Namecheap vs. WP Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Namecheap
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
Namecheap is a website domain name service offering providing easy domain name registration, and affordable hosting plans.
$5.98
per year
WP Engine
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
WP Engine is a website hosting service built to host WordPress for companies of any size, with features such as daily backups, firewall,SSL, and proprietary caching technology.
$29
per month
Pricing
NamecheapWP Engine
Editions & Modules
domain - .com
$5.98
per year
domain - .org
$8.98
per year
Business Email - Starter
$10.88
per year
domain - .net
$10.98
per year
Business Email - Pro
$25.88
per year
Shared Hosting - Stellar Business
$58.88
1st year Renews at $118.88/year
VPS Hosting - Pulsar
$118.56
per year
VPS Hosting - Quasar
$214.56
per year
Dedicated Server Hosting - Xeon E-2234
$915.88
per year
Dedicated Server Hosting - Xeon E-2236
$1175.88
per year
Dedicated Server Hosting - Dual Xeon Silver 4208
$2171.88
per year
Startup
$25.00
*Per Month
Growth
$95.00
*Per Month
Scale
$241.00
*Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NamecheapWP Engine
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details*Pricing for annual contract.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
NamecheapWP Engine
Considered Both Products
Namecheap
Chose Namecheap
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.
WP Engine
Chose WP Engine
I have used WP Engine for several years and love the service. Their technology, security, speed & support are unparralleled. I've had to file several support tickets & the experience was really good every time. Being a consultant & tech integrator, I often have to deal with B2B …
Chose WP Engine
WP Engine has a no worry solution for automatic backups and free SSL is great for $30/month. They scale to our needs as well so we never have to worry about being throttled if we get a lot of press. and at $1 for every 1000 visitors over your quote, hits one of the cheapest …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
NamecheapWP Engine
Small Businesses
Shopify
Shopify
Score 8.8 out of 10
Cloudways
Cloudways
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Shopify
Shopify
Score 8.8 out of 10
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
NamecheapWP Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(12 ratings)
9.2
(29 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.7
(6 ratings)
User Testimonials
NamecheapWP Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
Namecheap
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.
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WP Engine
I am an enterprise user of WordPress and host over 7000 sites with WPEngine. Areas that I think they are well suited for include customers that need enterprise-level support and uptime and have more complex needs than a simple blog. They also manage scale well with a variety of isolated install options that you can scale up or down depending on your contract needs. They also provide premier support for enterprises and have highly knowledgable Technical Account Managers that provide a significant value add. If I were to look at where it isn't as appropriate for usage I would focus on the low-end needs and say while they do support small sites, there are options out there for cheaper hosting that lack the support a WPEngine gives you.
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Pros
Namecheap
  • 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.
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WP Engine
  • 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.
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Cons
Namecheap
  • I wonder if it's feasible to have bulk discounts or a loyalty program?
  • They may have this already, but features to buy and sell premium domains, or browse ones for sale, would be great.
  • We don't use their hosting because there are higher quality options, but it'd be great if they did better hosting so we could keep it all under one roof.
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WP Engine
  • I'd like to see WP Engine offer their own monitoring solution. When I say monitoring, I mean specific use cases that may end up being something you could script. This would keep customers from having to pay for additional services like Pingdom, New Relic, etc.
  • I would like to see some proactive analysis done by WP Engine on their customer sites - at least on their home pages, and offer up suggestions. This kind of goes along with the other example.
  • Finally, it would be nice to see a "lighter" offering, perhaps a plan that costs $49 for those who want to host only a few sites, or even 1 site.
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Likelihood to Renew
Namecheap
No answers on this topic
WP Engine
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.
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Usability
Namecheap
No answers on this topic
WP Engine
It took very little time to learn their dashboard for managing WordPress sites. Their built-in tools are really well done, and the addition of security and CDN tools is great.
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Support Rating
Namecheap
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.
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WP Engine
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Namecheap
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.
Read full review
WP Engine
While we still use GoDaddy for some services, WP Engine definitely has been a major upgrade for our WordPress hosting. In addition to faster load speeds, WP Engine has been more adept at allowing us to manage a high number of websites without straining the system. We have never used Network Solutions for our own hosting needs, but when we do interact with them on behalf of our clients, their systems always seem to be clunky and hard to use, and they often overcharge customers by selling them products they do not need.
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Return on Investment
Namecheap
  • 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.
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WP Engine
  • WP Engine reduces our time investment and upkeep costs which increases our margins.
  • WP Engine simplifies site management with a built-in development server, which saves us headaches.
  • WP Engine itself is positioned as a premium service, which allows us to use their branding as a tool to close sales.
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ScreenShots