5 Best iPage Alternatives – Setting Up Your Website on a Budget

For a lot of bloggers and newbies on the web, iPage is the prime destination for cheap web hosting that will get their website started. iPage succeeds at being very beginner friendly, providing a solid hosting service, easy to use tools, marketing credits among other things that will help you in the initial phases. That is just how iPage rolls, they help beginners and surprise them later on with upsells and lame pricing tricks.

I’m here to kill your hype and explain that this incredibly cheap hosting service isn’t actually cheap in the long run. It seems like a good deal for those who are just starting out, but it’s those of us who got to know numerous hosting companies. We know that many of them are full of shit and tricks that will end up getting you to spend more than you thought initially.

Don’t worry, we’re here to give you some much better alternatives. You’ll find a trustworthy hosting company worth giving your money to within the next few minutes.

Before we jump into more details, here is the list of 5 best iPage alternatives that we recommend:

Web Host Promo Price
inmotion best ipage alternative
$2.95 / mo
hostgator best ipage alternative
$3.95 / mo
bluehost best ipage alternative
$3.95 / mo
namecheap best ipage alternative
$2.88 / mo
godaddy best ipage alternative
$2.99 / mo

An Overview of iPage

iPage is one of EIG brands, which is a massive company that has numerous hosting companies under its wing such as, PowWeb, JustHost, Dot5Hosting, VPSLink and other brands you probably never heard of. EIG is known well for its inconsistency and number of upsells and their services are between average and poor. iPage is one of those brands. Though it’s worth noting that it’s among the better ones.

Their most popular plan is the Essential Plan, which costs $1.99 per month and offers an average hosting service. It’s nothing special but gets the job done, just as the rest of their services. I have to give them a thumbs up for honest pricing. You can get the $1.99 for a 12 month subscription and enjoy an extremely cheap service throughout the year. But don’t let this confuse you, the upsell comes when you’ll renew your hosting plan. Once the promotional period ends, the price will go up to $8 per month. Which is a 350% jump. They will make you pay more for an average service than you would for an outstanding web-hosting experience, which is just lame.

Customer support for example takes about 20-30 minutes to respond and help you with your problem. While that is less than terrible, other customer support representatives don’t wait more than 5 minutes to give you an answer. Though they try to sweeten the deal with some good security features and SiteLock protection. They also have good third party application support, but both of these are something that most decent companies provide to their users.

To top it off, the core of their services aren’t that good either. With a below average uptime of 99.80% and a page loading speed of 1000 milliseconds, it’s very easy to find companies that do much better. Here’s a list of companies that will serve as better alternatives. I’ll start with the best ones that and leave those with the more average service last.

InMotion Hosting

inmotionhosting best ipage alternativeI’m starting with my favorite to lift the mood a little. I love InMotion for multiple reasons, and one of them is the fact that they give you what you pay for. They know that their success depends on giving you the best deal and best service possible and act accordingly. Which is why it’s hard to find anything wrong with their service. Of course, you want to read the facts, not my boasting, so let’s see.

InMotion is a large hosting company that’s home to more than 300 000 domains. There’s a good chance that you already heard of them because of their ads and they receive positive reviews in just about any review site. They offer great shared plans that’s great for beginners and just about anyone else who wants to host a few websites.

InMotion refers to their shared hosting plans as “Business Hosting”. Their Launch Plan is the smallest and most inexpensive, which costs $5.99 per month. You’re able to host two websites and have unlimited bandwidth, storage space and email addresses. There’s also a free domain involved. So, right off the bat they’re offering a much better deal than most hosts out there. They go the extra mile by offering free SSD storage for all of their plans, free website migrations, free premium security plugins and an award winning customer service.

Really, InMotion states that they’re “the leader in customer service” is no joke. They really do have an incredible customer support team that received positive reviews everywhere. They’re great in our experience as well, because they didn’t take more than 2 minutes to respond and gave helpful answers to all our questions.

Some hosting providers offer decent services for a lot less, but InMotion goes the extra mile in every way. They offers a solid and reliable service, outstanding customer support and a bunch of free services, such as site migrations, site backups and SSD storage for all of their plans. They are simply worth doing business with and I can wholeheartedly recommend them. At least check out their website to see the rest of what they have going on. Also, as a testament of their confidence, InMotion lets you try their services for 90 days with a money back guarantee.

HostGator

hostgator best ipage alternativeHostGator is one of the biggest players in web hosting and there’s a good chance that you heard about them more times than you could count. They have been around since 2002 and have been pushing hard with their advertisements ever since. It was hard to not come across one of their ads for the last 5 years and their recent YouTube campaign will make you watch one of their commercials after every second video you see. But other than that, they actually offer a pretty good hosting service and do so with a good price as well.

HostGator has recently launched one of its new premium services, called HostGator Cloud. It combines speed and reliability with a very low price, which I like. I won’t go into their shared hosting plans, because the Cloud plan far outweighs them in quality and comes at a great price too. In fact, I would recommend steering clear of HostGator’s shared hosting plans, because they aren’t very good.

HostGator Cloud Plan

Their customer support is really good in my opinion, because they’re reliable and you can reach out to them 24/7/365. It took us about 15 minutes to reach a knowledgeable customer service representative who was even friendly and provided us with the answers we were looking for. There was no frustration and they didn’t make me fall asleep in front of my PC while I wait. This would be enough to close the deal for me, but HostGator’s plans come with numerous free services as well.

You’ll get what you would expect from any decent hosting providers. HostGator provides free site migrations, and enhanced security measures as well. In their premium plans, they’ll give you automatic malware removal, automated database backups and a free SSL certificate to let you make safe transactions. Their servers are also protected against DDoS attacks, so you can rest assured that your website is safe and sound at all times.

BlueHost

bluehost best ipage alternativeBlueHost is the #1 destination for many WordPress users who are searching for a place to host their website. One reason for that is because BlueHost is recommended on WordPress.org and another one is because their services are really cheap. Any beginner and blogger would like the opportunity to have their website hosted for as little as $2.95 / month. The phrase that BlueHost’s servers are optimized for WordPress, also sound pretty catchy. But do they actually meet people’s expectations? Let’s see.

Shared Hosting Basic Plan

At its core, this plan seems pretty solid, since it offers the uptime and speed we’re looking for. It also comes with solid security options, a drag and drop site builder and other free app integrations. BlueHost’s cPanel is easy to use, which will work really well for any beginner. Although, their customer support isn’t exactly top notch. Last time, we had to wait about 45 minutes to get in touch with their representative, only to get disappointed again. They sent us pages from their frequently asked questions section. Were they implying that we shouldn’t even speak, just browse their website? I don’t know.

While even this sounds kind of acceptable, there’s a catch. To get this low advertised pricing, you’ll have to sign a contract for a 3 year subscription, which is a tall order from this company. A lot of people would rather go to priest school than sign a three year contract with a service they’re not completely confident in. In case you want to sign up for a shorter period, the price will inevitably go up.

If you’re looking to run a website smoothly for three years, not asking many questions from their customer support team, BlueHost is a good option. Their servers are fast and reliable throughout the year, which is the main point of having a hosting service anyway. They leave a few things to be desired, but they’re definitely a good cheap hosting option and I can recommend using their services.

NameCheap

namecheap best ipage alternativeNameCheap might not be as popular as the other hosting providers mentioned above, but they are definitely a reliable and trustworthy domain registrar and web hosting company, and certainly a good alternative to iPage. NameCheap is mainly known for its cheap domain name registration service, but you they also offer a wide range of hosting plans suitable for both personal and business use. With NameCheap there is room to grow, being able to choose from multiple shared, VPS and dedicated plans, upgrade and downgrade between as you needed.

Stellar Shared Hosting Plan

A good alternative to iPage’s Essential Plan is the Stellar Plan offered by NameCheap. This shared hosting package comes with 20GB SSD space, unmetered bandwidth and allows up to 3 websites. You can choose the datacenter location (US or UK) as well. If you need hosting for more than 3 websites you can choose one of their other plans, which offer unlimited website hosting.

Each shared plan comes with a 100% SLA guarantee, cPanel control panel, easy WordPress install, free SSL certificate, around the clock professional online support and 30 day money back guarantee. Free automated backups are performed twice a week on all shared hosting accounts.

You will have the option to pay by the month or pay upfront for a year saving couple of dollars.

So if you are looking for a simple and cheap alternative for iPage hosting, NameCheap is a pretty good one to go with.

GoDaddy

godaddy best ipage alternativeGoDaddy is an exceptionally well-known domain registrar that has moved into the web hosting industry. They provide easy to use and affordable hosting packages and incredibly easy way for folks to choose and register a domain name. Getting your account set up is fast and building, managing your website is also a straightforward process. GoDaddy’s control panel is filled with one click installs and you can always upgrade your plan through a single click as well, in case your business has to grow. You can install WordPress with a single click and start building your website.

Shared Hosting Economy Plan

Their service is pretty cheap, since their economy plan costs only $2.99 per month. This will let you host one website on 100 GB of storage space, have access to unmetered bandwidth and a free Microsoft Office 365 Business software. It’s a fair deal to say the least. Their Deluxe plan however costs $4.49 per month, and it makes everything unlimited. Your website will also be shielded from security threats, such as DDoS attacks. Their customer service provides 24/7 phone support and you can reach out to them if you come across any issues or if you have trouble with setting up your website.

Though they offer a 30 day money back guarantee and their service is decent, buying into it is a pretty big commitment. They make it pretty hard to leave, throwing plenty of upsells and additional fees (like leaving fees or something) once you try to cancel your subscription. But, if you are planning in the long run and looking for a reliable host to switch to from iPage, GoDaddy is a good choice.

Conclusion

You see? It isn’t hard to find a solid alternative to iPage. You just have to look around and do your best to weed out companies like JustHost or PowWeb. Your money is worth more than you know, so don’t give it into the hands of a company that has an unresponsive customer support and disrespects you. You’re probably tired from all the numerous hosting companies trying to suck your wallet dry, so go with an admirable one like InMotion, which will definitely give you your money’s worth!

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David Cross

David is the chief editor at WebHostingMedia right from the beginning. He has a great passion for building and managing websites and creating helpful content. He is also interested in programming - currently learning python.