Uptime & Reliability

High quality datacenters and great stability

iPower has four datacenters, each of which have onsite security, CCTV and secure entry systems.  They keep their hardware up to date, which helps to avoid any unnecessary downtime.  One thing that several customers have complained about is that their technical support teams aren’t as knowledgeable as they should be.

This often means that while problems don’t happen too often, they can take longer than one would expect to get them fixed.  In addition, customers have to keep escalating their tickets to help ensure it finally gets to someone who knows how to fix the problem.  Most of these types of complaints are related to more complex issues, but that is something a hosting company should be ready for.

Features

Free standard features with premiums available

No matter which of the hosting packages you choose you’ll get all the standard hosting features. They push Unix based hosting, though windows systems are available in some packages.  In addition, they have very few limitations for bandwidth or disk space.  The lowest level hosting package does put some additional limitations on the services they provide.

One really great feature is that when you sign up with their pro plus shared hosting package you get three free domain names for a year.  Most other hosting companies provide just one at the most.

All their datacenters are equipped with 24/7 on site monitoring, CCTV and much more to help keep your data protected.

Support

Nice support options but techs may be unqualified

iPower offers you phone, email, live chat and other support options to get help when you need it.  While it is certainly easy to get in touch with the technicians, they may not always be able to help you as quickly as you would like.  When experiencing complex issues, their customers have reported that they had difficulty finding a support technician who was able to get them the solutions that they needed in a timely manner. After escalating, however, the issues were able to be resolved.

In addition to the actual tech support, they also provide nice user guides, tutorials, a knowledgebase and much more that will help you to avoid problems in the first place.

Pricing

Fair prices with great discounts for upfront payment

The pricing at each level is fairly consistent with industry standards.  They do encourage customers to sign up for 2-3 years at a time, which will earn you a hefty discount at each level.  If you know you’ll be running your site for a long time and you are confident that you’ll be happy with this host, this is a great way to save some money.

In addition to these standard features they also have a number of extras such as SSL certificates, SEO services, online backs ups and more, but they come with added costs.

Summary

Nice Services with some history of support issues

Overall this is a good hosting company that will be able to provide you with good hosting for a long time.  They do a good job at keeping up with technology changes, which will help keep your site moving quickly.

While their limited number of VPS options and lack of dedicates servers will rule this company out for high end websites, they provide good hosting for entry level to mid-level website requirements.

Pros:

• Pricing for long term commitments is great
• Backed by Endurance International Group (a major hosting provider company)
• 24/7 live chat for technical issues

Cons:

• History of poorly skilled technical support staff
• Custom control panel
• $35 cancellation fee after the 30 day trial period