iPage Review

Company Information

Founded: October 1998
Headquarters: Burlington, MA
Domains Managed: Over 1,500,000

Accreditations and Awards

Pricing

iPage offers only one web hosting plan, appropriately name the "Essential Plan".

Plan works as follows:

iPage also offers several extra services that you can purchase upon checkout. You should be aware that some of these 'extras' are checked off automatically, and you will be billed for them if you do not uncheck the box.

iPage's extras include:

Money Back Guarantee

If you are dissatisfied with your iPage service for any reason, you can apply for the iPage "Anytime Money-Back Guarantee," which will ensures that you'll receive a refund for any time remaining in your iPage contract.

If you register your domain directly through iPage you will be charged a $15 non-refundable fee upon cancellation of your iPage services. This fee will ensure that you will be able to transfer your domain to any other web hosting service.

Features

iPage's Unlimited Hosting Features:

• Unlimited disk space
• Unlimited transfer/bandwidth
• Unlimited domains
• Unlimited MySQL databases

Web Design Services:

• Drag and drop site builder
• Template-based site builder
• Domain name for life
• Blog setup assistance
• Photo gallery setup assistance
• SEO-friendly features

Website Marketing Tools:

• $50 Google AdWords credit
• $25 Yahoo! Search Marketing credit
• HubSpot's Website Grader
• Free Submitnet basic plan
• Free 60-Day trial of RatePoint Feedback Service

Technology:

• 24/7 monitoring to ensure uptime reliability
• Enhanced security suite
• Site traffic reporting
• High-performance load balanced servers

Online Marketing Features:

• $50 Google AdWords credit
• $25 Yahoo! Sponsored Search credit
• Free 60-day membership to RatePoint's newsletter manager
• Internet marketing guides
• Google Webmaster Tools integration

Integrated Applications:

• Joomla
• WordPress
• Gallery2
• phpBB
• Gbook

eCommerce Features:

• Multiple shopping cart options
• PayPal integration

Ease of Use

Setting up a website begins with choosing a domain, and iPage makes this process simple. If your first choice isn't available, iPage will provide you with alternative extensions or domain names to choose from.

Once you've selected your domain you can choose between several site creation options including an FTP system and a 'drag-and-drop' editor which is powered by Weebly. Unfortunately, Weebly's premium services cost extra, so if you plan on adding unlimited pages, audio files or appointment capabilities, you may be required to pay more for using the Weebly site builder. You can also choose to purchase one of the many software products to help with the site creation.

Instead of using the cPanel control panel as most web hosts do, iPage uses the vDeck control panel which is supposedly more user-friendly than the cPanel. After taking a few moments to familiarize myself with the interface I felt comfortable enough to begin building my site.

Control Panel

For my first trial, I selected the FTP option and installed a WordPress application quite easily by using iPage's Install Central. I was surprised to see that WordPress did not immediately display, so I called the customer service center for help. I was informed that when using WordPress you must change the homepage file from home.html to home1.html so that the Wordpress template will appear on your domain. This suggestion solved the problem quickly and easily.

File Manager

One benefit of iPage is that it integrates various Google tools directly into its control panel so that newbie website builders can easily submit their site to Google and take advantage of the Google's various tools such as Webmaster Tools (which report many problems on the site), AdWords (which is used for optimizing keywords) and AdSense (which is used to generate revenue by allowing external advertisement on websites). By having Google tools as an add on in the control panel, iPage makes it easy to install and take advantage of all of these useful services.

Google Add Ons

As a second experiment I decided to try iPage's Drag and Drop site builder, which, as its name suggests, requires little more than dragging and dropping. Even without taking a tutorial I was able to figure out how to add text and images to my page, and even to replace the header. During the course of my trial I made the mistake of hitting the 'back' arrow when I wanted to undo a change to the website. When I was brought back to the control panel, I got nervous that I had lost my work, but I was thrilled to see that when I went back to the site builder my changes had saved automatically.

The Final Product

Customer Support

iPage offers 24/7, US based, customer support via phone, live chat and email. iPage's features page claims that customer service phone calls are answered within 2 minutes (average), and I found this to be entirely accurate (in fact, my call at 9:35 am EST was answered within 1 minute). I spoke to a different customer service representative each time I called and found them to always be polite, helpful and patient. Hold-music played in the background when I was on hold so that I knew I wasn't disconnected, which was very reassuring. iPage's live chat responses were equally expedient and useful, though the wait time for assistance via chat was significantly longer than the wait time for phone support, especially during off peak hours. My average wait time for chat help was 5 minutes.

An example of an iPage chat

In addition to calling and chatting, I also emailed iPage with a specific question about their site builder, at 2:49pm EST. I received a helpful and relevant response 4 hours later, that provided precise instructions for how to perform the task in question.

Question Sumitted

iPage's response

iPage also offers an intuitive Help Center complete with tutorials, a knowledgebase, and an FAQ section. Each section is organized clearly and arranged neatly so that you can find what you're looking for at a glance.

Help Center

Summary

Positive Features

• Offers very attractive pricing without sacrificing on the service
• Easy-to-use "Drag and Drop" site builder
• Expedient customer service
• Google tools integration
• $50 Google AdWords credit and $25 Yahoo! Search credit come with hosting packages

Negative Features

• The wait time for chat help can be rather long