Choosing the right web hosting service is critical to your business' success. In fact, it's just as important as selecting a suitable domain name. The amount of traffic you expect and type of site you’re building are key factors in making this choice, too. The well-rounded iPower sits at the web hosting equator between a basic service like JustHost, which is good for low-traffic sites, and DreamHost, HostGator, and Hostwinds, which are excellent, beefy services that accommodate mission-critical businesses. Overall, iPower is a dependable and budget-friendly hosting option, but it lacks some of the advanced features you'd find in our Editors' Choice picks.
Shared Hosting Plans
Much like its competitors, iPower offers shared web hosting. This hosting type stores your website’s data on a server alongside other clients' files, so all sites on said server share the same system resources. The hosting cost is spread across multiple customers, so shared web hosting services are generally the cheapest web hosting. That results in a lower start up cost. The downside is that high traffic, be it to your site or to a site that shares your server, may slow your site's performance—or potentially bringing it down altogether.
iPower's basic Starter plan (starting at $3.99 per month, with a one-year commitment) nets you just 5GB of disk space, 250GB of monthly data transfers, one domain, and a single email account. These are fairly meager offerings compared to iPower’s other plans, and you must commit to an annual plan to lock in the aforementioned price. The Pro plan (starting at $12.95 per month, with an annual commitment) offers unlimited disk space, unlimited monthly data transfers, unlimited domains, and 2,500 email accounts. Pro Plus (starting at $12.99 per month, with an annual commitment) adds three free URLs, and unlimited email accounts.
Keep in mind that these are the introductory rates; after your first year of service, the renewal price significantly increases. A one-year Starter package costs $111.96 at the annual renewal rate, with no monthly renewal option. The Pro package's price jumps to $14.95 per month, but thankfully this package can be renewed on a monthly basis, making it a much more flexible and valuable plan than the Stater tier. Renewing a Pro plan with a two- or three-year commitment drops the rate to $13.85 and $12.95 per month, respectively. Pro Plus is not listed on their renewal page, but a customer service representative explained that the Plus renewal rate was the same as the Pro plan, which means that, aside from the introductory rate, Pro Plus is the better shared hosting value.
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The aforementioned accounts operate in a Linux-based environment, but if you need Windows to act as your website's foundation, iPower also offers a Windows Pro plan (starting at $8.99 monthly, with an annual commitment). Signing up for the service nets you a free URL, 25 domains, 1,000 email accounts, unlimited storage, scalable monthly data transfers, and other useful features. For more info on server operating systems, check out Linux vs. Windows: How to Pick the Best Server OS for Your Website.
iPower's shared hosting packages are decent, but they don't hold a candle to HostGator's Editors' Choice award-winning packages. HostGator offers month-to-month plans, as well as unlimited storage, monthly data transfers, databases, and email addresses at each shared web hosting tier.
VPS Hosting Plans
iPower also offers Linux-based virtual private server (VPS) packages, which is great if your website needs more resources than basic shared hosting. VPS, if you’re not familiar, is similar to shared hosting, except far fewer sites live on each server. These sites also have significantly more resources dedicated to them. You're much less likely to be affected by a server mate's shenanigans with a VPS hosting plan. In short, iPower has several VPS tiers that are worth a look.
VPS Basic hosting starts at $24.99 per month, and includes a free URL, 1GB of RAM, 40GB of storage, 1TB of monthly data transfers, and unlimited email. iPower's highest-tier VPS hosting plan costs $99.99 per month. and includes 8GB of RAM, 120GB of storage, 4TB of monthly data transfers, and unlimited email.
With that said, Hostwinds, the Editors' Choice pick for VPS hosting, has more flexible and feature-packed plans. These wallet-friendly, well-rounded VPS offerings start at $10.99 per month for 1GB of RAM, 30GB of disk space, 1TB of monthly data transfers, and unlimited email. The plans scale up to $526.99 per month for 96GB of RAM, 750GB of disk space, 9TB monthly data transfers, and unlimited email, so there's room to grow.
Dedicated Hosting Plans
If you're looking for an extremely powerful server that'll act as your website's foundation, a dedicated server is the way to go. With a dedicated server plan, your site leverages every iota of the server's available power for itself, as there are no other clients sharing system resources. This is the way to go for mission-critical high-traffic sites that must be absolutely bulletproof.
iPower's dedicated servers are available in a number of configurations. The options start at $149 per month for 4GB of RAM, 500GB of storage, and 5TB of monthly data transfer, and they scale as high as $239 per month for 16GB of RAM, 1000GB of storage, and 15TB of monthly data transfers.
The drawback is that iPower only offers Linux-based dedicated servers. If you want to build a website using a Windows-based dedicated server, we recommend AccuWeb Hosting, the PCMag Editors' Choice pick for dedicated web hosting. AccuWeb’s Classic dedicated options use Windows Server, and come with an impressive 20TB of monthly data transfers, too.
WordPress Hosting Plans
There are two ways to get the WordPress content management system up and running on an iPower server: You can install WordPress on a standard Linux-based server or sign up for WordPress hosting. Using a WordPress-tailored hosting package has its advantages. They typically come with WordPress-specific security, customer service reps who are trained in WordPress tech, and automatic CMS and plug-in updates.
The WP Starter plan (starting at $3.75 per month) offers a free URL, a customized control panel, pre-installed themes and WordPress plug-ins, daily site backups, and unlimited monthly data transfers, storage, and email accounts. The WP Essentials package (starting at $6.95 per month) adds to that by offering a speedy solid-state drive instead of a traditional hard drive, a high-end security package, and specialized customer support.
Like other managed WordPress hosts, iPower's managed hosting environment is specifically designed for installing WordPress and associated plug-ins. In fact, you don't have to install the CMS at all, as it comes preinstalled. Once you're logged into WordPress, you can create posts, pages, and galleries as you would with any other self-hosted WordPress site.
That said, iPower's WordPress packages fall short when compared to A2, BlueHost, and WP Engine, our Editors' Choice picks for WordPress Hosting. A2 focuses on small-business friendly WordPress packages; BlueHost has a built-in, WordPress-enhancing toolset; WP Engine specializes in enterprise-level WordPress hosting.
Cloud and Reseller Hosting
iPower uses cloud-based tech to enhance its many hosting services, but doesn't expound on specifics aside from its touted "cloud-based flexibility." In addition, iPower lacks the flexible, usage-based billing that DreamHost, the category's co-Editors' Choice pick, offers with its cloud server plans. DreamHost's packages start at $4.50 for 512MB of RAM, 80GB of storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers, and cap at $48 per month for four CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, 80GB of storage, and unlimited monthly data transfers.
iPower also offers a reseller program called WholesalePlus that gives you discounted hosting rates if your intent is to provide hosting to clients of your own. This program is priced at $49.95 annually, and plans are priced at $2.95 per month for a single domain with unlimited disk space and unlimited monthly data transfers. If you’re shopping around for the best reseller rates, give Hostwinds consideration, as well; it’s the Editors' Choice pick for reseller hosting. Hostwind's reseller options mirror its shared hosting plans, and start at $5.24 per month for a single domain with unlimited monthly data transfers and disk space.
Website-Building Tools
After we chose a plan, iPower prompted us to select a domain. There's also a $10 setup fee. You can add domain privacy ($9.99 per year), which keeps your contact info off the site.
Two add-ons—automated daily backup and a security tool—are irksomely checked by default on the confirmation page. We unchecked them, and after navigating through a few add-on screens, the purchase was finally confirmed. While you're waiting for iPower to activate your site, you can watch a helpful video that shows you how to set up email, create a website, and use the control panel.
iPower's control center is has many advanced options. You can choose from several different website-building tools, including Drag & Drop Site Builder, WordPress, or File Manager (which lets you upload pages that you've designed elsewhere and edit HTML). When we first reviewed iPower, we used the Drag & Drop Site Builder that was powered by the Weebly website builder. iPower no longer offers that tool to new customers, as the company's transitioned to WebsiteBuilder for the same functionality.
E-Commerce and Security Tools
iPower leverages Ecwid e-commerce (starting at $4.95 per month) for selling products or services on your site. You get a slight discount for signing up for an annual plan ($56.88 per year). Ecwid features an intuitive store builder and management system, as well as Weebly, Joomla, and WordPress support. There's a 20 product limit, but your inventory can be expanded to 50 or unlimited products with the Professional ($13.95 per month) or Unlimited ($34.95 per month) tiers, respectively.
iPower offers a handful of security add-ons, including SiteLock Fix Plan ($89.99 per year), a service that performs daily scans to check for and remove malware and other vulnerabilities. A Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate ($31.99 per year) provides secure online transactions.
Rock-Solid Uptime
Website uptime is a vital element of the web hosting experience. If your site goes down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services. Even a few minutes downtime here or there may encourage a customer who wants to make a purchase right now to go elsewhere—perhaps never to return.
For this testing, we used a website monitoring tool to track the iPower-hosted test site's uptime over a 15-day period. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings our website and sends an email if it is unable to contact the site for at least one minute. The data revealed that iPower is a stable web hosting service, as it didn't go down once.
Swift and Thorough Customer Service
We called iPower's customer support team several times, with various wait times—ranging from a minute to just under five minutes—before speaking with a representative. iPower has improved its telephone help since we last reviewed the service, which now has hold-time approximations. During our first call we asked the representative about the difference between regular hosting and WordPress hosting, and received a thorough answer. Our second call was equally pleasant, with an iPower representative explaining VPS and dedicated hosting services to us. Unfortunately, a third call was a dud; the responder was unable to hear our inquiries, forcing us to drop the call.
We also initiated web chats to get instructions on how to import an existing WordPress blog. To start a chat, you fill in your name, email, domain, and the answer to your security question. We waited less than a minute before being connected to a customer service representative. A second chat representative explained how shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting compared to one another, by making a wonderful apartment complex analogy. Despite the one dud phone call, we are pleased with iPower's customer service team overall.
iPower offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is standard fare in the web hosting space, but DreamHost bests most services out there with an impressive 97-day money-back guarantee.
5 Things You Need to Know About Web Hosting
A Well-Rounded Web Host
iPower is a decent mid-level web hosting service, one that works well for shared, VPS, dedicated, and WordPress plans. Plus, it has effective site-building tools, and helpful customer service. That said, iPower's entry-level shared hosting plan is a subpar starting point compared to the company's other hosting tiers, and it doesn’t quite stack up to the competition's basic packages. For more powerful web hosting, checkout DreamHost (the Editors' Choice for shared hosting) or Liquid Web (an Editors' Choice host that caters to large businesses).
For more on getting started online, read our tips on how to create a website. You might also want to check out 7 Things You Need to Know When Building an E-Commerce Website.
iPower offers a useful suite of web hosting tools that caters to individuals, small businesses, and resellers. It's a jack-of-all-trades web host that sits comfortably in its niche, but the web host lacks some of the robust feature sets found in the category's top services.
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