{"id":3247,"date":"2024-03-11T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themindedmarketing.com\/?p=3247"},"modified":"2024-03-10T20:31:00","modified_gmt":"2024-03-10T20:31:00","slug":"ipage-and-bluehost-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themindedmarketing.com\/ipage-and-bluehost-review\/","title":{"rendered":"An Honest Look at iPage+Bluehost Web Hosting (NEW)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Blogging is still alive and kicking so why not start hosting with a simple hosting service like iPage?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, or anyone looking to build a website in this AI-ridden world, choosing the right web hosting provider is crucial. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of 2024, iPage and Bluehost<\/a> have officially become partners and all hosting for iPage now goes through the Bluehost platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While iPage has been around for decades as a budget-friendly option, a lot has changed in the hosting landscape. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this comprehensive review, I’ll take an unbiased deep dive into iPage’s integration with Bluehost to determine if it’s still a viable choice or if you’re better off with an alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be fully transparent, I have hosted sites on iPage and Bluehos before so I will make sure I do not sugar-coat anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The iPage Pricing Breakdown<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"iPage\"<\/span><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

One of iPage’s biggest draws has always been its aggressive pricing, especially for new customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is VERY HARD to find good hosting at a cheap price like iPage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their shared hosting plans used to be a rock-bottom rate of $1.99\/month. However, with the Bluehost integration, it has now gone up to $2.95.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some important caveats to understand about this pricing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. The $2.95 rate is a promotional price for the first term only when you sign up for at least 36 months. After that initial period, the renewal rates increase exponentially to $11.99\/month on the basic plan.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. To get that $2.95 rate, you have to pay at least the full 1-year term upfront. That’s about $35 due immediately for the first year.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Most of their affordable plans renew at much higher rates after the first term, jumping up to $11.99\/month and higher for renewals on some higher tiers.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    So while that $2.95 sticker price seems amazing on the surface, the pricing model employs some common tactics to attract new buyers with deep discounts before hitting them with dramatic price hikes on renewal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This makes iPage an affordable short-term option, but a progressively more expensive long-term choice compared to some alternatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The iPage Unlimited Resource Breakdown<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \"what<\/span><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Another area where iPage has differentiated itself is its “unlimited” resource allocations. This is something that Bluehost also had so this is not something new for these two companies. Their lower-tier shared plans all advertise unlimited domains, disk space, bandwidth, databases, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    That sounds amazing for a $2.95\/month host, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Well, not so fast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    While they don’t promote hard limits, iPage does implement fair usage policies and monitoring to prevent abusive usage of those “unlimited” resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    According to their Terms of Service, they may temporarily limit, suspend or terminate your hosting if you consume what they deem to be excessive server resources, violate their Anti-Spam policies, or engage in other prohibited activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In practice, this means those “unlimited” allocations are soft caps that only apply to typical low-to-moderate usage levels. Once you start using significant resources by hosting larger sites, running resource-intensive applications like forums, or getting major traffic volumes, you’ll likely get throttled or shut down. So the unlimited claims are misleading at best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    iPage Performance & Reliability <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \"black<\/span><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    Of course, while pricing and resources are important, performance and reliability are arguably the most critical factors for any web host. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Here’s an objective rundown of iPage’s offerings in these areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Site Speed <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Based on independent data from reputable sources like IsItWP<\/a>, iPage’s average global loading speeds sit around 1.4-1.8 seconds. That puts them in the middle-to-lower range for shared hosts, but not terribly slow either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Uptime<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Over the past year, iPage has maintained an impressive 99.98% uptime record with minimal outages according to monitoring data from UptimeRobot. That’s quite strong for a budget host.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    However, with the Bluehost platform, it has been known to have a bit more downtime so you will want to keep an eye on that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Infrastructure<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Their hosting environment utilizes newer NVMe SSD storage and multiple data center locations for redundancy, which helps performance & reliability. However, their shared plans don’t utilize load-balanced CloudLinux, which higher-end hosts use to isolate accounts and stabilize node performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Overall, iPage delivers acceptable loading speeds and very good uptime for a low-budget provider. However, higher-tier hosts can still beat their performance in many cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The iPage+Bluehost Customer Support<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \"man<\/span><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    To be very honest with you, Bluehost <\/a>customer service is not known to be the best. So it will be interesting to see how iPage is going to resolve this issue now that they are partnered with Bluehost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I must also admit that since I am now on Cloudways, I am a bit biased because of how amazing and fast the customer service has been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I am also fortunate to have hosted successful and non-successful blogs in the past. This has given me a real insider view of hosting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    When it comes to iPage’s customer support, the reviews are very mixed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Pros:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n