I can certainly say that Ipage Hosting services are the simplest one out there. If you are not looking to window shop, as in go through different packages and plans then you might love the standard plan which it offers as 10.99 Dollars a month.
This plan offers standard hosting package with a lot of features which I will discuss later. You must be wondering why I am all blabbering about the goodness of this hosting service anyway. Well, I took to experiment with the service myself and thus, here is the review. Don’t be too excited though, there are also some negatives which might turn you off. Also Check out here best web hosting companies
While working with Ipage, I delved deep into its functionality, plans and features and found out that due to its cost effective nature and host of discounts the service is quite ideal for novice bloggers and new digital marketers who want to promote themselves and their portfolios out there. The three year plans can get you rates as low as $1.68 a month.
There is catch though. You need to be careful when signing up because the renewal rates are never discounted. Therefore make sure you have the right calculations before you proceed.
Let us look at its various hosting plans to get a better overview of Ipage
Standard Price: $10.99/month (Varies with add-ons and term discounts)
The offerings are:
- Unlimited Disk Space
- Unlimited Network Bandwidth
- Unlimited Domains
- Unlimited Email Addresses
- Unlimited MySQL databases
- 3 Site builder tools
- Built-in Online Store
- Access to multiple 3rd Party Applications
- Free Cloud Storage
- Advertising and Marketing tools
Sounds impressive, don’t it? Well it is when coupled with the anytime money back guarantee which supports you if you are not able to get any traction. I never got to use the money back option as for me the hosting performed well.
There are host of other features and plans you can add to this one hosting plan but that will cost you extra. Be careful throughout the entire registration process as the website always looks forward to making you more by providing rather useless offers like increased privacy options or SSL certificates. Do not go for those unless you are a fully operational medium scale firm.
Now some downsides to this plan:
- Exhaustive and complex password creation process. Therefore use long and complex passwords from the beginning to avoid multiple trials.
- Excessive top-selling in the form up updates and add-ons like the domain privacy is annoying
- Backup storage comes with an extra cost. This is bad because many other providers give it away for free.
Price: starting at $24.99/month
- Comes in 3 configurations: Basic ($24.99/month), Business($59.99/month) and Optimum($99.99/month)
- The plans cover different scales of various VPS requirements like:
- Core CPUs
- RAM access
- Memory Storage
- Bandwidth
- Domains etc.
More details can be found out on this link. The good thing about this package is that there are a lot of options for you to choose from. You can customise the plan according to your specific requirements and easily fit the VPS package to your budget. This is one top quality offering by Ipage web hosting services.
Price: Plans start at $149.99/month (this can be taxing to a lot of needy online enthusiasts)
- Up to 1 TB storage
- 16 GB of RAM
- 15 TB of data transfer/month
The Dedicated server is needed when you have a very large scale of operations. Thus, this concerns considerably large firms with a high traffic and data volume. I have not tried it myself but it is easy to get a hang of it. Looking at the functionality and control it offers through this service to marketers, I believe the service is priced at a cost-effective quotation. You can still customize it according to your requirements.
- WordPress Hosting
Price: can go as low as $3.75/month
- Access to curated teams
- Pre-installed plugins
- Customised Control Panel
- Anti-malware tools
This does mean that some of your efforts are taken care by Ipage here. It is cool option for bloggers and marketers to start their blogs suing this service and effectively promote them at a low cost budget.
Moving towards the functionality of the Hosting Provider, Here is what I found out
The Initial Set-up Process is easy. You will be asked a few questions which are very basic. What is interesting is the control panel which can be seen in the image just below.
As you can see, it is simple and minimalistic. The straightforwardness accounts for increased efficiency and speedy operations which I experienced while at it. It is easier to find things, there is not tabbed interface and you can find the relevant icon for all relevant operations.
Ipage offers 3 site building tools:
- The CM4 all template based builder: You can build up to 6 pages for free. One downside is that it does not work with Chrome which can be frustrating because we all love Chrome. Another downside it eh slowness of this builder which is bound to irritate you. Therefore, my personal advice is to stay away from it and use other options.
- GoMobi Site Builder: You can build mobile ready pages. It’s a good thing but you will have to pay $8.99/month extra if you want to use it.
- The Basic Site Builder: Use this one as it is quick, simple and you can do a lot with the basic version too!
All in all, if you have all things planned and sorted the functionality will not disappoint you.
Now for some cool and unique features
A lot of inbuilt tools hand-crafted for E-marketing and Ecommerce like:
- Shop Site: To create an online store
- Zen Cart
- Mojo Marketplace
- OS Commerce
Security is good. You get anti-malware for email. You can restrict access if you want. Customer Service is good but can do a lot better. It offers 24/7 telephone support and Online Chat. I can vouch for these as I have personally tried and tested them. One thing is that sometimes the representatives take time as they have no clue what we are talking about. That sure needs improvement.
In the end I will lay it all out for you
Ipage certainly has its list of goodies. It supports web hosting over Linux and Windows, provides good site builder options, Unlimited Bandwidth and other features. The money back guarantee surely wins hearts.
There are some points which need attention. There are no monthly plans. You have to buy a longer subscription. There are too many dashboards, a lot of upselling and many irritating offers.
Here is an interesting video review of the service
Video Credits: WebHost Clipper
Testimonials of various users
Have you used Ipage web hosting services, share your reviews and opinions with us. By sharing reviews, we can test which hosting is better for our business. I have tested Ipage for some of my websites. What’s your take ?
