According to a press release, Namecheap has over 10 million domains under their control. Still small potatoes compared to their evil competitor – Godaddy, which touts a reported 40 million domains.

Notably, Namecheap has come out on the right side (in our opinion) on a couple of very important political issues that effect the internet in a very drastic way:

Namecheap was strongly opposed to SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Conversely, Godaddy came out in support of this bill and was brought under fire by the general public, with many people calling for a boycott of Godaddy. Namecheap seized the opportunity and rewarded would-be customers with a sizable discount to transfer their domains from Godaddy to Namecheap. Good on you guys!
Net neutrality: Like most domain registrars – and sane people everywhere – Namecheap has been a strong advocate of Net Neutrality since the beginning. They have put their money where their mouth is and raised almost $400,000, donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who fights for our online civil liberties.

Enough about Namecheap’s history. You are here to learn if Namecheap is the right choice for you to purchase or host your domains. So let’s get on with the show.

Namecheap Pricing

Comparing pricing at domain registrars can be tricky as most registrars offer coupons and promo codes (like on our site!). That makes a comparison very hard.

But since most domain registrars only offer a discount or coupon for the first year or first invoice of a domain registration, looking at standard, non-discounted pricing will give a good idea of how competitive they can be.

At the time of this writing, at full price, Namecheap offers a .Com domain for $8.88 per year for the first year, with private Whois included for free.

Godaddy

Namecheap

Purchasing a new .Com domain from Namecheap is a lot easier transaction than on Godaddy. The first thing that you notice is that by default, Godaddy tries to get you to register the domain for 2 years. No biggie really, as it’s just another click to change it to one year but still kind of annoying. So we’ll change it to one year – see below.

Now let’s compare prices. We have domain privacy (Whoisguard on Namecheap) selected because, well, you’re crazy to not have private whois. Unless you like spammers. Which we don’t.

As you can see, Namecheap is 2 1/2 times cheaper (250%) than Godaddy. That’s a lot. The price difference alone is reason enough for us to choose Namecheap for our domain registration needs, but read on – there are more reasons you might want to choose them if you haven’t already.

Upsell

Virtually all domain registrars try to upsell you. Things like web hosting, secure email, and even SEO services. Namecheap is no different than the rest. But the nice thing with Namecheap is that they don’t push it like some other companies do.

Below you see a sample upsell screen for Namecheap. All of these options are well below the checkout portion of the process and you actually have to scroll down the screen to see them. And NONE of them are turned on by default.

Domain registrations are a low margin, high volume kind of business so we don’t blame Namecheap for having addons. And we give them full marks for not jamming it in our faces.

Namecheap Control Panel

I find the Namecheap control panel to be clean, intuitive and easy to use.

I especially like the DNS controls, they are quick and simple to use. Since I have over 50 domains registered with Namecheap, I appreciate the fact that I can login and do what I need to do in a hurry. There are better things to do with life than struggle with a lousy interface.

Customer Support

It’s pretty rare to need support when it comes to domain registrations but I have had to contact them twice in the past few years, and I have to admit my experience was a bit mixed. Both times I had to contact them was about a domain I was transferring to them from another registrar (can you guess which one?)

In the first instance, the problem had to do with the other registrar not being as helpful as they could have been about transferring the domain away from them. The suggestions I got from Namecheap were fast, knowledgeable and got the problem resolved very quickly.

The next time I had to contact them was a bit different. There was a section of their site that I felt was a bit misleading. The support agent apologized but made no other effort to either honor what their website had said or to say they would fix the misleading text. I think they could have done better. To be fair, this was a non-standard issue with a .co.uk domain which have their own set of rules that Namecheap doesn’t have control over. Still, my opinion is it could have been handled better.

But overall, the responses from Namecheap support have been very quick. I typically use live chat as I prefer to get things resolved right away rather than waiting for emails. I’ve never waited for more than a minute or two to talk to an agent and never been passed off to a higher up.

Because of my mixed experience, I would rank Namecheap support at 7/10.

Using Namecheap Promo Codes

Good news and bad news.

Good news is that Namecheap makes it super easy to use promo codes for domain registrations, web hosting, email and more services that they offer. The other good news is that they come out with new promo codes every month, so if you can find a coupon on our site that you like right now, come back at the beginning of the next month and chances are they’ll have one to suit your needs.

Now for the bad news. As of the time of this writing, ~~Namecheap no longer has promo codes for renewing domains~~. This has become common in the industry, with Godaddy stopping renewal coupons years ago. I know we get thousands of visitors every month looking for a coupon code for Namecheap that they can use to renew a domain and I’m sorry they just don’t exist right now.

Of course, if they ever decide to offer a coupon for domain renewals again, you can be sure to find it at DomainCouponsPro.

Great News!

As of July 2019, Namecheap has a promo code that works for renewals. We don’t know how long this code will last, so take advantage while you can and let us know if it stops working.

Look above in our list of Namecheap promo codes to take advantage of this 20% off renewals offer.

From our sample domain registration, you’ll see that it’s very easy to enter a promo code for Namecheap. Notice also that by default, they added a promo code to the order since it was a new registration. But be sure to check our promo codes above to make sure you are getting the best deal you can. There’s no point in giving your money away if you don’t have to.

Summary

Namecheap is a very solid domain registrar with a long, solid history and very competitive pricing. At this time, we don’t have any experience with their other offerings like web hosting but will update this review when we have time to do some testing.

Overall, Namecheap is a good choice for registering most common domains like .Com, .Net, etc. You might find better deals for more unique Tld’s elsewhere so check out our Domain Registrar listings if you’re looking for something out of the ordinary.

DomainCouponsPro Namecheap Rating

It’s hard to find fault with Namecheap for all your Domain registration needs. Low price, clean control panel and decent customer support are the main reasons for us giving them our rating.

 5/5

https://www.namecheap.com/