If you currently use WordPress or are planning to launch a new site with WordPress and you’re debating on going with either Namecheap or Bluehost for your hosting provider, then you probably want some information about them. Preferably, you want that information to be firsthand, from someone who has experience using them. Well, you’re in luck, because I am that someone. 😏
In this comparison, I’m going to dig into the WordPress plans that both hosts offer. I’ll also take you through their user interface – including real screenshots from inside my own Namecheap account and our company Bluehost account. In addition, I’ll share my experience with their customer service teams. If you stick around until the end, you’ll also get the results of our ongoing performance tests that we run on both companies. Let’s get started with a high-level overview:
Namecheap | Bluehost | |
---|---|---|
Entry-level promo price | ||
Full 5 year cost | ||
Full 10 year cost | ||
Storage | 20 GB SSD | 10 GB NVMe storage |
* | * | |
Email hosting included | * | |
Free SSL certificate | * | ✅ |
0.62s | 0.62s | |
Load time (EU) | 1.31s | 0.55s |
99.98% | 100% | |
Customer Support | 24/7 Chat | * |
Hosting plans for WordPress users ⚖️
Both Bluehost and Namecheap offer hosting plans specifically catered towards WordPress users. However, there is a difference in the way they present and organize them.
Bluehost does not differentiate between their WordPress plans and their shared web hosting plans.
In contrast, Namecheap’s web hosting plans are not the same as their WordPress plans. You can see this below:
The good news is that you can use the regular web hosting plans and install WordPress on them.
In fact, that’s exactly what I do.
The reason I do it is simple: I have multiple websites and the Namecheap web hosting plans support multiple websites per plan, whereas the WordPress ones only support a single site per plan. The amount of money I’d have to pay if I bought even the cheapest WordPress plan for each one of my sites would be astronomically higher than the mid-range web hosting plan I’m currently on.
With that said, I will let you compare the tiers for yourself.
The left columns represent Bluehost’s web hosting / WordPress hosting plans.
💰 Note that the Bluehost prices reflect a discounted rate for Themeisle readers when you use our link.
The middle columns represent Namecheap’s WordPress plans, while the right columns are their regular web hosting plans:
Notably, Bluehost also has a fourth tier plan called Pro for which there is no Namecheap equivalent. It’s priced at $9.99 per month for the initial contract term and renews at $20.99. It supports up to 100 websites, 400,000 visitors per month, and 1,000 simultaneous visitors, while giving you 100 GB of NVMe storage space. These are all double the values of the tier three plan.
Both companies also provide a 30-day money back guarantee which is a nice assurance in case you decide to change your mind for whatever reason.
User interface and experience 💻
Now that you have an overview of Bluehost and Namecheap’s hosting plans, let’s take a look at what it’s like “on the inside” when you open an account with either of them.
Bluehost | Namecheap | |
---|---|---|
WordPress installation | Pre-installed | Manual install via Softaculous Installer |
WP admin | Custom dashboard designed for beginners | Standard dashboard |
cPanel | ✅ | |
Email included | ||
Marketing tools | ❌ | |
AI tools | ✅ | ✅ |
Bluehost 👨💻
If you’re hungry for an extremely user-friendly interface then Bluehost will not disappoint. It has a very intuitive dashboard that’s easy to navigate, with access to cPanel for those who want it.
On the shared hosting plans, Bluehost automatically installs WordPress for you, making the setup process for a new website extremely quick and easy. Afterwards, accessing your site is as simple as going to Websites → Edit Site:
Within the new WordPress installation, you will find a customized version of the WP admin dashboard. It contains a Bluehost menu that helps with streamlining your website setup and design process. There are also helpful prompts in an area called “Next steps for your site.”
The Bluehost menu can help you…
- Create pages and blog posts
- Manage menus
- Install WooCommerce
- Set up a staging area
- Activate caching
You can also purchase a selection of premium themes and plugins via the Bluehost marketplace.
This is in addition to the standard access that you get to the WordPress repository via the WP admin dashboard:
Overall, Bluehost has done everything possible to ensure that creating a new website is quick and easy for beginners. For those who have some experience with WordPress already, the features aren’t really necessary.
Namecheap 👩💻
Namecheap is also very user-friendly, although it provides a slightly different experience to Bluehost. Once you have set up your account with Namecheap, you can view and manage your account, domains, and hosting plans within your dashboard.
However, unlike Bluehost, to set up a new website, you will need to do so via the Softaculous App Installer within cPanel.
Using the Softaculous App Installer is very straightforward. If you’re curious, you can use the Softaculous demo and try it for yourself.
Once you finish installing WordPress, you can access your website via the normal WP admin URL, which is yourwebsite.com/wp-admin
. Again, not the most difficult thing in the world by any means, but also not as simple as clicking “Edit Site” (as it is with Bluehost).
Unlike Bluehost, Namecheap does not include any type of special WP admin screen with beginner tips and guidance. It’s just the classic WP admin dashboard. To be perfectly honest, I actually prefer this though. I find the Bluehost menu to be unnecessarily cluttered, but I’ve also been working with WordPress for years.
For total beginners, the Bluehost version might work better due to the way it prompts you in certain ways to complete the steps you’d normally take when creating a website.
In conclusion, both companies over a user-friendly interface and make it easy to get started with WordPress. Bluehost has a slight edge for new users because it pre-installs WordPress on your hosting account and its custom WP admin dashboard is geared towards first-timers. While the Softaculous installer you get with Namecheap is very easy to use, it’s obviously not quite as easy as having it done for you.
Customer support ☎️
Bluehost | Namecheap | |
---|---|---|
Chat support | 24/7 | 24/7 |
Phone support | 24/7 on all plans above the entry-level plan | ❌ |
Knowledge base | ✅ | ✅ |
Email ticket support | ❌ | ✅ |
How-to videos | ❌ | ✅ |
Both Bluehost and Namecheap provide good quality support.
To begin with, they have an extensive knowledge base that contains troubleshooting tips for a wide range of issues. However, Namecheap has a slight edge here because they also offer video tutorials and dedicated guides (that are separate and more in-depth than the general knowledge base).
Both companies provide 24/7 chat support. From personal experience – and on numerous occasions – I can tell you that the response time of both is very fast and the reps are helpful and knowledgeable. There’s really no marginal edge with either one here. They’re both just really good.
Where they differ from each other is that Namecheap also provides 24/7 ticketed email support, whereas Bluehost has 24/7 phone support for all plans above the entry-level Basic plan. Depending on how important it is to you to be able to speak with someone on the phone will determine how much weight you put on this specific decision-making factor.
Website migration 🔁
Another thing worth mentioning here is that Namecheap offers a website migration service. If you have an existing website hosted with a different web host, Namecheap will transfer it for free. When I moved my account over to them from HostGator, they went above and beyond in terms of customer service for me. I’m not going to say exactly what they did because I don’t want them to get bombarded with similar requests, but I’ll just say that the migration process went extremely smoothly.
Bluehost offers a WordPress migration tool, but I can’t speak to how their process compares to Namecheap because I’ve never personally used it. However, I did ask the Bluehost customer support team to explain to me how it works and it seems straightforward:
Performance results 📈
At Themeisle, we’ve purchased hosting setups with many of the most popular hosting companies, using our own money. Naturally, this includes Bluehost and Namecheap.
As I mentioned in the intro, we’ve done this to gain firsthand experience with using these companies as a customer. That way, when we review the companies, we’re not only sharing secondhand knowledge that anyone can get by scraping info from the companies’ websites.
The other reason we maintain these hosting subscriptions is so that we can continuously test and monitor the companies’ performance.
More specifically, we look at two measures – loading time and uptime.
Loading time refers to the duration it takes for a webpage to fully display its content after a user clicks on a link. Faster loading times enhance user experience, reduce bounce rates, and can positively impact search engine rankings. Ideally, a website should load in under three seconds to keep visitors engaged.
Uptime is the measure of time a web hosting service is operational and accessible to users. It is typically expressed as a percentage. 99.9% is the common industry standard, indicating that a website is available nearly all the time, with minimal interruptions.
We update the results of our tests on a monthly basis by using a shortcode mechanism. The results of the most recent tests are below:
Bluehost 📊
East Coast USA: 0.61s ⭐ | West Coast USA: 0.70s ⭐ |
Central USA: 0.54s ⭐ | London, UK: 0.60s ⭐ |
Paris, France: 0.49s ⭐ | Mumbai, India: 0.60s ⭐ |
August 2024 | September 2024 | October 2024 |
---|---|---|
100.00% ⭐ | 100.00% ⭐ | 100.00% ⭐ |
See the live status page and historical data for Bluehost.
Namecheap 📊
East Coast USA: 0.81s ⭐ | West Coast USA: 0.45s ⭐ |
Central USA: 0.61s ⭐ | London, UK: 1.25s |
Paris, France: 1.36s | Mumbai, India: 1.99s |
August 2024 | September 2024 | October 2024 |
---|---|---|
99.97% | 100.00% ⭐ | 99.98% |
See the live status page and historical data for Namecheap.
Since the figures above are continuously updated, I can’t write a definitive conclusion based on the numbers I’m seeing as I’m writing this. What I will say though, is that generally speaking, both Bluehost and Namecheap offer solid loading times and uptime, with Bluehost having a slight edge some of the time.
For uptime specifically, you can actually check the live status and historical record yourself by using the links above.
Which hosting provider should you choose? 🤔
Bluehost and Namecheap both have much to offer for WordPress users and I’ve covered most of it here. However, if you’re still struggling with making a decision – then here’s one more quick summary that should help tip you over one side of the fence (or the other).
Choose Bluehost if…
You really value the following features that you won’t get with Namecheap:
- WordPress pre-installed on your hosting account.
- Custom WP admin dashboard with guidance for new WordPress users.
- Customer support via phone.
- The latest NVMe hard drives, which are faster than older SSD models.
In addition, based on our ongoing tests, Bluehost has slightly faster loading times, on average. Though this is compared to Namecheap’s shared web hosting plans, not the EasyWP WordPress plans. The WordPress plans would (most likely) have an edge over the Bluehost plans.
If you want to learn more, you can check out our full Bluehost review.
Choose Namecheap if…
You want to get more for your money. Namecheap provides much cheaper hosting packages – particularly when you factor in the post-promo period. So if your main criteria for a new host is low cost, especially over the long term, then Namecheap is a better choice.
In addition, you’ll get:
- Much lower prices on domain name renewals.
- Free domain name privacy.
- An entire suite of useful marketing tools (some of which are 100% free).
In short, if you have any type of previous experience working with WordPress or even with building a website using other tools, then Namecheap is the way to go. You won’t need any of Bluehost’s “beginner-friendly” features anyway, so why pay a premium for something that’s of no use to you?
Final thoughts 💭
If you’re still not sure whether to choose Namecheap or Bluehost, my overall recommendation for most WordPress users is Namecheap. After all, I use it myself.
However, the caveat here, which I stated above, is that if you are not very tech-savvy and this is going to be your first time building a website, then you may want to consider Bluehost instead. It’s more beginner-friendly and if you get stuck, you also have the benefit of talking to someone on the phone (on all plans above the entry-level plan).
If you want to learn about other hosting companies within a similar price range, check out our full collection of cheap web hosting services. Or, if you’re willing to pay a little more for better features, you also might want to check out our list of cheap managed WordPress hosting providers.
Do you have any remaining questions about Namecheap or Bluehost? Leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help you.
Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals. Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (itโs free)!