iPage Hosting Review

iPage, founded in 1995, acquired by EIG in 2009, has focused on shared web hosting services for 17 years. It provides a cost-effective web hosting solution to customers who need a budget service and has been topping the list of almost all the web hosting review sites and hosting communities.

So far, iPage is serving one million websites over the Internet, about 1,500,000 domain names and 300,000 customers in 150+ countries.

Based on the verified reviews from real customers, we carried out the following ratings for this web host concerning about some important elements in web hosting. Move on to the details.

The above ratings clearly manifest that the service wins 4.5 out of 5 stars in reputation, speed, and reliability while its features and technical support are rated 5 out 5 stars. Obviously, these ratings are remarkably excellent. Below, we are to further analyze the service in detail.

Pricing

This company comes with one shared web hosting package that is called the iPage Go Plan. With billing cycles including 12/24/36 months available, this package is starting at $1.99/mo.

In addition to the considerable discount and a free domain for 1 year, iPage offers customers a lot of free extras, such as $100 Google Adwords credits, $25 Yahoo!/Bing search credits and $50 Facebook advertising credits to promote websites.

Guarantees

iPage claims to be one of the most secure and reliable web hosts by providing customers with a money-back guarantee. As stated in the iPage User Agreement, for customers who sign up with iPage hosting service for the first time, and cancel the account within the first 30 days of registration, can get all the fees back which are paid in connection with the hosting service. If the account cancellation is requested after the first 30 days, they will be issued a prorated refund of the remaining unused service.

Besides, this web host has an exclusive support team to handle this issue. Therefore, to cancel the account, customers only need to contact the support staff via phone call, e-mail, and live chat.

Features

For basic features, iPage offers unlimited disk space, bandwidth, domains allowed, and MySQL databases, etc. With regard to advanced features, iPage offers vDeck as its control panel to help users save time and energy in the management of websites, scripting languages including PHP and Perl, and cutting-edge technologies such as shared SSL, secure FTP, FTP manager and custom error pages.

The highlighted part is SimpleScripts that enables customers to install tons of 3-rd party applications with minimum effort and time. With this auto script installer, it demands almost no technical skills and knowledge to install a great deal of indispensable software.

To make things straightforward and plain, we make a list of other significant features as below. More details are presented as follows:

• Email Management – Unlimited accounts, forwarders, autoresponders & web-based Email.
• Hosting Features- Unlimited disk space, monthly bandwidth, hosting domain, FTP accounts & one free Domain.
• Scripts & Development – PHP5.2.17, latest version of Perl, .htaccess Overrides, Custom PHP.ini & Unlimited MySQL database.

Green Web Hosting

iPage has made large efforts in reducing the carbon footprint by purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates. All the iPage data center facilities, servers and offices are completely powered by 100% wind energy. As introduced, by leveraging the green energy, iPage reduces the emitting carbon by over 5000+ tons every year.

Meanwhile, as an EPA Green Power Partner, iPage certificates the hosted websites with the Green Energy Certification.

Performance

The company makes good on the promise of 99.9% uptime by utilizing 2 data centers in Boston, MA area. Equipped with cutting-edge facilities and advanced technologies, this company houses thousands of top-ranking servers with multiple Petabytes of storage. To maximize the uptime, it also equips the data centers with on-site safeguards 24 hours every day, together with both interior and exterior closed-circuit television.

Nothing speaks louder than objective statistics. To obtain real data of its performance, we have personally hosted a website on its servers and recorded its uptime. The outcome shows that iPage delivers 99.95% uptime averagely. Please refer to the following chart for detailed statistics.

As for hosting speed, the company employs the-state-of-the-art Dell servers equipped in 2 data centers. These data centers, together with the extensive peering arrangements, are designed to maximize Internet reach and bandwidth capacity and to optimize performance. Check the below chart.

Technical Support

As one renowned web host serving millions of websites, iPage wins tremendous praise for its responsive and efficient technical assistance that can be successfully reached all the time.

Being available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, the technical support offered by this company can be successfully sought through phone calls, live chat and e-mail. Backed by hundreds of highly professional and experienced technicians, webmasters are always capable of reaching prompt and helpful assistance which enables them to address technical issues with high efficiency.

Also, you are capable of turning to other resources for help including knowledgebase and user guide on the official website of iPage. These two ways enable you to read hundreds of articles, with which some common technical issues can be settled with the least time and endeavor on your own.

Is iPage a Favorable Choice Enough for Joomla & Drupal?

Still, many people are not sure about whether iPage is a favorable choice for Joomla hosting or Drupal hosting. And they also question whether the iPage package is compatible with Drupal and Joomla well? Of course, the answer is yes. With years of experience in the open-source community, iPage is equipped with advanced technologies to guarantee 100% compatibility.

In effect, iPage fulfills its commitment by utilizing the technologies we have listed as follows.

• MySQL 5 database.
• PHP running as suPHP for enhanced security.
• Apache 2.2.x with mod_rewrite module by default.
• PHP 5.3.x and 5.4.x with 128 MB PHP memory_limit.

How is the Quality of iPage Magento Hosting Service?

There are some strict installation requirements of Magento: Linux x86 or x86-64 as the operating system, Apache 1.3.x or above as the webserver, PHP version from 5.2.13 to 5.3.24, MySQL 5.0.2 or later, and the capability to run scheduled jobs with PHP 5. iPage highly meets these requirements by coming with the following features.

• the latest version of Apache installed with mod_rewrite.
• the latest version o PHP, Perl, Python & MySQL.
• PHP runs as suPHP for better security.

How About Choosing iPage to Host eCommerce Websites?

The Essential Plan is offered with features specifically designed for selling online including free online store, choice of a shopping cart, PayPal integration, Shopping carts for ShopSite, osCommerce, and AgoraCart, etc. To help you get a comprehensive understanding of these features, we have worked out the following list for your reference.

• Free SiteLock includes daily malware scans, anti-spam email monitoring, blacklist monitoring, business validation, together with SQL, XSS, and website application scans.
• ShopSite shopping cart is a premier online store management system with which you are able to list products, product options, accept credit cards, and so on.
• osCommerce and AgoraCart are 2 leading online eCommerce shopping carts that are featured with an automated shopping cart installer by iPage.

Conclusion

Based on what we have reviewed above, iPage does an excellent job of offering affordable prices, abundant features, outstanding performance and prompt technical support. And due to its unbeatable compatibility and advantages for hosting Joomla, Drupal, Magento software and eCommerce site, iPage is regarded as a credible choice for webmasters who are serious about their web hosting.