Hey, what’s up?
I’ve been trying the 1-month free trial with Spaceship.
I figured that I’d make a review about it explaining my pros and cons, and why I’m going to keep using it for now.
WHAT IS SPACESHIP
Spaceship is a new web hosting company that was launched in 2023 and that is owned by Namecheap. It offers many web services like domain names, web hosting plans, email hosting, etc.
1- PROS
1.1- CHEAP DOMAINS WITH PRIVACY INCLUDED
The initial thing that attracted to Spaceship is their cheap domain names with privacy included. With most domain name registrars, privacy is sold separately as an add-on. With Spaceship, domains aren’t only cheap, but they also include privacy.
1.2- OWNED BY NAMECHEAP
Spaceship is owned and developed by Namecheap. Namecheap is a successful and popular web hosting company that has been around for a while now. The way I see it, Spaceship is basically Namecheap, but more modern and up-to-date with the latest technologies. Because of that, I also assume they know what they are doing.
1.3- MODERN, INTUITIVE AND CUSTOM DASHBOARD
Because they are associated with Namecheap, they are able to develop their very own custom dashboard, instead of using the traditional cPanel. Now, you still have access to it if necessary or if you feel more comfortable, but personally I find their custom dashboard more modern and agreeable to use.
1.4- PERFORMANT AND UNMETERED PLANS
Another aspect that I love is that they offer performant, unmetered and unlimited plans, giving more freedom and control over my web hosting without worrying about reaching a certain limit. For example, you get unlimited domains, unlimited websites, unlimited bandwidth and the biggest hosting plan has unmetered SSD Cloud Storage.
Depending on your hosting plan and needs, you also get a bunch of CPUs.
1.5- Softaculous
In the past, most web hosting companies hosted WordPress websites, which is perfectly fine. But now, more and more web hosting companies are making Softaculous available on their platform.
Softaculous allows you to install many web applications, most of them being open source, into your web hosting panel. As of right now, it has over 380 applications that you can use and install with a one-click installation. I’m assuming that more will be included in the future.
I find that interesting because I can host web applications that would usually require a VPS. For example, I use Softaculous to host my NextCloud instance. One day, I hope that I’ll be able to host my Mastodon, Lemmy, Pixelfed, etc
2- CONS
2.1- SSL ONLY FOR A YEAR
One of the worst thing about Spaceship is the way they handle SSL certificates. Depending on your hosting plan, you have some SSL certificates, but they are only free for one year. After that year has passed, then you have to pay for these certificates every year.
For some reasons, they aren’t using Let’s Encrypt certificates, they are using PositiveSSL. Because of that, you are expected to pay for your certificates after that first year.
That applies for every domain and subdomain that you have. So if you transfer or have lots of domains, you might be ok the first year, but be careful when they all expire. You might get a surprise.
Now, it’s not very expensive, it’s about $7 per year. But to me, it simply feels like a scam.
2.2- EMAILS ONLY FOR A YEAR
Email addresses also work in the same way. You have a bunch of email accounts included in your hosting plan for the first year.
Once that first year is over, you have to pay them.
Just like the SSL, it feels like a scam to me.
2.3- HEAVILY SUBSCRIPTION BASED
Overall, I think spaceship is quite heavily subscription based. You have to manage many subscriptions within your web hosting subscriptions.
Guess what? I hate subscriptions. Why do I need to deal with so many? Having one is more than enough. I usually try to avoid them as much as possible, but I figured that I actually need web hosting.
I simply think it would be better to have everything under one simple subscriptions instead of having to manage everything individually. If Spaceship doesn’t want to give us unlimited SSL and some email addresses, then simply raise a little bit the price and remove the subscription manager.
That’s exactly what Hostinger is doing.
2.4- LIMITED NUMBER OF FILES
Another limitation to be careful of is the number of files allowed. Technically, many things can be unlimited and/or unmetered. But on all plans, you have a limit on the number of files on your account.
Now, you’re given lots of files, but it is still a limitation to be careful and be aware.
2.5- LEARNING CURVE
Since Spaceship has its own custom dashboard, it means that they created something unique and somewhat different. It has a small learning curve. If you’re used to something like the cPanel, then you might need to adapt to their dashboard and learns how it works.
For example, I used many web hosting companies in the past, and it is the first time that I experienced something like the connection manager. Basically, the connection manager is a feature that allows you to connect different services with each others. For example, you might have a domain name that you want to connect to an SSL or to a hosting plan.
2.6- RESTRICTING TERMS AND CONDITIONS
It has unmetered plans, but it’s not entirely unlimited. You might be able to get away if you have a bunch of WordPress websites, but if you’re doing more exotic things like NextCloud or run some other web apps. You might actually need to read the terms and conditions to make sure that you’re doing everything right.
For example, they are mentioning an acceptable use of 10GB for a shared account allocated to multimedia files. I’m not exactly sure what they mean by that, but it doesn’t sounds very unlimited or unmetered.
If you’re planning to use this web hosting company for things out of the norm, I would recommend that you read the terms and conditions and/or contact the customer support to keep your account safe.
2.7- SUSPENDED OR LOCKED ACCOUNTS
You should make sure to keep your account safe because they seem to ban or suspend some account from time to time. If we go on Trustpilot and read some of the reviews for Spaceship, we can see that some users actually got their accounts banned or suspended.
Now, I obviously don’t know the details about these situations. Were these people rightfully suspended? I don’t know. Maybe some of these people unintentionally broke the rules. Maybe it was intentional. Maybe mistakes actually happened. I obviously can’t know for sure.
The point that I’m trying to illustrate is that: yes, these things can happen. So keep your account safe and read the terms and conditions or contact the customer support if necessary.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I will be using Spaceship.com for my web hosting needs for now, as I currently don’t have the technical skills to do self-host everything myself. Spaceship is new, modern, generous, quite easy to use and backed by Namecheap which gives me confidence to go forward with this company.
Ultimately, my long term goal would be to have my own server where I can host everything myself without relying on a web hosting company. To do so, I would probably use an operating system like yunohost.org that makes self-hosting and server administration easier. In fact, I will most likely learn how to use this operating system in the future.
So that’s pretty much it, I hope this was helpful to you. If this blog was valuable to you, you could consider following me on social media and if you have any thoughts or comments, you can leave them below.
I hope this helps, peace!
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