iPage Web Hosting

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
If you need a website for your business, but don't have the time—or the will—to dig through a Web hosting provider's many pricing and plan pages, take a gander at iPage's simple pricing (starting at $10.99 per month). This Web hosting service offers an unusually generous standard shared Web hosting package that includes unlimited disk space, network bandwidth, domains, and databases for everyone, as well as virtual private server (VPS) and dedicated server offerings if you need a more powerful foundation for business Web hosting. If it weren't for some strange quirks, iPage might have challenged Arvixe, PCMag's five-star Editors' Choice for Web hosting services, and Dreamhost, the well-stocked Editors' Choice that's designed for more advanced webmasters.
Whereas most Web hosting competitors offer 15- to 30-day refund periods, iPage promises the remainder of your unused fees back when you cancel.
Shared Web Hosting PackagesUnlike Arvixe, iPage does not offer month-to-month shared Web hosting plans. It actually has a lot in common with HostMonster in that respect. You can sign up for either a one-year, two-year, or three-year term, with the two-year and three-year rates working out to a mere $1.68 per month. Note, though, that the $2.50 per month rate we received with our one-year term, and the $1.68 promised for longer contracts, refer to just the introductory rate. Renewals are at the regular rate, which is $10.99 per month for one year, $9.99 per month for two years, and $8.99 per month for three years. The price more than quadruples when it's time to renew. You've been warned.
While iPage's terms of service mention other hosting plans, the Essential plan is the only one available from the site. iPage's Essential plan offers unlimited disk space, network bandwidth, domains, email addresses, and MySQL databases. There are not one, but three different site-builder tools, a built-in online store, access to the Mojo Marketplace to get more third-party applications, access to a free cloud storage account (much like One.com), and various advertising and marketing tools. All of this is available with a generous anytime money-back guarantee.
Because there is only one shared Web hosting plan, any other feature or capability you want to add costs you extra. And there is a lot
of upselling. The sign-up process tries to get you to pay $9.99 for domain privacy (hiding WHOIS information), so if you aren't interested, uncheck the box before you hit submit. If you want to enable SSL on your site, you can buy it for the introductory price of $49.95 instead of $79.97. Automatic site backups ($12.95 per year) is another feature that iPage pushes. Hostgator, in contrast, provides backups for free.
We were prompted to create a password after the account was created. We were a bit miffed with the password-creation process. The site clearly states its password requirements, such as mixed case, numbers, and minimum length, all of which are good. We tend to use 18-20 character complex passwords, but iPage said my password was not strong enough because we didn't have at least two numbers (we used just one). It deemed the string "PCMag12#" secure, while rejecting my 18-character passphrase. Just pick a complex password, or better yet, use a password manager to make sure it's truly complex and strong.

VPS Hosting PackagesiPage also offers VPS hosting, starting at $24.99 per month. If you expect high traffic volumes, or have specific compliance requirements that prevent you from using shared servers, these are good options to consider (especially if you don't want to pay dedicated Web hosting's relatively high prices).
iPage offers three configurations for its Linux-based servers: Basic, Business, and Optimum. Basic plans ($24.99 per month) start with just 1GB of RAM, 40GB of storage, and 1TB of monthly data transfers. Business plans offer 4GB of RAM, 90GB of storage, and 3TB of monthly data transfers. The Optimum plan has 8GB of RAM, 120GB of storage, and 4TB of month data transfers.
iPage's virtual private server plans are quite solid, but Arvixe, the PCMag Editors' Choice for VPS web hosting services, edges it out with unlimited monthly data transfers and a choice of either Linux- or Windows-based servers. Don't underestimate the importance of a Windows server option; if you plan to build (or migrate) a site built on an ASP.NET framework, you'll appreciate Arvixe's Windows-based VPS offerings.
Dedicated Hosting Packages
iPage's solid, middle-of-the-road dedicated server plans (starting at $149 per month) aren't radically different from what Bluehost, HostMonster, and JustHost offer. You can configure the servers with up to 1TB of storage, 16GB of RAM, and up to 15TB of data transfers per month. That said, HostGator, the PCMag Editors' Choice for dedicated Web hosting, is a superior choice thanks to its 25TB of data transfers per month and Linux and Windows operating system options (iPage only has Linux-based dedicated servers).
Like some of its competitors, iPage offers dedicated WordPress hosting, starting at $3.75 per month for the WP Starter plan and $6.95 per month for the WP Essential plan. The differences between the two plans are the support level and blog performance. With a hosted WordPress plan, you have access to curated themes, pre-installed plugins, customized control panel, improved performance using WP Essential, anti-malware tools from SiteLock, and extended support.
Setting Up an iPage Hosted SiteiPage asks a few questions to help market the website to search engines as part of the account creation process. The questions are basic, such as whether this is a business site or personal one, and what kind of topics the site will have.
The iPage control panel is pretty straightforward. Everything is broken out in sections on a long page; no tabbed interface here. It's easier to find things because you just scroll down till you find the relevant icon. To my surprise, iPage offers three site-building tools. First of all, there's the basic CM4All template-based builder, which lets you build up to six pages for free. It doesn't work with Google Chrome, which is an odd restriction; it's only compatible with Firefox or Internet Explorer. CM4All built a nice-enough site, but it is really stodgy, very slow, and the pages are fairly basic. The control panel also offers the goMobi site builder, which lets you build mobile-optimized sites. The problem is that nothing on the panel indicates there is an additional $8.99 per month fee for this builder.
Most people should stick with the basic drag-and-drop site builder, which happens to be Weebly, our Editors' Choice for Web-based site-builders. You can upgrade to the premium version or just use the basic one, which we thought was just fine for most purposes. Weeby's drag-and-drop functionality let us quickly build an attractive page complete with slideshows, contact forms, social media links, maps, and photo galleries, and more.
Getting Started With WordPressThe process of setting up WordPress was easy because the database was already set up and ready to go. We clicked the WordPress icon and were directed to a page on the Mojo Marketplace where we indicated that we wanted to install the blogging software. We selected where WordPress should be installed, and the installer created our username and password and set up the entire site. The process took a little longer than we recall it taking with other hosting providers, but since the marketplace queues all requests, we were able to navigate to other parts of the site and pick out other software packages while we were waiting.
We were pleased to see that iPage offers an import button that lets import an existing WordPress blog. Even though WordPress makes the import process easy enough from its interface, it's always nice to see the step simplified even further. However, we were unable to get the process to work, and the error messages we received were quite cryptic.
It got really difficult keeping track of so many different software interfaces in our testing. There is the main control panel for iPage, an entirely separate dashboard to manage applications installed from Mojo Marketplace, and all the site-builder tools have their own separate pages. It's tricky to shift back and forth from different sections of the site because each one looks different and works differently.
Unlimited Email Is NiceHaving an email address associated with your website domain and not a Gmail or Yahoo account makes the business appear serious and established. While many competitors restrict the number of accounts you can create, iPage offers unlimited mailboxes.
Setting up an email account is a breeze. You click on the MailCentral icon within the Control Panel and create the account and password. You have to do each account one at a time, which is inconvenient. Network Solutions, by contrast, lets you make several at once. iPage offers anti-malware protection built into the service, but there isn't any way to see the rules or tweak the settings.
E-marketing and E-commerce Tools GaloreAs mentioned earlier, iPage offers an online store as a built-in feature. To get started, you click the ShopSite Starter icon and then a button to enable ShopSite. We did, but the page became blank. We refreshed and found the ShopSite page with a Manage My Store button. The ShopSite bundled with the Essential plan is the basic version, with a 15-product/5-page limit, no third-party application integration, and limited design options. You can upgrade to the Manager version ($29.95 per month) or Pro ($49.95 per month).
While it took a few minutes to turn on, setting up the online store was fairly easy. The store creation wizard walked uw through a nine-step process to develop pages, define products, and set up the payment options. The wizard is very old-fashioned, but the templates are modern looking. The starter plan doesn't support color palette changes, so there is only so much you can do with the templates.
Note that when you get into ShopSite, you leave iPage and its Control Panel behind entirely. It would have been nicer to see a bit tighter integration there. If you don't want to use ShopSite, you can visit the Mojo Marketplace and download platforms such as ZenCart and osCommerce.

Security FeaturesiPage has anti-malware for email. You can also define the .htaccess file to restrict who has access to the server or selected sections of the website.
Customer Service Is OkayLike HostMonster, iPage offers both 24/7 telephone support and an online Web chat—we tested both help methods. This is one way in which iPage was better than Arvixe, which doesn't have online chat. We dialed into the telephone tech support at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning to ask about the difference between using Web hosting and WordPress hosting. The customer service representative described how we would have access to better themes and support. We asked if iPage would handle updating the software. The representative at first didn't know, but later clarified that updates would be automated.
The online Web chat was fairly straightforward. We waited about 45 seconds at around 1 p.m. on a weekday afternoon to ask how to import the blog. We explained how we were having trouble, and while the chat agent couldn't explain my error message, provided a link to the knowledgebase article explaining what we needed to do.
Feature-Rich, but IntimidatingiPage turns out to be a surprisingly robust Web hosting service that provides a whole range of features, as well as the flexibility to refine the features as needed. We found it difficult to get used to Mojo Marketplace, but we like the number of supported applications. We also like the service's simpler pricing options, but the pricing could be a little bit more consistent. There were just enough misses, such as that weird import issue with WordPress, the soaring cost after one year, and the fact that one of the site-builder tools didn't recognize Chrome, that it's Arvixe and Dreamhost—the PCMag Editors' Choice winners for Web hosting services—that we'd recommend for those who want a well-rounded Web host experience. That said, if you want some flexibility with your Web hosting service, iPage is worth a look.

Source: View the original article here