Namecheap Hosting Turns 10

Last month, Namecheap celebrated 10 years of offering reliable and robust hosting services.
On this major anniversary, we want to share some of the history that led us to build our world class capabilities, as well as some important goals we’ve achieved along the way.
So let’s step into the time machine and rewind a little, shall we?

In the Beginning

Ten years ago…
In 2007, there were a few conditions starting to emerge that would create the “perfect storm” from which Namecheap hosting would emerge.
This was a time when the market was more segmented. Most domain companies just sold domains and hosting companies only sold hosting. Many of our competitors (think RegisterFly) were engaged in certain marketing practices that were, shall we say, less-than-scrupulous. Domain registrars were seen as a “necessary evil” in the early days of the web. You couldn’t have a real online presence without them, but you didn’t want to bother with them any more than you had to.

A New Vision for Hosting

Within this environment, however, Namecheap was beginning to make a name for itself by doing something most other providers weren’t: combining great value on domain registration with a focus on customer experience and service.
Then there was Namecheap’s founder and CEO, Richard Kirkendall. When we first met, I was intrigued by his long-term vision to build a registrar that consistently put the customer front and center in its priorities.
But hosting still wasn’t part of Namecheap’s batch of products.
Here’s where I enter the story.
My background was in web hosting, and it amazed me that this essential (if under-appreciated) part of any website or online presence was such an afterthought for the major registrars of the time.

Namecheap Hosting is Born in 2007

Together, Rick and I launched Namecheap Hosting, complete with his customer-first mission, and my vision of a registrar that delivered hosting as good as a ‘pure hosting’ company, if not better.
We started with Shared Hosting, delivered from servers in New York. Soon after, we launched email hosting, which was then based on cPanel’s POP3/IMAP mail-only service. We formed a 4-member technical team whose sole focus was to build and run our hosting infrastructure.
Our early customers immediately responded to the reliability and speed of our hosting, delivered through a foundation of quality server hardware in a good datacenter. We grew surprisingly quickly.

Growing with Our Customers

Jump into the time machine again and zoom ahead five years to 2012. By now, we’ve matured our hosting business has matured. We’ve extended our product range, built out larger and better data centers, and expanded our amazing team of people.

Snapshot of 2012

• Our product range extended to include Reseller Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, and Dedicated Servers.
• Our cPanel email service was replaced by Private Email, powered by OpenXchange.
• We hosted several hundred servers, over 200 of which were delivering various hosting services to customers. These were spread out between Phoenix, Dallas, and Atlanta.
• We hosted more than 35,000 web hosting customers who, in turn, hosted more than 100,000 websites across our infrastructure.
• Our teams of specialists grew to include Hosting Level 1, 2, and Hosting Billing teams who worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week helping our customers succeed online.

Back to the Present Day

Now, in 2017,  our hosting services are firmly established and widely regarded as some of the most reliable, high-performance, secure, and competitively priced products on the marketplace.
2017 Highlights:

• Phoenix, Arizona is now home to our primary North American datacenter.  We host more than 2,500 physical servers there with over 1,700 in various configurations.
• We have a 99.99% uptime guarantee. 100% uptime is the norm.
• We run our own solid, DDoS protected network, delivering high-performance connectivity to customers around the world.
• We support over 160,000 hosting customers who themselves host more than 600,000 websites with Namecheap.
• Our teams have grown to include Hosting Levels 1-3, Concierge, Legal and Abuse, Technology Operations, Network Operations, and Datacenter Operations.
• Our teams process more than 30,000 live support chats and 12,000 tickets each month.

Looking Forward

I’m proud to have helped build a hosting service that’s worthy of our customers. And while we’ve made great progress in just ten short years, we’re always looking to the future. Namecheap’s fierce dedication to quality, customer satisfaction, and a free and open Internet has no limits.
Check out all of Namecheap’s hosting options  and see for yourself!