Hello dear visitor. If you came across this post you are most likely searching for a good domain provider. I’ve been at this game of buying domains since the early days of the internet and over the years I’ve dealt with quite a few domain providers. A lot of them rose to the top only to be taken down by up and coming providers offering either better prices or better support or some combination of the two. I used to host a lot of my domains with Netfirms, but recently I decided to move all my domains over to Namecheap. Why you may ask? Well, Namecheap offers good prices and their support is excellent, but thankfully their platform is robust enough that I rarely had to resort to asking for help from their tech support staff. My main requirement is that a domain provider’s domain management control panel be easy to use and work as expected. In this regard Namecheap has met my expectations.
They have pretty much any TLD (top level domain) you can imagine. I typically buy .com domains though, cause well, I don’t know I suppose I’m just still an old fashion .com bubble guy.
So, do they live up to their name? Do they really offer cheap domains? I’d say they do. You can get a cheaper .com domain from Namecheap than you can for example from GoDaddy. With Namecheap you can buy a .com domain for $9.58 per year. Sometimes they also have really good sales. For example right now they’re offering 43% off .com domains, 23% off .net domains, and a ridiculous 96% off .online domains. If .online TLD is your cup of tea then you can’t beat $1.48 per year.
One cool thing about Namecheap is they offer FREE WHOIS protection. I used to pay $9.99 per domain for WHOIS privacy with Netfirms.
While the main focus of this post is to share my recommendation for their domain offerings, you should be aware that they offer more than just domains. They offer a full suite of hosting services such as: shared hosting, VPS servers, WordPress hosting, Dedicated Servers, Reseller hosting, and more.
I don’t have experience with their hosting packages but seeing as they’ve been around for ages I think they’ve mastered the art of hosting by now. I may explore their VPS or dedicated server offering at some point in the future.
But back to the heart of this post, domains! Domain transfers are also pretty affordable. For .com domains the transfer cost is $9.78 and they renew at the typical $13.98 which is not that bad.
Oh, by the way, they do offer premium DNS hosting if you need rock solid DNS server hosting. I haven’t used their premium DNS offering so I won’t be able to comment much. However their basic Free DNS included with every domain has been very reliable for me.
Another cool feature they have is a domain marketplace, where you can either buy or sell your domain. Think of it like an ebay for domains. You want to know some inside scoop? This domain was purchased off the Namecheap Marketplace! Just be careful, it can be quite addictive to bid on domains. I found myself spending far more than I had in mind bidding on a whole bunch of domains. I ended up winning the auctions but I bought far more than I really should’ve. I could not resist it however!
That concludes this brief overview and minor endorsement of Namecheap. I hope to continue to build my domain empire along with them.
For more details and to get your little piece of internet real estate please check the Namecheap website and grab your dream domain today!
Cheers,
Alan