It is wild to me that they have 1700+ employees. With that headcount, it’s easy to see why there are dozens of places undercutting their price on .COM.

Yeah, but mostly in Ukraine and other places outside of the States. Most companies make money not from registrations but from added services (email, hosting, etc.) or from aftermarket sales and dropped/expired domain auctions.

Not sure what you mean. Pay peanuts - get monkeys is exactly what namecheap is about.

On the contrary! By not charging peanuts for domain names, you won't attract customers for peripheral services, which are the only ones making decent revenue! Domain registrations are a small business opportunity!

In the 'shop' sense of the word, they're spot on.

They are far from cheap, and they are not secure either. I removed the 2FA from an account via chat without any authentication, and others said on HN that they managed to do the same. They are a terrible company - stay away! You can spend millions protecting your infrastructure, but if your domain is not well-protected, all can go down the drain instantly!