Don’t Buy From iPage.Com Until You Read My Review — Save Time And Money!!
Jun 06
Its simply not enough to go after phoney baloney webhosting review sites, you have to go after the companies that put money in their coffers. The money is coming from webhosting companies. Because of this practice we are swamped with tons of crap while trying to search for real info on a webhosting. There are 25 webhosts on webhostingstuff.com’s top list Since iPage is at the top of webhostingstuff.com they are the first on my list. Going by rating then number of reviews they would be number 9, but by webhostingstuff.com’s own ranking on the page for iPage.com its 60. I will start with them. In July I will go after another hosting review site and their customers.
There is a lot of info to sort out on iPage. The puzzling thing is they were supposed to be hosting since 1998, but according to this link (http://www.findmyhosts.com/hostmonster-vs-iPage-vs-fatcow/) they just relaunched after years of inactivity back in October 2009. iPage.com claims to have more then 1,000,000 websites. It does not say domains or customers. Are they counting addon domains like what geocities did? Keep in mind customer can have one plus domains, and I have seen a lot of customers with a thousands of domains for the sheer purpose of increasing their site rankings. A gimmick that hosting companies and hosting review sites also employee.
Looking at their dns records I see this:
ipowerweb.net
Another webhosting company on theplanet.com servers.
Strangely while trying to see where webhostingstuff.com ranks ipowerweb, I get the following message:
We apologize for any inconvenience you are currently facing.
To allow us to diagnose the error(s) you’re facing, please fill your email address below
and press the “Diagnose My Connection” button.
Our Webmaster Team are then able to diagnose error(s) you’re facing and contact you when
they are fixed.
Once again, thank you for your patience! 
Your Email Address:
I am not going to give them my email address. But the problem seemed to happen after I went to the advertise with us link. A friend on the same network has confirmed that they do not have the same problem and can clearly see the top 10 on webhostingstuff.com’s main page. But I tend to wonder the relationship between iPage and ipowweb. The lay out of both sites has a similar feel. Perhaps the collective of companies have over 1,000,000 websites on their “Platform”.
One of the ways iPage is promoting their company is an insane affiliate program with commission junction that I don’t quite understand. They offer $100 – $125 per annual account, and what appears $25 per blog. I had to look at it several times because it does not make a lot of sense, especially since they are talking about their $3.50 a month plans (which is their only plan). A full year is $42.00. However this only counts if the person ordering does not decided to cancel their order and get suckered into the last chance offer when trying to get away from the shopping cart. In which case there is no commission made by the referrer. Granted there is nothing in regards to renewal fees so I suppose they can start making a profit off refereed customers after a year or 2, if that customer buys into the extras. But that’s a lot of income being taken away from the service of the customer. It is however very desirable to those that want the income to push this product when they can get a very high pay out for a single sale. Making it to where anyone that wants to push hosting is not going to go for an affiliate program that while rewarding the referral, is not giving away the farm to get the new customer. Keep in mind not every customer is going to come through the commission junction program, and this is not going to be iPage’s only source of advertising. After all they are also paying the cost to remain on number 1 host out of 25 with webhostingstuff.com. Not to mention Commission Junction is not exactly bringing affiliates for iPage for nothing. Clearly you have a choice to select between a company that pays more for making sure you get the best service, or more to those that would bring customers in like cattle.
Webhostingstuff.com is not the only company parading this company as being a highly regarded website. Going to Google I get a load of various affiliates, and a list to add of people that are in the business of webhosting reviews. Though it appears they are like webhostingstuff.com is paying the most for “advertising”. I found it on a few affiliates that try to appear as unbiased reviews. But none of these sites are hosted on iPage.com’s network. http://www.webhostingbreak.com/ is one of the sites that has a glowing endorsement. Better yet Ian (owner of webhostingbreak.com), allows you to do blog posts about hosting companies. Using other people to help advance his own website to promote hosting companies on his lists, all of which have affiliate programs.
After a long review of search engine results its hard not to find negative feedback about the support, uptime, and at times support responses that don’t understand the most basic of questions. Worst yet a repeat pattern where people are told there was no outages when asked for the cause of the outages. I find it remarkable based on the negative feed back that I have found that iPage.com has no negative feed back on webhostingstuff.com. The only glowing endorsements I can find are those that are clearly affiliates that have a coupon code so you can get service for $3.50.
The terms of service, or the many pages of terms of service. Are some what long and cumbersome for a product that is only $3.50 a month. Frankly I have had credit card agreements, cell phone contracts, and loan agreements with less reading involved. Considering the amount of time I have spent on researching this company already, I am not willing to invest anymore time into digging in to their terms of service. So at best I am going to tell you what I have found while glancing and looking for certain parts of the terms of service. Namely the domain name, since they offer a free one.
I am no big fan of hosting companies that want you to buy or transfer your domain to them. I don’t see a third option with iPage to simply change your dns to their servers from the domain register you have your domain with. You have to read the terms of service to see what they might mean by transfer which appears to mean changing your dns. Nothing clear in regards to that. The free domain is somewhat fuzzy on its own. I don’t have a problem so much with the domain being free for the life of the account, its an incentive. Not exactly one I would have preferred to use. But its the fact that they do not disclose how much the domain will cost if you decided to leave. I had to call to find out, and its $15.00 (however the site lists it as a $9.95 value). I stated I could get it cheaper else where, so I was not interested in buying a domain through them. I also asked about just changing my dns, and not transfering the domain. The operator on the other end was unclear on the details. But they do try to transfer you from your existing domain register, unless you contact them prior to ordering. These days you can get a domain for less then $10 from many fine registration companies. After all who wants to pay extra to a hosting company they may not like.
Then their User Agreement and their Domain Registration Agreement do not agree with one another.
User Agreement 2.b.i: If your plan includes a free domain name and You cancel within the first 30 days, a fee for the domain will be deducted from your refund. If you do not wish to keep the domain name, iPage will take possession of the domain and the fee will not be charged.
Domain Registration Agreement 4: Once a domain name has been registered or renewed through iPage, no refunds will be given for the domain registration or renewal fee.
On one hand they can charge you $15.00 non-refundable on the other they refund all your money.
Also in User Agreement 2.b.i: at anytime by either party by giving the other party thirty (30) days prior written notice, provided that we may charge You a minimum $35.00 charge as an early cancellation fee.
Meaning after you cancel after 30 days and you paid for a year ($42.00) you could get $7 or less.
Going to the order form they automatically selects 2 year pricing. I am not sure about their experience, but generally I have had forms on monthly pricing, often customers would not even bother reading the terms of service or for that matter see what they were paying for. But the worst part I think is that they preselected some add-ons, Prevent Identity Theft & Secure Your Data ($12.95 a year) and Automate Your Site Backup ($12.95 a year). That’s an extra $51.80, if the person who ordered did not bother to check the bi-annual billing, versus $25.90 for the year).
Finale here is my chat session with one of their (shared)staff, you will get what I mean after you read the transcript. Needless to say I found out more then I though I would ever get out of a chat session. BTW I am Benjamin.
Thank you for contacting support. Please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we’ll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you. Please hold for the next available operator to respond.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
You are now chatting with ‘Bryan Smith’
Bryan Smith: Hi Benjamin My name is Bryan Smith, how are you today?
Benjamin: I was wondering if you could give me details on some of the freebies offered on your main page that are not listed on the hosting features site. in regards to carbonite and shopsite. There are no details that I can see as to what I get with these two services if I sign on with you.
Bryan Smith: I apologize for the wait time.
Bryan Smith: Could you please provide me with the URL from where you have entered this Chat interface?
Benjamin: your main page
Bryan Smith: May I have the URL of our website through which you have logged into this chat? I need the URL of our website where you have clicked the Chat icon.
Benjamin: you should know that, there is only one main page
Bryan Smith: I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. But we need your co-operation as we are in the process of enhancing the Chat icons on our website and during this period we want to identify the exact page from where you have contacted us. This will help us to determine the list of pages from where we usually get the chats and organize the Chat icons in a better way.
Benjamin: but you only have one main page, either you know it, or you are supporting more then one company.
Benjamin: meaning outsourced support
Benjamin: iPage.com, which you should have been able to tell me
Bryan Smith: Okay.
Bryan Smith: Thank you for your interest in iPage.
Bryan Smith: Yes, we are supporting couple of hosting company.
Bryan Smith: FatCow is the sister company of iPage.
Bryan Smith: I will provide you the information.
Bryan Smith: May I place you on hold for 4 or 5 minutes, while I check this for you?
Benjamin: ok
Bryan Smith: Thank you for holding.
Bryan Smith: In order to know more about the ShopSite, please go through this link:
Bryan Smith:http://www.iPage.com/product/shopsitemanager.bml
Bryan Smith: In order to know more about the Carbonite, please go through this link:
Bryan Smith: http://Carbonite
Bryan Smith: The correct link is:
Bryan Smith:http://www.iPage.com/product/carbonite.bml
Benjamin: if I decided to not stay with your company how much does it cost to keep the domain name?
Bryan Smith: Only $10.95 per year.
Benjamin: but your site says a 9.95 value
Benjamin: and someone on the phone told me 15.00
Bryan Smith: You can view the domain price list at:
Bryan Smith:http://www.iPage.com/product/domainRegistration.bml
Benjamin: how many other companies are you supporting? To be honest I was looking for a company with its own support.
Bryan Smith: Only two hosting company.
Bryan Smith: iPage and FatCow.
Benjamin: fatcow does not appear to offer carbonite
Bryan Smith: FatCow offers the Carbonite.
Benjamin: where?
Bryan Smith: Please go through this link:
Bryan Smith:http://www.fatcow.com/product/carbonite.bml
Benjamin: ok I will review
Benjamin: may, ask where you are located?
Bryan Smith: Our headquarters are in Burlington, MA, but I’m located in one of the support centers in Mangalore, India.
Benjamin: you have a uncommon name for some one in India
Benjamin: anyway have a nice day
Bryan Smith: Its not our real name.
Bryan Smith: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Benjamin: why would you not use your real name?
Bryan Smith: Due to a security reasons we do not use it.
I ended the chat session after this, perhaps if I dug more I could have found out that this was not even a human being, after all Brian said “its was not our name”, I felt if I dived in any closer and I would find myself in the twilight zone. I have no problem with names that are not of European descent, but it seems a bit odd to use a fake name for the sake of security of someone in India. After all he could just go by his first name (is the person on the other side even male?). Its not like my name is all that rare, and I am sure the person on the other end has a common (maybe Hindi) name. But perhaps I could have found out more information from the person on the other end that eagerly volunteered information. I tend to doubt that fatcow is the only site behind iPage. I tend to wonder if iPage was somehow absorbed into the collective known as fatcow. Its clearly cheaper to get hosting from iPage.com then fatcow.com. Which makes me wonder since iPage.com is cheaper, if what ever company that own fatcow is now seeing a slide in sales since it seems like unlimited hosting gets cheaper and cheaper as the months go gy.
My suggestion, avoid this company as well as any company that tells you that they offer you unlimited hosting for dirt cheap. Offers you tons of freebies like carbotnite, but that’s just a trial account, not the full version. They also offer google adwords, Facebook advertising credit, Yahoo,…… all of which I get in the mail for free straight from those companies. This is nothing more then a gimmick to get you into buying service from those advertising outlets.
Then there is WordPress and Joomla, also free. The most I have paid for WordPress is on themes and applications. A lot of stuff that most people would never need. I am not a Joomla User, though I can tell you it was a support headache. But both of which you can install for free, especially if your host has a program that sets up apps like the one I was using with cPanel.
At this point I have to stop digging, as the more I dig the more I find. I wanted to spend no more then a day looking into this. Yet I spent 5 days. I have more content then I care to post, as I could devote a whote site to just what I found on iPage.
Sigh, I SHOULD have seen this blog before I’ve purchased an iPage account. I feel really bad! Now I am looking into another account where I can safely transfer my domain and my friends’ accounts too are hosted with me. I have read all the comments here and I hope you’ll come up with a top ten list of a “good” websites soon. I just feel so bad being stuck with them right now. I always get that weird 500 timeout message on my website. Sigh. Now what do I do???
i freaking hate ipage, can I take my domain elsewhere? they refunded part of my money but wont give over my domain
HELP!?
ipage.com is the WORST hosting I have ever seen, it’s a big fake show but no services I can’ add addon domains , I can’t extract zip files from the server side , they didn’t include extract option in my cpanel plus the servers is too bad , my advice don’t try to hit http://www.ipage.com
Like many others commenting here, I wish I had read your review before I signed a contract with iPage. But it was my first time and I was naive about the other web hosting reviews I found on Google. In addition to the unfair $15 fee for cancelling an account (even if you do not want to keep the domain) they jacked up the price for WhoIs privacy from $8.99 to $12.99 after the first year. If their hosting service was decent I wouldn’t complain as much, but from the beginning I suffered unacceptable lag and generally slow response on my websites as well as the control panel. I just checked and there are 370 domains on the same iPage server as me, compared to just 16 on the same server for the new host that I have moved to (Hawkhost).
Hello, maybe this is a stupid question, but can you tell me a good hosting?
Hello Rob,
No its not a stupid question. Though at this time there is no host that I can recommend.
My suggestions for finding a good host can be found at:
http://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/my-top-ten/my-top-ten-host-tips-%E2%80%93-how-to-pick-a-shared-host.html
Regards,
Benjamin
I’m glad I bought with an AMEX card. I signed on to check out iPage. They managed to bill me about 3x what I was expecting and then nowhere did they list their name servers – because they wanted to transfer my domain.
Now I can’t find a “cancel account” option so I’ll just have AMEX refuse to honor the payment.
wow.
oh dear….
I got confused trying to find a good hosting company that I made the mistake of being ripped off twice by iPage!!!
No seriously!
Last year I went for there $30 a year deal and got charged over $60, this year.. please don’t ask why as I don’t know
I went for there $30 deal again with free domain etc only to be charged over $40 just for the .co domain and as it didn’t give me a final figure to be charged on my account I was also lucky enough to get a few bolt on’s so was charged nearly $150, both times I had arguments with there terrible support staff, to be honest gave up.
I won’t be caught again… avoid!
Hello Dave,
Sorry for the late reply.
I have question for you, a bit of a theory really. When you first order from them did you navigate away from the order page, and then get a special discount if you signed up? As I think that may have been what happen. Certainly when I was on their order page I never saw anything that stated that you got to keep the rate or that it was off the first bill.
Regards,
Benjamin
Terrible Service.
I purchased web hosting today for $42.00 and selected my preferred domain name. But before doing so, I had checked out other domain names. After purchasing and getting billed, I noticed that they gave me the domain name I entered first and was available, and not my final choice. After talking to a representative via live chat for tech support, I got ignored and a support ticket was created. Soon after that I contacted billing this time with a request to refund my money and cancel my account. Again all they told me was to wait for a support ticket. Needless to say, they seemed from India as well. After waiting for a “quick” response as I was told by the representatives, the “quick” response never came. I finally got fed up with it and called them. Their Billing was closed at this time, but I redialed and selected tech support. A guy who could speak English (Thank god) picked up and after 3 minutes my account was cancelled and hopefully I am waiting for a refund now.
Here’s a transcript.
General Info
Chat start time Jan 18, 2012 10:22:09 PM EST
Chat end time Jan 18, 2012 10:31:17 PM EST
Duration (actual chatting time) 00:09:07
Operator Pablo King
Chat Transcript
info: Thank you for contacting us.In order to ensure that we’re chatting with an authorized account owner, please be prepared to answer your security question when we begin chatting. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up.At the end of our conversation, please keep this window open and complete our one question survey to let us know how we’re doing.Please hold for the next available operator to respond.
info: You are now chatting with ‘Pablo King’
Pablo King: Hi, I apologize for the wait time. My name is Pablo King, how are you today?
Anonymous: Good
Anonymous: I just have 1 request
Pablo King: How can I help you today?
Anonymous: I purchased a web hosting plan 10 minutes ago and it did not register the domain I put in.
Anonymous: Instead it registered one I had tried before but disliked the name.
Anonymous: Is there any way to change the domain name to the one I want
Pablo King: The domain ‘(removed by Benjamin)’ is already registered in your account.
Pablo King: I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
Pablo King: You need to pay $13.99 now to register new domain name.
Anonymous: Ok, thank you.
Pablo King: It is not possible to cancel the registered domain name.
Anonymous: Can you please help me receive a refund?
Anonymous: What do I need to do to receive a refund
Pablo King: We do not provide the refund for the domain purchased.
Anonymous: The domain came free.
Anonymous: I would like a refund for the web hosting
Pablo King: Okay. I will escalate the issue to check whether we can take the domain ownership and provide the free Domain Credit back.
Anonymous: Thank you.
Pablo King: You’re welcome!
Pablo King: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Anonymous: I either need to be able to change the domain name or receive a refund if changing the domain name is not an option. No other requests, thank you
Pablo King: Thank you for chatting with us. Please feel free to contact us at any time. We are available 24×7.
Pablo King: Bye!
Anonymous: Wait!
As many have already posted, I was naive and did not read any reviews. I only checked out http://www.top10bestwebsitehosting.com/iPageCustomerReview
which seems like other bull$%!&. I wrote a review with the lowest starts possible, and what a shocker! it never popped up. Now just keeping my fingers crossed and waiting for my money.
@Anonymous and anyone else trying to cancel an iPage account:
I persisted and had the $15 domain fee that iPage charges when you cancel your account waived. Just keep asking for your case to be escalated up until you get out of the canned responses from their India call center. This only works if you do not want to keep the domain that you initially registered when you created your account.
@Ken
I was refunded the full $42.00 overnight even though one of the operators told me it would take 5-7 business days. I was not charged a $15 fee because the domain came free with hosting. I recommend calling them to resolve the issue and not chatting. Any web hosting that you guys can recommend?
dude i paid for this ipage, then after speaking to the representative on livechat, i discovered so many hidden details, including some offers not open in the UK, a differentiation in price i.e. $13.99 fee means a £13.99 fee, but a facebook credit of $50 means £32.
also their terms and conditions are bogus. it states a cancellation fee applies, however the representative said they are updating their terms (which means at this moment, they have no set terms..)
i could have had cheap hosting/domain for one year, then cancelled but i couldn’t bear to think of the hassle i’d have to receive a refund for the remainder years.
luckily i cancelled half an hour after paying, hopefully i’ll get the money back without a hitch, luckily as well i paid by paypal so it’s all good.
I just want to say, “God Bless” you for this information. I have ATT&T hosting my domain and they are a nightmare to say the least. Their customer service is right off the script in “Mayberry RFD”. I was close to utilizing the iPage hosting but after reading your post and your sincere comments regarding this company I am opting out of doing business with iPage. iPage is what we call, “A good example of a bad example”. Appreciate the info and I appreciate the others that posted with their information. You folks rock! Thank you.
I want to say a very huge thank you for this honest review, I as almost moving my 8 websites to ipage.com from netfirms.com which I have been using for the past 3 three years without any complain until recently when they migrated to the VDeck control panel, started offering unlimited plans and it seems they have also been taken over by another bigger company. their service and support is great and maybe I will stick with them.
Thank you for the heads up
Hello John,
Actually iPage is owned by the same company that bought netfirms, they are called Endurance International Group (EIG for short).
Regards,
Benjamin
I have to say that I’ve been with iPage for over a year now and they have been great. There have been a couple of small issues with configuration(s) but it all works really well now and the support was great each time.
I’m very happy with them and have to say that every experience I’ve had with the support people so far has been really good. I agree that the name thing is a little strange but, I can live with that.
I was with another company for a while and it was horrible and iPage was recommended to me by a friend and I am happy I switched.
Hello Tim,
If you like them you should have no problem telling what the site is you have hosted with them.
Positive reviews are nice, but pointless without showing what domain you have with them.
Regards,
Benjamin
Happy Now?
Hello Tim,
How about one that has been with them for over a year? The one you showed was created May 2011, and updated July 2011. So at best you have a few months shy of a year on the domain you listed.
Regards,
Benjamin
You are correct, like 9 -10 months for that particular one. I have to say that they have been really good and I’m happy I went with them, so far.
Same here with all the grief. I’m usually cautious but as my wife was already with them I thought why not as I saw how easy the webbly builder was to use. But I soon found out a lot of limitations which iPage doesn’t tell you about, (They tell you to find 3rd party software to adapt the website to your needs- hello- the $100′s of free software to help me is useless then?)plus being given the runaround by tech support that didn’t seem to know it’s own software. While waiting for support to get back to me about a refund I did what I should have done and looked for negative reviews and ended up here. After reading this I immediately phoned them up and cancelled immediately (and got a full refund as I had registered elsewhere). 10 minutes later I got a message from tech support saying someone would be helping me with my refund soon. Not the sharpest lot wherever they are based!
I don’t believe they are a TERRIBLE host; it’s okay for small undemanding stuff but look for a WAY to get their anytime refund- they don’t make it easy. Don’t chat- PHONE and don’t be swayed!
DO NOT USE IPAGE. USE ANYONE ELSE BUT IPAGE.
THEY ARE THE WORST WEBHOSTING COMPANY -BE WARNED!!!!
THEY HAVE HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE & THEIR WEBSITE IS TERRIBLE I WAS ON HOLD YESTERDAY FOR OVER AN HOUR 4 TIMES, TRYING TO TRANSFER MY DOMAIN, WHICH THEY ARE BLOCKING ME FROM DOING IT. Again, this is my 3rd day being on hold, because IPAGE can not give me my EPP address.
Thank you! I almost fell for this website! It almost looked too good to be true–which apparently it is.
Careful also of webs.com (not to be confused with web.com –which seems legitamate). The web builder and price are good; but I’ve learned the hard way that putting in one’s own domain causes name problems. Extra .com is added. Also domain names apparently can’t be refunded (some ICANN rule???); I’m still trying to cancel my 2 accounts with customer service after 5 days!
Great feedback, Benjamin–keep up the good work!
Hello Blake,
There is a very good reason for not offering a refund on domain, and that is the pain of returning it. Its like returning used underwear to a store. Sure some places will take used underwear and some places will give you a refund on domains. A hosting company like iPage will do everything that it can to cut corners in this case on something that is not high or profitability. And domain like underwear you have no idea what was done with it unless you do research. Returning a domain is not simple for a host/domain register to do. After all they act as a third party between you and icann.
Also when it comes to domains I never recommend buying it from the same place you host. For one it can be cheaper with a domain register, especially when you decide to host elsewhere as that free domain soon becomes expensive. Most host will not let you transfer a domain with in 2 months of purchase or renewal because of chargebacks.
Regards,
Benjamin
I wish I would have seen your review BEFORE I purchased hosting from iPage. I just wanted to inform everyone that after having a fine experience with them for one year, I received an invoice for my renewal at $107.40/year!!! That is quite a steep jump over the $40 I spent on my first years hosting. This is interesting to me because I switched my hosting from justhost.com to ipage for the exact same reason. The justhost.com accounts also jumped to $107.40/year. A very specific price and it makes me think the two companies are related. Unfortunately I have moved several hosting packages to ipage in the past year and now have to go through the hassle of moving them all again without my customers noticing a downtime. I do not support the bait and switch practices of these two companies!!
I agree with you benjamin.
I have been with them for past 2years and their support simply sucks. I am from India and we have these kinda jokers with all types of support centers.
While the interface is easy to handle and basic issues are sorted out easily, the page loading speed is pathetic. Even our Indian servers offer speeds than them.
I would like to know if there are any good unlimited domain hosts, I do not need unlimited space but multi domain hosting capability.
Great job mate.
Cheers
iPage seems incapable of efficiently resolving problems. Live chat and telephone support is worthless if it provides no help. Live chat is extremely slow, you are repeatedly asked to wait for extended periods of time. The responses are boilerplate that often do not answer the questions. My SEO Marketing Manager insisted it was imperative my company name in the title be preceded by the city I am in. The alignment would not work and part of the name ran into a picture on a Weebly drag and drop site that could not be moved. After two emails to him he passed me along to tech to fix the problem he created. After a call and three back and forth chats with tech they said it could not be done. All the while my site is up like this. My marketing manager takes no ownership for creating the problem. He ignores an email to have whoever is in charge of SEO call me. I can not get this person by phone but I am promised the right person will quickly respond. IPage has a slick site. Unfortunately they are also slick at avoiding problem resolution.
Hi Benjamin………thanks for all of your hard work. We currently use Go Daddy to host our website and are having lots of problems with our email (on a mac). By “googling” “mac mail problems with Go Daddy” I found that lots of other users are having the same problems. I was going to switch to iPage due to the great reviews but have changed my mind since reading your thread.
The question I have is how do we find a good hosting company?
Thanks for your help.
kevin
I HATE IPAGE[.]COM!!!
It works like SH&T and the DOWNTIME is HUGE. I’m having over 20 downtimes in 30 DAYS!!! DON”T BUY HOSTING FROM IPAGE[.]COM
The support is way below stupidity. Even if they offer a lot of features at a low price (the lowest) you won’t enjoy 90% of your money.
If you search the web for IPAGE Reviews THE FIST TWO pages are own by them! and when you want to close the page you will redirected to their sh%t% website.
PLEASE DON’T BY HOSTING FROM THEM and make you a favor.
Based on my experience I would rather pay double for the same features the buying hosting from such a low, low, low, low company…
Cheers all!
to KEVIN, and to all you guys and girls that are looking for a hosting company: ask your fiends and colleagues to see how they are getting along with their hastings. after more the 7 years on the web, being involved in 15-20 web hosting relocations I can tell you that it’s nothing like a web hosting company located in the country where your customers are. I’ve have huge bandwidth and uptime problems with companies like ipage and godaddy and I advise all my customers to buy hosting from their country of origin instead of buying from giants like godaddy.
Some of my customers are based in Romania (3rd country in speed connection on the planet) and I advise them to chose from hosting based in Romania.
Thanks Benjamin for this GREAT review and for giving all of US the CHANCE to express our FEELINGS
I purchased iPage last year and it came up for renewal on March 15. I was told renewal would be automatic and I did not have to do a thing. My credit card account was billed and they received their payment. Almost four times what I initially paid for. They never told me that the hosting and all the products would now be $107 rather than the 29.99 which I originally paid. All in all for all the services I paid over $160.
And then this is the zinger. I was charged the renewal fee of 13.99 for the .com renewal for a year. It was posted to my account as paid. Come March 15 all was good. Then on April 21 I noticed my site was down. The message I kept getting when searching for it was that it did not exist.
Since it was like 2a.m in the morning when I discoverd this I left a message on their message console. The reply I recieved said that the domain had expired. I immediately called later that morning and spoke with two operator who both saw and confirmed payment, but couldn’t tell me why the domain was not renewed. 6 days of nightmarish hell transpired and I was told it would be up in running in 48 hrs but it was not.
Finally this escalated to their Business Specialist who proceeded to tell me that they had sent emails to tell me that the domain had not gone through and it was my fault that it had not been renewed because I didn’t contact them sooner. Hello!! they took my automatic payment credited my account as paid but now tell me it did not process and therefore I have to pay $160 to get it back. What?!!
Now they say, while it was a system error they will pay half but I am responsible for $80. This is outrageous! The payment of 13.99 is non-transferable and they cannot deduct that from the $80. In the meantime. My webstore has been down I am losing money. My customers are calling and I just sent out 200 postcards for a Mother’s Day sale to new customers who must think I am stupid, because the webstite does not exist.
Of course I can wait till the domain goes back to the public at the end of the month (May 31) but am told I have no guarantees that it will be available and risk not getting it again. Do they put you over a barrel or what? They know you have invested time and money and hope that you pay to renew.
I checked the BBB (Better Business Bureau)and there are over 350 complaints against them and still they are allowed to cheat and extort more and more money while not providing the services that are paid for.
I am cancelling all..but after reading the complaints at BBB about cancelling and receiving a refund I am very skeptical that I will get anything back and will actually be charged cancellation fees. Even when they post a Anytime money back guarantee.
DO NOT sign up with this company it is a SCAM. They donot care as long as they get and extort more and more money. I learned the hard way, hopefully no one has to go through what I have, by reading all these complaints.