Is This Popular Web Hosting Company Any Good?
Introduction
iPage is a web facilitating and area enlistment organization possessed by the Endurance International Group. They offer a wide scope of web facilitating answers for online organizations and website admins to make sites.
iPage likewise offers shared web facilitating bundles and a simplified basedsite developer that enables clients with no coding learning to make a site.
iPage was at first established in 1998 as a full web specialist organization ,however the organization re-propelled tasks as a web facilitating supplier in 2009.
It’s now owned by Endurance International Group, which additionally claims other web facilitating organizations, for example, BlueHost and HostGator.
iPage offers a shared hosting plan that enables users to host unlimited domains for a monthly fee.
Features offered by iPage are similar to other unlimited shared hosting services and include unlimited disk storage, data transfers, email addresses, FTP accounts, addon domain names, and MySQL databases.
iPage likewise gives WordPress facilitating arrangements which are fundamentally shared servers pre-designed to run WordPress.
On their “Green Web Hosting” page, iPage claims they are run by 100% wind power and are a part of the United States Environmental Protection Agency Green Power Partner program. However, as of December 2018, the page has been removed and does not exist anymore, and iPage does not appear in the EPA list of green power partners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPage
Quick Overview
July 2019 Thru July 2021
Average Page Speed | 913 ms |
Average Uptime | 99.90% 120 minutes over 20 outages |
Average Render Time | 238 ms |
Average Security Threats | 5 attempts |
Support | 24/7 Live Chat, Email, and Phone |
Apps | WordPress, Joomla, Drupal |
Features | Scalable bandwidth, free SSL, free domain for the 1st year, free website builder |
Plans | Shared and WordPress Hosting |
Transfer | $150 per site migration |
Pricing | Starting at $1.99/mo (renews at $7.99/mo) |
Three Main Considerations
Speed and Reliability
Most site proprietors are losing cash if their site is down or individuals leave since it is moderate. At an absolute minimum a web facilitating supplier ought to have the option to give 99.95% uptime and burden pages in under 1 second.
We are playing out a running month to month trial of Ipage’s speed and unwavering quality with a straightforward WordPress site as a testing reference point. Here is a connect to that site:
http://ip-openhostingreviews.com
Uptime – 99.90%
Response Time – 913 ms
WordPress Render Time – 301 ms
Up until now, iPage has had the option to beat our desires for uptime and speed. They are additionally destroying the greater part of the challenge. Beneath you will discover a breakdown of their presentation by month:
July 2019 average uptime: 100.00% average load speed: 939 ms
Aug 2019 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 954 ms
Sept 2019 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 1,022 ms
Oct 2019 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 1,027 ms
Nov 2019 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,064 ms
Dec 2019 average uptime: 99.87% average load speed: 1,100 ms
Jan 2020 average uptime: 99.91% average load speed: 1,099 ms
Feb 2020 average uptime: 99.96% average load speed: 1,060 ms
Mar 2020 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 1,041 ms
Apr 2020 average uptime: 99.94% average load speed: 995 ms
May 2020 average uptime: 99.93% average load speed: 919 ms
June 2020 average uptime: 99.95% average load speed: 799 ms
Aug 2020 average uptime: 99.90% average load speed: 774 ms
Sep 2020 average uptime: 99.84% average load speed: 867 ms
Oct 2020 average uptime: 99.88% average load speed: 806 ms
Nov 2020 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 780 ms
Dec 2020 average uptime: 99.69% average load speed: 834 ms
Jan 2021 average uptime: 99.69% average load speed: 876 ms
Feb 2021 average uptime: 99.92% average load speed: 773 ms
Mar 2021 average uptime: 99.97% average load speed: 835 ms
Apr 2021 average uptime: 99.80% average load speed: 813 ms
May 2021 average uptime: 99.78% average load speed: 852 ms
June 2021 average uptime: 99.83% average load speed: 865 ms
July 2021 average uptime: 99.99% average load speed: 1,590 ms
Quality Of Support
Ipage offers great resources for you to contact support . They have email, support tickets, phone, and 24/7 live chat. Their knowledge base is very in depth.
The fastest way for me to quickly judge how knowledgeable their support is to chat with them one on one and ask a very simple question most operators should know without hesitation:
“What version of RHEL or CentOS is my website running on?”
This is the most standard operating system. When it comes to an OS, most hosting companies are using Linux, either Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or CentOS. You can make a quick judgement call on the competence of the staff on how easily they know this.
Here is a screenshot of my web chat:
The chat with iPage took longer than normal, from start to finish it took around 40 minutes and my initial question was not answered all the way.
The chat with iPage took longer than normal, from start to finish it took around 40 minutes and my initial question was not answered all the way.
I connected to the agent Gowreesha in less than a minute to initiate the chat. I was a little disappointed that the agent did not verify the account.
The agent unfortunately did not know the difference between a web server and an OS. In the end the agent informed me that they were running Ubuntu, which version they could not answer that.
They wanted me to submit a support ticket which is standard procedure to find the answer. This chat raised a lot of concerns about the security of iPage as a hosting company.
Affordability
iPage is ridiculously affordable for a web hosting company. Their basic package starts at $1.99 a month, this comes with the ability to host unlimited domains and one free domain.
Remember these are the prices when you do 3 years of service upfront. Prices jump up a little bit when you go to 12 months in advance. You do not have the option of doing month to month which is unfortunate.
For instance if you choose the most affordable offer of $1.99 a month for 3 years you renew at $7.99. Two years will get you $2.49 a month renewing at $8.99. One year costs you $2.99 a month with a renewal of $9.99.
Now if you want to migrate your site to Ipage, unfortunately there is no free option starting out. It’s $150.00 for the site, but you can move up to 5 sites for that one price.
These are promotional intro offers which comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.
Here is a copy of my receipt for the iPage package for 12 months:
Available Plans, Pricing, and Details
There is only one plan, the only difference is the length which determines the upfront cost. 3 years run $1.99 a month, 2 years $2.49, and 1 year runs $2.99.
The main features included are, a free domain name, free email addresses, free SSL certificate, free website builder, you can host unlimited domains, and a 30 day money back guarantee.
Plan Features
- Includes Domain: Yes, no renew fee for the following year.
- Easy Setup Process: You go thru an easy four page setup process
- Admin Dashboard Experience: They have a custom control panel. They do not use cpanel.
- 3rd Party Application Support: One-click integration with Mojo Marketplace for easy installation of popular scripts like WordPress, Weebly, Joomla, Drupal, OpenCart, and more.
- Server Information: Linux CentOS 6, PHP 7, MySQL 5.6, PostgreSQL 10
- Payment Methods: Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex, and PayPal.
- Hidden Fees and Clauses: No refunds are given on any domain names. Renewal rates for both domains and hosting increase.
- Upsells: Some Upsells. But it’s common in the web hosting industry, so don’t worry about it.
Other Plans
Unfortunately what you see if what you get with, there are no additional plans to sign up for like VPS Cloud or Dedicated servers.
Do We Recommend iPage?
Yes, we recommend iPage as a hosting company. It is easy to get started even if you are new building a website.
iPage has dominated on all the speed and uptime in our reports.
There custom panel is easy to navigate, we like their money back guarantee, and they have the lowest prices of any hosting company so far.
There are a few things that we do not like however. Their customer support is very basic, if you were running a blog website we do not see an issue.
But if you had an e-commerce site running and ran into a serious issue it may take some time to get it resolved. You may need to submit a ticket as their customer service.
They do have a pretty well thought out knowledge base. It is easy to navigate, and the topic headings are pretty straightforward.
One thing to note that might determine if you go with Ipage is that they do not have cpanel. This may be a make it or break it moment when you make your decision. They have something similar to cPanel, which is called vDeck.
The difference between cPanel and vDeck is control, vDeck offers more with the ability to install pre-designed templates. cPanel is good if you are just starting out and do not want to accidentally change something without having a fail-safe built in.
To get the most out of the cheap pricing they offer, we recommend locking in the 3 year plan.
Despite some of their issues they offer great value.
Visit iPage.com