Are you thinking of using one of Namecheap’s hosting plans? Perhaps, you’re wondering whether the Stellar Plus is a good plan for you.
While Namecheap provides various web hosting plans, The Stellar Plus plan seems to be a comprehensive hosting solution.
As this review unfolds, you will find out if the Namecheap Stellar Plus plan is worth signing up for.
What Is Namecheap Stellar Plus?
Stellar Plus is a shared hosting plan by Namecheap. It is feature-rich and suitable for websites with less or moderate traffic. The Stellar Plus plan is a clear winner when it comes to price. It is priced at $5.88 monthly, for a yearly subscription it is priced at $2.98 per month and if you opt for a 2-year plan, the cost is $2.68 per month.
You can transfer or register 1 domain name with this plan.
Pros and Cons of Stellar Plus Plan
Pros
Affordable Price – $2.98 per month
- Free website migration
- Free automated backups
- Unmetered storage and bandwidth
- Efficient 24/7 support
- A renowned hosting brand for more than 20 years
- Free domain WHOIS privacy protection
Cons
- No free SSL certificate after the first year
- No datacentres in Asia
- No phone support
Features & Benefits Of Stellar Plus By Namecheap
The Stellar Plus plan has a lot more features as compared to the basic Stellar plan and it is the only shared hosting plan that gives you unmetered disk space.
Let’s have a look at the features:
- Bandwidth: The stellar Plus plan offers unmetered bandwidth. As there are no limitations on the power of the server, you get better performance during peak traffic times as well.
- Domain Names: The Stellar Plus plan enables you to host unlimited domain names and subdomains.
- FTP Users: You can create unlimited FTP users when you sign up for the Stellar Plus plan.
- Email Accounts: You can create unlimited email accounts; this is a beneficial feature if you have a large number of users or employees.
- Email Forwarders: Unlimited email forwarders are provided.
- Databases: Get unlimited MySQL and PostgreSQL databases with the Stellar Plus plan.
Performance: Is Namecheap Fast?
One of the best things about Namecheap is that they have LiteSpeed included in all their shared hosting plans. LiteSpeed accelerates the performance with minimum CPU and memory usage.
When you activate LiteSpeed for your account, you are sure to get good speed.
This is an uptime and resource graph for 2 weeks. Considering the downtime and the outages, this plan does not look like an ideal hosting plan for large traffic websites. The response time is averaged at 1.05 seconds which is concerning too.
LCP or Largest Contentful Paint is a Google metric that is taken into consideration while ranking websites. As long as the time is below 2.5s, you have more chances to rank higher. When you consider this metric, Namecheap gives an average performance.
Unless your website is hosted in the US, you wouldn’t get a good performance and structure score in other locations like the UK and India.
The performance metrics shown above are based on the tests done on small sized websites with no traffic. Based on these metrics, we do not recommend the Stellar Plus plan of Namecheap for ecommerce websites with high traffic as the performance of the website will be greatly affected.
Will Namecheap Customer Support Help Me?
Namecheap has one of the best customer support and this is an advantage for new website owners and beginners.
- Customer support provides prompt and fast responses.
- When you opt for live chat, you get connected to an agent in less than a minute.
- Their ticket system is fast; you can expect an answer to your query within hours.
Stellar Plus Pricing
Namecheap hosting plans start from $26.44/year and undoubtedly, they provide the cheapest hosting prices in the industry. Namecheap provides a special discounted price for any shared hosting plan for the first billing cycle.
When you sign up for the Stellar Plus plan, you pay $35.44 for the first year, and this plan is renewed at $68.88/year. You can opt for monthly, yearly, or 2 yearly billing terms.
It might interest you to know that if you want to host your website in the UK or EU, Namecheap adds a charge of $1/month.
Namecheap provides 50 free SSL certificates for one year, these SSL certificates are installed on the domains that you host on the server. Free SSL certificates are offered only for the first year. The renewal price for the basic SSL certificate – Positive SSL is $12/year if you opt for a 1-year term and the price will be lower if you opt for a term of more than 1 year.
Namecheap accepts payments through credit cards, PayPal, and cryptocurrency as well.
Few Limitations Of Stellar Plus Plan
- RAM (memory): You get guaranteed 2 GB RAM with the Stellar Plus hosting plan. If needed, you can use up to 6 GB RAM for a short period.
- CPU: The CPU timing offered is 40% which means that you can use up to 40% of 1 CPU Core.
- SSD Limit: There is no definite SSD limit as content is part of what is allowed to be hosted. The limit is on the total number of inodes. The Stellar Plus plan is limited to 300,000 files in total.
- maxEntryProc limit: The Stellar Plus plan provides a maxEntryProc limit of 30 which means that the number of entry processes is limited.
- IO: The IO limit for the Stellar Plus plan is 30, this is the maximum speed of data transfer between the server hard disk and the RAM.
What Do People Say In Trustpilot?
Here is what people have been talking about Namecheap hosting:
There are some negative reviews as well:
Although Namecheap has positive as well as negative reviews, the overall experience rated by the users is excellent. There might not be any web host without negative reviews but it is all about how you provide the right solutions.
3 Alternatives To Namecheap Stellar Plus Hosting Plan
A2 Hosting – Startup Plan
The Startup plan is the lowest shared hosting plan by A2 Hosting. It is priced at $2.99/month. The renewal price of this plan is the same as the purchase price. You can opt for a period of 1 month, 12 months, or 36 months.
- Ideal for hosting a single website
- 99.9% uptime
- Intuitive control panel
- Choose from several datacenter locations without paying any additional charges
- Offers a speed of 279ms on an average
- More resources, better billing policy and premium hosting features
This plan is priced at $2.59/month if you opt for 3 years and it renews at the same price. This is a feature-rich plan that includes pre-installed WordPress, automated WordPress migrations, SSD storage, and a free SSL certificate.
This plan is designed for beginners and has a user-friendly interface with flexible options for your hosting needs.
- Ideal for beginner websites and blogs
- User-friendly interface
- Round-the-clock support, regular updates, and valuable resources
- Free domain name privacy
- Automated daily backups
- 99.9% uptime
The Single Shared Hosting plan offered by Hostinger suits beginners. It is priced at $1.99/month and renews at $3.99/month. You can host 1 website with this plan. This plan provides managed WordPress and WordPress acceleration and is suitable for small website owners and bloggers. You get a free SSL certificate with this plan but you have to pay for the domain name.
- Free SSL
- Free website migration
- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Security features – CDN, RAID-10, weekly/daily backups.
- DDoS protection with all the plans.
Here is a quick comparison of all the plans at a glance
| Namecheap – Stellar Plus Plan | A2 Hosting – Startup Plan | Dreamhost – Shared Starter Plan | Hostinger – Single Shared Hosting Plan | |
| Free Domain Name | 1 | 1 | 1 | No free domain name |
| Number Of Websites | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unlimited | Unlimited | 100 GB Bandwidth |
| Storage | 20 GB SSD Storage | 100 GB SSD Storage | Unlimited SSD Storage | 30 GB SSD Storage |
| Free AutoBackup | Available | No Free Backup | Available | Free Backups For 1st Month |
| Free SSL | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Price | $6.48/Month – Monthly Plan $3.18/Month – Yearly Plan $2.88/Month – 2-Year Plan | $10.99/Month – 1-Month Plan $6.99/Month – Yearly Plan $2.99/Month – 3-Year Plan | $2.59/Month Billing Terms: Monthly, 1-Year, 3-Year | $9.99/Month – 1-Month Plan $3.49/Month – 1-Year Plan $2.49/Month – 2-Year Plan |
Namecheap Stellar Plus Review – Final Verdict
If you have never hosted a website before, you can start small by analyzing your needs first. You can upgrade later to a business plan if you find it necessary.
Who Is It for?
- For people who have a limited hosting budget.
- This plan is apt for creating a personal website, WordPress blog, or business landing page.
- It is ideal for demanding websites and blogs.
Overall Namecheap is a good hosting option but if you want to host a big website or if you receive high traffic to your website, then you might experience a slowdown in your website performance.
So for buying a domain name we would recommend NameSilo with their cheaper prices.
FAQ (frequently asked questions)
What’s the difference between Namecheap Easy WP and Stellar hosting?
EasyWP is a dashboard that enables you to manage all your WordPress websites while Stellar hosting is a web hosting plan. Namecheap provides EasyWP with all the WordPress hosting plans. This platform allows you to create backups, change your domain name, and access files through SFTP. You get a website builder when you opt for the Stellar hosting plan.
Is email free with Namecheap Stellar plan?
Yes, email is provided for free with the Namecheap Stellar plan. You can create 30 email accounts.
Who owns Namecheap?
Namecheap is an ICANN-accredited domain registrar and technology company. This company was founded in the year 2000 by Richard Kirkendall who is the CEO of the company now. Namecheap is one of the top domain name registrars and web hosting providers worldwide.
If you have any suggestions or if you want to add to the information given in the review, you can mention them in the comments section.
