iPage Review – A Hidden Gem?

Price is often one of the most information factors when individuals are choosing a new Web host, and if you’re looking for cheap hosting, iPage is one of the most likely to come up. Their essentials plan offers customers a great introductory price — but is it worth it?

Brief History of the company

One of the older hosting companies on the market, iPage has been providing customers with cheap, quality Web hosting since 1998. Started by Thomas Gorny, the CEO of UnitedWeb, iPage was once a full Web service provider, but shifted their focus in 2009 to specialize in Web hosting, and were bought in 2010. You guessed it, they were bought by powerhouse Endurance International Group, who owns some brands that haven’t been my overall favorite hosting companies.

They have offices around the world, and note that their platform serves more than 1,000,00 customers in two different U.S. data centers.

iPage Plans and Pricing

iPage offers three separate types of hosting, all with an incredibly large amount of benefits and extras, and what seems to be too-good-to-be-true low prices.

Essential hosting packages are shared hosting plans that offer free domain registration, free site builder and templates, and a free e-commerce online store, starting at prices as low as $1.99 each month. The biggest draw, though, is the promise of unlimited disk space. They seem to have a variety of different plans in their hosting menu, with premium plans that are billed at $20.95 per month for a 12-month term, working down to a $10.95 per month at the regular price, for a 36-month month essential plan term.

The essential plan is the most widely promoted, offering terms from one month up to the 36 months, and the $1.99 per month introductory price available for your first term. Unfortunately, when you renew, no matter what term length, the renewal rate is much higher.

VPS hosting is instantly deployable and highly customizable, allowing you to create domains and sub-domains, as well as POP3 e-mail accounts, MySQL databases, and FTP accounts There are more than ten pre-installed scripts, and a variety of built-in cPanel features.

New customers get 20 percent off their first one-, 12-, or 24-month term, bringing the basic package down to $19.99 per month for one core CPU., 1GB RAM, 40GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth. This runs CentOS 6.4 and gives you one IP address.

The next plan, the business (starting at $49.77.month), includes two core CPU, 4GB RAM, 90GB of storage and 3TB of bandwidth, for 2 IP addresses.

The optimum plan starts at $79.99 per month after the 20 percent discount, and includes four core CPU, 8GB of RAM, 120GB of storage and 4TB of bandwidth, with two IP addresses.

Dedicated hosting, with two cores, 4GB RAM, 500GB storage and 5TB of bandwidth, their startup level, costs $199.99/month, a $30 discount from the normal price. The professional plan ($151.99/month) runs on four cores, with 8GB of RAM, 1000GB of storage and 10TB of bandwidth. The top dedicated hosting plan, enterprise ($191.99/month), runs on four cores, with 16GB of RAM, 1000GB of storage and 15TB bandwidth.

All dedicated plans offer fully-managed support, but give customers the ability to install applications without any restrictions. They all have cPanel, and give administrators root access. With the dedicated plans being Cloud-based, they give you an easy way to scale your plan based on your needs.

Their new user special is the prices listed, which are 20 percent less than their regular prices. These prices are only good for your first term, but the regular prices, when compared to other hosts, are still pretty reasonable. They offer one-month, 12-month, and 24-month terms, with the most inexpensive prices given to those who subscribe for a 24-month term.

WordPress hosting comes in two different sizes; both include a core hosting plan, customized control panel, and pre-installed themes. The WP starter stops there, and and offers standard support at $3.75 per month at the introductory cost. WP Essential has an introductory price of $6.95 per month, but adds in super speed, extra security through SiteLock, and the support of their WordPress experts.

Very Inexpensive Hosting

Seriously, I’ve only seen one company that has ever offered lower prices, and the rates that iPage is promising are extremely affordable for each type of hosting, at any budget level. I’m impressed by their ability to provide such a great value.

Reliability and Uptimes

iPage is very fast — I’ve been impressed at their speeds, especially when I consider the prices. However, they aren’t the most consistent. Some customers have seen fantastic uptimes, even reaching 100 percent regularly. Others, though, experienced several downtimes. They offer ongoing network uptime monitoring. This means they keep a watchful eye on their servers and respond immediately.

Support

Between their own 24/7 monitoring, their phone contact and the tickets, I’m happy with the service. Other customers have found, though, that more in-depth situations could cause customer service and communication to be slightly slower than they would like.

30 Days Money Back Guarantee

With the exception of outside certificates or registrations, like the cost of your domain name, iPage offers a full 30-day money-back guarantee. They do have a $35 early cancellation fee, and you need to have paid with a credit card to take advantage of the guarantee, but they are easy to work with if you find you aren’t satisfied.

200% Green Web Hosting

Web hosting isn’t the most green industry — the electrical use and energy needs of hosting companies can be pretty high. There are some companies with green data centers who buy renewable energy certificates, a fact I love. What I like even more, though, is that iPage buys 200 percent of their energy use in renewable energy certificates, guaranteeing that the grid electricity used to run the company is from renewable sources. The REC bought by iPage is equal to planting almost 250 acres of trees.

$100 Adwords Voucher

Adwords is one of the many benefits they offer their essentials customers, helping you to reach and drive new traffic to your new Web site. Once you’ve established your top keywords and campaign, you are ready to start publicizing your new site.

1-Click WordPress installation

The auto/simple script installer included with iPage’s products is very easy to use, allowing you to install WordPress or another CMS that can be installed with a few clicks.

Secure your Site with Sitelock

The essentials plan includes a 12-month subscription to SiteLock, which helps to keep your site safe from malware, spam, and other harmful entities that can cause severe and permanent damage to your Web site.

Unlimited data transfer

As we’ve established with a number of other hosts, unlimited isn’t always unlimited. Customers who are using the Web site packages that offer unlimited e-mail can create an unlimited amount of e-mail accounts as they need, with either a 50MB or 10,000 e-mails.

Unlimited disk space means that no matter what size of your Web site, iPage will work with you, especially you are following the terms and conditions of the company, to not bog down the servers but give you the space you need. Unlimited bandwidth is typically sufficient for more than 99 percent of customers who follow the rules and use the plans correctly. If it’s not enough, they’ll work with you to scale your site to the next appropriate level.

Some Negative Sides Too:

No cPanel (Instead of cPanel they go with lesser known vDeck)

iPage offers the well-known control panel, cPanel, on their VPS and dedicated server plans, but the essentials plan offers clients vDeck, a lesser-known panel that may be harder for some cPanel-diehards to get used to. The plus side is that the vDeck control panel is pretty self-explanatory, with clear icons and descriptions.

Renewal price significantly higher than introductory price.

I touched on this earlier, but it’s enough of a situation that it bears repeating. The insanely low introductory price is only good for the first term, which can be anywhere from one month to 36 months, depending on the hosting you are looking to utilize. Once that first term is up, the prices go up significantly, from $1.99 per month to as much as $20.99 per month for some essential plans.

Pros & Cons of iPage: This Review in a Nutshell

Final Verdict

Do I recommend? Yes

iPage is a really inexpensive way to get your new site off the ground. It’s ideal for customers who are new to Web hosting and administration, or for experienced pros who know their way around lesser-known control panels and other added feature, but still want inexpensive hosting.