Question:

I don’t know much about companies who host web sites but I have a feeling some of these extras being offered are of no use or aren’t worth the money. This site is for a non-profit charity so spending the least amount of money is very important. If someone who knows about this stuff can help I would appreciate knowing what is important to have and what isn’t. I found these on a site called ipage.com but I don’t think I will use their services as I have found better reviews for other sites. anyway thanks in advance.

Here’s the list that I copied and pasted.

1. Prevent Identity Theft & Secure Your Data – Just $ 12.95/year – Identify security vulnerabilities that could lead to Identity Theft and allow hackers to steal sensitive information. Exclusive registration price! A $ 59.95 value. $12.95 per year
2. Get a JumpStart on Your Website. Just $ 12.95 – Don’t wait until your site is built to get online! We’ll launch your email and a temporary Web page while you work on your site. We’ll even give you tips on getting started. $12.95 Charged one time
3. Directory Listing for $ 1/month – Reach thousands of potential customers. Add your site to our directory and get a listing, searchable by the keyword and category of your choice. Exclusive Registration Offer! Just $ 12/year (regularly $ 29.95). $12.00 per year
4. Automate Your Site Backup for $ 12.95/year – Protect your site with this automated daily backup. Easily restore lost and damaged files directly to your account. $12.95 per year
5. Drive Traffic to Your Site. Only $ 9.95/year – Optimize and submit your site to business directories and top search engines with SubmitNet Basic. Raising your search engine rankings will help customers find your site. $9.95 per year.

I appreciate the help!

Answer:

iPage is a good web hosting, but I’ll just go right down the list and explain each one.

1. Prevent Identity Theft - This isn’t to protect your identity online, it’s to protect data that you may be collecting about other people like names and addresses or other sensitive data. It’s an SSL certificate. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re placing an order online or entering personal information to create a membership. You may have noticed the URL changes from http to https. That indicates it’s a secure transaction. That’s what that is.
2. Website Jump Start - Instead of the default under construction page, they’ll create a custom home page with your business information that can be used as a placeholder while you work on your site. You have to fill out a little form to give them that information. At that point, you could have done it yourself. They’ll also set up 2 email addresses for you. They also explore the iPage control panel with you. You can do all of that yourself with the iPage Getting Started User Guide and that’s free.
3. Directory Listing – They’ll add your site to their directory listing. I looked up one of the sites on Google from that directory and the listing didn’t come up within the first 2 pages of the search results. If you do it now it’s $1/month. If you do it later it’s $2.50/month. I really don’t see the value in this, especially since they are “nofollow” links. That means you are not being given any link juice. That means that if Google bot visits that directory page to index it, Google will NOT follow the link to your site and index your site. You can do that on your own by listing your site in the Google Webmaster Tools for free. You can get far better results with item #5 on the list.
4. Automated Site Backup - I do recommend if you put any type of value on your site. I personally don’t have time to deal with website backups so having this automated is awesome. Plus, if you accidentally delete a file you can easily recover just that one file from backup. This would be a good thing to get if you change your site frequently. BUT, it only backs up the file system. It doesn’t backup databases like those used for WordPress. For that I recommend a good WordPress backup plugin like WP-DBManager. You can schedule backups, repairs and optimizations. You can even have the backups emailed to you.
5. Traffic to Your Site - If you want your site found on local search engines like Google Local, Yahoo Local, Local Yellow Pages, etc. This would be a good thing if you don’t know how to do it yourself, especially for $9.95/year. That’s hella cheap.

Bottom line, you need to evaluate what you want that website to do for your organization.

If you value your data, get the backup plan.

If you want your site to be found in the search engines, then get the traffic package. FYI: How you phrase your site’s description is going to be EXTREMELY important with that because if you optimized for the wrong keywords, it’s useless.

If you need to protect transactions on your site, then get the identity theft protection.