Namecheap

About Namecheap

Namecheap was founded in 2000 by Richard Kirkendall as an ICANN-accredited domain registrar, originally in Los Angeles before settling in Phoenix, Arizona, and it grew into one of the largest registrars in the world -- by its own 2022 figures more than 11 million customers and over 10 million domains under management -- with a large engineering presence in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Alongside domains it sells SSL certificates, email, a VPN, and shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting, with its VPS line running out of the PhoenixNAP datacenter in Phoenix. In September 2025 the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners took a majority stake in a deal valuing Namecheap at about $1.5 billion; Kirkendall kept a minority stake and stepped down as CEO that December, with long-time COO Hillan Klein succeeding him.