow, Scale having a pricing structure that ranges from $19.95 to $49/95 a month for a 3-year term contract. The regular prices are from $29.99 to $59.99. It includes special features like SEO tools, PayPal integration, daily backups, unlimited storage, and much more.
Next in the row is the VPS Hosting plan. There will be times that Shared Hosting Plans won’t be enough for you and you will require greater performance and reliability. Then you must move to VPS hosting. The three plans offered are Standard, Enhanced, and Ultimate.
The pricing structure is $18.99, $29.99, and lastly $59.99 per month respectively. The renewal prices are $29.99, $59.99, and $119.99 per month respectively.
Want a whole server dedicated for your site?
Then go for the Dedicated hosting option offered by BlueHost having 3 tiers known as Standard, Enhanced, and Premium having a regular price range of $119.99 to $209.99 a month.
Lastly, there comes a WooCommerce hosting as well that is aimed to grow your online business. The normal pricing of the two plans offered is $24.95 and $39.95 per month respectively for a 3-year term.
Additionally, domain registrations cost $11.99 for the first term and renew at $17.99 per year. For domain privacy, you will have to pay 11.88 dollars annually.
NameCheap:
Its Shared Hosting option comes with 3 distinct plans named Stellar plan, Stellar Plus Plan, and Stellar Business Plan. Its basic Stellar plan allows 3 websites to be hosted and 50 MySQL databases which are quite unusual. Along with this, you will get 20 GB of storage and 30 email accounts.
The other two plans allow unmetered bandwidth, unlimited websites, email accounts, and auto backup. In Stellar Plus Plan you will get unlimited storage but storage in its Business plan is limited to 50 GB but it does offer Cloud Storage with premium support.
The renewal cost is $2.88, $4.88, and $8.88 per month respectively. If you sign up for a year or more, the cost will be reduced further.
Next in the row is the Managed WordPress Hosting option that has three plans that you can choose from. The only significant difference between them is the storage with 100 GB being the highest. The prices go from $3.88 to $11.88 per month.
Like BlueHost, it also offers a VPS Hosting option. It has two plans named Pulsar and Quasar costing $11.88 and $19.88 per month respectively after renewal.
If you want to be unperturbed about traffic then you must go for the Dedicated Hosting plan which is also offered by Namecheap having three tiers. It costs $52.88, $98.88, and $161.88 per month at renewal respectively.
Lastly, you can have a Reseller Hosting option which is often referred to as White Label hosting, having three plans namely Nebula, Galaxy Expert, and Universe Pro having a regular price range from $18.88 to $48.88 per month.
When the topic of Domain registration comes up, there is hardly any pricing competitor for Namecheap. You will get it for just $8.88 for the first year, while the after-renewal cost is $12.98 per year.
To cut it short, BlueHost offers more hosting options and tiers than NameCheap, therefore it’s relatively easier to step-up gradually into more advanced hosting plans. On the other hand, the pricing structure of Namecheap is much cheaper than BlueHost.
5. Customer Support
For many, it just seems ordinary and they do not take it into much consideration but believe it or not, you must thoroughly research this aspect as it will be where you will have to turn to when stumbling across troubles.
BlueHost:
Bluehost provides a number of support options including 24/7 live chat, email support, and phone support. They also have a knowledge base having articles, video tutorials, and step by step guides making it pretty easy for you to get your answers.
Like if you have a query, you can search it out there, and find articles, live chat options and even a particular phone number to directly get your answer. Their fast-acting support agents were knowledgeable and were quick to address the issues.
But, like Namecheap, some of their answers were also copy pasted. Well, overall, it was a good experience.
NameCheap:
They offer 24-7 life chat support and ticket systems but one downside is that they do not offer phone support.
Furthermore, they even have a section of FAQ’s that cover each and every topic so that you can find answers for your questions in detail easily. Similarly, they also have How-to videos and hundreds of pages of information to guide you with everything to help you out.
Their support agents were not knowledgeable and sometimes they were incapable of putting forward a solution. Their response time was not good as well. In short, their customer service is not the one which you can entirely depend upon.
By now, you must have reached a conclusion that BlueHosts pulls miles ahead of NameCheap in this round.
6. User Interface
When choosing a webhost, you must go for the web host that makes things intuitive and simple for you. Fortunately, both of them focus on providing you with better user-experience and ease of use.
BlueHost:
It uses a customized version of cPanel making it easier for you to manage your sites and operate things from its user interface.
Furthermore, it even extends free dedicated support for beginners assisting you in launching a site, and installing themes and plugins.
It does not offer a site builder, but you can use WordPress integration for it or a Visual Composer plug-in and an integration of the basic version of Weebly site builder.
Like Namecheap, you can delete, create, and manage databases directly from their cPanel.
NameCheap:
Its industry standard cPanel interface is well-organized and un-cluttered with all the options perfectly placed in the sidebar. It makes it more intuitive by making it simple and straightforward for you to manage domains, FTP accounts, databases, email accounts, and so much more through its cPanel’s regular file manager.
Everyone does not have programming languages knowledge like HTML or CSS or any other expertise in this field. This leads to difficulty in building and designing websites. Taking that into consideration, it provides a free simple drag-and-drop site builder to make your life easier.
This is limited for Shared hosting plans only. You have to use a Softaculous App installer for WordPress installation, unlike BlueHost.
You can also further protect your login area with a 2-factor authentication..
Unlike BlueHost, there are virtually no upsells.
In conclusion, both have them provide ease of use and intuitive user interface, but BlueHost extends a better user experience.
Final Thoughts
So, who is the Champion after all? Of course, it’s BlueHost.
It provides distinctive customer support, better features, security, excellent performance, and plenty of hosting options for better scalability. Its pricing structure is higher than that of Namecheap but the features also speak up.
With that being said, Namecheap is an all-in-one shop, offering world-renowned domain registrar experience, and one of the best value of money in the market.
If you just wish to have a domain registration then you must go for Namecheap or if its pricing structure that appeals to you and you can compromise on support, user experience, uptime, and a little on features then you can choose Namecheap.
But at the end of the day, BlueHost is the winner.
