I'll chime in. I've been using them since 2007. For me, they're nice and straight-forward. They don't offer any bulk discounts (NN% off for 5 years, etc), but they do occasionally hold sales.
They also raised their rates a few times. When I first joined, they were $8.88/mo. Then they went to $9.29/mo, then $9.69/mo, and now $10.16/mo. Arguably, this may be one of their downsides, but I've never minded. I believe other registrars were also raising their rates around the same time too. (NOTE: prices include the ICANN fee.)
You realize VeriSign increases the registry fee 7% each year. NameCheap from my calculation is actually eating into their own margin each year slightly.
I used to use them back in around 2004, love the company, owner is wonderful. Only reason I don't use them is I got a much better deal at Fabulous.com which is designed for large portfolios. I still recommend them to basically anyone looking for a registrar that isn't holding 100 domains or more.
Not the person you asked but I've used namecheap for 3 years now and haven't had any issues, the whoisgaurd they offer is cheap when it comes up for renewal and you don't have to have a card or anything on file for when renewals come up, they do email you a bit when they do but I don't mind that.
The interface isn't going to win any awards and most of my domains use linodes dns so I can't say how well their dns stacks up.
I also have a few domains on nearlyfreespeech which is quite a bit down on the interface but their terms are great.
>The interface isn't going to win any awards and most of my domains use linodes dns so I can't say how well their dns stacks up.
Their DNS has been fantastic for me. Very straightforward interface, and even has a few nice touches like being able to automatically set up mx records for you if you use Google Apps on that domain.
Only a couple times in the last year, just used them to register the name for the startup my wife and I are hacking on, however they came highly recommended by a friend of mine and Googling turned up many happy customers.
They also raised their rates a few times. When I first joined, they were $8.88/mo. Then they went to $9.29/mo, then $9.69/mo, and now $10.16/mo. Arguably, this may be one of their downsides, but I've never minded. I believe other registrars were also raising their rates around the same time too. (NOTE: prices include the ICANN fee.)