OVERALL RATINGS
Best for?
- Individuals
- Businesses
Price
Starting at $2.95 per month
Our Verdict
Experience uninterrupted website performance with 99.85% iPage’s uptime.
iPage’s web hosting service was Established in 1998 by Thomas Gony, and has emerged as a prominent player in the web hosting industry. iPage is now hosting millions of websites worldwide. Following its acquisition by Endurance International Group (EIG) in 2010, iPage has expanded its presence with offices across six global locations and two data centers in the US.
iPage takes pride in providing affordable and dependable web hosting solutions. iPage also offer round-the-clock support through phone, live chat, and email, backed by comprehensive documentation that guides users through every aspect of web hosting.
Although iPage’s competitive pricing is a significant benefit, it is crucial to acknowledge the compromises commonly linked to entry-level web hosting providers. Despite not reaching the speed and performance standards established by more expensive hosts, iPage makes up for this shortfall by offering cost-effective solutions.
In this review, we will extensively analyze multiple facets of iPage’s web hosting services, encompassing aspects such as pricing, performance, features, support, usability, and more. Come along as we assess iPage’s performance relative to its competitors, carefully considering its affordability in light of any potential performance limitations.
iPage Feature Images
iPage Hosting Product Offer
iPage offers a range of hosting-related services beyond their popular shared hosting plans. Let me guide you through their diverse offerings:
In addition to hosting, iPage lets you purchase domain names directly from them. The prices for domain names vary, with a .com domain costing $9.99 for the first year and $19.99 upon renewal. They provide numerous domain name extensions, including unique ones like .coach or .bargains.
Their shared hosting packages have gained significant popularity, particularly due to their appealing first-term prices for those seeking affordable web hosting. Shared hosting involves sharing a server and its resources with other customers. Upon renewal, a 12-month plan costs $8.99 per month, which is not exceptionally cheap.
iPage also provides shared hosting optimized specifically for WordPress users. While this plan offers WordPress pre-installed and some plugins, the specific advantages beyond that are not entirely clear. The renewal price for the basic iPage WordPress hosting plan is $9.99 per month. However, other providers have more cost-effective options for cheap WordPress hosting.
For users with specific technology requirements, iPage offers VPS hosting services, allowing for customization to meet individual needs, such as utilizing uncommon programming languages. You can explore one of iPage’s VPS plans, which start at approximately $23 per month.
Lastly, for those requiring more resources or hosting large-scale websites, iPage offers dedicated servers where you have an entire server dedicated solely to your use. However, dedicated hosting plans at iPage can be quite expensive, starting at around $140 per month.
However, for the purpose of this iPage review, the focus will primarily be on their shared hosting services.
iPage Hosting Pricing
iPage simplifies their signup process by offering a single affordable hosting plan. This approach eliminates confusion, allowing users to effortlessly sign up for an account. The tables below enlists the iPage price structure from shared hosting to dedicated hosting.
iPage Shared Hosting Prices:
| Package | Promotional Pricing | Renewal Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| 12 months | $2.95/mo | $9.99/mo |
| 24 months | $2.49/mo | $8.99/mo |
| 36 months | $1.99/mo | $7.35/mo |
iPage VPS Hosting Prices:
| Plan | Promotional Pricing | Renewal Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Standard NVMe 4 | $46.99/mo | $65.99/mo |
| Enhanced NVMe 8 | $65.99/mo | $95.49/mo |
| Ultimate NVMe 16 | $94.99/mo | $140.99/mo |
iPage Dedicated Hosting Prices:
| Plan | Promotional Pricing | Renewal Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Standard NVMe 32 | $141.19/mo | $188.79/mo |
| Enhanced NVMe 64 | $217.19/mo | $271.19/mo |
| Premium NVMe 128 | $312.19/mo | $391.19/mo |
iPage also provides a 30-day money-back guarantee, minimizing the risk associated with trying out their shared web hosting plan. This guarantee ensures that users can test the hosting service with peace of mind, as they have the option to request a refund within the specified period if they are not satisfied.
What Do Their Shared Plans Include?
| PACKAGES | 12 MONTHS | 24 MONTHS | 36 MONTHS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Websites | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Allowed domains | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Support | 24-hour phone, chat, and email | 24-hour phone, chat, and email | 24-hour phone, chat, and email |
| Max. inode count(Relating to file count) | 200,000 | 200,000 | 200,000 |
| Storage | Unlimited(with operation policy) | Unlimited(with operation policy) | Unlimited(with operation policy) |
| DatabaseMax. DB size | Unlimited3GB or 1000 tables | Unlimited3GB or 1000 tables | Unlimited3GB or 1000 tables |
| Backup | Paid separately | Paid separately | Paid separately |
| First-term prices | $2.99 a month | $2.49 a month | $1.99 a month |
| Renewal price | $8.99 a month | $8.99 a month | $7.35 a month |
When it comes to iPage hosting renewal rates, it’s important to note that prices may increase after the initial term. Renewal rates for iPage hosting can be higher than the discounted rates offered during the first term.
iPage Hosting Pros and Cons
- Affordable Pricing: iPage is widely praised for its competitive and budget-friendly pricing, making it an attractive option for individuals and small businesses.
- User-Friendly Interface: iPage's intuitive and user-friendly interface simplifies the process of setting up and managing websites.
- Structured Plan: iPage follows a straightforward plan structure by offering a single hosting plan. This approach ensures that users are not overwhelmed or confused by multiple plan options and features.
- Performance Limitations: According to our customers feedback research iPage's hosting performance, particularly in terms of website speed and server response times, falls short compared to more expensive hosting providers.
- Upselling Practices: iPage upselling practices attempts to sell additional services and features that is perceived to be intrusive and pushy.
- Renewal Price Increase: They is a significant price increase upon renewal, which can be higher than expected and may catch users off guard.
Best Time to Use iPage Hosting
While it is difficult for me to give a strong endorsement for iPage due to its subpar performance and lack of certain features (further details will be provided below), it may be a suitable choice if you are seeking a low-cost hosting service for a personal project and are willing to commit to a three-year plan.
Additionally, iPage could be a viable option for students with limited budgets who require an initially affordable hosting provider. However, it’s worth noting that alternative solutions like DreamHost offer comparable pricing along with significantly better performance.
Worst Time to Use iPage Hosting
I will not encourage users with project that require optimal speed and high server performance to move with iPage. Their subpar performance could negatively impact user experience and search engine optimization (SEO). Moreover, their slow support can be extremely frustrating when encountering hosting-related issues.
It’s important to note that iPage lacks built-in backup features, necessitating the purchase of their backup add-on. This can become crucial when needing to restore a previous version of your website, especially in situations such as a plugin update causing site crashes.
Lastly, iPage disappoints avid developers and teams due to its absence of SSH access, staging area, and server-side caching system, which are desirable features for efficient development and optimization.
iPage Hosting Feature Ratings
EASE OF USE
The control panel has a modern look and isn’t based on cPanel, but it lacks user-friendliness. Finding information on pricing, features, and hosting restrictions is difficult. The registration process is confusing with excessive add-ons and pressure to commit to a 36-month plan.
UPTIME
In our evaluations of web host reliability, iPage consistently exhibits a remarkably low uptime score, making them one of the least reliable providers in our tests.
SECURITY FEATURES
The inclusion of a free SSL and support for PHP 7.4 enhances the security of your website. However, if you require additional security features such as malware scanning, these must be obtained separately at an additional cost of $20 per year. Unfortunately, multi-factor authentication is not included in the package.
SERVER LOCATION
Their data centers are exclusively located in the United States, specifically in Boston and Waltham.
SERVER SPEED
Unfortunately, iPage does not support PHP 8, which is known for its improved speed. Additionally, they do not offer HTTP/2, lack a server-side caching system, and do not appear to utilize SSD drives. Regrettably, these factors have a detrimental effect on the speed of their services. Based on our web host speed tests, iPage consistently ranks among the slowest providers.
WEBSPACE LIMIT
iPage offers unlimited disk space as part of their hosting package. However, it is important to note that they enforce an ‘Acceptable Use Policy’ which restricts certain projects that typically require extensive web space, such as cloud backup storage for high-definition pictures.
MONTHLY DATA TRANSFER LIMIT
According to their claims, iPage asserts that they can accommodate 99.5% of their users’ needs. However, if your website experiences a significant increase in traffic, they may recommend migrating to a VPS (Virtual Private Server) without specifying the threshold at which this recommendation is made.
FTP ACCOUNTS AND SECURE FTP
Users have the freedom to create multiple FTP accounts as per their requirements. iPage allows users to connect to their websites using both FTP and SFTP protocols. However, it’s important to note that SSH access is not available with their services.
SERVER FEATURES
iPage provides Linux-based shared hosting that supports MySQL 5 and PHP 5 & 7. Additionally, users can utilize other programming languages like Python and Perl on their platform. However, it’s worth noting that iPage lacks an integrated caching system, and with their shared hosting, GIT repositories are not permitted. Lastly, their servers do not appear to be PCI Compliant by default.
DATABASES
There is no restriction on the number of MySQL databases you can create; however, the maximum number of database queries allowed is 75,000 per hour. Each database’s size is limited to 2 GB, and it cannot contain more than 1,000 tables.
DOMAIN NAMES
iPage permits you to associate as many domain names with your account as necessary. Furthermore, they provide a complimentary domain name for the initial year, with a subsequent cost of $19.99 after that period.
APPLICATIONS
iPage exclusively offers 1-click installations for WordPress. However, if you opt for a different CMS like Joomla or Drupal, you’ll need to go through the manual installation process, which can be cumbersome and inconvenient.
EMAIL RATING
iPage provides unlimited email accounts for users. However, there are limitations for each account, where the storage capacity cannot exceed 500 MB or hold more than 10,000 emails, whichever limit is reached first.
BACKUPS
You will be required to buy their Site Backup Tool add-on, which begins at approximately $31 per year for each website.
CDN
While iPage does not provide its own CDN, you have the option to integrate an external CDN service like CloudFlare with their hosting.
REFUNDS AND GUARANTEES
iPage provides a 30-day money-back guarantee; however, it appears that they do not have a Service Level Agreement in place, particularly regarding uptime.
ASSISTANCE AND SUPPORT
Locating answers to your inquiries on their website can be quite challenging. Though iPage offers support through phone, chat, and a ticket system (email), their support team may not always be the most helpful.
OVERALL RATINGS
iPage’s initial deal is attractive, but the $8.99 monthly renewal is expensive, considering limited backups, poor support, and low performance. Better options are available.
iPage Hosting Performance Tests
For those considering iPage as their hosting provider, performance is a critical concern. To provide valuable insights, I continuously assess their speed and uptime through regular monitoring. This information aims to help users make informed decisions about the reliability and efficiency of iPage’s hosting services.
iPage Hosting Speed Test
unfortunately, iPage’s speed performance was disappointing when compared to 12 other providers. In each test, they ranked among the slowest with an average loading time of 2.60 seconds. This was significantly worse than the top-performing provider, GreenGeeks, with an average loading time of 1.29 seconds.
| Page Load Time in Seconds | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| GreenGeeks | 1.56 | 1.29 | 1.21 |
| A2 Hosting | 2.01 | 1.30 | 1.25 |
| GoDaddy | 1.94 | 1.44 | 1.28 |
| Cloudways | 1.73 | 1.46 | 1.30 |
| SiteGround | 1.54 | 1.56 | 1.35 |
| Hostinger | 1.61 | 1.63 | 1.35 |
| WP Engine | 1.65 | 1.66 | 1.37 |
| Namecheap | 1.60 | 1.69 | 1.40 |
| Dreamhost | 1.84 | 1.75 | 1.63 |
| Kinsta | 1.77 | 1.82 | 1.70 |
| Bluehost | 2.87 | 2.07 | 1.89 |
| IONOS | 1.95 | 2.32 | 2.20 |
| InMotion | 2.75 | 2.58 | 2.35 |
| iPage | 2.76 | 2.60 | 2.58 |
| HostGator | 2.78 | 2.72 | 2.70 |
iPage Hosting Uptime
Uptime is a measure of your website’s (server) availability. While it’s challenging for most hosting providers to guarantee 100% uptime due to maintenance reasons, a rate of 99.95% or higher is considered good. Lower rates can negatively impact SEO rankings and user experience. iPage’s uptime is better than their speed, standing at 99.95%, which is considered good but not excellent.
The following chart illustrates the comparison of iPage Hosting Uptime over the past year with other web hosting providers.
| Uptime Chart | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SiteGround | 99.97 | 100 | 100 |
| WP Engine | 99.99 | 99.99 | 100 |
| Namecheap | 99.99 | 100 | 100 |
| Kinsta | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| InMotion | 99.73 | 99.95 | 100 |
| A2 Hosting | 99.99 | 99.98 | 99.99 |
| Cloudways | 100 | 100 | 99.99 |
| HostGator | 99.91 | 99.99 | 99.98 |
| GreenGeeks | 99.98 | 99.98 | 99.97 |
| GoDaddy | 99.90 | 99.96 | 99.95 |
| Hostinger | 99.48 | 99.92 | 99.95 |
| Bluehost | 99.96 | 99.99 | 99.95 |
| iPage | 98.45 | 99.85 | 99.95 |
| Dreamhost | 99.99 | 99.96 | 99.83 |
| IONOS | 99.91 | 99.93 | 99.71 |
iPage Hosting Review: Do I Recommend It?
For hosting projects like ecommerce or popular blogs, I highly recommend seeking a more reliable alternative, as iPage’s poor performance may negatively impact your project’s success. Their support can be slow and unsatisfactory at times, while their steep renewal prices and costly backup-restore fees might deter some users.
Additionally, serious users, such as developers, may find iPage lacking essential features like useful backup options without their paid add-on, SSH access, staging areas, and a server-side caching system.
Nonetheless, if you prioritize an initially low-cost hosting service, iPage could be a suitable choice. Keep in mind, exploring other options may offer more comprehensive and satisfying features for your hosting needs.
>Experience a 30-day free trial of iPage or explore our comprehensive guide to the top web hosting companies.
iPage Hosting Alternatives
What makes iPage hosting stand out from other providers?
iPage stands out with its user-friendly interface, unlimited disk space, and the inclusion of a free domain name for the first year. Additionally, their 24/7 customer support ensures assistance whenever you need it.
Can I create multiple websites under one iPage hosting account?
Yes, you can! iPage allows you to have as many domain names connected to your account as you need, making it convenient for managing multiple websites from a single hosting platform.
Is my website secure with iPage hosting?
Absolutely! iPage offers a free SSL certificate, ensuring secure data transfer between your website and visitors. While they do not provide an integrated caching system, you can always connect an external CDN provider like CloudFlare for enhanced security and performance.
