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Picking a hosting site for your WordPress blog takes about as much thought as choosing a house does. Because, when you think about it, hosting is kind of like a house for your blog to live online in! So, you want to make sure you get the best one.

I’ve had both Namecheap and Siteground as a blog host before, and I know how hard and confusing it can be to make a choice.

So today, I’ll be taking a look at each tier plan for WordPress hosting, and deciding which WordPress hosting is better- Namecheap or Siteground!

PLAN 1: STARTUP (SITEGROUND)  VS. EASYWP STARTER (NAMECHEAP)

SIMILARITIES:

• Both plans only allow you to host one website
• Can hold 10GB of storage
• Come with easy WP install (which is pretty much industry standard at this point)
• Refund policy is 30 days

EXCLUSIVES:

-Migrating your site:

Siteground: If you already have an existing site that you want to switch to Siteground, you can do it yourself, for free, with a plugin.

I personally thought it was confusing to switch it over myself, but I’m not very tech-savvy and wanted it done correctly and professionally.

So, if you’d like them to migrate your site for you, you can buy it for $40 with this plan, but it is not required.

Namecheap: Unfortunately, with the Namecheap plan, it doesn’t go into a lot of detail about what they offer so it can be hard to tell exactly what you’re getting.

From the research I did, there is no plugin where you can do this for free, but Namecheap will do it for you for free according to this article.

-SSL certificate:

This is important to have on your site as it keeps your site, and your visitors, safe.

WHAT IS AN SSL CERTIFICATE?

According to this site here, “An SSL certificate encrypts (and in turn, protects) all data exchanges between a website and its visitors.”

This essentially means it protects the information given to you by your visitors and protects information on your site as well. An SSL certificate also gives you the little lock on your site, next to the address bar at the top to let visitors know that their information is secure.

Siteground: SSL certificates come for free with all of their plans.

Namecheap: You have to buy an SSL certificate for $8.88 a year. When I first heard of this, I assumed it was normal. But after more research, I learned it’s actually more common that you are given it for free. So it’s a bit strange you are required to pay on Namecheap.

-DAILY BACKUPS:

WHY DO YOU WANT BACKUPS OF YOUR SITE?

It’s good to keep multiple copies of your site around in case something were to happen to break your site.

• A plugin you download breaks something
• You make a coding change that breaks your site
• You make a cosmetic change on your theme or download a theme, you decide you don’t like
• Accidentally uninstalling an important plugin on your site

These are all reasons you may need to keep copies of your website stored away somewhere.

Siteground- This is done automatically, and they will keep up to 30 copies of your site.

Namecheap- While you can back your site up with Namecheap, they do not do it automatically for you. Which is kind of a bummer. It’s just yet another aspect where Namecheap falls short.

-CDN:

WHAT IS A CDN AND WHY DO I WANT IT?

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network and what that does is speed up your website loading time for visitors in different geographical locations (according to Sitegrounds site).

There’s a lot of technical work that goes into this, but the basics of it are, your site will load faster for people who live in different counties from you as if they were living in closer to you. Because apparently internet distance is a thing. Who knew?

Siteground- As expected, Siteground offers this for free.

Namecheap- Of course, yet another answer that has to be searched for. It seems as if Namecheap is actually rolling out a free plan of this, but their CDN only covers 45 locations whereas Siteground covers 152 locations. Namecheap’s plan is in early access right now.

-Email Address:

Many bloggers recommend having a personalized email address for your blog, and normally you’d have to purchase them separately.

WHY YOU WANT A PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS:

A personalized email address just means that, for example, instead of using mywebsite@gmail.com you can use mywebsite@myname.com . It’s good to do this for a few reasons.

• Looks more professional
• Looks more personal
• Your emails are less likely to end up in spam folders when you send out emails to your email list for example

Siteground- you can create a free, professional email address with Siteground.

Namecheap- They offer email services, but they are paid. However, there is a free trial period you can get as well. Here are the prices:

-PRICE:

That’s it for the features of the startup plans for both. Now let’s look at the prices.

–Siteground startup- $6.99 a month 

–Namecheap- $3.88 a month

Now, there is obviously a big price difference between the two. However, when you look back on all of the features mentioned that Siteground offers that Namecheap does not, there really is no contest.

You have to think about the fact that you get an SSL certificate with Siteground, and on Namecheap, you’d have to spend an additional $8.88 every year for that very important feature.

Also with Siteground, you get a free email address, and while it isn’t required to have, it is highly recommended. And those can cost you an extra couple bucks every year.

With both of those things included, and not considering everything else Siteground has to offer that Namecheap doesn’t, you’d actually be spending MORE each year by going with Namecheap.

In my eyes, Siteground is the clear winner here.

But, we still have two more plans to go through!

–Check out Siteground’s Startup plan here!

–Check out NameCheap’s EasyWP Starter plan here!

PLAN 2: GROW BIG (SITEGROUND) VS. EASYWP TURBO (NAMECHEAP)

Now, all of the things mentioned above already come with these next plans, so I don’t want to mention them in detail all over again.

I’ll just be going over what is added or different from these plans, and then at the end, I’ll give a side-by-side comparison to make it easy.

AMOUNT OF WEBSITES AVAILABLE

-Siteground: You can have unlimited websites for free with this plan

-Namecheap: You’d have to buy more sites

-STORAGE:

–Siteground: 20 GB

–Namecheap: 50 GB

-SSL/CDN

-Siteground: Offers for free on all plans

-Namecheap: Offers for free on this plan

EXTRA FEATURES ON SITEGROUND:

-On-demand backup copies: You can create backup copies whenever you’d (up to 5 at a time). So you can have peace of mind when you are making any big changes to your site!

-Speed-boosting cashing: All plans come with a CDN to make your site faster, but speed-boosting cashing speeds up your site even more.

-Staging: Allows you to create a “staged” version of your site. This will allow you to test any coding or design changes you’d like to make without them going live on your site first.

-Add collaborators: You can add collaborators (who have their own Siteground account) so they can build or maintain your site for you.

Namecheap, from what I’ve been able to find, offers none of these features.

PRICE:

And now we get down to the pricing.

Siteground GrowBig plan: $9.99 a month

Namecheap Easy WP Turbo plan: $7.88 a month

Again, we see there is a bit of a price difference here but it can be made up for the fact that Siteground still offers more for their plan.

–Check out Siteground’s GrowBig plan here!

–Check out NameCheap’s EasyWP Turbo plan here!

PLAN 3: GO GEEK (SITEGROUND) EASY WP SUPERSONIC (NAMECHEAP)

Just like last time, all of the features above are available for these plans as well. So I won’t be renaming them, just going over what’s added onto these plans and then doing a side-by-side later!

SPACE:

Siteground: 40GB

Namecheap: 100GB

99.99% UPTIME GUARANTEE:

Siteground: This is offered on all their plans, as a standard.

Namecheap: Only mentioned on their most expensive plan, which I find a bit strange

EXTRA FEATURES ON SITEGROUND:

The highest tier of resources: This means you use more resources than on the other two plans giving your site more speed, among other things.

Priority support: When you get their highest plan, you get connected in chat faster and get access to the most experienced agents available on call!

I find this feature funny because I don’t have this plan and I’ve never had a problem with support before. So I could only imagine how nice support must be when you have “priority support”!

PRICE:

Siteground GoGeek plan: $14.99

Namecheap EasyWP Supersonic plan: $11.88

As expected, Siteground comes out as most expensive in price again.

–Check out Siteground’s GoGeek plan here!

–Check out NameCheap’s EasyWP Supersonic plan here!

FINAL THOUGHTS: WHO WINS?

So, here’s the thing. I have nothing against Namecheap. They are a good company. They are perfect for someone starting out who doesn’t exactly have the budget for something like Siteground.

That’s exactly what I did. I started with Namecheap because they were the most reliable host I could find in my price range.

But, eventually, I started to look for better. I wanted faster hosting that offered me more. And after all the good I heard about Siteground, I couldn’t resist. So I tried it out.

And like I said, Namecheap makes you pay for things, or just simply doesn’t offer things that Siteground does. For example, the email address or the SSL certificate. This means there are more “hidden” or added fees that you have to consider when choosing Namecheap.

At the end of the day, it is all up to your budget. But for me personally, I am so happy I switched over to Siteground!

After all that, here is a side by side comparison of both plans so you can get a good look at what they offer. Because, believe it or not, Siteground has even more features than what I mentioned. I just went over the important ones!