iPage Server Speed & Uptime

Further along in my review, you’ll see that one of the main reasons I rate iPage Essentials so highly is the consistently high levels of uptime and lighting fast server speeds.

Uptime, for me, and hopefully for you, is a very important factor when considering a web host. Having a high uptime percentage on your website is a critical aspect to ensuring that your business stays online and attracts visitors. Monitoring your websites’ uptime is key to establishing whether your web hosting provider is right for your website, or type of business.

Over the six months that I tracked all of the companies, iPage regularly outperformed most of their competitors, with monthly uptime averages dropping below 99.9% on only two occasions. Even then, this was so minuscule that it didn’t seem to affect the over all performance of my websites.

I also monitored my website’s response time. Again, another important factor when considering the best web host. The average response time was 788ms which is below 1 second. This is a great result! The maximum response time recorded over several months didn’t even reach over 1 second.

If you cannot afford any downtime, you’ll need to find a web host that honours a 99.9% uptime guarantee to ensure your website and emails keep going strong. However, after reading this review, you find you like a lot of the aspects that iPage offers, they do give all of their customers a 30-day money-back guarantee if you feel you have any doubts about their services. As you can see from my real-time tracking above, iPage’s uptime was 100% over a 7 day period, and 99.71% over the 30 days that I monitored a website hosted with them. Although it’s not a perfect score, compared to most companies, it’s very good.

Meanwhile, the servers -which are fueled by 100% renewable energy sources- loaded pages at speeds well above the average rate, making them one of my top picks for high performance, reliable hosting.

iPage Features

Often imitated, rarely duplicated, iPage was one of the first major hosting providers to abandon the traditional multi-tiered approach to selling shared hosting and focus on one all-inclusive shared hosting solution which comes without restrictions on the following key resources:

Storage space
Bandwidth
MySQL databases
FTP accounts
Email addresses

With the latter, every email account you create comes with 500MB of storage space, access via webmail and POP3/IMAP, and its own autoresponder, spam filter, and virus checker. This alone is a great feature. Some web hosts don’t give you email accounts, and they can be quite costly!

As well as the features listed above, iPage also includes the following:

• Core Features: iPage provides some core features that you’d expect to see with every web host. However, the difference is that iPage offers these on an unlimited basis. This includes unlimited disk space, domains, MySQL databases and a FREE domain for 1 year.
• Design Features: Once you’ve got web hosting and a domain name, you’ll need to create a website. iPage provides an all-in-one service where you can use iPage’s website builder. Not only this, your site will be mobile optimised and have the use of their 1-click WordPress installer.
• eCommerce: When you sign up to iPage you’ll get a FREE online store. This also comes with PayPal integration and AgoraCart to get you started. Whilst it may not be the most comprehensive eCommerce tool, it’s hard to complain when it’s included in the price.

The features above are only just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what iPage Essentials have to offer.

iPage Customer Support

With a lot of web hosting companies that I review, I tend to find that the level of customer service is no more than satisfactory. That is, the company and its support staff typically get everything right but don’t really stand out as being anything worth raving about.

iPage are one of the very rare exceptions to that rule. On the whole, my personal experiences in dealing with the company via live chat, email and telephone support have been far above average.

Their 1st line support team were friendly, investigated any issues that I had, and dealt with it there and then. If 1st line support couldn’t deal with my query due to it being more technically involved, 2nd line support, more often than not, responded to me within 24 hours.  Not only did the customer support reps at both the tech and billing support ends respond quicker than their contemporaries at other hosting companies, but they were friendly, helpful, and struck just the right balance between tech talk and keeping things simple.

Even if iPage’s customer support had ended up being not so good (which, just to clarify, it really was an excellent experience), their 24/7 uptime monitoring tool allows their support team to be on hand and reactive if anything were to go wrong.

Meanwhile, the comprehensive bank of how-to guides, tutorials and advice articles were more than sufficient in tackling common iPage Essentials and website problems, often eliminating the need to contact support at all.

Their user guides are extensive, covering common topics, such as managing your domain, how to configure your email, selling online, etc. Most web hosts do provide some kind of FAQ section or knowledgebase, but iPage has gone the extra length to put these handy guides together; as I said, it often reduces the need to contact support, and you can read through them at your own leisure.

iPage Pros and Cons

iPage is without a doubt one of my favourite hosts. Whilst there are some conflicting reviews out there about their hosting, I personally haven’t had any issues. When I look to recommend a web host, I take everything into account.

A good web host to me is one that offers reliability, stability, good performance, affordable pricing, and great customer support. iPage does a good job by meeting all of my criteria, whilst offering an astounding number of features alongside.

Pros

Unlimited Features: iPage offers a whole host of unlimited features. This includes disk space AND bandwidth. If you want to host a small or medium sized business, you’re not going to have any worries here.

eCommerce: iPage’s eCommerce features are on another level. You’ll get a FREE SSL certificate to get you started, as well as payment gateway support, eCommerce site builder, and hundreds of templates to choose from.

Customer Support: After some truly horrendous experiences elsewhere, iPage is a refreshing change. Their customer support is helpful and the staff know what they’re doing. They go the extra mile to ensure customer satisfaction.

Green Energy: iPage are officially green certified, and offsets energy use by 200% – pretty amazing, right? What they’re doing is equivalent to taking 224 cars off the road – it may not seem like a world-changing amount, but at least they’re doing something about it and are conscious about what they do.

Cons

U.S. Only Features: At first glance, iPage looks to be keeping up with their rivals by offering a £80 Google Adwords voucher and a further £80 in credits for Yahoo/Bing. Then I realised that these are only actually available to customers in the United States

No cPanel: This is a bit tricky to list, as it’s a con in some cases. Most people tend to like the simplicity and familiarity of cPanel, and unfortunately iPage don’t use it. Although iPage’s control panel may not be the ‘usual’ cPanel that most are familiar with, this doesn’t mean that it’s bad.

iPage Pricing

This is one of the simplest pricing reviews I’ve had to do. iPage only offers ONE pricing plan – that makes things easy doesn’t it! Their pricing plan is £1.50 per month for an initial 12, 24 or 36 month term. After this period, it renews at £8.35 per month.

Their approach is a one-size fits all web hosting package. They believe you should be able to build and host your website with them regardless of your site or business. For an amazing value of £1.50 per month, let’s check out EVERYTHING you’ll get:

• Unlimited disk space
• Scalable bandwidth
• Unlimited domains
• FREE SSL certificate
• FREE domain
• iPage website builder
• FREE online store
• PayPal integration
• 1-click installer for WordPress and other apps
• Customizable email address with your domain
• Enhanced security suite (£80 Value)
• vDeck Control Panel
• 24/7 network monitoring
• Visitor statistics/site traffic reporting
• Online help center and ticketing system
• Step-by-step tutorials
• 30-day money back guarantee
• 24/7 phone and chat support

Do I Recommend iPage?

Absolutely YES! There’s no doubt in my mind that I’d recommend iPage. Their user-friendliness is second to none. You can sign up and be ready to launch your website within a couple of minutes. Their customer support is outstanding, I have always felt like I’ve received a personal experience and one that will stick in my mind for good reasons.

Their features are fantastic – all of what I’ve mentioned for a mere £1.50 per month! They are an incredible web host with plenty on offer. Aside from all the features, they also offer stable and reliable web hosting. Whilst their performance isn’t out of this world, it’s pretty damn good and rivals other web hosts that are a lot more expensive.

Here’s a quick summary of iPage:

Amazing features (there’s SO much on offer)
Unbeatable prices (just £1.50 per month for the term of your own choosing)
Free website builder (no need to go elsewhere for anything else)
Free domain name (included for the first year as well as a FREE SSL certificate)
Great customer support (live chat support is super handy and absolutely fab)
Green hosting (using renewable energy, iPage are helping to save the planet)

Renewal prices are a lot more expensive (I’d possibly be tempted to go elsewhere at renewal)
Performance improvements (whilst it’s by no means bad, I’d be 100% dedicated to iPage with better uptime)