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Cloudways vs Namecheap is a comparison you may not have to settle all at once. Namecheap is a domain registrar first, with cheap shared hosting beside it. Cloudways is a managed cloud server with no domains and no email. So a buyer can keep the domain at Namecheap and point it at a Cloudways server. As hosting, though, the two are far apart. Namecheap Stellar costs $106.08 across 36 months and renews at $4.88. Cloudways costs $504.00 at a flat $14.00, and has the measured uptime Namecheap now lacks. The same Namecheap figures against Kinsta are in our Kinsta and Namecheap comparison.
Cloudways vs Namecheap: The Short Answer
Cloudways, at 4.1 against 3.7 in our reviews, for a site where uptime and control matter. Namecheap is the better buy for a small site on a tight budget, and the better place to keep a domain either way, with privacy included for life.
Head to Head
| Criterion | Cloudways | Namecheap Stellar |
|---|---|---|
| Product | Managed cloud server | Registrar with shared hosting |
| Price | $14.00/mo flat | $1.98/mo, then $4.88 |
| 36 months | $504.00 | $106.08 |
| Uptime, named | 99.996% to 99.999% | Monitoring paused after 30 June |
| Response time | Varies by cloud | 461 ms, Q4 2025 |
| Server hardware | 7.6, Vultr HF | 5.0 of 10 |
| Domain privacy | Not applicable | Included for life |
| Not included | Included with cPanel | |
| Billing | Hourly, no contract | Prepaid, 12 or 24 months |
| Support | Chat and tickets; phone as a paid add-on | Chat and tickets, no phone |
| Owner | DigitalOcean, 2022 | CVC Capital Partners majority, 2025 |
| Our score | 4.1 | 3.7 |
Nearly Five Times the Price
Namecheap Stellar bills 24 months at $1.98 and then $4.88, which is 2.5× over 24 months. Three years come to $106.08. Cloudways charges $14.00 from the first month with no promotional term, which is $504.00 over the same stretch.
The gap never closes. Namecheap’s renewal of $4.88 is about a third of Cloudways’ flat rate, so over five years Stellar totals a little over a quarter of the Cloudways figure. The tiers above follow the same pattern: Stellar Plus runs $2.98 to $6.88 and Stellar Business $4.98 to $9.88. Our page on hosting renewal prices lists all three.
⚠️ Namecheap has had a new majority owner since September 2025, and its low renewal was set before that. As of 20 September 2026, Stellar still renews at $4.88. A 24-month term signed today fixes the $1.98 intro, not the renewal that follows. For the same host against Hostinger, see Hostinger vs Namecheap.
| Host and plan | How it builds | 36-month total |
|---|---|---|
| ChemiCloud Starter, 36-month term | 36 prepaid months at $2.49 | $89.64 |
| InterServer Standard | 36 months at $2.50, price locked | $90.00 |
| DreamHost Launch, 48-month term | 36 of 48 prepaid months at $2.89 | $104.04 |
| Namecheap Stellar, 24-month term | 24 at $1.98, then 12 at $4.88 | $106.08 |
| Hostinger Premium, 48-month term | 36 of 48 prepaid months at $2.99 | $107.64 |
| HostGator Hatchling, 36-month term | 36 months at $3.75, renewal not reached | $135.00 |
| HostGator Hatchling, with daily backups | 36 at $3.75, plus CodeGuard at $35.88 a year | $242.64 |
| Bluehost Starter, 36-month term | 36 months at $3.99, renewal not reached | $143.64 |
| GoDaddy Economy, 36-month term | 36 months at $5.99, renewal not reached | $215.64 |
| GoDaddy Economy, with SSL from year two | 36 at $5.99, plus $119.99 in years two and three | $455.62 |
| Hostwinds Basic, annual | 12 at $4.54, then 24 at $6.99 | $222.24 |
| SiteGround StartUp, 24-month term | 24 at $2.99, then 12 at $14.99 | $251.64 |
| DreamHost Launch, annual | 12 at $2.89, then 24 at $10.99 | $298.44 |
| Scala Hosting Mini, annual | 12 at $2.95, then 24 at $11.95 | $322.20 |
| Bluehost Starter, 12-month term | 12 at $3.99, then 24 at $11.99 | $335.64 |
| IONOS Plus, annual | 12 at $1.00, then 24 at $14.00 | $348.00 |
| GreenGeeks Lite, 36-month prepay | 36 months at $2.95 | $106.20 |
| GreenGeeks Lite, annual | 12 at $2.95, then 24 at $13.95 | $370.20 |
| SiteGround StartUp, 12-month term | 12 at $2.99, then 24 at $17.99 | $467.64 |
| Cloudways, from | 36 months at $14.00, flat | $504.00 |
| A2 Hosting Turbo Boost, annual | 12 at $6.99, then 24 at $20.99 | $587.64 |
| Rocket.net Starter, annual | 12 at $25.00, then 24 at $30.00 | $1,020.00 |
| WP Engine Startup, annual | 12 at $27.00, then 24 at $35.00 | $1,164.00 |
| Liquid Web managed VPS | 36 months at $33.00 | $1,188.00 |
| Kinsta Starter | 36 months at $35.00, flat | $1,260.00 |
| InMotion Core, 36-month term | 36 months at $3.19, renewal not reached | $114.84 |
| InMotion Launch, 36-month term | 36 months at $4.99, renewal not reached | $179.64 |
The Evidence Favors Cloudways
We run no tests, so these figures belong to Hostingstep. Cloudways held uptime between 99.996% and 99.999% across five plans from October 2025 to May 2026. Its weakest published result is a load test on its Vultr High Frequency plan, at 288 ms with a 1.7% error rate, and that plan scores 7.6 of 10 on hardware.
Namecheap recorded 461 ms and 4 outages in the last quarter of 2025, with hardware at 5.0 of 10. Then its shared hosting stopped reporting to the monitor after 30 June 2026, and the project marks every Namecheap figure with an asterisk. So its record is older, shorter and weaker, and the project itself says so.
⚠️ For a small site behind a page cache, the hardware gap is rarely felt. For a store or a site with heavy plugins, it is the number that shows up on every uncached page. Our guide to reading an uptime report explains why a paused monitor weighs less than a running one.
You Can Use Both
The strongest thing Namecheap sells is the domain. Privacy is included for the life of the domain, and keeping it at a registrar rather than a host makes every future move a DNS change. Cloudways does not sell domains at all.
So a common arrangement is to register the domain at Namecheap and point it at a Cloudways server. You keep the registrar’s privacy and the cloud server’s uptime, and neither decision locks in the other. Our guide to pointing a domain to a new host covers the records, and our guide to setting up email on your domain covers the mailboxes Cloudways will not host.
Privacy matters more than it looks on a single domain. Without it, the owner’s contact details can appear in public domain records, which invites spam and unwanted calls. Several hosts bill privacy every year. At Namecheap it is part of the registration for as long as you keep the domain, which is one reason to register there even when the site lives elsewhere.
What Namecheap Includes as a Host
Stellar runs cPanel, so email lives in the account and every tutorial matches the screen. Namecheap also runs EasyWP, a managed WordPress line, with a 30-day trial that needs no card. That is a rare way to test a host without paying first.
Support is chat and tickets, with no phone line. Refunds run 30 days and exclude domains. For a budget site with a patient owner, that is a complete package at a very low price. Our Namecheap review covers the tiers.
Owners with more than one site can step up within Namecheap rather than leave. Stellar Plus opens at $2.98 and renews at $6.88, and Stellar Business opens at $4.98 and renews at $9.88. Even the top shared tier renews below Cloudways’ entry server, which is the clearest sign of how differently the two are priced. Our list of hosting for multiple sites covers the multi-site case.
What Cloudways Includes, and Leaves Out
Cloudways runs a managed server on the cloud provider you choose. SSH, WP-CLI, Git deployment, staging and PHP version selection ship on every tier, and it runs any PHP application. Billing is by the hour, so stopping the server stops the bill.
It leaves out domains, email and cPanel. Mailboxes come through Rackspace at about a dollar each per month, and phone support is a paid add-on. For a developer those are small costs, as our list of hosting for developers explains.
Commitment and Leaving
Namecheap prices Stellar on 12 or 24-month terms, so its best rate needs two years up front, and refunds run for 30 days. Cloudways asks for no commitment at all: you pay for the hours the server runs and can stop at any point. For a project with an uncertain future, that is worth part of the price difference.
Leaving works differently too. Namecheap runs cPanel, so an account exports in a standard format that another cPanel host can import. Cloudways has its own console, so moving away means moving each site. Our guide to migrating web hosting covers both routes.
Moving From Namecheap to Cloudways
The common path runs from cheap shared hosting to a cloud server as a site grows. Cloudways provides a migration plugin for WordPress, so the site itself moves in one step. The domain can stay at Namecheap and simply point at the new server.
Move email first, because Cloudways will not host it, and a mailbox left behind on a canceled plan is easy to lose. Our guide to moving from shared to VPS lists the signals that the move is due.
A First Site, Specifically
For someone building a first site, Namecheap is the gentler start. Domain, email and site sit in one account, cPanel matches every tutorial, and the bill is small enough to make mistakes on. Our guide to understanding cPanel covers the panel.
Cloudways assumes you are comfortable choosing a cloud, sizing a server and arranging email elsewhere. Our list of hosting for beginners weighs the same trade across more hosts.
Two Owners, Both Recent
DigitalOcean acquired Cloudways in 2022. CVC Capital Partners bought a majority stake in Namecheap in September 2025, and its founder stepped down as chief executive that December. Both are now owned by larger companies.
For Namecheap the change is the more recent, and renewal policy tends to follow owners. That is not a prediction, only a reason to recheck the renewal before each term ends. Our comparison of Bluehost against Namecheap, a Newfold Digital brand, covers the ownership change in more depth.
Which Result Matters for Your Site
For a brochure site, a blog or a portfolio behind a page cache, most visitors receive a stored copy, and the server rarely meets a crowd. The gap in hardware and monitoring between these two hosts matters less there than the difference between $4.88 and $14.00 a month.
For a store or a site with launches, carts and logins bypass the cache, and the server works on every request. There, a running uptime record and stronger hardware are worth paying for, and our roundup of hosting for high traffic ranks hosts by how they behave under that load.
The Five-Year View
Over five years Stellar totals a little over a quarter of what Cloudways does, and the gap grows by more than nine dollars every month after the promotion. Add Cloudways’ email and the gap grows faster still. Only a site that needs what a cloud server provides makes that difference worth paying.
Which Site Belongs Where
A small site on a tight budget. Namecheap, for the lowest renewal here and email in the account.
A store, a membership site or an application. Cloudways, for measured uptime and capacity you can resize. Our list of hosting for ecommerce covers the store case.
Several domains to keep. Namecheap for the registrations, wherever the sites are hosted.
A developer running projects. Cloudways, for SSH, Git and billing by the hour.
Where Each One Is Weakest
Namecheap is weakest on evidence and hardware. Its monitoring is paused, its hardware scores 5.0, and its renewal now sits with a new owner. None of that has raised a price yet.
Cloudways is weakest on price for a small site and on what it leaves out. Nearly five times the three-year cost buys uptime a quiet site may never need, and email, domains and a phone line are missing or extra. Our Cloudways review covers each cloud.
Winners by Category
Price: Namecheap, at $106.08 against $504.00 over 36 months. Renewal: Namecheap, at $4.88 against $14.00. Named uptime: Cloudways. Hardware: Cloudways, at 7.6 against 5.0. Domains and privacy: Namecheap. Email: Namecheap, with cPanel. Billing flexibility: Cloudways, hourly.
How We Research
We run no tests. Uptime, response and hardware figures come from Hostingstep’s 2026 benchmarks and reviews, each with its window, and we mark where Namecheap’s monitoring paused. Prices, privacy and refund terms come from the providers’ own pages, read on 20 September 2026.
The criteria behind our scores are on our about page. The five-year shares above come from month-by-month arithmetic on the published rates.
Cloudways vs Namecheap FAQ
Namecheap, by a wide margin. Stellar costs $106.08 across 36 months and renews at $4.88, against $504.00 at a flat $14.00 for Cloudways. The gap never closes, because Namecheap’s renewal is also far lower.
Yes. Register or keep the domain at Namecheap, where privacy is included for life, and point it at the Cloudways server. Cloudways does not sell domains, so this is a common way to use both.
Cloudways, on the named figures: 99.996% to 99.999% uptime across five plans. Namecheap recorded 4 outages in the last quarter of 2025, and its shared monitoring stopped reporting after 30 June 2026.
No. Mailboxes come through Rackspace at about a dollar each per month. Namecheap’s Stellar plans include email through cPanel.
DigitalOcean has owned Cloudways since 2022. CVC Capital Partners bought a majority stake in Namecheap in September 2025.
The Verdict
Cloudways takes this on score, at 4.1 against 3.7, because its uptime is measured and running while Namecheap’s monitoring has stopped. For a store or a busy site, that settles it.
For a small site, Namecheap is the better purchase at a fraction of the price, and it is the better place for the domain whatever you choose for hosting. Many owners will do best with both: the domain at Namecheap and the site wherever it runs best. Our page on what web hosting costs runs the totals further.