GoDaddy vs. Namecheap vs. Network Solutions

Good for transferring over an existing site. Truth be told, I haven't used it for building a brand new site-- I know that this is a fairly common thing but I just never needed it. For what I've used it for, it has worked well. For a small business with anyone with a little bit of technical skill, it's surprisingly good.

Incentivized

Namecheap is the absolute best domain registrar that I have used, and I have used just about all of the big names. They are priced right; they offer excellent customer service, their FAQs and documentation are excellent. They don’t spam you with offers for things you don’t want, and they don’t have misleading practices like hiding that the first-year fee is 1/10 of the regular annual cost. They don’t try to sneak in a change to your bill and charge you for multiple years when you’ve already set it to a one-year renewal. The only negative of Namecheap is its brand name. I have had a few raised eyebrows when I have told executives that we are using Namecheap. It doesn’t sound like a professional service. It sounds like a consumer service. This is terrible because they are the MOST professional service and reliable service of all the services I work with on a daily basis.

Incentivized

My experience with using Network Solutions hasn't been great. At best, it has almost feature parity with its competitors at a higher price. But when you tack on all the minor annoyances of being given interstitial ads for their other products or discount offers when logging in or performing a transfer, the all too common bugs where a feature doesn't work, and in my experience support takes at least a half-hour to understand your problem before even attempting to fail at a resolution. It just isn't worth it in my opinion. Go with a service with better support, features, security, and lower price.

Incentivized

• Registering a domain - I've found their site to be the easiest to navigate
• Website builder - their website builder is user friendly
• Email hosting - easy to set up and use, wether in an email app or online email.
• Wordpress hosting - I have multiple wordpress sites I use under one account
• Their customer service is always very helpful and easy to contact.

Incentivized

• Domain registration is easy. This is big because when finding the perfect domain name, you have to do a lot of domain checking to see what is available. Namecheap not only makes this easy, but they recommend other domains that you might like instead, if the one you want is taken. They also allow you to sell domains and buy premium domains from other sellers if they are already registered to them.
• Free Whois Guard & privacy. This is HUGE. All those annoying phone calls and emails you get the second you register a domain, they will stop when you start using NameCheap to register your domains. This is because they provide free Whois and domain privacy with all domains, for the life of the domain as long as it is registered with them. I love this and it is a huge selling point.
• Easy updating and management of domains. This is a must. At many time, I need to update the nameservers of multiple domains at once. Namecheap makes it extremely easy to do this and allows for bulk updating. Things also seem to propagate quicker than other domain providers.

Incentivized

• Network solutions supports TXT, MX, and CNAME records.
• DNS changes propagate fairly quickly.
• Network Solutions has a web management portal for maintenance of your account.

Incentivized

• Support agents are woefully undertrained, even in knowledge of their own products.
• Support agents will always try to upsell you, even when you're dealing with an urgent, high-impact issue.
• There's no guarantee of uptime, and there will often be gaps in service as part of normal procedures.

Incentivized

• Hosting isn't brilliant, as there are other options available which do a better job from a security stand point.
• Would be great if the discounts were bigger for bulk purchases for longer renewals
• The layout/dashboard could be simpler to move around - not easy to find somethings

Incentivized

• There appears to be no cPanel. This is something that is standard across just about every hosting company and it makes it easy to quickly find what you're looking for however I have not been able to find one in iPage. This makes it a less than attractive option for me.
• Very slow tech support. Getting someone on the phone takes ages and then once they do put in a ticket for you, it might be weeks until the problem gets resolved. Really unsatisfactory in this regard.

Incentivized

We can't really choose anyone else and the cost/effort of moving all of the hosted data would be extremely large, and we just have to stick to them, and hope they improve service

Incentivized

Some integration could be much cleaner and smoother. Seems it used to be easier. Plus, they took away the catch all email feature.

Incentivized

Personally I find it really easy to use and getting everything set-up and sorted is no problem at all, from initial account set-up and purchasing to the technical aspects required

Incentivized

The backend for managing your domain is very easy to work thru once you learn where everything is and what it is for if you want to do it yourself. The company has toll free phone support 24/7 that can also make changes for you if you are away from your desktop or have an emergency situation where you can't make the change yourself. This is peace of mind knowing that there is help out there should you need it. You don't have to learn the backend if you want to have the Network Solutions customer support team help you. They are secure and won't make changes for anyone who calls, they authenticate you for your protection every time

Incentivized

I think a lot of companies can learn from GoDaddy's support team. I have found:

• Chat or phone support is almost always available.
• Their agents are friendly and helpful.
• Their agents seem to care and be knowledgeable about a wide range of issues.
• I rarely have to escalate my problem to get the support that I need.
• If they can't help me, then they can tell me why something is happening and direct me to resources that can fix my problem.

Incentivized

We very rarely have to reach out to customer support because the service is so quick, easy and intuitive to use. But when we have had to use it, the customer service was quick, reliable, answered our questions and addressed our problems without too much back and forth, and was native English speaking.

Incentivized

For the most part I've had excellent interactions with the customer support team I've dealt with at Network Solutions. When I've needed help with something like Wordpress, it hasn't always worked out so well but you can pay their techs for 1 on 1 help with these offerings, you just won't have the support for free. I've often been talked to on upsells for services that I particularly didn't need and found the offers to be annoying when the agents kept pushing me on an upsell instead of addressing my issue. It's hit or miss on that, perhaps it depends on the department you speak with.

Incentivized

We use Wix currently for our online store. It is nice and easy to use, but they don't offer the email domains as well (the last time we checked). They have pretty decent customization of the web page, but still limited. We're going to try it with GoDaddy, since we have other services from them already. It just doesn't make sense to pay two different companies for something we can do with one.

Incentivized

Namecheap wins hands down on cost and ease of use. I have experienced zero compromise with using Namecheap. There was no trade-off to enjoy the cost savings. Namecheap does everything the other registrars do and more in some cases.

Incentivized

Based on my experience to date, I would rate Network Solutions easily at the bottom of the list. I have not previously and would not select Network Solutions, but have worked with it as related to sites and clients previously set up there.

Incentivized

• GoDaddy reduces our ROI by costing me in non-billable hours. I don't charge clients for sitting on the phone with tech support to power cycle the server or fix the php.ini file, so my $/hr takes a hit.
• Their nickel&dime strategy requires I have an additional conversation with clients about their max recurring fees. Small as they are, I need approval for upping their bill. GoDaddy is only the cheap option if you don't value security, stability, or performance.

Incentivized

• Namecheap has saved us hundreds of dollars a year on services that we were required to pay extra for by NetworkSolutions that Namecheap provides for free.
• Namecheap has made managing our domains simpler, saving us dozens of labor hours a year.
• Namecheap has encouraged us to experiment with new domain names to see which ones work best. We couldn’t do this with our previous registrars because it was too hard to change from one domain to another.

Incentivized

• Huge time sink for routine activities.
• Higher direct costs than competitors with similar or better features.
• Poor service leading to even more expense of time on the user's side.

Incentivized