iPage Review They’re cheap, but what about their performance?
Brad Smith
I’ve been a paying customer for iPage for the last 37 months. During that time, I’ve monitored their performance – avg. load time and uptime.
This review relies strongly on data, such as uptime, load time (speed) and customer support experience.
What is iPage?
iPage Hosting is an Endurance International Group (EIG) brand, acquired in 2010 from founder Thomas Gorny.
EIG has been around for about 20 years, and they’re a force to be reckoned with, to say the least.
EIG owns some huge names in the web hosting world, like FatCow, Bluehost, HostMonster, Just Host, PowWeb, EasyCGI, StartLogic, Dot5Hosting, VPSLink, and more.
Originally started in 1998, iPage Hosting now has offices in six worldwide locations serving over one million websites between two data centers in the U.S.
Phew, that was a mouthful. GET STARTED NOW
iPage Hosting Review
There’s a slight hesitation that occurs when we find out we’re reviewing yet anotherEIG-owned company. Our experience with most of them has been, well, not great.
They’re big. Well known. And wildly inconsistent (typically falling somewhere between average and poor).
That being said, we want to be proved wrong. Maybe iPage could, delivering stunning performance statistics that we can’t deny or hide.
To find out, we set up a WordPress website on their ‘Essential’ shared hosting plan in June 2015. We’ve been running performance tests ever since to monitor the most important hosting characteristics like uptime and speed which are critical to your site (and business) success.
VISIT IPAGE
Pros of iPage Hosting
First, the good news.
iPage is perhaps the cheapest hosting option available. Like, cheap x 2.
Their support is pretty decent (albeit inconsistent), while their partnership with SiteLock can help you sleep well at night knowing someone else is worrying about the potential security problems or issues.
Here’s a quick rundown of the biggest benefits to iPage.
- Cheap, Inexpensive Hosting
iPage Hosting comes in at only $1.99 per month making it one of the cheapest web hosts available in the marketplace.
The great news, is that not only does this rate apply to their long-term deals (like 36 months), but also their shorter, minimum one of 12 months too.
That means you won’t necessarily have to get locked into (or pay upfront) a three-year deal (like many other hosts out there required) just to get the best advertised rate.
- Good Customer Support
You don’t always expect the lowest cost provider to have good support. But iPage bucks that trend, providing decent support through phone, email and live chat.
Despite the twenty-minute connection delay, their rep answered all of our questions directly with additional helpful details along the way. We were very satisfied, especially when compared across all of the other web hosts we’ve reviewed this far.
iPage Support reviewed
(It’s worth mentioning that our background checks revealed mixed reviews. So buyer beware I guess.)
- Enhanced Security Options
All iPage Hosting plans come with a SiteLock security suite, which is like a security frontline for your site.
Apparently, iPage and SiteLock did a user study and found that 12%+ of subscriber sites contained malware at some point in 2014.
SiteLock helps prevent unwanted security breaches by regularly scanning for malware issues. Depending on the plan you choose, this also includes them going in and removing the malicious stuff for you.
In addition, they’ll use a firewall to help prevent any potential security leaks. For example, running a site with outdated plugins makes you an easy target, as updates regularly reveal where holes or breaches exist in past versions.
Best of all, they’ll also include daily backups. So IF something were to happy, you can simply roll back to a prior version ASAP to get things back online.
This is a nice added bonus that many other web hosts will charge additionally for, making that super low $1.99 look even better yet.
- Third Party Application Support
iPage plays well with others, connecting simply with Google Apps, PayPal, and more. That’s especially helpful for eCommerce websites who need to handle secure payment transactions.
iPage also throws in some bonus credits on new accounts for Google AdWords, Yahoo, and Bing.
- Upfront, Honest (Cheap) Pricing
Many web hosts appear inexpensive at first. Especially most EIG brands who are frequent perpetrators of this trick.
Things look rosy until you click ‘Checkout’ and discover (to your dismay) that to lock-in that great deal you’ve been told about thus far, you’ll have to fork over three-years worth, all at once.
Fortunately, iPage is different – charging you the same monthly rate no matter which duration you’d prefer (assuming a minimum of 12 months). Honesty and transparency goes a long way in our books.
It IS worth noting however, that when this low-priced promotional period ends, get ready for a huge rate hike. Without spoiling the punchline, check out Con #3 below.
- 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
Most web hosts offer some kind of money back guarantee. iPage Hosting is one of them.
But there’s something a bit different about this web host’s money back guarantee in comparison to others:
There are no strange terms and conditions that apply.
iPage Hosting claims that if you contact them within 30 days of purchasing and request a refund, they’ll give it to you with no questions asked.
Some other web hosts, in comparison, won’t give you a refund if you use a certain amount of bandwidth or payment method that their guarantee doesn’t cover.
You’ll have to pay for your domain name though. Skip to con number 4 to read more about expensive domain names.
- Strong Uptime of 99.97%
While iPage’s pricing is among the cheapest we’ve seen, their uptime (similarly to HostGator) is among the highest we’ve seen too. That’s is really good.
Their average uptime of 99.97% over the past twelve months is significantly higher than many of the other web hosts we’ve reviewed to date (and .18% better than the industry average).
2017:
January average uptime: 99.99%
February average uptime: 99.98%
March average uptime: 99.96%
April average uptime: 100%
May average uptime: 99.87%
June average uptime: 100%
July average uptime: 100%
August average uptime: 99.99%
September average uptime: 99.87%
October average uptime: 100%
November average uptime: 99.96%
December average uptime: 100%
iPage performance stats
iPage: Page Load Speed and Uptime
In addition to that, iPage claims to offer 24/7 uptime monitoring. If a site goes down, iPage’s support is supposed to begin working to get things back online immediately.
- iPage is an EPA Green Power Partner
iPage is an EPA Green Power Partner, meaning that the data centers and web servers that support iPage and its users are powered by wind energy.
Because of this, iPage is certified as a green site, and the company purchases enough Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) to offset their energy use by as much as 200%!
This is the same as planting a whopping 244 acres of trees or taking 244 cars off of the road. Talk about saving the planet!
ipage epa green
RECs prove that, although electricity is purchased from a regular grid, the portion that is being used was created from renewable energy sources.
By hosting with iPage, you’ll be contributing to their commitment to helping the planet.
If you’re looking to reduce your carbon footprint or work with socially conscious brands, iPage is a web host you should seriously consider.
#9th in OVERALL
#13nd in SPEED (908ms)
#11th in UPTIME (99.97%)
iPage is cheap, but very reliable host
Host with iPage
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