Bluehost is a very popular hosting provider that also offers domain registration. On the other hand, Namecheap is a popular domain registrar that also offers web hosting services. Both companies are known for their affordable hosting packages, and in this article, we’ll take a look at how they fare against each other.
Is Bluehost better? Or should you consider Namecheap’s cheaper hosting packages? Read on to find out.
Bluehost vs Namecheap Comparison Chart
| Bluehost | Namecheap | |
| Â |  |  |
| Price | Check Price at Bluehost.com | Check Price at Namecheap.com |
| Sites | Basic: 1 site Plus: Unlimited Choice Plus: Unlimited Pro: Unlimited | Stellar: 3 sites Stellar Plus: Unlimited Stellar Business: Unlimited |
| Storage | Basic: 50GB Plus: Unlimited Choice Plus: Unlimited Pro: Unlimited | Stellar: 20GB Stellar Plus: Unlimited Stellar Business: 50GB + Cloud storage |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Free Domain | Yes | Yes |
| Free SSL Certificate | Yes | Yes |
| Site Builder | Yes | Yes |
| cPanel | Yes | Yes |
| Customer Support | 24/7 phone and chat Tickets Knowledge base | 24/7 chat Tickets Knowledge Base |
| Free Site Migration | No | Yes |
| Money Back | 30 days | 30 days |
Hosting Plans
Namecheap’s shared hosting plans are cheaper.
Namecheap and Bluehost both offer different hosting services for people with different needs. They both have shared hosting, VPS, dedicated, WordPress and reseller hosting plans. In this comparison, we’ll be taking a look at their shared hosting plans.
Bluehost offers four shared hosting plans—Basic, Plus, Choice Plus and Pro. The Basic plan is limited to only 1 website and 50GB storage, while the rest come with unlimited sites and storage. All plans come with a free domain for 1 year, free SSL certificate and free CDN.
As for Namecheap, they have three shared hosting plans—Stellar, Stellar Plus and Stellar Business. The Stellar plan is the cheapest and it is limited to 3 websites and 20GB of SSD storage. With the Stellar Plus and Stellar Business plans, you are not limited with the amount of websites you can build. The Stellar Plus plan comes with unmetered storage, while the Stellar Business has a 50GB limit, but with access to cloud storage.
When choosing a plan, Namecheap allows you to choose the location of your data center—US or UK. This is great if you are targeting a certain demographic for your site. Both companies offer a 30-day money back guarantee with their hosting plans.
Performance & Reliability
Bluehost slightly outperforms Namecheap.
When it comes to reliability and performance, we’re looking at their average uptime and speed. Bluehost does not have any sort of uptime guarantee, while Namecheap guarantees that their servers will be up 99.9% of the time.
As for their actual performance, both hosts perform well enough. Bluehost had an average uptime of 99.95%, while Namecheap had an uptime of 99.94%. While the difference is very slim, Bluehost still has an advantage in this area.
Load times are also similar, with both having an average speed of around 600-700ms. They both load pages in under a second, which is good.
Performance-wise, they are similar, but Bluehost has the edge when it comes to uptime. Load times are the same.
Features
Namecheap offers more features for the money.
When it comes to features, Bluehost and Namecheap both offer industry standards such as free domain (1 year), free SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth and more. As for exclusive features, we’ll take a look at Namecheap’s offerings first.
Namecheap’s cheapest shared hosting plan—Stellar, can host up to 3 websites. This is great if you are on a very tight budget and you want more than one website, as most hosting companies, including Bluehost, only offer 1 hosted website with their lowest priced plans. With Namecheap, you can also have your site transferred/migrated for free. Furthermore, you can choose either US or UK datacenter when signing up with Namecheap.
As for Bluehost, some of the features you will get that you won’t with Namecheap are the following: free CDN, 24/7 phone support and advertising credits for Google and Microsoft.
Support
Namecheap’s support staff is more responsive.
Both hosting companies offer 24/7 customer support. For Bluehost, they offer 24/7 chat and phone support, along with tickets and a knowledge base. As for Namecheap, their 24/7 support is limited to chat only, but they also offer ticket submissions via their 24/7 help desk. Namecheap also has a comprehensive knowledge base that covers a lot of topics that are helpful to both beginners and experts.
When it comes to actual support, Bluehost’s support agents can be a little slow. Chatting with their support agents can also be frustrating because they outsource their support department.
In contrast, Namecheap’s support is more responsive. Their ticketing system is also fast when tackling any issues regarding your account. Overall, Namecheap’s support department is better.
Verdict
If you want the best value, go with Namecheap.
In conclusion, we think that Namecheap offers the better value overall. They are cheaper, their performance is good, and you get more features even on their lowest tier shared hosting plan. Bluehost is not a bad choice if you want a more established host that performs slightly better.
FAQs
Since Namecheap offers cheaper plans, and their performance when it comes to uptime and speed are not far off, we are inclined to say that Namecheap is better.
Namecheap’s hosting offers great value for the money. They are affordable with good performance.
Yes, Namecheap uses cPanel, just like Bluehost.
Yes, you get 1 free domain for 1 year when you sign up to any of their shared hosting plans.
