GoDaddy and NameCheap are two of the most trusted and well-known domain name registrars all over the world. Both companies sell web hosting services and there has therefore been quite a debate as to which company is better at what it does.
We, therefore, decided to clear the air and end this debate once and for all. For a period of three months, we reviewed the companies' shared hosting packages and in the process, collected a lot of valuable information that sheds light on each company's operation. We, therefore, rated each company on some of the most fundamental factors based on the information we gathered. To find out how these companies stack against each other, please read on.
1. Plan and Price
At the time of the study, NameCheap had 4 shared hosting packages while GoDaddy had 3.
NameCheap:
NameCheap packages are named Value, Professional, Ultimate, and Business SSD, and cost between $0.82 to $19.88 per month. For the Value, Professional, Ultimate plan, the cost for 1 year subscription is $9.88, $19.88, $29.88. It, however, does not come with a short term billing cycle of 1, 6 months like the other 4 plans.
Their money-back guarantee period was another drawback we found. At only 14 days, this period is quite short. Additionally, no shared hosting package includes free domain name registration or marketing credits.
GoDaddy:
On the other hand, GoDaddy shared hosting packages are named Economy, Deluxe, and Ultimate. They are priced at $4.99, $5.99, and $7.99 per month respectively for all billing cycles except the 1 month billing cycle. For the 1 month billing cycle, prices are $6.99, $8.99, and $14.99 respectively. GoDaddy includes free domain name registration into all annual plans and you also get a standard 30-day money back guarantee for all your purchases. Also, GoDaddy always has special offers for their web hosting services, such as Economy plan with only $1.00/mo include free domain name, or you can get savings with other hosting plan when using coupon code 50% off all hosting plan.
2. Features
Both NameCheap and GoDaddy use cPanel as a control panel. This offers easy account and website management features to their clients. However, we also found that all basic plans from both NameCheap and GoDaddy had limitations in the amount of allocated disk space, number of hosted websites, email and FTP accounts, databases, and more.
| Feature |  |  |
|---|---|---|
| Plan in Comparison | Economy | Value |
| Free Domain |  |  |
| Disk Space | 100 | 20 |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Hosted Domains | 1 | 3 |
| Parked Domains | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email Addresses | 100 | 50 |
| cPanel Control Panel | | |
| PHP 5 | | |
| 1-Click Installer | | |
| PostgreSQL | | |
| Mysql | 10 | 50 |
| Ruby on Rails | | |
| FTP Users | 50 | 50 |
| CloudFlare Ready | | |
| Money Back Guarantee | 14 | 30 |
| Email Support | | |
| Live Chat Support | | |
| Phone Support | | |
| Price per month | $4.99 | $.82 |
| Discounts | ($1.00/mo with free domain) | ($.66/mo + free .website domain) |
3. Speed and Uptime
Both GoDaddy and NameCheap offer a guaranteed 99.9% uptime to all their customers on the shared hosting platform. They also promise a platform that is very reliable and will keep all hosted websites online at all times. We, however, wanted to find out whether these statements from these two companies were true. We hosted sample sites with both companies and kept monitoring the uptime of both of them. True to their word, the results were pleasing. In a period of 30 days, the results we collected were as follows:
Uptime Report:
GoDaddy: 99.93% average uptime
Speed Report:
GoDaddy takes 3.40 seconds on average to respond, this is not satisfactory for a high traffic website. However, our statistics showed that GoDaddy is faster than NameCheap in terms of responsiveness. NameCheap takes 3.57 seconds on average to respond, this slow speed has actually been a problem for NameCheap for years now.
4. Technical support
Both companies were quite similar in this aspect in that they offer free 24/7 email support to all their customers. The support is also very responsive and quite helpful to say the least. They are able to promptly offer accurate solutions to clients thanks to their highly experienced professional support teams.
Additionally, NameCheap provides live chat support. This is a very convenient way to offer instant solutions to customers. It, however, does not offer customer support via telephone. GoDaddy on the other had has live chat support feature but very very hardly to connect to them, but if you want live chat with GoDaddy that easily, read how to contact to GoDaddy customer support before. Beside that, GoDaddy also allow customers to call in and ask for help.
We do not think either NameCheap or GoDaddy is a good choice, especially when you are looking to host an e-commerce website since these have strict performance requirements. This is because they both have almost the same speed, feature, and technical support limitations.
