Namecheap and Dynadot companies were founded one year before and after the Dotcom bubble burst i.e. in 2000 and 2002. The latter firm might be a 20-year-old and just two years younger than NC, but the number of domains registered via their platform is far less than NC. While Dynadot’s core business is selling TLDs, NC offers dozens of services. From selling domains to hosting plans, you’ll find every service required for a website to function on the registrar’s site.
Below we’ve compared the various services offered by both companies. Find out which registrar is affordable and has better support and plans.
User interface
Dynadot’s homepage shows the premium domains and their price. It also lets you see the number of backorder requests for a popular TLD. When you visit the website, you will often encounter a hello bar that shows the brief details of an ongoing flash sale.
Namecheap also shows discounts on the homepage. The deals are mouth-watering as they’re offered on TLDs or important services of the company. The option to open the domain suggestions tool dubbed “beast mode” appears on the domain finder search box. This tool lets users find all types of extensions based on certain conditions.
Dynadot’s “suggestion” tool enables you to find a TLD name by mixing words. Its dashboard is attractive, but it makes you visit different pages. For example, there’s a page to enter the contact information, another page for setting nameservers, etc. Namecheap shows important TLD-related settings in one panel. You can edit nameservers, addresses, etc, without opening another page.
Pricing
The pricing of domains for existing holders of TLDs with Namecheap is the same as Dynadot. Only the .org extension on the company is around 1.5 USD costlier. You can buy .org for 7.48 on NC and 8.99 on DN. New users can get a .com for just 0.99 cents on NC. Since last month, the registrar has been running this campaign, and we don’t know when the campaign will end. .com’s on DN cost 9.99 dollars.
Now, let’s have a look at the renewal fees. Namecheap customers must pay 13.98, 14.98, and 14.98 to extend the validity of their .com, .org, or .net extension for a year. Renewing a .org TLD on DN will cost you $2 more than the amount you paid to buy the domain. The transfer and renewal fees of the .net and .com TLDs are the same i.e. $9.99 and 10.99. Renewing a domain on Dynadot is cheaper compared to NC.
Email hosting plans
Some businesses may want to communicate with their clients with a branded email address. You’ll find dozens of email hosting service providers on the internet. The list of providers includes the two registrars. DN has a single yearly $15.9 subscription that supports unlimited email addresses, has 99.9% uptime, and provides 1GB of storage.
NC has a cheaper 10.98-dollar plan, but there’s a catch. You can create and use only one email address. To add new mailboxes, you must pay 7.92. Want more mailboxes? You can buy the Ultimate or the Pro plan for 43.88 or 25.88 dollars. These 2 email packages ship with 5 and 3 mailboxes. The storage memory NC has allocated for these two plans is 105GB and 45GB, respectively.
Website Builder
The registrars enable users to create a website without writing code or installing any application with their website builder tool. When you click the website builder option of NC or DN, the tool will show a list of templates. Once you choose the template, the tool will load the template and show several modules. You can drag and drop the module on the page or click the element on the page to see the options.
The website builder packages of Dynadot start at 10 dollars per year, and the costliest pack is priced at 100 dollars. Namecheap website builder is available to users who purchase any of these shared hosting plans – Stellar, Stellar Plus, and Stellar Business. The subscriptions cost 1.88, 2.98, and 4.98 USD per month.
Hosting
Dynadot belongs to the list of domain registrars that have not launched a hosting plan yet. On the Namecheap website, you’ll find hosting packs for beginners and advanced users. The plans for beginners are cheaper than those launched for users who own or manage an established website. They belong to one of these hosting categories – dedicated, shared, or VPS. NC claims to offer an uptime of 99.9% for their dedicated, shared, and VPS servers like other hosting companies. It has launched special and cheap managed hosting plans for WordPress users.
SSL certificates
Namecheap sells Positive SSL certificates for 5.79 dollars. Dynadot sells the same certificate for 16.99 dollars. The price of a wildcard SSL certificate on NC starts at 41.99 dollars, and the same on DN costs 80 dollars.
Marketplace
Dynadot is a great choice for domainers as it has a listing of thousands of domains on the marketplace. No one buys TLDs blindly. When you click on the domain, you’ll see the following details:
- Expiration date, inbound links.
- Type, years old, etc.
DN lets either buy the TLD at a price the user who has listed it is selling or place a bid (if the extension is sold through an auction). You can filter the listed domains by the following conditions on DN:
- Price, inbound links, the seller.
- Character count, category, age, etc.
Namecheap might launch a “marketplace” service soon. The “Market” tool of the registrar is in Beta.
Support
Namecheap support staff are available 24 x 7. You can talk to them on the phone or get live help from the team with the live chat interface. Dynadot provides live chat support, but the chat support team is online only during certain hours. The option to create a ticket is also available for the users of the registrar. DN has a forum you can refer to for fixing an issue you’re facing. NC doesn’t have a discussion forum.
Closing words: Dynadot is an ICANN-approved registrar, but it sells domains at a bit higher price. On the other hand, NC lets new customers buy a TLD for around one dollar only. Compared to Namecheap, the website builder and email hosting plans of Dynadot are cheap.
