IPower has many different hosting options at affordable prices that appeal to a range of website owners, from beginners to advanced.
While most popular hosting companies (see: OVH, iPage, and HostMonster) usually only offer one or two support contact methods, IPower offers 24/7 support via live chat, email, and phone.
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IPower was pretty hot in 2009.
Here is how they’ve trended over the years:
Features
IPower offers some unique features that many will find useful, particularly those that are building their first web project.
Here are some of those features:
1) My Website: Some hosting companies offer web design services, but they are often undescriptive and very vague about what they can do for your business. IPower lays out their web design services very clearly.
There are three basic options including informational sites, eCommerce stores, and custom websites. The custom option is a whole new design from the ground up and includes a logo design and a dedicated project manager. The other options can be five or more pages and allow you to choose from over 150 template layouts.
The eCommerce site comes with a payment processor and checkout system provided by IPower. They will even upload your first 20 products to make sure it goes smoothly. You can customize the colors and a few layout options on the information and eCommerce plans. Pricing is not available for this service on the website, but you can contact their sales department for more information. You can even have IPower continue to manage the site for you a few hours a month to take a hands-off approach to site ownership.
2) My Website Traffic: Building a website is an important step in allowing visitors and potential customers to find out about you online. Although, if you don’t take proper steps to make sure that you are easily found by the search engines, you may never fully realize your site’s potential. That’s why IPower has created a service called My Website Traffic to help you rank highly for certain terms on search platforms, like Google.
This is a process that begins with specialized experts finding out more about the content, services and products you will provide to visitors. They’ll need to know things like the location of who you want to see you and what they’ll be looking for when they get there. Then, they’ll get to work picking out key words and phrases that someone may search for and helping your site get to the top of Google, Yahoo and Bing to bring those people right to your site.
3) SiteLock: The internet can be a very hostile place. Hackers break into large sites on a daily basis, releasing private information that isn’t theirs to unveil. The visitors to your new website are becoming timid about which companies they trust. There are several measures you can and should take to keep you and your customers data safe. IPower offers a popular option for this called SiteLock.
For $1.49/mo this service will scan your site for malware and deal with it as soon as it’s detected. If one of the many routine scans picks up anything out of the ordinary you will be notified immediately, and the SiteLock software can even remove harmful files automatically. This not only keeps data safe, but also keeps your site from being penalized by search engines, like Google. If their crawlers detect malware, they won’t let your site be found easily. If you purchase the SiteLock subscription, you will have the ability to display a certificate on your site which will let your visitors see that you are protecting their secure data.
Customer Support
IPower offers a 24/7 support team, available via live chat, telephone, or though submitting a help ticket.
While they’re not particularly known for their customer support, it’s nice to see a hosting company that has all three main contact methods (phone, email, live chat).
Reviews
We’ve checked several online sources looking for honest reviews about IPower. We found several customers pleased with their uptime.
One happy reviewer states: “Down time has been almost a non-issue except for one time when IPower was, well, powerless to fix a network problem not of their making.”
Another long-term customer writes: “IPower has hosted my web sites for over 5 years and I could not be more pleased. They’re hardly ever down and when they do have problems, they send an email to let you know.”
Not all reviews were positive however. We also found several IPower customers unhappy with their tech support.
This frustrated reviewer writes: “This is the worst Hosting Provider ever. Lousy support. Very slow in responding to requests and dealing with issues.”
Another upset customer warns: “Their support is awful. I wish I could give it less than one star. And they don’t use PHP, they use PERL, so a bunch of stuff won’t work with WordPress and Woocommerce.”
Pros
1) Daily Backups: IPower backs up all of the data on its servers nightly.
2) Free Website Builder: There is a customer website builder available for free with your hosting plan.
3) Free Ad Credits: There are $200 in free ad credits and a YP.com listing for all new IPower customers.
4) Free Domain: With some of the hosting plans offered, customers will get a free domain name with the account.
5) Referral Program: If you refer a friend to IPower you will receive a $35 referral fee.
Cons
1) No Uptime Guarantee: While IPower does back up data, they don’t offer an guarantee against downtime.
2) No Money Back Guarantee: There isn’t any information about a money back offer, but they do charge a $35 cancellation fee.
3) No cPanel: There is a custom control panel on IPower, but cPanel is not available.
4) Busy Website: While a lot of information is available on IPower’s site, it is confusing and difficult to find.
Summary
IPower has many different hosting options, but seem to help personal site web masters and small business owners the most. You can find VPS and dedicated servers available, but they certainly aren’t a focus of the company.
If you are looking for a specific type of hosting besides shared, you will likely find better plans with another host.