iPage reviews

Good for Small Businesses

iPage is a good hosting service for small businesses that need to host multiple websites on a single package. They have good customer support in live chat, but server speed and consistency could use some improvement.

The WordPress installer has been given to MOJO Marketplace, but they’ve had several issues. It’s down for significant amounts of time. I personally had quite a few occasions wherein I had to contact support to have them install WordPress for me.

One good thing about iPage is that they allow unlimited add-on domains, subdomains, and databases, which makes them stand out among other hosting services at the same rate. However, the other downfall of iPage is that there is a limit for how many hits a database can receive per hour. If your WordPress page has a lot of plugins, you might face downtime and your database may get shut down. If you want to avoid this issue, you have to pay for special WordPress hosting which is quite expensive.

In the end, the shared hosting price is quite cheap compared to other competitors with the same features. Hence, my go-ahead for small businesses.

Biggest Pro: Unlimited Databases, Unlimited add-on and sub domains, Unlimited bandwidth and storage, Highly responsive support
Biggest Con: Not using generic Cpanel, Lacks basic functionality in some areas

iPage is a reliable hosting company with a good support team

I have used iPage for several clients, and I love their hosting service. They seldom have downtimes, and their platform is so easy to operate. They offer free SSL for all domains, so that was a massive plus for me. Their LiveChat is super efficient, and I solved almost every problem I had using it to talk to their support team.

They helped me fix so many domain errors and even helped me set up SSL & automatic redirection from Http to https on my websites at no added cost. However, a few issues occurred, but the problems were never too massive for the support team to handle for me.

Even with the shared hosting, I was able to host so many files on the server, and I never noticed a significant reduction in speed on my websites.

The only wrong impression I have of them was an instance where they cancelled a client's hosting account because he violated some policies. I tried several means to retrieve the files, but I wasn't able to as they made it impossible.

I do wish that they were more lenient or made more efforts in making people understand critical items on their policy page. But then, almost no website does that these days.

I will recommend iPage, but I'll also advise new customers to read their policy page very well so they know what they are going into.

Biggest Pro: Free SSL for all domains

iPage is the most affordable hosting of all

The most interesting thing with iPage is that as a new customer I got a free domain name for the first year. This domain becomes your own and you can have it hosted by other companies even if you cancel your membership with iPage. I had the opportunity to host unlimited domains on my subscription which was quite cheap and could never be allowed by other hosting companies that I have tried earlier on.

Their technical support is always friendly and skilled, they have assisted me in so many ways such as installing WordPress, canceling monthly subscriptions and other technical assistance. However, Customer Care Chat option is not the best as it usually has delays relaying information. It always seems to be quite slow so you need patience with this.

iPage lacks Cpanel which is quite simpler for me to operate, although the have their own menu, which was quite hectic for me to understand. Their load time speed quite is always low, which was a negative thing in my business and it scared away my customers. Initially the cost of setting up a website is very low and affordable to many, however, as you grow your business you will be subjected to higher renewal rates and other third party application which accumulatively will turn to be an expensive affair. Hence iPage is ideal for startups and small businesses.

Biggest Pro: Very affordable and Ideal in pricing for Startups
Biggest Con: Load time speed is very slow

Good for Start-ups and Amateurs

I have used iPage for the last one month and so far so good. I have little knowledge if any on web-hosting but I had a smooth time searching and buying the the domain name.The only issue I had was installation of the domain in wordpress because it had a pop-up "external error". This almost frustrated me.

After being unable to install the domain in wordpress, I contacted the support and they were prompt in their response. They did not only help me in installation but also activated the free SSL for me. I never knew how to do this. The support staff also offered to help in case I needed web designers for my websites. That was a good gesture and also a good marketing strategy.

After installation and the website was running, I also accessed the basic email plan. The email works perfectly for start-ups.I also had a little problem setting up the email, but I think because I am not a tech guru.

That is the good part. The speed of the website is not the best but considering I have not fully set up everything, I have not experienced serious problem with this.

I believe iPage would be better if amateurs could understand what is the problem during installation and how to go about solving the issue. I tried to search for the solution online but what was available did not fully help me resolve the issue.

Biggest Pro: -Pricing

My experience after using Ipage web hosting for 3 years

I am a web developer and I have been an Ipage customer for almost 3 years. I have two websites hosted on Ipage and I also recommended Ipage for hosting to my clients who has a limited or low budget for their website. The reason I picked them because of their Cheap, Inexpensive Hosting. Their up-time was above average at 99 % over the past few 24 months, while their page loading times were slightly below (787 ms) which is quite good in my opinion. SO at a low price, I got unlimited bandwidth and disk space, a free domain name for the first year, and a free SSL certificate!! Wow!!
The cons which attracted me to buy their service were their average 99.97% uptime, Good Customer support, and the additional services they offer with hosting plan.
One time my website was hacked and the hacker deleted everything including the backups. I contacted Ipage support using live chat and my website was recovered and live within few minutes.
How ever having average loading time 787ms and not having a real cpanel and their simple file-manager are things I don’t like. I feel it difficult to unzip archive files I uploaded in file manager as there is no zip extractor there. Those things should be improved by Ipage. Especially their slow loading time puts a bad rating on my website speed.
If you have a small budget and have a medium-sized website Ipage is the best cheap Web hosting you can get. But if you are planning to have large websites under one single hosting account, you should try looking at other options. For me, I am very much satisfied with Ipage and will continue using their services

Biggest Pro: Cheapest hosting
Biggest Con: Simple file manager

Switching to iPage was a HUGE MISTAKE

The absolute worst in customer service!!! Nothing is their fault...it must be your equipment, your settings, your lack of understanding of how to send an email...PURE B.S. Their email service is terrible and about 10% of my emails are never received.

Biggest Pro: None
Biggest Con: iPage is a CON

Ubelievably Bad--But Now I Believe It!

I have to agree with all the other negative reviews, particularly about customer service/tech support. Even the platform stability now is getting worse. iPage advertises 24/7 American Phone Support. True, if you call between business hours on the East Coast you do get someone speaking native English, often with no more than a 20-25 minute wait. Since I live on the West coast and will no longer waste time with chat or email support (both handled apparently from India) the last time I called late in the afternoon my time I waited on hold for 45 minutes.

Chat support, usually relatively quick to respond (5-10 minutes), is a waste of time. Typically, the first response after the apparently obligatory "I can understand your concern regarding the matter and I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused," the support person will pick up on a couple of words in your question and cut and paste in a completely unrelated boilerplate response. Then after multiple paraphrases of your question you get the “Please be on hold for 4 to 5 minutes while I look into your issue” (it used to be 2 minutes but now it is longer). That is usually followed by more replies that are non-responsive and in some cases contradictory information until eventually you give up.

I do have to say, though, that often after this kind of frustration you will get a "sincere" apology from an outsourced supervisor--not that it solves the problem. Emailing support or using the support ticket option generally follows the same pattern, perhaps because it seems to be out-sourced as well. Out of 48 email support tickets over the past 18 months , which seems high when they are all about problems), I would guess that fewer than a dozen were resolved even with multiple exchanges begging the technician to actually READ and TRY TO UNDERSTAND my question. On the majority of these issues, as with chat support (even more attempts) I either gave up or found a work-a-round. For just one example, here is a problem that took ten contacts on my part with four iPage responses: Issue: Spurious characters being inserted in HTML code. Never resolved. Partial apology in Last iPage response: “I apologize for the issues you are experiencing with the website and I apologize for the inaccurate information provided in previous response. I have gone through the ticket to check the exact issue you are experiencing and could see that additional character is being inserted in the URL automatically even after removing it.”

More worrisome lately are occurrences of problems with actual web pages you create and email accounts. I have found instances where I updated a web page and saved it but found the changed information failed to be retained. A POP mail address I set up suddenly failed after working flawlessly for six months. The tech support person claimed it had been improperly set up, even though I pointed out that not only was it set up the same way as other accounts which still worked, the problem account had worked just fine until something happened at iPage. This kind of thing can cost you customers.

Only inertia and the efforts in recreating a complete web site (because I can no longer count on downloading fully functional pages from my iPage account) and switching to another host have kept me going with iPage this long after signing for a two-year contract. Now, I am redoing all my pages in Dreamweaver and will be changing soon to a company with an excellent record of accomplishment and the developers of the LiveCode programming language (http://www.runrev.com).

The bottom line for me is that like most things, with cheap you get cheap. If you want a working business site or even a personal one that does not require endless hours of support communication to keep it working, you have to pay for it. And $1.89 a month does not give you what you need!

Biggest Con: Support and stability

Automatic Renewal Scheme - Rip-off

As I have little use for a website I was planning in terminating my web hosting service after the first year.

I paid $12.00 for the first year and to my surprise IPage automatically renewed my plan for another year for $150.00

More than 10 times what I paid the first year.

Stay away from IPage or make sure your plan is not automatically renewed. This is nothing but a scam.

Biggest Pro: Stable and reliable
Biggest Con: Their Automatic Renewal is a scam.

Beware of IPage Refund Policy - It's a Rip-off

You can really lose some serious money if you don't understand Ipage's refund policy. This is how it works:
They only refund the hosting amount. Any other services are non-refundable after 30 days. In my case this included:
-Site Lock
-Jumpstart
-Rapid SSL/Dedicated IP
-Simply Local
-Go Mobi Site
-Domain Privacy
are all non-refundable and that is the lions share of what you pay for. I spent over $200 for their service and receive not one dime in refunds.

Worst yet, I chose "Weebly" site set up to create my page and it never works properly. When I launched my site it wouldn't display. Worse yet, once the page was launched Weebly didn't allow me to make changes are corrections to the site and I was unable to conduct any site maintenance.

I would never recommend this company to anyone least of all a novice web designer as it is poorly designed, limited in its tools and you could be putting hundreds of dollars at risk.

Biggest Pro: Courteous Customer Support
Biggest Con: Unreliable tools

Still the Best

I've now been with iPage since 2010 and I'm still amazed at how good their Web Hosting is. I have had very few issues but when there is a problem they deal with it promptly and professionally. Uploading is very quick, especially considering how large my website is. Server and connection speed is excellent and the Customer Service team couldn't be more friendly and knowledgeable, whether on the phone or chat service. Fantastic service for a very competitive cost. I cannot recommend iPage highly enough.

Biggest Pro: Cost and tech support