Our Review of: iPage

Overview:

Check out our current #5 rated web hosting provider, iPage. Located in Massachusetts and led by a team of hosting veterans, iPage offers a comprehensive hosting solution at the incredible price of just $1.99/month. Moreover, the team at iPage has made a commitment to continually improving the customer experience and it shows. Their 80,000+ customers are proof of this, needless to say. Currently employing over 800 employees, iPage has the personnel and resources to keep customers happy for the long haul.

Their hosting tools and scripts are incredibly simple to use and their support team is happy to help you get them setup and utilize them. Best of all, their support is 100% North American-based, with incredibly short hold-times.

Servers are fast and reliable also, with 2 high-tech datacenters, located near Boston, MA, managed completely in-house. Also as an added speed bonus, your site files are served off server "pools", otherwise known as load-balancing, which ensures your pages will load fast and reliably.

Pros:

• Lowest prices out there.
• Multitude of great scripts available.
• 100% english speaking support.

Cons:

• PHPMyAdmin isn't standard, but can be enabled on each account.

Features & Specials:

At $1.99/month, you can't beat the price or, more importantly, the security iPage offers. The Essential Plan includes the SiteLock Security Suite, which provides daily malware and spam scanning, business verification, and a security seal you can put on your site. We looked around and these kind of security services usually START at $100 and they're yours for free.

You'll also receive unlimited disk space, bandwidth, databases and email; great site and store building tools that work for novices and experts alike; free domain for the life of your account; an anytime money-back guarantee; green hosting; 24/7 support from North American-based phone agents; and an expansive product catalog that includes Microsoft Exchange; and $400 in hosting extras.

Plus, iPage is one of the few hosts that offers $50 in Google Adword coupons (most hosts only offer $25). Not only that, you'll be able to boast an eco-friendly website through this green host.

Reliability & Speed:

iPage hosts more than 1,000,000 web sites on its load-balanced architecture. With two data systems and an intricate network of failover protections, the host delivers outstanding reliability and redundancy. FTP and mail speeds are average to slightly above average, in part due to their fast OC-48 backbone connections.

We also love the fact that iPage posts information about service interruptions quickly using its public alert system, and even give customers the option to subscribe to have those alerts sent out to them. Again, more proof of their commitment to the customer experience.

Support:

The North American-based phone agents at iPage actually listen to customers and understanding what they need. They're also pretty good at resolving issues and communicating with customers. Wait times were short, usually 2 minutes or less. We had great experiences with chat agents as well. iPage offers 24/7 phone, chat and online/email support. The online interface is a little awkward, but certainly usable once you get used to it.

When it came down to it, however, all the agents all seem committed to their customer's success. And, we really like the iPage team's informational welcome calls.

Average Support Wait Times:

Chat Wait Time 5 seconds

Phone Wait Time 2 minutes

Control Panel:

The tools that iPage offers are easy to use and consistently improving. In the last year, they've launched a fantastic file manager and have been incorporating more user interface standards into each of their tools. It's clear they test their interfaces for usability and they actively solicit customer feedback.

Given the robust offering of the iPage suite of services, the homepage of the control panel can be a little overwhelming, but stick to your left nav bar and you'll be fine. The control panel can also be a little slow around mid-day, but not so slow that it become unusable.

What sets them apart?

Summary:

If you put a high value on security and want to create an effective website quickly, you're going to want to give iPage a closer look. Not only is their web host offering robust and incredibly affordable, it's clear they've taken the time to understand their customers needs and they're constantly working to address those needs.

While they may be a little aggressive in marketing their extras, they really do offer an incredibly diverse and valuable suite of services. They also over many pricing specials, which make their extras seem well worth the added expense. That said, check out iPage today, to see their outstanding web hosting plans.

iPage Ratings ChartScore: 91%