The post Podcast 153: Niche Site Project 4 Revealed! June 2019 Income Report appeared first on Niche Pursuits.
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Thursday, July 18, 2019
Podcast 153: Niche Site Project 4 Revealed! June 2019 Income Report
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Monday, July 15, 2019
The Top 10 Widgets to Improve Your Website
If you’re new to building and managing websites, you need to get yourself familiar with widgets as soon as possible.
What’s a widget?
Simply put, it’s website component that adds features or functionality to your site. Widgets are embedded directly onto your site, but you don’t have to develop or code them on your own.
To install a widget on your website, it’s as simple as copying and pasting some code, which will be provided by the creator of the widget. There will usually be a sufficient set of instructions for how and where to install the code from your widget-provider.
Why do you need widgets on your website?
Here’s the thing. Websites can functionally operate without widgets. But I’m sure you’ve landed on websites and wondered how they were able to add so many cool features and functionality to their pages. In many instances, they probably used a widget.
Your website builders and content management systems will be somewhat limited. Widgets fill in all of the blanks that aren’t provided by those platforms.
Widgets come in all shapes and sizes. They range from clocks, to weather feeds, and translators. But depending on the type of website you have, adding a clock or weather icon to your site doesn’t really add much value to your visitors.
That’s what inspired me to write this guide. I’ve come up with a list of the top 10 widgets that add real value and functionality to improve your website.
1. Reservio
Reservio is an online booking widget. So for those of you who run a business that takes appointments, it will enhance the experience of your website visitors.
Adding the Reservio booking button to your site is easier than having to take appointments over the phone. Plus, since all of your bookings can be handled online, your customers can schedule appointments at any time, even outside of your normal business hours.
Reservio syncs with the calendars that you’re already using, like Outlook, iCal, and Google Calendar.
It’s compatible with popular site builders and CMS platforms such as Wix, Webnode, Weebly, and WordPress.
With that said, if you’re a WordPress user and want more than just a widget for scheduling online reservations, you can check out my list of the best WordPress booking plugins.
2. Smartsupp
If you want to drastically enhance the customer service experience on your website, you need to implement live chat.
The Smartsupp widget is one of the easiest ways to make this happen.
This is ideal for those of you who are selling online with an ecommerce site. Whether you’re selling products or services, Smartsupp makes it possible for your current and prospective customers to reach you with any questions they have.
Adding personalized communication methods to your website will ultimately increase your conversion rates in the long run.
According to a recent study, 77% of consumers won’t buy from sites that don’t offer live chat as a support option.
People that engage with a live chat representative on your website are worth over 4.5 times more than customers who don’t.
Live chat increases average order values by 10%. It also increases conversion rates by 40%.
Response times for live chat are also significantly faster than communication methods like email or phone support. Plus, live chat has the highest consumer satisfaction ratings.
So if you’re ready to add this feature to your website, just install the Smartsupp widget.
3. Disqus
The Disqus widget is made for those of you who want to have more engaged website visitors, which is basically everyone.
If you have a blog on your website, it’s a great platform for you to share your thoughts, opinions, and give valuable information to your visitors. But that communication platform shouldn’t be a one-way street.
To increase engagement, you want your customers to share their opinions as well.
Adding Disqus to your site adds functionality to your blog comments. It also gives you added management tools for monitoring and responding to comments.
This widget is super easy to set up. Disqus even includes a video instruction guide for installing their widget.
4. AddThis
You spend a ton of time creating content. But what happens after you publish it to your website?
Sure, in a perfect world all of your site traffic will come organically. But you and I both know that isn’t always the case. It’s crucial for you to find other ways to get people to land on your website.
One of the best ways to do this is by leveraging your existing website visitors. Encourage them to share your content with their friends, family, co-workers, and peers via social media.
Here’s the thing. People won’t necessarily go out of their way to do this unless you make it easy for them.
That’s where the AddThis widget comes into play.
You can connect to more than 200 social networks with the share buttons offered by the AddThis widget. All of the buttons are mobile-friendly and fully customizable.
Formatting for the share buttons include:
- Floating bar
- Image sharing
- Expanding
- Inline
These options ensure that no matter what type of website design you have, you’ll be able to seamlessly integrate these share buttons without it feeling too intrusive for your visitors.
Now people can share your content on social media with just one click, which will ultimately increase awareness and drive more traffic to your website.
5. Survio
In the past, I’ve explained how to use surveys to make more money for your business.
With widgets like Survio, this process has become easier than ever before. You can simply create a new survey in just a few minutes and integrate it into your website with the Survio widget.
It’s a clean and professional way to gather more information from your website visitors.
Premium surveys are mobile-friendly, safe, come with email support, and SSL. You’ll also be able to evaluate the responses with real-time results.
They have hundreds of survey templates and examples for you to choose from. Here are just a handful of examples to give you an idea of how extensive the options:
- Brand awareness
- Buying experience
- Service cancelation
- Tech support
- Event planning
- Team building
- Volunteer
- Bank
- Cafe
- Cosmetics and beauty salon
- Hotel guest
- Shipping service
The list goes on and on. So no matter what type of business or website you have, you’ll be able to find a template that’s suitable for your survey needs.
6. MailChimp
Collecting email addresses and growing your email list needs to be a priority for all websites. This statement holds true for blogs, personal sites, ecommerce companies, SaaS, and really any time of site that you an imagine.
In order to effectively collect emails from website visitors, you need to have signup forms strategically placed throughout your landing pages.
If you’re using MailChimp for email marketing services, then the MailChimp signup widget is an absolute must-have for your website.
It’s as simple as copying and pasting the signup form code into your site’s HTML wherever you want the widget to appear.
MailChimp offers four types of forms for you to choose from:
- Classic
- Condensed
- Horizontal
- Unstyled
After you choose the type of form, you can customize the title, form fields, and enable features like re-CAPTCHA to eliminate spam signups.
These widgets are compatible with platforms like WordPress, Jimdo, Webs, Weebly, Yola, Blogger, and Blogspot.
7. GetResponse
GetResponse is another popular marketing software for email. But with that said, it also has features and benefits that go beyond email marketing.
The widgets offered by GetResponse correspond with some of the features that they offer.
For example, they have a standard subscribe widget, similar to the one we just discussed from MailChimp. It’s an effective way to get more email subscribers with an opt-in form.
But GetResponse also has a contact widget, which is used for creating contact forms that are fully customizable.
This is a great way for your website visitors to communicate with you and provide feedback.
In addition to the subscribe and contact widgets, GetResponse also has a survey widget that can be used for a wide range of functions.
- Exit surveys
- Customer satisfaction
- Market research
You can also use your surveys to collect email addresses. The widget can integrate with other platforms like MailChimp, Mailer, and HubSpot. So they don’t force you to use their email marketing software if you’re already using another provider.
8. Gumroad
Gumroad is made for those of you who are using your website to sell a digital product or service.
I wouldn’t recommend it for full-fledged ecommerce sites. In those instances, you’ll definitely want to be using an ecommerce platform.
But for example, if you run a blog and want to sell an ebook, you can easily use the Gumroad widget to make that happen. It’s extremely simple to install.
All I did was type “Buy From Quick Sprout” into the form field and the button automatically changed. Then you can decide if you want to auto-trigger the payment form and allow single-product purchases.
After that, the code is automatically generated based on your settings. Then it’s just a matter of copying and pasting it into your website.
Processing payments with this widget will cost you 3.5% + $0.30 per transaction.
That pricing is actually pretty competitive if you compare it to the best payment methods for your ecommerce site. But again, if you’re just selling one digital product, you don’t necessarily need to go through all the steps of setting up an ecommerce website.
Just install the Gumroad widget instead.
9. Swiftype
How can your website visitors find what they’re looking for? I’m sure you have a menu and sitemap that are easy to follow, but navigating that way isn’t always user-friendly.
Adding a search bar widget like Swiftype is a solution to this problem.
Industry giants like CBS, AOL, BMW, AT&T, and Samsung are using this widget to add search functionality to their websites.
The way that this widget works is simple.
All you need to do is enter the address of your website, and Swiftype will index all of the content. Then it will essentially create a real-time search engine that’s specific to everything on your site.
No coding is required to operate this widget. But if you’re a developer, Swiftype has an API available to give you added control.
The widget can autocomplete searches based on what users start typing. It will also refine the search based on things like price, location, date, or type of content.
Swiftype searches are intelligent, so you’ll benefit from spellcheck, stemming, bigram matching, phrase matching, and synonyms. All of this ensures that your website visitors are seeing as many relevant results as possible.
10. Wufoo
Wufoo is an online form-building widget.
It allows you to create surveys, invitations, contact forms, registrations, and payment information.
All you need to do is create a form using their form builder. Then embed it on your website. Wufoo will email or text you whenever the data from your forms become available. You also have the option to set up real-time analytics.
There are more than 400 form templates for you to choose from. You can also set custom rules and create dynamic visualizations with charts and graphs.
Conclusion
Adding a widget to your site can truly take it to the next level.
You can benefit from enhanced functionality and professionalism while improving the user experience simultaneously.
There are more widgets out there than I can count. But these 10 are my favorite. They are flexible, functional, and can be used on a wide range of different websites.
I tried to make sure I included something for everyone on here. So I’m confident that you’ll find the widget that you’re looking for on this list.
from Quick Sprout https://ift.tt/2jWLeON
Amazon Affiliate Program Review: A Good Choice For Your Website?
The post Amazon Affiliate Program Review: A Good Choice For Your Website? appeared first on Niche Pursuits.
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Internal Linking: Best Practices for SEO with Real Life Examples
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Friday, July 12, 2019
How to Optimize Your Product Pages
As an ecommerce store, driving traffic to your website is only half of the battle. That in itself is a tall task, but so much more needs to be done in order for you to actually generate sales.
Take a moment to put yourself into the minds of the consumers.
Clearly, they’re somewhat interested in whatever you’re selling. Maybe they found you from an organic search of a product they need or maybe they clicked on a PPC advertisement. It’s possible that they found your site from a social media campaign.
The way they found you really doesn’t matter. What’s important is that they landed on your site because of interest.
You’ve done a great job of setting up your site navigation, making it easy for visitors to find exactly what they’re looking for. This brings them to the product page, which is what we’ll be focusing on in this guide.
Here’s what you need to realize. When a website visitor lands on your product page, they’re often just a click away from completing the purchase process. But that won’t happen if those landing pages aren’t optimized for conversions.
Failure to properly design and optimize product pages is a mistake that I see ecommerce sites make all of the time. That’s what inspired me to write this guide.
I’ll explain everything you need to know about crafting product pages that drive conversions.
Elements of a product page
Before we continue, I want to make sure you understand exactly what needs to be included on every product page. All product pages should have the same elements.
- The Product
- Branding
- Design
- Copywriting
First and foremost, your product always needs to be the center of attention. While this may seem obvious, I’ve seen some ecommerce sites position their products in a way that appears to be an afterthought.
Branding needs to be everywhere on your website. While you may have branding on your homepage or other interior pages, you can’t forget to add this to your product pages. Depending on where your traffic is coming from, not everyone who lands on a product page will see your homepage.
Website design is one of the most crucial elements of a product page. Even if you include all of the other proper elements, it’s useless if the design isn’t functional or user-friendly.
You can’t sell products without text. That’s why your sales copy is a critical element. The writing needs to flow well with your design and branding to tie everything together.
Now that you know what needs to be on your product pages, let’s look at some more specific tips for product page optimization.
Make sure your CTA is clear and obvious
How does someone buy an item from your product page?
They need to click on a button that allows them to check out. But if that button is buried somewhere on the page, you won’t drive as many conversions.
Take a look at this product page from Blenders Eyewear.
There’s only one button on this entire page that can be clicked—add to cart.
It’s big, bold, and the only text on the screen with a background color. In fact, aside from the product itself, the CTA here is the most prominent part of the page. It can’t be missed.
Go to your website and look at your product pages. See if your CTA is as clear and obvious as this one.
If your visitors can’t spot the button right away, it’s a problem.
Your CTA must be in view at all times. If users have to scroll to find it, then it’s not going to have a high conversion rate.
Here’s something else to keep in mind. Don’t place your conversion CTA near other CTAs on your site. For example, the “buy now” button shouldn’t be positioned next to a “subscribe” button.
While collecting emails is important, that doesn’t belong above the fold on your product page, and it certainly shouldn’t be somewhere that will draw attention away from your transactional CTA.
Don’t get too cute or fancy with the wording of your call-to-action either. Something along the lines of “buy now” or “add to cart” is just fine. Trying to be creative here can just end up confusing your customers.
Use professional photography
Unlike brick and mortar retail, online consumers rely heavily on images to make their buying decisions.
Your smartphone might take a great picture, but you should not be using it to take product photos. Everything needs to be handled by a professional.
Get a photographer to handle photoshoots with professional equipment and editing software. It’s worth it to spend extra on these things in order to get the best shot. You’ll need to take photos from every possible angle.
With that said, you also need to make sure that you’re taking the “right” photos for your product pages.
For example, let’s say you’re selling something like a wristwatch. A photo of a watch alone on a table doesn’t really add much value to the consumer. But if you put it on someone’s wrist, it gives them a better indication of the product will look if they buy it.
Take a look at the images on this product page from MVMT.
This is great photography. They used the “right” images because all of the shots show the product on a person’s wrist.
You can see how it looks from every angle. The first image shows how it looks from the first person perspective of the model looking down to check the time. Then it includes some other shots of how it will look from someone else’s view.
Oh yeah—they even show what the watch looks like if you’re jumping out of a plane.
These photos tell the full story about the product. It’s stylish, looks great, and can be worn as casual wear and active wear alike.
Include social proof
No matter how independent or unique a person claims to be, consumers will still follow the lead of others. Why should they buy a product if nobody else has?
They’ll have no way of telling if your product is good, useful, or just a waste of their money. If they’re unable to get these questions answered, then they probably won’t buy.
That’s why you need to include social proof on your product pages.
84% of people trust an online review as much as a recommendation from a friend. After reading between one and six reviews, 68% of customers form an opinion about a brand or product.
It’s your job to encourage customer reviews. After someone makes a purchase, send a follow-up email and ask them to rate or review the product. The more reviews you get, the better off you’ll be.
In fact, 49% of consumers say that they value the quantity of online reviews when they’re evaluating a business.
Blenders Eyewear, one of the examples we looked at earlier, had reviews on their product page. Just make sure you don’t let the reviews distract the user from buying.
Here’s another example of this strategy used by Brooks.
This product has 68 reviews and it’s rated 5/5 stars by their customers. You can see this information above the fold, and near the product description.
However, the actual reviews aren’t shown here. If you click on them, it will bring you to the bottom of the page.
That’s where the reviews belong.
If these were positioned elsewhere on the page, it would be too distracting and take away from the product and CTA. But by including some information above the fold, and giving customers easy access to find the reviews and read them, it helps aid their buying decision.
Visitors can do all of this without having to go to another landing page or third-party review sites.
Add videos
If a picture is worth 1,000 words, how much is a video worth?
Earlier I explained the importance of allowing your customers to get a better understanding of your products with images. But a video really gives them a closer look at everything.
Videos can showcase your products more than a picture ever could.
In fact, 90% of people say that product videos are helpful during the buying process. 70% of marketers say that videos convert higher than any other type of content.
After watching a video, 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product.
Check out this example of a product page from GoPro.
It’s a different approach compared to some of the other examples we’ve looked at so far.
Videos are especially important for this company since they’re selling a camera on this page. The video shows exactly what type of content can be captured with this camera.
Videos are great for those of you who have products that need a little bit more explanation. It’s not necessarily required if you’re selling something simple, like a plain shirt.
But with that said, you can still include videos, even if you’re selling something straightforward. Allbirds is a shoe company that has videos on their product pages of people walking in their shoes.
For those of you that have a product that’s a bit more complex and requires further explanation, adding a “how to” video or product demonstration can be very helpful to the consumer.
Carefully craft product descriptions
This is one of the more common mistakes that I see on ecommerce product pages. Everything looks great until the description.
While your product page should definitely be visually appealing with photos and videos, you still need to have some text on the page.
Keep it short. Don’t go overboard with long paragraphs. Nobody wants to read large blocks of text. You can use bullet points to shorten the content and make it easier for people to read.
Don’t be boring. Establish a brand voice. Know your audience and what they want to hear.
If your target market is business professionals over the age of 50, the description would be different then if you were trying to reach college students.
Look at this product description from Dr. Squatch, an ecommerce site that sells men’s soap.
This particular bar of soap was inspired by the scent of beer.
Take a closer look at some of the text in this description. They use phrasing like “drag a lawn chair into the shower” and “sip a couple cold cruisers.”
Their product isn’t for everyone. So they’re comfortable using slang to target a specific market.
Normally, I’d say steer clear of this type of phrasing. But in this case, it’s part of the company’s overall branding strategy.
Understand your customer and what they want in a product. Then work that into the description.
Don’t just rush through the process and say “soap that smells like beer.” Does this describe the product? Sure.
But will it make anyone want to buy it? Probably not.
Justify your pricing
Your pricing strategy is part of your product page since the price will obviously need to be on display.
This is your chance to justify your pricing and show your product’s value.
The description, pictures, videos, and everything else on the page needs to explain exactly why your product is priced a certain way. This is especially true for those of you who are selling products at higher price points.
Look at this example from Lululemon.
They have a quick “why we made this” description directly under the price.
In short, it explains that the product doesn’t have seams, is made with anti-stink technology, is ventilated, and made for training.
It’s not just a regular t-shirt for wearing to bed or around the house. So the high price tag of $68 for a seemingly simple shirt is justifiable.
Without that information, consumers may be a bit more reluctant to buy.
A/B test everything
Truthfully, you won’t know for sure if your product page is fully optimized until you try different approaches.
That’s why every element of the page should be A/B tested over and over again.
- CTA wording
- CTA placement
- CTA color
- Description
- Review placement
- Price placement
- Price size
The list goes on and on. It’s an ongoing process.
Even as your conversion rates rise, don’t assume that they can’t get any higher. Keep running tests to be sure.
Conclusion
Product pages are the most important components of your ecommerce site.
When a website visitor lands on one of these pages, they are moments away from converting. It’s your job to make sure that every product page is optimized to drive sales.
Use this guide as a reference to help you make sure that your pages have all of the crucial elements needed. Then follow the examples that I showed you and apply those same principles to your website.
from Quick Sprout https://ift.tt/2YQO7zL
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Podcast 152: 3 Advanced Strategies for Building Links with Sam Williamson
The post Podcast 152: 3 Advanced Strategies for Building Links with Sam Williamson appeared first on Niche Pursuits.
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Monday, July 8, 2019
iPage Web Hosting Review (2019)
Unlike some of the other web hosting providers on the market, iPage isn’t as well-known. But the company has been around for more than 20 years and hosts over one million websites with its two data centers.
If you stumbled upon iPage for web hosting, it’s probably because you were looking for an inexpensive hosting plan.
With hosting plans offered as low as $1.99 per month, that’s the major draw for this web host.
But the cheapest web host on the market isn’t always the best—or is it? That’s what inspired me to write this guide.
I’ve been getting lots of questions lately about my opinion on iPage. How does its low-cost factor into its performance?
For those of you who are looking for a budget web host, iPage might be an option for you to consider. But before you make that decision, read through this review to make sure you have as much information as possible.
iPage Web Hosting Plans
Before we talk about the pros, cons, and performance of iPage, I want to give you a brief overview of the plans that they offer. For a low-cost web host, they actually have quite a few options for you to choose from.
Shared hosting
Like most web hosts, the shared hosting plan from iPage is the least expensive option.
But what’s unique about this web host compared to other providers on the market is the lack of shared hosting plan options. Typically, web hosts offer at least two or three different pricing tiers for shared hosting, each with different features and benefits.
iPage, on the other hand, just has this one plan.
If you decide to use iPage’s shared hosting service, you’ll also get:
- Free domain
- Free SSL certificate
- Free email addresses
You can host an unlimited number of domains on the shared plan as well.
Pricing starts at $1.99 per month if you sign up for a three-year contract. Rates for a two-year contract and one-year contract start at $2.49 per month and $2.99 per month, respectively.
VPS hosting
If you’re interested in a virtual private server, iPage has what you’re looking for. Unlike the shared plan, VPS hosting with iPage does come with different pricing tiers and plan options.
- Basic VPS
- Business VPS
- Optimum VPS
Here’s a comparison of those three plans.
As expected, the more you pay, the more features you’ll get. CPU, RAM, disk space, and bandwidth increases at each tier.
While iPage has a reputation for being a low-cost web hosting provider, their VPS plans are not necessarily cheaper than other web hosts on the market. Their VPS services are priced about even to or higher than some other well-known hosting providers.
All of the pricing you see from the image above is the introductory offer for a three-year plan. Rates will increase when your plan renews and if you commit to a shorter term contract length.
With a VPS plan, you’ll have more customizable options. iPage will give you root access and the ability to customize your software and hosting environment.
Dedicated servers
The dedicated servers from iPage are a step above the VPS plans. You can get up to 16GB of RAM, 1,000 GB of disk space, 15 TB, of bandwidth, and 5 IP addresses with a dedicated server
Introductory rates for a three-year contract are as follows:
- Startup — $119.99 per month
- Professional — $151.99 per month
- Enterprise — $191.99 per month
Those plans renew at $149.99, $194.99, and $239.99. Again, for a budget web host, I wouldn’t necessarily say that those price points are cheap.
But the dedicated servers give you complete customization. There are no restrictions to your software and hosting environment, these plans were made for those of you with more technical skill levels.
You won’t be sharing any resources with other websites if you use a dedicated server from iPage.
WordPress hosting
iPage offers web hosting solutions specifically for WordPress. If you want to start building a new WordPress website, there are two plans for you to consider.
- WP Starter — $3.75 per month
- WP Essential — $6.95 per month
These rates are definitely more aligned with iPage’s reputation of being a low-cost web hosting provider.
Both plans come with unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, customized control panel, as well as some pre-installed themes and plugins. The WP Essential plan also has automatic malware removal, added security, and expert WordPress support.
The rates renew at $7.49 and $10.49 per month.
Benefits of iPage for web hosting
Now that you’ve had a chance to review the hosting options offered by iPage, it’s time for us to look at the best parts of this web host.
Low pricing
Based on the plans we’ve covered, you can see that iPage has a wide range of options to choose from. There are some budget hosting solutions, as well as some higher-end offers with added features and functionality.
But ultimately, iPage is best-known for its low pricing. With shared plans offered as low as $1.99 per month, it’s very appealing to new website owners who are on a budget.
The only drawback of this low pricing is that you need to commit for three years and pay for it upfront to get that rate. Unlike other web hosts on the market, iPage does not offer month-to-month plans.
Money-back guarantee
While iPage doesn’t offer free trials or month-to-month rates, the provider still stands behind their services. All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
It’s a “no questions asked” policy. If you’re unsatisfied for any reason, iPage will fully refund your hosting fees.
However, there is a non-refundable $15 fee if you registered your domain with iPage. They set this up to ensure that you won’t lose your domain if you want to transfer it to another provider.
I usually wouldn’t recommend a hosting provider that doesn’t offer some type of money-back promise. So the fact that iPage does this for their customers is definitely a positive. You can try them out knowing that you have a month to change your mind.
High uptime
At the end of the day, performance is really what matters the most. If your web host can’t keep your website up and running, then it’s essentially useless.
So, how well do iPage’s low-cost plans perform? Let’s take a look.
Hosting Facts conducted a study on the performance of 32 different web hosts. They calculated the average uptime rates for each host throughout the course of one year.
As you can see from the chart, iPage cracked the top 10, ranking eighth out of the 32 web hosts in the study. The average uptime rate of 99.975% in 2018 was good enough to land this provider in the top 25% of web hosts.
Overall, that’s a very strong uptime. I’d definitely be happy with that number, especially considering the fact that it’s achievable at such a low cost.
With that said, the length of their downtime was nearly triple the amount of the top host on the list. But I truthfully wasn’t expecting iPage to compete with those figures.
It’s also worth noting that unlike other web hosts, iPage doesn’t guarantee a certain uptime rate. So if they fail to meet a certain standard, you won’t be refunded or compensated in any way. However, they do offer uptime monitoring, so you’ll be notified if your site goes down.
Third-party tools
iPage is compatible with lots of third party tools and platforms. Here’s a list to name a few.
CMS tools:
- WordPress
- Drupal
- Joomla
Forum tools:
- Gbook
- phpBB
- SMF
Blogging tools:
- PixelPost
- B2evolution
Photo gallery tools:
- ZenPhoto
- Gallery2
iPage is also compatible with ecommerce solutions like Zen Cart, OpenCart, PrestaShop, AgoraCart, TomatoCart, and OSCommerce.
Helpful support
We already talked about the money-back guarantee. But beyond that, iPage also offers 24/7 phone and live chat support.
They also have an extensive knowledge base, with informative guides, tutorials, and lots of other helpful information about their platform, tools, and services.
So no matter what type of question you have or problem you run into, I’m confident that you’ll be able to get that solution resolved quickly and efficiently with iPage support.
Other considerations
As expected with a low-cost web hosting provider, iPage has its fair share of flaws. I’ll let you know about some of the downsides of using their services. You can use this information to see if these drawbacks are worth the low price.
Loading speed isn’t ideal
Again, performance is key when it comes to web hosting. Aside from uptime, which we already discussed, loading speed usually the next metric that we look at.
Check out the response times for an iPage test site over the past 12 months.
The average response time from this sample is 755 ms.
Honestly, it’s not terrible. But this number is a little too close to a full second page loading time for my liking.
Plus, this is just a test website. If you’re going to be adding pictures, video, and other media files to your site, it will slow down even more.
While iPage definitely doesn’t have the worst loading times we’ve seen, they certainly don’t have the best either.
Not a “green” web host
This may not be a big deal for some of you, but I figured it was still worth mentioning.
iPage used to have environmentally-friendly web hosting. They had a landing page explaining that they ran on wind power and had a certified green certificate. However, as of late last year, this page has been removed from their website. I tried to Google it and got a 404 error instead.
The web host no longer appears on the EPA Green Power Partner List either.
Extra fees for add-ons
iPage is a low-cost web hosting provider. I think it’s safe to say that we established that. However, their services end up costing more than you might think.
Even if you choose the lowest plan of $1.99 per month for three years, you’ll still have to pay extra for things like:
- Domain privacy
- Website security
- Site backup and restore
- Website builder
These are things that usually come free with other hosting providers.
So in your head, you might be thinking $2 per month for 36 months is just $72. Not a bad deal, right?
But as you can see from this checkout page, you’ll end up paying significantly more than that amount for some pretty basic features.
Paid site migrations
To entice customers to switch providers, most web hosts will offer a free site migration. But iPage doesn’t do that for new customers.
It will cost you $150 for their tech support to move your site to iPage servers. That cost only covers one website, which is expensive. To put that into perspective for you, Bluehost also charges $150 for site migratations, but they’ll move up to five sites for that same rate.
Unless you’re a tech wizard, you probably don’t want to try and migrate your website on your own. So this is another cost that you’ll have to incur.
Conclusion
Do I recommend iPage for web hosting?
In short, yes. They have low-cost shared hosting plans, as well as options for VPS, dedicated servers, and WordPress hosting.
Just be aware that those advertised rates have some conditions attached to them. You’ll need to commit for three years to get the best price, and then your rates will go up when it’s time to renew. Plus, you’ll need to pay extra for all of your add-ons.
With all of that in mind, iPage is still a reputable and reliable web host with high uptime rates and great customer support.
For those of you who are on a budget but still aren’t sold on iPage, check out my list of the best cheap web hosting services for some alternative solutions.
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