The iPage web hosting user reviews we read were mainly negative. We decided to dig deeper to see where the issue lies. Here are the basics:
The vendor offers four plans – Go Plan, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated servers.
The iPage website builder tool is available for free, too. But if you decide to get a paid plan, the cost starts at $1.99/Month. You will get unlimited websites, limitless storage, and custom email support.
So, where exactly is the problem? Keep reading to find out.
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What Is iPage Web Hosting?
The iPage builder enables users to create professional websites with zero technical skills. All you need to do is drag and drop elements in place for editing. The company offers affordable hosting to both individuals and businesses.
But that’s not all!
The vendor upsells a wide range of value-added services. These range from simple ones such as domain registration to advanced SEO services. Simply put, it’s a one-stop-shop for everything you need to power your website.
How iPage Infrastructure and Network works?
iPage owns a total of two data centers that are in Boston, Massachusetts. Each of these facilities houses thousands of state-of-the-art servers. Its top-features include fast SSD storage, multi-core CPUs, and gigabit speeds internet connectivity.
iPage Inc. prides itself as a “green hosting” company. That’s a type of technology, which relies on renewable sources to power systems. Some examples include solar, geothermal, tidal waves, and more. In the case of this host, it comes 100% from wind.
The company powers over a million websites globally. These include blogs for ordinary users and business sites for enterprises. It sounds great on paper, but there are some issues that can’t be ignored.
Let’s first discuss the features.
What are the iPage Features?
Here are some of iPage’s standout features:
iPage Website Builder
The first thing we tested for this iPage web hosting review was the website builder. It supports drag-and-drop, which makes it extremely simple to use. You won’t need to fumble with complex code. All it takes is just a few clicks to come up with a jaw-dropping design.
The free Starter plan is the most basic option. It has pre-built templates, SEO tools, and support for up to six pages.
The Business version is the next one on the line. You can create unlimited web pages and perform endless revisions to your content. Likewise, you’ll find powerful analytics for tracking visits and increasing conversions.
While that sounds good, it costs $6.99/month on top of hosting fees to use it. The case isn’t any different with the ecommerce tier for online stores. Prices start from $12.99/month, which perfectly suits a small business. It supports PayPal payments, inventory management, and coupons for promotions.
Overall, it’s not feature-rich as Wix, Squarespace, and Zyro. But it still gets the job done.
iPage Domains
iPage domain registration service is a perfect start for establishing your online presence. You can use it to look for a unique name that matches your brand. Even though the search tool is okay, it’s not as good as GoDaddy’s.
With over 1.8 billion websites today, finding an ideal web address is challenging. Sadly, iPage’s solution is far from the best in that department.
On the flip side, you get iPage domain privacy for free. It helps keep your personal information secure. Once enabled, it swaps your details with iPage’s contacts. It simply protects you from spammers that use the WHOIS database to find a domain’s owner.
Unlimited Resources
iPage reviews highly praise this vendor for its resource allocation. It allows you to create an unlimited number of websites. This feature is available for free across all plans except WP Starter.
Unmetered disk space allows you to host any file without worrying about running out of storage. Likewise, you can create an endless list of MySQL databases.
Overall, you can run countless applications for all your sites.
Goodies also include bandwidth, SSL certificates, and email addresses. But,
Users often mention frequent downtimes in their iPage web hosting reviews. It turns out the “unlimited” allocation has fewer restrictions. This includes but is not limited to overuse of the system resources. If you do so, the vendor may switch off your site to protect other users.
The good thing is you’ll receive an email warning you to cut down usage. Alternatively, the host will request you to upgrade to either a VPS or dedicated server. We’ll discuss this later in this iPage hosting review.
iPage SEO Services
User reviews on iPage point out that the host upsells lots of services. While that’s annoying, it allows you to land on good deals. During our tests, we came across a 30% discount to try out its SEO product.
Here’s what we found:
For starters, it provides copywriting services. You can rely on a team of professional writers to create kick-ass articles. If you use pictures in your articles, you’ll be happy to find out you’ll get access to over 550,000 images for free.
Apart from that, iPage tech support will take care of your ranking on search engines. The team will build juicy backlinks as a strategy for increasing your traffic. As if not enough, you’ll receive weekly reports of your site’s performance.
On the downside, the service will set you back $99/month on the lower site. And yes, that includes the discount as well. Without the offer, the regular prices go for $150/month. Even though it’s expensive, it allows businesses to skyrocket their online presence.
Ecommerce Add-ons
Managing an online business can be stressful without the right tools. iPage has ecommerce covered. You get a shopping cart, credit card processing gateway, and website templates.
The highlight of this service – premium SSLs that come from well-known cybersecurity firms, like Comodo and Sectigo. Unlike the free iPage SSL, they actually get the job done.
You also get an inventory management system to streamline your sales. It helps you to monitor stock, manage suppliers, and track performance. In other words, you can easily start selling products online.
SiteLock Security
iPage SiteLock is an out-of-the-box solution for securing your site. With this application, you will be able to keep away malware, spam, and DDoS attacks. It also does an excellent job of blocking resource-hungry bots.
On the downside, it’s only available for free on the iPage Essential hosting plan. On the rest, it costs at least $3.99/month as a separate add-on. It offers unlimited daily scans, malware removal, and blacklist monitoring.
1-Click Installer
While working on this iPage web hosting review, we quite liked the intuitive app installer. All it takes are a few clicks and you’re done. Some of the most popular options include WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
The solution also offers a marketplace for ecommerce applications. You will find OpenCart that provides useful integrations for your online shop. You’ll get goodies like themes, customer management, and multi-store support. Likewise, it uses iPage’s PHP to accelerate your store’s performance.
Magento and PrestaShop are available as well. In combination with OpenCart’s features, you’ll definitely be spoiled for choice. You can test back and forth between them before settling for the best for your needs.
Automatic Backups
iPage has a backup service, but it will cost you extra. The competition offers it for free. And to add salt to injury, only yearly plans are available. That’s $30.99/year on the top of your hosting plan.
Even though it’s irritating to your pocket, the features are mouthwatering. You can create up to an unlimited number of archives for your websites. Backups also take place automatically overnight in the basic tier.
The Pro version is one of the best that we’ve seen around. It can store up to five records daily. Likewise, you can manually generate the archives of your site on-demand. Should things go south, you’ll be able to jump back online using the restore option.
iPage Uptime
The iPage uptime guarantee of 99.9% is pretty standard across the industry. To determine this, we used Pingdom. The service tracks the online status of almost all hosts worldwide.
From their data, this vendor consistently scores an average of 99.92% every month. That’s 0.02% higher than what it promises on paper. There are a few months, however, where its performance was pretty bad. But that’s way back in early 2020 when Covid-19 and cyber-attacks slowed businesses.
As a standard practice, most hosts provide a partial refund to cover massive downtimes. Sadly, iPage doesn’t offer any compensation whatsoever.
iPage Speed
We started the speed tests for this iPage web hosting review by determining the duration it takes to connect to and from a server. We got an average of 900ms.
The time to first byte (TTFB) was the next one. This checks how fast the web server sends the first file to the end-user. After multiple runs, we got approximately 500ms. This is, however, not on par with Google’s recommendations. For the best outcome, it needs to be around 200ms or less.
Overall, our test website did manage to load in under 2 seconds fully. You can speed the performance by up to 200% using a content delivery network (CDN). You’ll find it a worthy investment despite costing extra.
iPage Plans
iPage hosting plans include the following:
iPage Go Plan
iPage’s Go Plan is based on shared hosting. It offers all the necessary features you need to get started – scalable bandwidth, unlimited MySQL databases, and email support. On the security side, you get a free basic SSL for encrypting your site.
While hosting endless sites is possible, you only get your first domain for free. You have to pay to purchase additional iPage domains. The prices start at $3.99/year, which is decent.
You also get design tools. You can make use of the web builder, customizable iPage templates, and quick set-up wizards.
WordPress hosting
iPage also offers WordPress hosting. It has two packages – WP Starter and WP Essential.
The first one offers identical features available in the shared plans. Additions include pre-installed plugins and premium support.
WP Essential includes custom themes, SiteLock security, and iPage’s free SSL. You also get malware scanning and removal for free.
This service is highly flexible, making it ideal for novice and advanced users. It has a marketplace that provides 50,000+ plugins for free. Likewise, you’ll have access to unlimited templates and website designs.
The platform powers over 60% of sites globally. As a result, it enjoys the widest pool of community support from enthusiasts.
iPage VPS hosting
iPage VPS plans are for users that need more power and freedom. Its features include dedicated CPU, RAM, and SSD storage. However, unlike in Go Plan, the bandwidth is limited. It starts from 1TB/month and maxes out at 4TB/month on the highest option.
The service comes with a dedicated IP that helps to enhance security. In shared hosting, for instance, users usually have the same web server address. You might find yourself blacklisted if one of the customers engages in fraudulent activities.
With iPage VPS hosting, you’re always in full control. You get to determine the media, services, and products to host. For as long as you publish legal content, you’ll always be in good books.
The servers are easy to scale as well. You can request an upgrade at any time. Also, you can migrate servers with minimal downtime.
Prices start at $19.99/month. You get a free domain, iPage cPanel dashboard, and premium support.
Dedicated server
Dedicated servers are the powerhouse of web hosting. They offer robust resources for running demanding websites and apps. These include high-traffic ecommerce stores, media streaming sites, gaming platforms, and more.
With iPage web hosting, you get plenty of resources. You can enjoy 5TB+ bandwidth, 3+ dedicated IPs, and a free domain. The server is powerful as well. The cheapest option comes with dual CPUs, 4GB RAM, and 500GB storage. These doubles as you move up the ladder.
You’ll find pre-installed scripts to jumpstart your usage, including PHP5, Python, and Perl. But that’s not all – iPage has also included SSH. Developers have total control of customizing the web servers. They can have fun with custom app installations, server optimizations, and security hardening.
Pricewise this product isn’t for the fainthearted. It costs $199.99/month. It’s great for enterprises. You can tweak it to the maximum to provide an exceptional experience to your visitors.
iPage Support
iPage web hosting reviews by clients portray the staff are slow, rude, and hardly offer help. So, we gave it a try to have a firsthand experience.
You can reach the support team 24/7 by email, phone, and chat. The first option is better for handling complex challenges. The second and third are ideal for seeking quick answers.
Is iPage good?
In all honesty, while it’s an okay option, there are better ones on the market.
Naturally, iPage pricing plans and what it offers are bait to newbies. On paper, they get unlimited website support, unmetered bandwidth, free domain names, and endless storage.
Overall, we’d say the company needs to tone down the aggressive upselling of services. Likewise, customer support can surely improve.
iPage has room to improve and once it utilizes its potential, it will be among the top competitors on the market. For now, we’re sticking to Bluehost.
Where is iPage located?
The iPage hosting headquarters are located in Tempe, Arizona. The company’s data centers, however, are in Boston, Massachusetts.
How do I access cPanel on iPage?
Follow these steps:
- Open your domain’s dashboard.
- Click on “Server control center.”
- Select the “Server info” dropdown.
- Then click “Launch cPanel.”
- It will redirect you to your cPanel’s access page.
- Enter your “Username” and “Password.”
- Finally, click “Log in” to launch the panel.
How do I delete my iPage account?
So you have to:
- Open your domain’s dashboard.
- Locate “Account Renewal” link.
- Click on “Check auto-renewal status.”
- Then select “Do not renew my hosting.”
Your account will disappear once your active plan expires. Upon removal, you’ll not be able to recover any data. It’s, therefore, we suggest you backup and download your files for safekeeping.
What is EIG iPage?
The Endurance International Group (EIG) is the parent owner of iPage web hosting. It also owns lots of other popular hosts on the planet. You might recognize BigRock, HostGator, and Bluehost.
What is iPage essential hosting plan?
It’s an affordable hosting plan, with a long list of features, including templates, unlimited websites support, and unmetered bandwidth. The product also has premium security options. Think daily malware scanning and removal and SiteLock protection.
iPage web hosting customer reviews reveal it’s one of the more popular plans from the vendor. The service runs on WordPress CMS, which provides you endless design possibilities. You’ll have access to 50,000+ themes, plugins, and applications. Likewise, the platform has top-notch web builders for giving your site a professional touch.
