Side-by-Side Comparison
Namecheap vs Cloudways — Detailed Comparison
Compare features, pricing, performance, and support side-by-side. Pick the one that fits your needs.
Company Information
Founded
2000
2011
Headquarters
USA
Malta
Hosting Types
User Reviews
1,747
746
Pricing & Plans
Cheapest Plan
$1.90/mo
$11.00/mo
Number of Plans
Money-Back Guarantee
30 days
—
Performance & Infrastructure
Uptime Guarantee
99.9%
99.99%
NVMe Storage
No (SSD on Shared, NVMe on EasyWP)
Yes (DigitalOcean Premium)
LiteSpeed Web Server
Yes (Stellar plans)
No (Apache + Nginx + Varnish)
Data Centers
2 (USA + UK)
60+ (across DO/AWS/GCP)
PHP Versions
—
7.4 – 8.3
Inodes (File Count)
300K – 600K
—
Email Send Limit
5,000/day
N/A — Rackspace required ($1/mailbox)
Free Features Included
Free SSL
—
—
Free Domain
—
—
Free Migration
Limited (Some plans)
Yes (1st migration free)
Free CDN
—
—
Support
24/7 Support
—
—
Phone Support
No (Chat & Ticket)
Control Panel
cPanel
Cloudways Platform
Expert Ratings
User Friendly
—
Support
—
Features
—
Reliability
—
Pricing
—
Key Features
Namecheap
- 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
- LiteSpeed Web Server (Stellar plans)
- Free WhoisGuard Privacy for Life
- Free DNSSEC on all domains
- Free PositiveSSL (Year 1)
- cPanel Control Panel
- Domain + Hosting Bundles
- EasyWP — Cloud-based Managed WordPress
Cloudways
- 3-Day Free Trial — No Credit Card Required
- 3 Cloud Providers: DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud
- Lightning Stack (Nginx + Varnish + Redis + PHP-FPM)
- Object Cache Pro Included Free (4GB+ servers, $95/mo value)
- Cloudways Autonomous (auto-scaling)
- Free SSL, CDN & Migration
- Free First Migration by Cloudways Engineers
- 24/7 Live Chat Support
Pros & Cons
Namecheap
Pros
- World's #2 domain registrar with 16M+ domains
- Free WhoisGuard Privacy for LIFE (most charge $10-15/year)
- Free DNSSEC included
- Very competitive intro pricing
- Domain + hosting bundle deals
- LiteSpeed on Stellar plans
Cons
- Renewal prices significantly higher than intro
- SSL: PositiveSSL free Year 1 only (then paid)
- Data centers in USA & UK only
- Stellar Plus 'unlimited' excludes backups if >25GB used
- Max 10 GB allowed for media/archive files on shared
- Stellar plan: 30 mailboxes only
Cloudways
Pros
- Choice of 3 enterprise cloud providers (DO, AWS, GCP)
- Managed platform — no server admin needed
- Object Cache Pro free on 4GB+ ($95/mo value)
- Free migration done by Cloudways engineers
- Vertical scaling — increase RAM/CPU with one click
- Pay-as-you-go billing
Cons
- No domain registration
- No email hosting at all (must use Rackspace add-on at $1/mailbox/month)
- Backups cost extra: $0.033/GB
- Higher entry price than shared hosting
- No money-back guarantee (uses 3-day free trial instead)
- No free email — even Elastic Email is paid
Ready to choose?
Visit any of these providers to claim their best deal:
Namecheap Plans
8 plans available across all hosting types.
Cloudways Plans
12 plans available across all hosting types.
Cloud Hosting 12
| Plan | Price | Storage | CPU | RAM | Bandwidth | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DO Standard 1GB — DigitalOcean | $11.00/mo | 25 GB SSD | 1 Core | 1 GB | 1 TB Transfer | Get Plan |
| DO Premium 1GB — DigitalOcean | $14.00/mo | 25 GB NVMe | 1 Core | 1 GB | 1 TB Transfer | Get Plan |
| DO Premium 2GB — DigitalOcean | $28.00/mo | 50 GB NVMe | 1 Core | 2 GB | 2 TB Transfer | Get Plan |
| GCP Standard Small — Google Cloud | $37.33/mo | 20 GB SSD | Shared | 1.7 GB | 1 GB Transfer | Get Plan |
| AWS Standard Micro — Amazon Web Services | $38.56/mo | 20 GB EBS | 2 Cores | 1.75 GB | 2 GB Transfer | Get Plan |
| DO Premium 4GB — DigitalOcean Best | $54.00/mo | 80 GB NVMe | 2 Cores | 4 GB | 4 TB Transfer | Get Plan |
| DO Premium 8GB — DigitalOcean | $99.00/mo | 160 GB NVMe | 4 Cores | 8 GB | 5 TB Transfer | Get Plan |
| DO General Purpose 8GB — DigitalOcean | $106.00/mo | 30 GB NVMe | 2 Cores | 8 GB | 4 TB Transfer | Get Plan |
| GCP Standard Large — Google Cloud | $152.02/mo | 20 GB SSD | 2 Cores | 7.5 GB | 1 GB Transfer | Get Plan |
| DO CPU Optimized 8GB — DigitalOcean | $164.00/mo | 50 GB NVMe | 4 Cores | 8 GB | 5 TB Transfer | Get Plan |
| AWS Standard Medium — Amazon Web Services | $183.22/mo | 20 GB EBS | 2 Cores | 8 GB | 2 GB Transfer | Get Plan |
| GCP Compute Optimized XL — Google Cloud | $255.37/mo | 20 GB SSD | 4 Cores | 16 GB | 1 GB Transfer | Get Plan |