#7 Web Hosting - iPowerWeb Review

"iPowerWeb is one of the largest and most established host among the Top 10. They have built a strong reputation in the industry for the last 7 years and are always highly rated by many different sources."

Ready Site Plan: $3.95/month (FREE Setup; 2 year plan)
5 GB disk space, 250 GB Bandwidth

Pro Site Plan: $3.98/month (FREE Setup; FREE Domain 1 or 2 year plan)
Upgraded Again! 1,500 GB disk space, 15,000 GB Bandwidth

Site & Store Plan: $13.95/month (FREE Setup; 1 or 2 year plan), FREE Domain!
Upgraded Again! 2,000 GB disk space, Unlimited Bandwidth

Overview

iPowerWeb was founded in 1998 and is currently serving over 300,000 customers worldwide. They offer several hosting plans - one of the most attractive being the Business Pro Site plan. It is an ecommerce ready plan for only $3.98/month (a limited time offer) for the 1-year or 2-year plan. If you order for 1 year, you will also get a free domain name. The plan below this (Ready Site) is strictly for beginners/hobbyists (it is not eCommerce ready), does not come with a free domain, and has a $10 setup fee (waived if you sign up for 24 months). The largest hosting package offered at iPowerWeb is the Site and Store plan, which offers extra storage, premium web page creators and extra eCommerce features enabling customized checkout and a full online inventory. This plan comes with a free domain and waived setup fee (normally $30) for the 12 and 24 month contracts.

For 2,000 GB of disk space, unlimited bandwidth, more shopping cart features, extra web page creator options, unlimited mySQL databases and POP3 email accounts, iPowerWeb offers the Site and Store Plan for $14.95/month for the 1-year or 2-year prepay contract.

iPowerWeb is also promoting the very same plan and products with the brand iPower. Everything is exactly the same - plan size and features, customer support team, telephone numbers, hosting infrastructure ... except one thing, iPower has a website that looks a lot better.

Sample Site

We have signed up with iPowerWeb to host a picture site. This site was established in 1997 and contains over 400 pictures with a total size of 50 MB. If this site were to serve 2,000 unique visitors every day and use approximately 700 MB of bandwidth, it would require about 20 GB of bandwidth each month, which is a mere dent on the 15,000 GB bandwidth allocated by iPowerWeb for their Pro Site plan.

Customer Support

1. Email Support - Just like LunarPages, iPowerWeb has a very good and responsive email support system. Every email sent out will receive a reply. They can provide you with any information you need and any support you require. We have sent them multiple emails in a short period, asking them everything from what software version they run to setting up sub-domains. We have been very satisfied with their speedy replies. Send an email to support@ipowerweb.com for technical support or sales@ipowerweb.com for sales related questions. If you don't know what to ask, type in 'Why is your plan so cheap?' to see how they reply :-)

2. Knowledge Base - They have compiled a large searchable database of answers to many common questions. Unlike a normal FAQ style help center, you will not need to find the questions and answers by scrolling the screen. You just need to type some simple keywords and the search will return the relevant questions and answers! We have used it to find information on setting up sub-domains and domain pointers. A simple search with the keyword 'domain' returned the answer we needed.

3. Lots of Tutorials - iPowerWeb has prepared over 100 tutorials for their customers, which can be located in the new 'Support Center'. You can find walkthroughs and flash videos on common tasks and various software configurations. The tutorials have been divided into 4 categories - email, file transfer, vDeck control panel and misc. Email tutorials show you how to configure your email software, such as Outlook Express and Eudora. File transfer tutorials show you how to configure and use your FTP clients, such as WS_FTP and CuteFTP. vDeck category has the most tutorials. It will show you how to use all the features in your vDeck control panel. For example, it has tutorials on creating email accounts, managing MySQL database, viewing stats and using the web builder. The misc category contains anything else that does not fit into other categories, including the tutorials on how to change your domain DNS servers.

4. Toll Free Support - Call 888-511-HOST (4678) for free customer support. If you cannot reach the toll free number (outside USA/Canada), call 1-310-314-1608 instead.

5. Live Chat - Introduced in April 2004. To access the live chat, click on the "Questions? 888-511-HOST, Live Chat" below the iPowerWeb logo on the top left corner.

Ecommerce Ready

You can accept credit cards easily with 2CheckOut with an initial setup fee of $49. If you have a Premier/Business PayPal account, you can also accept credit cards payments too. iPowerWeb has integrated the PayPal cart into their control panel so you can easily add items to sell and receive payment through PayPal. 2CheckOut and PayPal are the best ecommerce solution for small businesses in our opinion. Their startup fees are low and advanced knowledge is not required.

If you want to take payment yourself instead of through third parties, you will need your own merchant account and gateway services. iPowerWeb has a partnership with e-dataonline to offer you such services. You can signup with e-dataonline through the control panel. If you are not from the US, you can't get a merchant account from e-dataonline. You will need to get it through your local bank. You may also try World Pay.

If you are selling 1 or 2 items, the shopping cart is not required. However if you are selling many products, you will definitely need a shopping cart so you can add, manage and remove items easily. iPowerWeb provides you with 3 shopping carts - ShopSite, Agora and osCommerce. SSL is also required for secure transactions if you are accepting payments with your own merchant account. Shared SSL is included in these plans.

Highlights

Free Domain Name
If you do not have a domain yet, order the Pro Site or Site and Store hosting plan for one year and you can get a new domain registered for free. If you already own a domain name, you can transfer it to iPowerWeb and have your registration period extended for another year for free.

vDeck Control Panel
iPowerWeb develops and uses its own control panel software - vDeck. It had been using CPanel for the last few years. New customers will now be placed on servers using the new vDeck. We have requested our sample site to be moved to a vDeck server to test-drive it ourselves, and we have found it to be very powerful and easy to use. They have also integrated the iPage Web Builder and Marketing Center directly into the new control panel.

iPage Web Builder
Having problems designing your website? You can use iPage Web Builder to build your web site. This tool is easy to use and is able to design professional looking web sites using their web templates. There are some flash tutorials on how to use iPage in their support center. iPage is an original tool created by iPowerWeb and can be found inside the control panel. The Ready Site and Pro Plans are allotted up to 9 pages and 100 templates, while the Site and Store Plan is allotted 220 templates and an unlimited number of page builds.

Marketing Center
This is an area where you can find a lot of articles and free tools. There are over 50 articles related to designing and marketing your web site here. For free tools, you can use the link submitter to submit your site to all major search engines, and use the link checker to check for bad links on your website. You can also create meta tags for your web pages, check your web site position in search engines, etc.

Anonymous FTP
You can setup anonymous FTP accounts with the Pro/Site & Store plans. Anonymous FTP allows someone to FTP to your account without a password (usually their email address is submitted as password). You will need to set up a specific landing directory for them so they won't mess up your account. They can then download files from the landing directory, or upload files if write permission is given (such as allowing your visitor to upload new pictures to you).

Order Process

Your account will be set up the same day as long as you provide valid credit card information. Double-check your credit card information! If everything is correct, your account will be set up by one of their staff members and you will receive an important email with all of your account information. Keep it safe and do not delete it. :-)

Our Advice

If you encounter any unresolved issues or dissatisfaction with iPowerWeb, they will be happy to assist you. We give them a top recommendation for customer service and hosting packages.