I’ve been using Namecheap for domain registration and hosting for a long time, but there is one thing I hate about their shared hosting: They don’t have free SSL certificates.

They only have premium SSL certificates, which you get for free with any hosting plan for the first year, then it costs an extra $13 per year to renew each certificate, and that’s just the cheapest one.

That’s a totally unnecessary cost these days where most hosts offer free SSL certs.

But to be fair, even with that extra cost, Namecheap’s renewal rates remain lower than other big competitors like Bluehost and GoDaddy.

If you want a cheaper alternative with free SSL certificates, two of the best I’ve used myself are Shock Hosting and WebGee. They’re both solid, although Shock’s servers have performed slightly better for me (less downtime).

You’ve probably never heard of these two, but if you ask me, the best web hosts out there are the ones you’ve never heard about, and the worst ones are usually featured on most “honest” review sites!

If you already have your domain registered with Namecheap, you can keep it there and just update the nameservers to connect it to the new host. You can also transfer the domain along but that’s not necessary.

You can add any other alternatives you’ve used in the comments.