Speed & Performance
Pricing
Features
Customer Support
Inside This Article...
iPage Review Overview
iPage has been around for some time now, established in 1998, they started to take on the web hosting market. In 2002, iPage relaunched its web hosting product and are now owned by Endurance Group (EIG). Our iPage review will delve deeper into this popular web host to see if they’re worth signing up for.
iPage now servers millions of customers and websites, offering two data centers across the globe. They are well known for being a reliable and affordable web host, so let’s take a deeper look into what they have to offer.
Many people consider value when trying to find the best web host. Value takes into account features and pricing, as well as other factors like customer support to weigh up whether they are in fact good value for money.
iPage is just $1.99 per month, which begs the question, are they just a cheap web host, or are its performance and reliability something to shout about.
I took it upon myself to sign up for iPage’s shared hosting to give you the low-down on the following sections, so I could perform an in-depth iPage review:
- Pros and Cons
- Performance and Speed
- Features
- Pricing
- Customer Support
Does iPage Sound Right For You?
Speed & Performance
iPage doesn’t offer their customers any kind of uptime guarantee, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their performance is bad, or their speeds are poor.
However, it is much more reassuring when a web host does offer an uptime guarantee. Web hosts like SiteGround provide SLAs and smash them, providing their customers with a high level of service.
I was keen to learn more about iPage’s performance, so I signed up for their shared hosting plan and started monitoring my website on UptimeRobot.
To my surprise, iPage absolutely blew my uptime result expectations out of the water. In the last 30 days, my website has been online 100% of the time. I was really impressed with this, especially as they don’t offer an uptime guarantee.
I also noticed my server response time was pretty good too, with an average time of 222.24ms during the last 24 hours. You can see from the graph that the server’s response time was very steady, with only one spike around 2:30 pm.
My Bitcatcha results were great. In the U.S. (W) my server response time (in real-time) was 47ms, and in the U.S. (E) it was just 32ms! That’s less than 0.5 of a second, which is darn right incredible.
Overall, I can’t find a bad word to say about iPage in terms of website performance and speed. Given their shared hosting plan is only $1.99 per month, I honestly am left feeling surprised, in a good way.
Pricing
iPage has just one shared pricing plan; whilst they do only offer one, the price changes depending on how long you want to commit for.
Signing up for a 36-month term will net you their best discount price at just $1.99 per month (regularly $7.99) which saves you 75%. An initial 3-year plan will cost a total of $71.64.
If you only want to sign up for 24 months, this works out at $2.49 per month, and 12 months would be $2.99 per month.
Considering their initial term price, iPage is incredible value for money. When your plan renews at $7.99 per month, I’m not sure it still is value for money.
Whilst I appreciate their generous features, there are other web hosts out there like SiteGround and BlueHost who top the table for me, with more features at a cheaper renewal price.
Features
Unlike most web hosts, iPage offers just one shared hosting pricing plan that’s designed to fit everyone. Because of this, everything I mention here in the features section is available to everyone who signs up for iPage.
Let’s take a look at what’s on offer:
- Unlimited: iPage boasts unlimited disk space and scalable bandwidth. This means there aren’t any real limits if you’re sensible. iPage claims they can support around 99.95% of their customer’s bandwidth needs. For anyone exceeding their ‘limits’, iPage try and work with them to find the best hosting plan for their needs.
- Website builder: iPage’s website builder allows you to create up to six web pages. Your site will be mobile optimised, which is pretty generous considering this is free and no additional costs are required.
- Online-store: With iPage, you can create an online store for free, whilst integrating PayPal and shopping carts like AgoraCart, OpenCart, PrestaShop, and lots more.
- 1-Click installation: If you want to create a WordPress website, you can do so for free with iPage’s shared web hosting. Their 1-click installation makes it easy for beginners to install WordPress so you can start building your website within a few minutes of sign up.
- Domains: Unlike anything I’ve seen, iPage allow unlimited domains on their shared hosting plan. There’s nothing outlining if there are any guidelines to their unlimited domains, so I’d suggest not going too crazy initially.
iPage do offer other types of web hosting including VPS hosting, WordPress hosting, and dedicated hosting, but we’re not going to cover these too much in this iPage review. These all come with their own set of features, but that’s for another review (but I thought I’d give it a quick mention).
Customer Support
iPage’s customer support is available 24/7. They have a toll-free number and live chat which is super useful in my opinion. Saying that live chat isn’t always a great thing. Yes, it’s convenient and instant, but often the agents can be impersonal and unhelpful.
To give you an actual idea of what iPage’s customer support is like, I opened a chat window with them and asked them whether they offered any kind of backup and restore feature (like other web hosts). I’d never used the vDeck control panel before, so I wasn’t sure whether this would be included.
The chat agent was quite helpful, but it was obvious they were copying and pasting some of their responses given how quickly they responded to my first question.
I also noticed a lot of the spelling and grammar was off, which isn’t a problem as I could understand what they were saying, but it wasn’t that professional.
It took a few minutes for the agent to respond to my next query, probably because they were typing it as opposed to copying and pasting it. I don’t mind waiting a little longer if the response is more personal (though I wasn’t really getting that vibe).
Finally, I asked about their uptime guarantee as I couldn’t see this anywhere on their website. They came back with the answers, but I didn’t once feel like this was a personal chat directed at me.
Efficient responses, but by no means out of this world customer support. It almost felt like the agent was either too busy or couldn’t be bothered.
If you don’t want to wait around for a live chat agent or speak to iPage on the phone, you can visit their knowledgebase. It has plenty of categories to search through, or you can use their search functionality to find the answers you’re looking for.
Whilst their knowledgebase is detailed, there wasn’t anything further than this available. Lots of web hosting providers have forums or tutorials and video guides, but I couldn’t find this with iPage. Again, an efficient service but it doesn’t go the extra mile.
Because of my personal experience with iPage’s customer support, I headed over to their Twitter account to see if their other customers had anything else to say.
A lot of the recent tweets about iPage’s customer support have been negative. They kind of ring true to my experience, where the service really wasn’t that great. I’m not saying it was terrible, and for some, a basic support service might be enough, but for me, it just wasn’t something to shout about.
iPage Review Summary
If cost is your main concern, I’d definitely recommend iPage. However, I’m not suggesting that their low price is iPage’s only redeeming feature. In fact, most of what they offer is very good, allowing them to compete within the web hosting market.
Their customer support definitely let this iPage review down. As you can see from my own personal experience, there was nothing outstanding about their support whatsoever. The basics were there, but that was about it.
I wouldn’t expect iPage’s customer support to go above and beyond anytime soon. I was also getting the same feedback whilst looking at iPage’s Twitter account. It seems as though iPage’s customer support used to be quite good but has since gone downhill.
On the flipside, iPage’s features are extremely generous in their first term. Not many hosts offer unlimited bandwidth, storage, a free domain name, free SSL certificate, free website builder, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
I’d recommend iPage for people starting their first website, experimenting with small to medium-sized websites, and small startup businesses.
Are You Ready to Try iPage After Reading Our iPage Review?
iPage Review FAQs
iPage is just $1.99 per month during your first term, which is incredibly cheap web hosting. Included in the one shared hosting plan they offer, customers get a free domain, free email address, and free SSL certificate, making it incredibly good value for money.
Despite their insanely affordable web hosting, iPage still offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. During the first 30 days of your iPage hosting, if you’re unhappy with your service, you can get a full refund of your hosting, no questions asked.
Yes, lots of hosting companies now include a free website builder, and iPage is no different. There’s also an eCommerce builder, so if you want to set up your online store, you can do this easily with iPage.
Yes, iPage offers unlimited email addresses at your domain. For example, if you wanted marketing@yourdomain.com you can have it and unlimited amounts of email accounts.
User Reviews
iPage Pros:
- Very affordable web hosting from just $1.99 per month
- Free domain and free SSL upon sign up
- 30-day money-back guarantee and free 24/7 support
- Free website builder and eCommerce online store
iPage Cons:
- Renewal prices are very steep, going up to $7.99 per month
- Only two data center locations to choose from
