Are you looking for a cheap WordPress hosting provider that is also reliable?
There are many web hosting companies out there and every single one has its own pros and cons, but today I’m going to be focusing on one particular hosting company that I’ve been using since I’ve started my blogging career.
Now, why am I writing an iPage review?
When you’re thinking about starting an online business or starting a blog to make some money or even starting a new site for your existing company, there are many things that come to mind and one of them is the cost.
We’re really not ready to spend a lot of money on a hosting company when we don’t even know how profitable this new project will be, or how long will it take for us to start making a revenue.
I can tell you this because I already went through it, and I’m not the only one, indeed everybody goes through the same thing.
Now, when I started my first blog back in 2014, I was looking for a cheap WordPress hosting provider, but I was also looking for a company that offers a reliable service that I can grow with, although I’m not paying a premium price.
Here’s what I found…
iPage Review: 4.8/5 Best Value/Price 75% DISCOUNT HERE!
Table of Contents: [hide]
iPage Review: Is it a Cheap WordPress Hosting that is also Reliable?
- About iPage
- What they offer
- iPage’s Performance
- iPage Server Response & Up Time
- iPage Support and Customer Service
- Refund Policy
- iPage Pros and Cons
- Conclusion:
iPage Review: Is it a Cheap WordPress Hosting that is also Reliable? - About iPage
iPage is a hosting company that has been around for many years, it was originally established in 1998, and ever since it has grown to become one of the most successful web hosting companies. They are currently powering over one million websites around the world.
They are an EPA Green Power Partner, which means that they use wind energy (green power) in order to run their data centers and web servers. Because of this, iPage is also certified as a green site, and they purchase enough Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) to offset their energy use by 200%.
By using iPage, you’ll be contributing to their commitment to helping the planet.
- What they offer
iPage offers a wide variety of services like Domain Registrations, Shared Hosting Solutions, VPS (Virtual Private Servers) and Dedicated Hosting Solutions for big companies.
They offer plans that start at $1.99/mo with a 36 months term, $2.45/mo for a 24 months term, and $2.99/mo for a 12 months term.
This makes them one of the cheapest web hosting companies available in the market, which also includes a Free domain registration (Usually about $10/year) and a whole bunch of extra features.
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They are one of the few cheap WordPress hosting providers that can really compete with the other big brands in the market that usually come at a higher price.
Some of the things I really like about iPage shared hosting:
- The Control Panel is easy to understand. I know many people hate on hosting providers who don’t offer a cPanel, but when you’re brand new at all this, you really don’t want to deal with anything that requires a lot of technical knowledge.
The control panel has all the options you need to get started and you really don’t need it for anything once you’ve set up your WordPress site. So you better don’t deal with anything you don’t know.
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- One click WordPress Installation (Look at the image above). This makes it really easy for anyone to set up their first blog or website without needing to know a lot of technical stuff, you just click on one button, they’ll ask for some info about the site you’re creating, and that’s it.
–> Check out this guide on how to set up your blog or website with iPage <–
- Live 24/7 Chat Support. No matter what time is it on your side of the world, if you have any issues and you need support, there’s going to be someone available for you. This is something I really look for when looking for a hosting company.
- FREE email address. It looks nicer to send an email to a client from a personalized email address for your site (example: admin@yourdomain.com), than sending an email from a free email service like gmail.com or hotmail.com.
- $500 in credits for extras. It sounds crazy, how can they give you a $500 credit, when their hosting is so cheap. Well, they do give you about $100 for Adwords, $100 for Yahoo! and Bing Ads, and some other that I just don’t remember at the moment.
Overall, they give you a great deal for the price you pay. Now let’s take a look at their performance…
- iPage’s Performance
When I look at a cheap WordPress hosting company, all I’m looking for is just a perfect balance between pricing and performance. We’ve already looked at the price and we know is low, now let’s take a look at the other side of the coin.
Like I’ve stated before, I’m hosting this blog with iPage, I’m currently not using any CDN (Content Delivery Network) in order to make my site load faster. I’m only using Cloudflare, which helps to cache the site better.
Here’s a screenshot of how my site’s speed is looking at the moment. I’ve used Pingdom for this test.
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Loading time is 1.26 seconds only, which is very good, 84% faster than other sites.
Here’s another test performed with GTMetrix from a different location out of the US.
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This time we got 4.5 seconds for the loading speed, tested from London, UK. Which again is really good, given the fact that we’re testing a real website with a lot of content, media files, banners, etc.
Overall, I can tell that the loading speed with iPage is not the best one in the market, but it’s actually very good and for the price, you actually get a pretty good loading speed.
- iPage Server Response & Up Time
Like I already mentioned at the beginning of this review, when looking for a cheap WordPress hosting provider we are also looking for a company that’s reliable, so we try to find the perfect balance.
We’ve already looked at the price, page loading speed, but we also want to make sure that our blog or website is always available when our visitors are coming, and we don’t want our site to crash when the server gets too loaded with visitors.
In order to ensure that my sites are always available to my visitors and also take any actions very quickly if needed. I monitor their performance and uptime with Pingdom.com. Here’s a quick look at this blog’s uptime report for the last 3 months.
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As you can see, 99.99% uptime is very solid. Only 5 outages of about 1 minute each one, so we can certainly tell is very good. I don’t know of any hosting company so far that can deliver a 100% uptime, but mostly the good ones are always above 99.95% on average.
In the other hand, iPage’s server response time is actually not the best. They do have high server response time for some specific regions, such as Japan, Australia, and Singapour, which makes their average server response time to be higher than some of their competitors (Lower server response time is always better, it means the site can load faster). But if you’re not getting many visitors from this regions, then is not such a big concern.
Here’s a table with the average server response time of some of the leading hosting companies for different regions.
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Now, here is how the server response time of this blog looks like:
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As you can see, Cloudflare is helping me out here, since most of the time the visitors won’t even get the site loaded from the original servers, but the stored cached version on Cloudflare servers. The response time is still high for some regions, but very fast for the ones I care about.
- iPage Support and Customer Service
We all need help now and then, if by any chance we have an issue that needs to be resolved, and its good to know that you can get a quick support when you need it.
iPage offers 24/7 support via the following channels: phone, live chat, and email. Apart from getting direct help, from someone who knows better, they also have a large knowledge base with articles, videos, and guides.
For this iPage review, I contacted the support staff multiple times via live chat and asked some complicated questions. I’ve also had my issues before, in which I’ve actually messed up a whole site while trying to do something. The customer support agents are actually knowledgeable, friendly, and willing to help.
- Refund Policy
iPage offers a 30-day money back policy, which means that if you’re not happy with the service you get, you can ask for a refund within 30 days.
Now, they are a little tricky with this policy and since this an honest review, I also have to mention that so you keep it in mind. If you’re not happy within the first 30 days they will give you a refund, but they will also deduct US$15 for the “Free domain” they’ve given you.
So they won’t give you a full refund, only a partial refund. This is one reason why people get really mad, and I understand, there are many bad reviews out there based on this situation.
But let tell you, is not so bad…
Why am I saying is not so bad? Is not so bad because you keep your domain name, and if you’re just switching to another company and they already offer a free domain, all you have to do is just transfer your existing domain from iPage and you’ll have your domain registered for 2 years now, instead of one. BTW, the domain name is usually paid every year and it cost about $10/year.
- iPage Pros and Cons
First of all, let’s take a look at the advantages that make this cheap WordPress hosting provider a good choice for you.
Pros:
Low-cost plans: iPage offers one of the lowest-priced shared hosting plans in the industry, which makes them great for newbies, personal blogs, and small businesses.
Customer friendly: They offer a wide variety of tools and services to help you easily build your websites and grow your business.
$500 Worth of Extras: This includes free Google AdWords and Bing credits, free YP.com listing, and Site Analytics Report.
1-click WordPress Installation: All their plans also include 1-click WordPress installation, unlimited databases, email accounts, unlimited storage, and bandwidth.
Strong uptime – 99.97%
Excellent customer support
iPage is a green web hosting
Cons:
Renewal Cost is higher: Like all other hosting providers, they get you in with a lower price for the first term, and then renewal at their regular cost.
Domain name cost is deducted when you as for a refund within 30 days.
- Conclusion:
Overall, iPage is a cheap WordPress hosting provider that delivers a great performance for the price they offer, this is why they’ve been in the market for so long.
I won’t tell they’re the best out there, but I’d strongly recommend them to beginner bloggers and small business who want to start growing their online presence.
My best recommendation, if you want to get the best price and not to worry about the renewal increase, is to get started with the 3 years term, this way you get the cheapest monthly rate, $1.99/mo and you also take care of your hosting expense for a whole 3 years period, so that you can focus on growing your business so that it pays for its own costs.
iPage Review: 4.8/5 Best Value/Price 75% DISCOUNT HERE!
Other helpful resources:
How to Make Money With a Blog: The Definitive Guide For Beginners
How to make money online with Google Adsense – US$2,000/mo
How to get a FREE https Certificate and Boost Your Rankings on Google
That’s it for now, I hope this article is helpful to you and if you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and I’ll be happy to answer them. Thanks for visiting, and don’t forget to share!