NameCheap – The Best Affordable Domain Registrar

A decade and a half ago, Richard Kirkendall founded Namecheap with the idea that domains should be available to the average person at affordable rates. He also believed in the value of customer service and 15 years after establishing the company; it now has a whopping three million domains in management and over one million customers.

Kirkendall believes that the internet is for anyone who has an idea to share to the world which is why affordable access is important. Access should not be limited to programmers or businesses who maintain server hardware.
Namecheap does not just offer the best prices in the industry; it also provides full featured hosting packages, privacy protection, SSL certificates and much more.

WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF NAMECHEAP?

I am a small business owner, and I agree with Kirkendall that online presence is a necessity for every business. Not advertising your brand online keeps your business in the dark as more and more customers choose to shop online. Smart mobile phone penetration is at its highest and last year. The number of mobile users has topped desktop users.

Here are some features that personally like about Namecheap

Solid Security – With WhoisGuard protection, my name, address and email address is safe from those who conduct Whois inquiries on my domain. Also included in Namecheap’s security package is Registrar lock, grant modification rights, and email-based security alerts.

Flexible Control – I find domain management easy with the features that Namecheap has. The advanced control panel lets me make quick changes like customizing the parking page.

Reliable DNS Performance – My website doesn’t take long to load with a reliable DNS spread across a network of servers.

Easy Domain Transfer – Moving my domain to Namecheap couldn’t have been any smoother. Aside from the lower prices, Namecheap supports over 20 extension types which allowed me to immediately transfer my domain. Right now I am not experiencing any downtime, and I get 24/7 live support.

SSL Certificates – I am confident that the information that goes through my website stayed private and secured with the SSL Certificates that I get from Namecheap. I have good customer trust, added branded power, secured encrypted information and good compliance with credit card standards.

Here are the SSL certificates the Namecheap has

• Comodo
• Geotrust
• Thawte
• Symantec
• Organization Validation
• Domain Validation
• Extended Validation
• Single Domain
• Wildcard
• Multi-Domain

Scalability – Starting out with shared hosting, my business grew, and just last month I upgraded to VPS hosting. The whole process was a lot easier than I imagined. With just one quick call and consultation I had a larger hosting package suitable for my ever increasing traffic.

100% Uptime – for both shared and VPS hosting, I never experienced any downtime for my site. Employing the latest Dell Server technology for shared hosting and a redundant Tier-1 high-performance network in Atlanta for VPS hosting, site loading speed is off the charts.

Apps – From building your site to managing it and improving your metrics, to marketing and other functions, Namecheap’s list of apps has all that you need. I am currently using Uplift for my social media marketing and MarketGoo for my SEO campaign. When I designed my website, I used Tailor for my logo and Strikingly for the overall site.

Billing Convenience – Aside from hosting services, I use apps for the development of my website, marketing my brand and managing my whole business. Having all of the apps I need to be integrated into the platform makes not just management easy but billing and payment as well.

NAMECHEAP SERVICES

Now let’s get a better look at the services that Namecheap offers and what the associated costs are so you can check how it would fit your business.

Domain Services

Registration

If you do not have your website yet or you want to start over, you can find the perfect domain name here. Namecheap offers to help you find the best name for your site with annual registration of as low as $3.98. You can shop for generic TLDs(top level domains) or country specific TLDs if you want a location-specific customer base.

Shopping by registry is also easy if you already know what you want from .com to .biz to .info and much more. New domain extensions are also available like .online, .music, .inc and whatever comes out in the market. Explore whatever is available or watch out for domains that are about to expire.

Personal Domain

With a personal domain, you can have better brand name identification and online impact. Nothing beats a custom email address when it comes to giving out a highly professional impression to your clients. Furthermore, search engines favor domain names with specific keywords. Your first name + last name combo helps with your ranking and authority.

Marketplace

Namecheap is not just about buying domains. It also serves as a marketplace for those who are in the business of buying and selling. With a quick and easy buy and sell system, you can search based on categories, price, and content.

Whois Lookup

If you are interested in a domain or want to checkout who owns what, Namecheap offers a Whois lookup system to view the domain’s stored information and availability status. If you are worried about your personal information, you need not worry as Namecheap offers WhoisGuard at a very affordable rate.

FreeDNS

Namecheap has secure, reliable and geographically spread out name servers that can help optimize your site’s performance and speed by converting your IP address to your domain name and vice versa. If you have a different domain registrar, you can work with Namecheap for a free DNS service.

HOSTING SERVICES

Shared Hosting – With fast, secure and reliable hosting, your website is always accessible and fast loading for your customers. This is best for startup businesses that are not yet driving huge amounts of traffic. Shared hosting means multiple websites each having its own domain are hosted on a common web server. Here are the different shared hosting packages:

VPS Hosting – A VPS is a virtual machine used for a hosting service that runs its own operating system allowing full root access to clients for any software installation. This gives complete customization for the hosting environment which is almost the same as dedicated functionality at significantly lower rates than dedicated hosting. Namecheap has a wide range of VPS plans and lets you upgrade or downgrade easily.

Dedicated Hosting – Usually the choice of enterprises and other big businesses, dedicated hosting offers optimum performance and reliability. Namecheap offers the latest server hardware and 100% network uptime guarantee.
All of Namecheap’s dedicated servers are located in a Tier IV data center which has fully redundant power, network, climate and security systems.

You will have the option for self-managed, managed or fully managed services. Whether you need a single muli-core CPU(Intel Xeon E3) or multiple multi-core CPU(Intel Xeon E5), Namecheap offers a long list of packages depending on RAM, Hard Drive size and bandwidth requirements.
Single CPU costs range from $58.88 to $149.88 per month while Multiple CPU costs range from $219.88 to $379.88 per month

Reseller Hosting – Host multiple websites or be a hosting reseller yourself. With Namecheap’s WebHostManager, you can create and modify unlimited hosting accounts and manage each account using cPanel.

Design your packages with the tools and resources that Namecheap allocates to your account and boost your client base. You can rely on high-powered Dell PowerEdge servers with 24 core Xeon CPUs and stay confident that your clients are always happy. All packages cost $1 for the first month.

Private Email Hosting – Namecheap’s private email hosting service is fast, secure, reliable and has an easy to manage interface. With full browser support, you do not need to satisfy any software requirements. All plans come with a free two month trial period.