iPage Review

Full review

While iPage doesn’t look as original as FatCow or have the presence of GoDaddy, this hosting service offers all you need to set up and host your website, at a competitive price. Read on for the details of iPage’s website hosting offers.

Hosting

As with FatCow, iPage gives you unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited email when you host your website with them. Other free things include unlimited domains and website building tools. iPage also throws in a package of security applications to help protect your site. With this you receive account-specific malware, domain verification, spam scanning, and a security scan. You can launch a security scan once a year on your site. Everything’s included in one price so you can get up and running quickly.

When you want to build your website you can use a choice of two point-and-click website builders in iPage. They’re not feature-packed but they will do the job if you want to get a basic site up and running. Connected to your hosting package you’ll find a free online store application with shopping cart, coupons and PayPal integration, and free blog apps plus other scripts, so you can build your online presence further. Pay extra and you can add Microsoft Exchange, higher levels of shopping cart, additional applications and more.

iPage is also green – the hoster’s data centers and offices are powered by 100% wind energy and you can use a badge on your site to attest to its environmental status.

iPage promises 24/7 monitoring to make sure your site is always running. The servers are reported to be solid and secure, with a pooled environment able to handle any requests with few interruptions.

If you’re not happy with the service that iPage offers, you can claim your money back at any point in your contract. iPage issues a refund for the remaining payment term or, if you cancel within 30 days, the full hosting fees. However, you don’t get everything back – non-refundables include the domain registration fee (although you won’t lose your domain name).

Domains

As with many website hosting services, iPage also has a function for registering your domain name or transferring an existing domain name to your iPage account. The process is reasonably straightforward but there’s a fee involved in registration.

Email

When you’re building a professional website you need to add a secure and reliable email function so your customers or followers can get in touch with you. iPage gives you the convenience of webmail through AtMail plus a range of features to deal with your emails. iPage gives unlimited mailboxes, up-to-date spam management features, unlimited forwards and autoresponders, plus unlimited POP3/IMAP email accounts. You can upgrade to Microsoft Exchange, for an extra fee.

Marketing & reporting

When it comes to marketing your site iPage has some tools and extras to help you. iPage has the Google control panel integrated into the package so you have an easier access to Adwords and your sitemap. As with other providers, iPage offers advertising credits to sweeten the package deal. There’s plenty to read on the site to develop your presence and make a statement, but you are not given as much guidance as other sites. iPage doesn’t offer the add-on, expert packages that FatCow does so, for example, if you want expert assistance with marketing you’ll need to pick it up somewhere outside the site.

Ease of use

This is a very clean, easy-to-use site with all the features explained without much jargon. iPage has a simple user interface and the features are well explained. It’s not quite as easy to find detailed information about the features as the other top two sites. Much of the explanation on the site is geared towards beginners so more experienced users may find it difficult to discover the answers to more technical questions.

iPage claims you can get a website up on the Internet in 10 minutes – a bold claim but the tools seem simple enough to use and you can put a basic, functional page plus contact details out there in around 10 minutes. Of course, there’s plenty to do afterwards to ramp up your site.

Help & support

iPage looks like it has the customer service package all figured out. There’s 24/7 phone support (based in North America), plus calls are answered in under two minutes by agents who are trained on iPage specifics. You can chat or email if you don’t want to talk, and there’s a ticketing system in place. For other issues, the site offers an online help center as well as tutorials for setting up and maintaining your account.

Overall

iPage and FatCow are actually owned by the same company and choosing between the two offerings is pretty hard. Often it comes down to who offers the best price at the time