IONOS vs Namecheap
IONOS and Namecheap compared on measured uptime, response time, pricing and features from our own tests. IONOS scores higher overall.
By Jennifer T. · Updated
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Verdict
IONOSWins overall
The former 1&1: unlimited sites and traffic from $8 a month at renewal, with a free domain and wildcard SSL
The Phoenix registrar's cPanel hosting: three sites for $5.88 at renewal, a 30-day free trial and four data centers
IONOS wins 2 of the six sub-scores and comes out ahead overall (7.1 vs 6.9).
How do the scores compare?
IONOS leads on 2 sub-scores, Namecheap on 2. Higher is better.
Which one is faster and more reliable?
Which one costs less?
On renewal, Namecheap is cheaper ($5.88/mo vs $14.00/mo). Intro prices need the listed term.
What does each include?
| IONOS | Namecheap | |
|---|---|---|
| Free domain | One domain free for the first year on every plan: .us, .ca, .com, .net, .org, .info, .me, .biz or .online | No |
| Free SSL | One DV wildcard certificate on Essential, Starter and Plus; unlimited wildcard certificates on Ultimate | 50 standard certificates for one year on every plan, installed automatically |
| Backups | Daily backup of storage and databases with data recovery, every plan | Twice a week on Stellar (restored by ticket); Stellar Plus and Business add AutoBackup with 6 daily, 3 weekly and 5 monthly copies |
| Free migration | No | cPanel-to-cPanel transfers free; manual migration case by case |
| Free CDN | Starter, Plus and Ultimate; not on Essential | Supersonic CDN with DDoS protection, for domains on Namecheap's hosting nameservers |
| Caching | Server compression and HTTP/2 listed; no caching layer named on the plan page | No |
| Staging | No | No |
| SSH, SFTP, WP-CLI and Git | Every plan, with 200 SFTP accounts, Perl and Python | Not stated |
| PHP versions | 8.4, 8.3 and 8.2, with paid extended support for 5.6 and later | Not stated |
| Resource limits | CPU priority 1x, 3x, 5x and 10x by plan; 262,144 inodes on every plan; cron jobs 10, 25, 50 and 100 | Not stated |
| Websites and traffic | Unlimited websites and unlimited traffic on every plan; 5,000 subdomains | Not stated |
| 1, 2, 4 or 5 accounts of 2 GB by plan, with forwarding, webmail and anti-spam | Not stated | |
| Data center choice | No | Phoenix, Amsterdam, Singapore or Farnborough at checkout; moving an account later is a billing request |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.99% in the general terms, with a credit for the month proportional to the downtime, on request and at IONOS's discretion | 100% monthly on shared plans; one day of service added per hour of unscheduled downtime, up to one month, claimed by ticket within 10 days |
| Security | Daily malware scanning (basic, or advanced with automatic removal on Ultimate), DDoS protection, geo-redundancy | Imunify360 (malware scanning, intrusion prevention, machine-learning firewall), KernelCare patching, account isolation, cPanel two-factor login |
| Phone support | 24/7, with a personal consultant | No |
| Windows hosting | No | No |
| SSH and languages | Not stated | Jailshell SSH, PHP, Perl, Python, Node.js and Ruby scripts |
| Website builder | Not stated | Sitejet AI website builder and an AI assistant for WordPress on every plan |
| Dedicated IP | Not stated | $4.00 a month add-on |