70 Blanchard Rd., Third Floor
Burlington, MA 01803
1-877-472-4399
iPage began as a web host in 1998, primarily serving non-profit agencies and small domains. iPage went inactive a few years later, and relaunched in October of 2009. Today, iPage hosts over one million clients from data centers in Boston, MA, and operates on wind energy.
Review
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Sales
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Before signing up for an account, I wanted to ask iPage about their money back guarantee. iPage offers an unheard of anytime money back guarantee that allows clients to cancel services and request a refund at any time during their hosting contract. This isn’t standard in the industry, with most web hosts giving only a 30 day money back guarantees. Though iPage promises an anytime guarantee, I also noted in their Terms of Service that a $35 fee is attached to early cancellations. To clear up any confusion, I first turned to iPage’s sales team, who give support by email, live chat and a toll free telephone number.
I was able to connect with a member of sales by live chat in just a few moments. I explained my confusion with regards to the money back guarantee and was told to ignore the Terms of Service on the iPage website. When I expressed concern, telling the sales member that this was a binding legal document that couldn’t be ignored, I was again told that the Terms of Service did not matter. From there, I went on to contact telephone support, who also assured me that there indeed was no $35 cancellation fee, though they could not tell me why it was listed as an actual charge on their website. Though both sales team members were polite and did their best to address my concerns, I was left feeling a little uneasy about iPage.
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Setup
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I received a letter welcoming me to iPage within a few moments of paying for my shared hosting account. The introductory letter instructed me as to how to change the nameservers associated with my domain, upload my files, and find further help if need be. iPage’s setup is instant and the welcome letter provided me with all the necessary information needed to get my website online that day.
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Billing
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I paid by credit card for my hosting account, choosing to be billed annually. My credit card was properly charged and I was never responsible for any fees or services that I had not specifically ordered.
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Pricing
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iPage has one plan that goes for $3.50/month and features unlimited space and bandwidth, plus a free domain name. iPage is definitely a price leader in the web hosting industry.
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Reliability
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During my twelve month stay with iHost I experienced weekly instances of MySQL server crashes and slow script performance. My Joomla powered website would often slow to a crawl, sometimes taking more than one full minute to load. The server itself stayed online and operational, but seemed bogged down and possibly overloaded.
There were no hardware issues with my web hosting server during my stay and the equipment itself seemed reliable and part of a strong network.
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Help & Support
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I contacted iPage several times during my year long stay to ask about the MySQL crashes. Live chat operators were able to help me immediately, always assuring me that the situation was being addressed, though several operators asked me what MySQL was used for. Live chat often left me feeling that they weren’t completely knowledgeable about web hosting or server maintenance. Telephone support takes approximately 20 minutes to connect, and I found the toll free support to be excellent.
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Uptime
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I use a premium monitoring tool to keep track of my websites and tell me when they go offline. I experienced only two extended periods of downtime during my one year stay with iPage, both registering that my sites were offline for 7 minutes each.
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Guarantee
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- 99.9% uptime guarantee
- Possible anytime money back guarantee
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Terms of Service
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The Terms of Service for iPage are online. Highlights include:
- Possible $35 early cancellation fee.
- Strict SPAM policy. Violators will be charged $100 for each piece of SPAM sent.
- No BitTorrent usage.
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Bottom Line
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Advantages
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- A green company powered 100% by wind energy.
- Courteous and helpful telephone support staff.
- 24/7 support.
- CPanel control panel.
- Extremely low prices.
- Good uptime.
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Disadvantages
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- Live chat support not always knowledgeable of issues.
- Slow script performance and website load times indicating possible overselling.
- Recurring MySQL server crashes.
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