Namecheap vs. WP Engine

Namecheap is well suited for anyone wanting to register a new domain. Their prices are extremely hard to beat and the renewal costs are also acceptable. They make the search easy so it's the best place if you aren't sure which domain name you want yet. I cannot think of any scenarios where it would be a bad idea to use Namecheap. You can't beat the free whois privacy.

Incentivized

New users to WordPress can rejoice with a very hands-off hosting approach. If 100% uptime is not essential, you can get breakneck speeds with minimal tinkering using their platform. If you need to get up and running quickly and scale as required, the cost-benefit is here, although you need to pay a lot to get the most from it.

Incentivized

• Domain search: When you search for a domain you'd like to register, they provide a list of alternative options using other top level domains (TLDs)
• Domain management: Managing domains in Namecheap is nice and simple. Plus, if you need to transfer ownership of a domain to another Namecheap user, the process is quite easy.
• Domain sales: Namecheap always has some great domain sales/promotions going on. Need to pick up a domain for 88 cents? Check Namecheap.
• Account security: They offer two factor authentication vie their Namecheap app. With that app, you're able to approve or deny login attempts. In my estimation, this is both easier and more secure than having a two factor auth security code emailed or sent to you phone.
• Support: Their live chat support is a great option for getting in touch and solving any issues you might be having.
• Hosting: They have some great low cost hosting options.

Incentivized

• I love the database backups and how quickly & easy it is to restore from an old backup point. This gives me & my clients confidence that any change can be rolled back.
• The built in caching & CDN mean that I have to spend less time worrying about the speed of the server & site. The caching has some side-effects that take getting used to (on-page dynamic PHP code sometimes needs to be moved to API endpoints), but this is true for most caching systems.
• They have really good support for multiple environments. It's very easy to have separate production & staging environments. It's also very simple to deploy from staging to production, making product launches and large scale website copy changes much easier to coordinate.

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

• The user interface is not very intuitive, which means new staff members require more training than I'd like.
• The way they manage production/development servers and FTP access is somewhere between nebulous and tragically unique.
• Their premium pricing is surely worthwhile, but it is significantly higher than virtually all of their competitors, without much obvious distinction in feature sets.
• Some very basic features like spinning up a second instance require a PHONE CALL to their BILLING department to enable. What is this, 1990?

Incentivized

I was in a situation where I had to bolt Wordpress on to an existing infrastructure that could not support it. If I ever end up in that situation again, please kill me. Other than that reasonably common use case, I don't think it offers a lot of value over robust shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated servers.

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

From the onboarding and in the days afterward, it was very easy to get into the platform and begin creating important websites and configuring user options. The interface is easy to navigate, and the platform pages load quickly. Since the platform is built for Word plus press, it has features including backup, staging, maintenance mode, and direct WP-Admin login to make configuration and site management faster. We have never had any issues on the billing side of the account.

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

Support is generally great. Enterprise support is fantastic, with little to no wait times. I find that chat support can almost always take care of the problem without escalating to a ticket for a higher level of troubleshooting. The chat support for many other hosting providers can only handle basic issues. This is a big bonus for us to get quick and helpful answers.

Incentivized

Namecheap is the best. Best price. Best service. Best UI. Best documentation. Best customer services. What impresses me the most about Namecheap is that they are there to do one thing really well. And they do it excellently. Unless something drastically changes, I will be a Namecheap customer for life. I can’t think of anything that any other company could offer me that would convince me to change. Other domain registrars are horrible to use, and it feels like you’re going to be taken advantage of the entire time. Namecheap is like the “Take 5 Oil Change” or “Five Guys Burgers and Fries” of domain registrars. They do one thing INCREDIBLY well. They are fast, affordable, friendly, easy to use, and they legitimately make the experience fun.

Incentivized

For Acquia and AEM the major differentiator was the cost for WPEngine was significantly lower and we could use the more common WordPress CMS. AEM is better for large marketing sites that integrate with the Abobe Marketing Cloud and we didn't feel we could support Drupal on Acquia. AWS EC2 is a viable option if you are going to self support and maintain your own WordPress experts. We felt that the value from WPEngine was they handled the support and the WordPress security patches and knowledge beyond simple theme usage. Pantheon was the closest in matching but we felt with our large installs that the hosting model for WPEngine was more cost-effective than the Container architecture for Pantheon

Incentivized

• Keeping all our domains all in one account is easy to manage.
• Picking and choosing which services to renew makes it effortless to manage and saves time and potential future headaches.
• Having free WhoIs privacy protection saves us from endless spam calls and emails, and also helps keep domain purchases private.

Incentivized

• Positive: We've been able to scale up more easily as adding new sites has been easier.
• Positive: The load speed improvements we saw were immediate and have not let up.
• Negative: Adding advanced security and other tools to a multiple sites is expensive.

Incentivized