iPage, Host Monster, Blue Host – anyone used any of these for domain names + hosting?

Question:   I’m looking at iPage, Host Monster and Blue Host for my website.  Has anyone used any of these for domain names and web hosting?  Which one(s) have you had good or bad experiences with? Can you recommend another if you got good service?

Answer:

I’ve used all three of them over the years.  They all have unlimited hosting space and bandwidth, plus a lot of other “unlimited features”, so I’ll just name the things that are outstanding about each one.

iPage – A very popular web host.

• Has the lowest pricing of the 3 you mentioned.
• Has an anytime money-back guarantee.  They’ll refund the unused portion of your hosting fees should you ever decide to close your account.
• Does not have ANY inode limits.  I personally contacted them to find out.  Most providers give you unlimited web space, but then limit the number of files you can have on your account.  Those files are called inodes.  iPage has NO limit.
• Easy to use vDeck control panel.  A lot of people complain that control panels are too complex and “I don’t need all that stuff”.  Then you’ll love vDeck.  Clean, straight forward, easy to use.
• Eco-friendly green web hosting.
• Super customer support.  Always friendly.

BlueHost / HostMonster – This is actually the same company.  I had a HM account years ago and I currently have a BH account.  Anyone can use it, but the control panel is geared more towards developers who “need the geek”.  If you don’t want that stuff, then just don’t use it.  Menu categories are collapsible.

• For the geeks who actually want lots of tools in the control panel, then both BH and HM deliver.  They use cPanel control pane, but they have some tools that other cPanel hosts don’t.
• Both MySQL and PostgreSQL.
• I mentioned those inodes, above.  They both allow 200,000 inodes AND they actually have a tool called File Count that lets you monitor them.  Other hosts don’t offer that feature.
• MySQL Usage gives per database usage stats.
• Most hosts using cPanel have the Fantastico 1-click software installer.  BH and HM use SimpleScripts.