iPage Web Hosting – No Ads

Question:

I want a web host with unlimited space, data transfer, and traffic, a free domain name, good security, a site builder, something thats good for blogs, and that doesnt have ads. I looked at iPage but they seem to have a lot of ads. Any good suggestions? That are preferably under 5$ a month? Thanks!!

Answer:

I don’t know what you were looking at, but iPage does not have ads.  It’s paid hosting and no host would dare put ads on a paid account.  Are you sure you’re not confusing them with some other company?

Anyhoo, iPage is great for blogs.  The WordPress software is already loaded.  After you purchase your account, log into your control panel and go to the Scripts and Addons category.  Then click on the SimpleScripts software installer.  You’ll find WordPress in there.  Oh, and there will be NO ads on your WordPress blog, either.  :)

iPage does have all you’re looking for – unlimited space, data transfer, and traffic, a free domain name, good security.  However, I highly, HIGHLY suggest you buy your own domain name instead of getting the free one.  That’s not an ipage thing, that’s true of any web hosting company offer free names.  If you buy your own name and if you ever decide to host it someplace else, you won’t have it buy it back from them.

You can get really cheap domain names with free privacy protection from NameCheap.  There’s a coupon code on that page.

After you buy your name, go to the iPage order form and check the radio button that says Transfer An Existing Domain.  You’re not actually transferring anything.  It’s worded pretty lame.  It assumes you already have web hosting and you want to transfer your hosting to ipage.  That’s all.  You domain name will still be managed at the registrar.

Then after you buy hosting, log into your NameCheap account and change the DNS nameservers to ns1.ipage.com and ns2.ipage.com.  They have a great support team so if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact them.

I also suggest not using any site builders on any web host.  Again, if you ever want to move your site, you won’t be able to take the site with you because those site builders don’t create HTML pages.  They create PHP pages and dynamically fetch the data from a MySQL database.  Use WordPress instead.  Yes, WordPress also uses MySQL, but exporting from one host to another is the same.  You can even take your themes and plugins with you.  You can’t do that with site builders because the themes are part of the software on the web server.