I secretly test hosts every month for speed, reliability, and support. Here’s a comparison between HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? and Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? with real proof of their performance.
HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? Hosting Plan
I have purchased a hosting plan on HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? and set up a typical web site. I use that example website to run these tests. Learn more about how I test.
Here is the plan information I chose:
| Plan Name | Hatchling |
|---|
| Cost | $8.95/month |
|---|
| Disk Space | Unlimited |
|---|
| Bandwidth | Unlimited |
|---|
| Uptime Guarantee | 99.9% |
|---|
| Money Back Guarantee | 45 days |
|---|
| Notes | Site was ready within minutes after I purchased. |
|---|
Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? Hosting Plan
Namecheap started as a domain registrar in 2001, but expanded into hosting in 2008. Their data centers are located in Phoenix, Arizona and Atlanta, Georgia.
I have purchased a hosting plan on Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? and set up a typical web site. I use that example website to run these tests. Learn more about how I test.
Here is the plan information I chose:
| Plan Name | Professional |
|---|
| Cost | $7.48/month |
|---|
| Disk Space | 100GB |
|---|
| Bandwidth | Unlimited |
|---|
| Uptime Guarantee | 99.9% |
|---|
| Money Back Guarantee | 14 days |
|---|
| Notes | Site was ready within minutes after I purchased. |
|---|
Page Speed Test Results
This test measures the total time it takes to load a standard web page. Lower is better. Learn more about the Page Speed Test.
HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? performs incredibly in the Web Hosting Speeds: Which Hosting Brands Are Best & Worst For Your Site? Test, with an average result of 2.79 seconds. It's best result was 2.00 s but it has been as bad as 15.02 s. HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? most recent result on Dec 10 was 2.00 s. Back in the day HostGator used to share a datacenter with SoftLayer - and they were lightning fast. Now that they made everyone transition to their own datacenter (after the EIG buyout), page speed has been worse, although not as bad as some other hosts here.
Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? performs impressively in the Web Hosting Speeds: Which Hosting Brands Are Best & Worst For Your Site? Test, with an average result of 3.12 seconds. It's best result was 2.00 s but it has been as bad as 72.71 s. Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? most recent result on Dec 10 was 2.00 s. Namecheap proves that they have consistent, low page load times. While I bet it could be improved if they enabled compression and caching headers, their stats are something other hosts strive for.
Let’s see how HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? and Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? compare in detail for their page speed stats:
Uptime Test Results
This test is performed by measuring the % uptime of a host. Higher is better. Learn more about the Uptime Test.
HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? performs impressively in the Web Hosting Uptime: Which Hosting Brands Are Best & Worst? Test, with an average result of 99.97 percent. It's best result was 100.000 % but it has been as bad as 97.500 %. HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? most recent result on Dec 9 was 100.000 %. Back in 2013 HostGator had several outages that lasted days. While I wasn't recording detailed stats at the time, I can vouch that it was a miserable experience. Many blame the lack of reliability on their new data center, which they made everyone move to after they were bought out by EIG. To be honest, HostGator's downhill performance was the reason I created this site (I was too annoyed by them to let them get away with it).
Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? performs alright in the Web Hosting Uptime: Which Hosting Brands Are Best & Worst? Test, with an average result of 99.94 percent. It's best result was 100.000 % but it has been as bad as 92.000 %. Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? most recent result on Dec 9 was 100.000 %. Namecheap has had a few significant outages (more than a few minutes) since I started testing them. It's nothing horrendous, but other hosts have better reliability.
Let’s see how HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? and Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? compare in detail for their uptime stats:
Support Response Test Results
This test measures how quickly the host’s support team responds to your request. Lower is better. Learn more about the Support Response Test.
HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? performs pretty poorly in the Web Hosting Support Response Time: Which Hosts Are Best & Worst? Test, with an average result of 53.4 hours. It's best result was 0.30 h but it has been as bad as 168.00 h. HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? most recent result on Mar 22 was 0.30 h. HostGator's tech support had proven to be pretty slow - you can count on them taking about a day to respond to you. Things used to be faster before they were bought out by EIG.
Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? performs okay in the Web Hosting Support Response Time: Which Hosts Are Best & Worst? Test, with an average result of 2.2 hours. It's best result was 0.10 h but it has been as bad as 6.00 h. Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? most recent result on Mar 22 was 2.20 h. Something I like about Namecheap is their honesty. While most hosts hide the fact that they oversell (put more customers onto one server than it can handle), Namecheap admits they do it. They explain that not only is it the only way for a host to survive (profitably), but usually it's fine because 99% of websites don't get that much traffic (and aren't using all the resources they're allocated). Thanks for telling the truth, Namecheap.
Let’s see how HostGator: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Their Uptime & Hosting Speed? and Namecheap: How Good (Or Bad!) Is Hosting Speed & Uptime? compare in detail for their uptime stats: