1.iPage

Summary

Serving over 1 million websites, iPage is undoubtedly playing in the major league. The web hosting company from Boston founded in 1998 now aims to provide hosting services to small and medium size businesses. A single plan for as little as $1.99/month targets most webmasters and includes unlimited disk capacity and data transfer, full MySQL capabilities, free online stores, and a web site builder in the default package.

iPage purchases Renewable Energy Certificates to cover 200% of the actually utilized power. RECs are special certificates that ensure the electric power the certificate's owner uses comes from ecological sources like wind generators. Knowing that your site doesn't damage the planet brings you peace of mind, and a special Green Badge you can display on your site lets your visitors know about that too.

In addition to many typical offers including Google AdWords, Yahoo and Facebook Ads credits and easy installing blog scripts, eCommerce platforms, or picture galleries, iPage can brag about several interesting capabilities. Free Yellow Pages listing may help to quickly boost your site rank, pre-installed Google Webmaster Tools assist you in tracking your progress, and advanced e-mail and FTP security plus free SSL ensure that your business remains safe.

Ease of Use

With vDeck control panel, iPage has everything an average customer might need: e-mail boxes and MySQL database setup, domain name manipulation, web mail, access logs, a file manager, etc. Mastering the panel is easy, and the Quick Start menu in the header of the control panel suggests three simple steps for new comers to quickly deploy a minimum "placeholder" website: add a domain, create an e-mail box, and edit the website with the site builder.

The e-mail central allows creation of unlimited e-mail accounts with their own forwarding and autoresponse settings. Additionally, there is a paid capability to store messages, contacts and other personal data in one place available from everywhere: your smart-phone, your desktop, your tablet, etc. This capability starts at $24.95/year and is powered by Open-Xchange.

Script and software installation is available using Simple Scripts.

 

50+ popular scripts sorted by category are ready to install with a click. Some solutions are free while others (politely highlighted with orange) offer only a free trial. In general, iPage offers all popular blog platforms, CMS, online shops, forums, photo galleries, social networking plugins and more.

We tried to install Simple Machines forum engine and phpMyFAQ, a platform for easy writing and publishing of FAQs and user guides on your site.

Both were installed within 1-2 minutes without any noticeable problems or glitches and worked fine after that.

To quickly build your website interface you have a choice of two site builders at iPage, one is CM4All Builder and the other one is Weebly Drag and Drop Builder. Both are free as long as you stay with a basic plan, but you can upgrade to a more advanced version with a click. The set of templates and tools are quite common so the chances that you can build a truly classy website with them is minimal, but at least you can focus on content from the start without bothering with manual layout editing, browser compatibility issues, or similar nuisances.

 

All of the tools and functions iPage provides worked predictably, and our overall impression of the interface and functionality was positive.

Technical Support

Our evaluation shows excellent phone and live chat support at iPage. We received straightforward and helpful answers in a minute. The question posted to the online ticket system was answered after 37 minutes. The staff was considerate and questions were answered in detail.

Tutorials and the extensive knowledge base are also available if you prefer self education.

Conclusion

Frankly, we like iPage. And who wouldn't? Indeed, you get a full package for a decent price, a glitchless control panel, and USA-based technical support eager to solve your problems.

Excellent reliability, unlimited bandwidth, oodles of disk space, convenient and flexible mail management, security and anti-spam measures, a free domain name, dozens of scripts to install and several very interesting looking paid offers – what more do you want?

You won't make a mistake if you select iPage as your web hosting provider. It has all that you need and a bit more!