In college I was asked to you GoDaddy. Then I was excited to try iPage at a lower cost and slightly higher performance. Luckily by the time my 2 years at $3.50/mo with iPage were up and the price was getting upped to $7.99/mo I had learned how to migrate websites to new servers. The servers I chose were Webfaction servers.
The cost is actually lower than iPage after the iPage’s introductory period. If you pay 5 years up front the cost is as low as $5.50/mo. Lower than iPage with just a 2 Year commitment.
What I didn’t like about iPage
The price there wasn’t much disappointing about iPage. They have good service in that they answered the live chat quickly although they often seemed scripted and I wasn’t sure if I was talking to somebody United States. My biggest concern about iPage: I did get a few clients complained about performance. All of the clients that had the biggest issue seem to be from California so perhaps it was a regional issue.
Why Webfaction?
I helped manage Webfaction accounts and I really like the interface; it was familiar to me. What impressed me the most was the performance. When I used Webfaction servers and updated WordPress it updated quicker than many other hosting accounts. It seemed with Go Daddy and iPage it would often take a long time to get the website going. That first Pageload is crucial. I was tired of seeing 0.00 time spent on a website in analytics. With shared hosting you always seem to be at the mercy of whoever else is on your server, but Webfaction does a good job of keeping their servers from being overloaded.
So in the end I could get better performance from a Webfaction account but then I could also get it at a cheaper cost than iPage could offer long term. The customer service for iPage was nice, but for me it was more about performance. I could handle most of the issues that come up with the server so I wasn’t too worried about having me service request. In terms of customer service do I wasn’t worried about Webfaction as much because they seem to allow more access to their servers but with iPage they seemed to constrain you and your options.
The cost is actually lower than iPage after the iPage’s introductory period. If you pay 5 years up front the cost is as low as $5.50/mo. Lower than iPage with just a 2 Year commitment.
What I didn’t like about iPage
The price there wasn’t much disappointing about iPage. They have good service in that they answered the live chat quickly although they often seemed scripted and I wasn’t sure if I was talking to somebody United States. My biggest concern about iPage: I did get a few clients complained about performance. All of the clients that had the biggest issue seem to be from California so perhaps it was a regional issue.
Why Webfaction?
I helped manage Webfaction accounts and I really like the interface; it was familiar to me. What impressed me the most was the performance. When I used Webfaction servers and updated WordPress it updated quicker than many other hosting accounts. It seemed with Go Daddy and iPage it would often take a long time to get the website going. That first Pageload is crucial. I was tired of seeing 0.00 time spent on a website in analytics. With shared hosting you always seem to be at the mercy of whoever else is on your server, but Webfaction does a good job of keeping their servers from being overloaded.
So in the end I could get better performance from a Webfaction account but then I could also get it at a cheaper cost than iPage could offer long term. The customer service for iPage was nice, but for me it was more about performance. I could handle most of the issues that come up with the server so I wasn’t too worried about having me service request. In terms of customer service do I wasn’t worried about Webfaction as much because they seem to allow more access to their servers but with iPage they seemed to constrain you and your options.