Review Of iPage

When I decided to quit selling my products through my personal email, I found myself doing hours of research every evening on ways to save money on building an e-commerce website.

My products were popular among a niche audience. I found a lot of success marketing my products through my personal email, but I knew that I needed to upgrade to an e-commerce website if I wanted to actually grow my business.

There are many pieces of the puzzle to consider when setting up any website. You need to find a host, and you need to buy a domain. There are hordes of companies to choose from that offer these products, so I spent plenty of time reading through reviews.

Why I Decided to Choose iPage

I've been talking to other online business owners about the problem with setting up a website. Many of us have experienced the same problems while first starting out in the endeavor. Building a site from scratch is a costly process.

Luckily, there are companies out there that take some of the stress out of starting an e-commerce site. iPage helps make running an e-commerce site a possibility for people who can't afford to pay the hefty costs of hosting with one of the popular brands.

Reason 1: Loads of Free Features

How many other web hosts have you seen offering this many free features to their customers? I have looked around the web at a variety of other hosts, and they all have something to give to their customers for free, but there's usually a catch.

Most of the free offerings that I've seen advertised on other websites come with a stipulation, like the feature is only free to premium customers. iPage offers more free features than its competitors, and their offerings don't include as many limitations.

Take a look at the free features I found on iPage that have helped me grow my business. We wouldn't have been able to put as much money into marketing and developing our products if we had spent it all on setting up a website.

This host offers their customers a free domain, which is one of the first things you'll need when you start an e-commerce site. Do you want people to be able to find your website? You'll need a quality domain that tells people what your site is about.

Some of the other hosts offer free domains to customers, but the domains they offer come with a catch (such as the free domain has to end with .website). However, iPage offers plenty of popular domains for free.

It's easy to use their website to figure out if your domain is available. Go to their site, click on the tab for buying a domain, and search for the domain that you desire. Even if it's not free, most of the domains you’ll want will only cost a few dollars.

Another great free offering is their website builder. I wasted too much time when I started my website because I didn't know where I could build my site for free. I nearly paid a thousand dollars to have someone build it for me.

When you work with iPage, you have instant access to a high-tech interface that allows users to build websites that they have always desired. You won't need a degree in computer science to figure out how to use their site builder either.

The free website builder offered by iPage comes with the account when you sign up. You'll have access to a website builder that is easy to use. All you need to do is drag and drop the elements onto the screen in the places you want things to appear for users.

Reason 2: Marketing Tools

In order to get people interested in visiting your website to browse your product offerings, you need to develop a clear marketing plan that utilizes a variety of tactics that other marketing professionals have tested and proven to be useful.

If you're in business to make money, you probably already have a business plan that includes a marketing plan. When you are looking for a host for your e-commerce website, you need to make sure that the host will facilitate all the requests of your marketing plan.

My marketing plan was already in effect before I started integrating my company on iPage‘s servers. I already knew what was needed to keep our customers coming back to the site, so I had a checklist of the different tools that were necessary.

In order to keep pushing forward with our marketing plan, we needed to have company email addresses to send out our newsletters to customers when they signed up through our website. Luckily, iPage offers free email addresses to their customers.

Having access to free email addresses makes my newsletters look more official. Instead of coming from my personal email address, they look like they are coming directly from my website. Sending newsletters this way increases the rate of receiving a positive response.

People are more likely to open a newsletter coming from the website that they are familiar with visiting.

My old way of sending newsletters wasn't receiving the response that I wanted because people were worried about opening email from someone that they didn't know.

In addition to supplying customers with free email addresses, iPage offers analytics tools to help you keep track of your results.

By knowing how many people are visiting your website, you will have a better idea of whether you are making progress with your marketing efforts.

There’s an additional marketing bonus that comes with opening an account through iPage. They offer their users free credits to help bring visitors to our websites. My credits worked for Google Ads and Bing.

Having $200 of free ad credits really helped me get my website started because I was relying upon search engine optimization to pull in new visitors to my website.

The credits help bring users to your site when they look for related products on search engines. The initial credits that iPage gave me helped foster an understanding of how the system works, so I was better prepared when I bought credits with my own money.

Reason 3: Introductory Savings Is Enticing

The cost of setting up a website is a big hurdle to overcome. Every new business needs to save as much money as possible when they first start out. That's why a little savings in the beginning will go a long way.

When I started selling my products through my site with iPage, I was able to set up my website for a low monthly fee. The cost of hosting was only $1.99 for each month of service. This was an introductory cost, but the initial savings helped me get started.

The regular cost of iPage's hosting platform is $7.99 for each month of service. The monthly fee includes unlimited disk space, which was a concern of mine when I started looking through the hosting options out there.

Some of the other hosts have restrictions as to how much disk space you are allotted, but iPage’s unrestricted allowance makes it easier to put the images and videos you want onto your site. I don't have to worry about converting and compressing my files.

In addition to the unlimited disk space, the monthly fee includes scalable bandwidth. Depending upon how much traffic you are expecting on your website, you might need to increase the amount of bandwidth that comes with your account.

My Only Concern With iPage

The services offered by this host are affordable, and they offer options to add more bandwidth if you're running low. My only concern with iPage was the cost for their services after the introductory period ends.

However, their site is straightforward about the amount of time included in the introductory period. The price adjustment after the introductory period ends is fair, so I’ll likely stay with their services in the future.

If you are able to get started on your business for a low overhead cost, then you should be able to plan for paying a slightly higher cost after the introductory period has expired. If their services are working fine, it's worth it to pay a few dollars more.

My Final Thoughts

Running a website of your own is difficult to manage when you are on a strict budget. Saving money on the costs of hosting your website through iPage will help you allocate funds for other matters.

If you're able to save a little money by registering for a free domain through iPage, you will have more funds to market your brand. Remember that there are more expenses that you'll have to cover after you get the site running.

Take time to register for a free domain, and try out their affordable hosting options. It's a low risk for the possibility of a high reward.

Related Articles

[tcb_post_list query=”{‘paged':1,'filter':'related','related':|{|'category'|}|,'orderby':'date','order':'DESC','posts_per_page':'3′,'offset':'1′,'no_posts_text':'There are no posts to display.','exclude_current_post':|{|'1'|}|,'queried_object':{‘ID':5336,'post_author':'1′,'post_type':'post'}}” type=”grid” columns-d=”3″ columns-t=”2″ columns-m=”1″ vertical-space-d=”30″ horizontal-space-d=”21.791666666666668″ ct=”post_list–1″ ct-name=”Default Post List” tcb-elem-type=”post_list” pagination-type=”none” pages_near_current=”2″ css=”tve-u-171e384facc” article-tcb_hover_state_parent=”” element-name=”Post List” total_post_count=”21″ total_sticky_count=”0″ posts_per_page=”3″ featured-content=”0″ disabled-links=”0″ article-permalink=”|{|tcb-article-permalink|}|” no_posts_text=”” class=” article-tcb_hover_state_parent=” article-permalink='|{|tcb-article-permalink|}|' ][tcb_post_list_dynamic_style][/tcb_post_list_dynamic_style][tcb_post_featured_image type-url='post_url' type-display='default_image' size='full' post_id='5622′][tcb_post_title css='tve-u-171e384face'][/tcb_post_list]

References & Resources

• iPage, Official Website.