iPower.com Company Overview
IPOWER.com launched their web hosting services in 2001 and experienced rapid growth. Their headquarter is located in Arizona and their 2 data centers are both located in Massachusetts. IPOWER hosts more than 700,000 clients from over 100 countries. Being powered by 100% wind energy, IPOWER – as a green web host – is contributing their part to protect the environment.
IPOWER offers a wide range of web hosting services, including 3 shared Linux packages, Windows hosting, VPS hosting and additional services like SSL certificates, web design and search engine marketing. They use a self-developed control panel (Vdeck) and give more than $125 in free marketing bonuses, e.g. for Google, Yahoo and other big players in the online industry.
IPOWER offers a 30-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 support through a toll-free telephone number, live chat and email.
Price Value
The “Pro Plan” Linux hosting package at IPOWER.com starts from $3.95 /month (if signed up as a 1-year plan) and offers a free domain name, unlimited storage space, unlimited bandwidth and the possibility to host unlimited domains in this single package. The feature-rich hosting plan offers 2,500 email accounts, a free web site builder with 100 templates, marketing guides and more than $125 in marketing bonuses. What we like about the package is, that despite the relatively low monthly price, the billing cycle is short (only 1 year) what makes the package pretty affordable.
The package offers many programing features, such as PHP 4 + 5, Perl, Python, mySQL, SSI, FrontPage Extensions and custom error pages. The ecommerce-features include several shop-systems and PayPal connection. Additionally, the package provides the customer with some applications, like a blog (WordPress), a bulletin board, a guest book and a chat application.
The “Windows Pro Plan” costs $6.95 /month (if signed up as a 1-year plan) and includes a free domain name, unlimited storage space, unlimited bandwidth and 1,000 email accounts. It comes with support for Active Server Pages (ASP), ASP.NET 2.0/3.0 with AJAX, ODBC support for Access Databases, SSL secure server, CGI-BIN, PHP 4 + 5 support, PERL, PHP 4+5, mySQL, FrontPage Extensions and many more features.
We rate the price value of both, the feature-rich Linux and Windows web hosting packages as very high.
Reliability and Performance
IPOWER provides their services through two state-of-the-art data centers in Massachusetts. They contain more than 800 servers and half a Petabyte of file storage. IPOWER’s servers process an estimated 5.5 Gigabits per second.
Both data centers are connected to the internet with multiple Gigabit and fiberoptic connections of diverse backbone-providers. Their front-end network consists of dual redundant M7I routers and 2 firewalls, based on IDP technology, cross-connected to the outside world with BGP border gateway protocol. This setup guarantees for total network reliability and lightning-fast network-performance.
The server architecure is split into several pools of servers for each application (mail, web, FTP) with RAID data storage devices behind it that hold the files. In this way, all the servers of one application-pool (e.g. all incoming-mail servers) can be customized for only this service, allowing a high specialization of the software setup and thus very high reliability and performance. IPOWER uses DELL high-quality servers.
The incoming requests are distributed to the servers by a dual Big Iron load balancer. The customer’s files (that are stored in network-attached RAID units) give every web server the possibility to access every customer’s data. Every machine is clustered with an identical machine, that immediately takes over in case the primary machine crashes. The whole data is additionally backed up regularly to another set of storage units. This pooled-architecture grants for highest reliability and performance, that is possible.
The data center itself is 24/7 protected by security guards and monitored by highly trained network security personal. Both data centers run on N+1 power (both A/C and D/C) and are protected by fire suppression systems and emergency electricity backups.
We rate IPOWER’s data center, server setup and network to be of highest quality, outstanding reliability and lighting-fast performance.
Features and Control Panel
IPOWER uses their proprietary control panel, vDeck. It provides more than 200 services and tools to the customer to manage every aspect of his web hosting account. Additionally, it includes wizards that help to install complex applications and a site builder with more than 100 templates.
vDeck is a very good and complete software to manage hosting accounts and build web sites.
Support
IPOWER provides 24/7 support through a toll-free telephone number, live chat and an email ticket system. When we checked out support response times they were quiet fast. Although there are other hosting providers that guarantee less than 2 minutes hold time (something IPOWER doesn’t guarantee), the responsiveness of the support can be ranked high. Support staff is friendly, competent and helpful.
Additionally, IPOWER.com assist their customers with many flash video tutorials, a vast knowledgebase and an FAQ section.
IPOWER support can be ranked among the top 10% service levels in the industry.
Conclusion
It has good reasons, why IPOWER grew so fast since they launched in 2001. Offering a wide variety of web hosting and additional services, IPOWER now hosts more than 700,000 customer’s websites.
The price value of both, the Windows and the Linux web hosting packages, are extremely high. The plans are feature-rich and priced very reasonable with short billing cycles (only 1 year), what makes them very affordable.
IPOWER’s state-of-the-art data centers grant for outstanding security, performance and reliability. The prorietary control panel vDeck is a complete and good solution for managing hosting accounts. IPOWER’s 24/7 toll-free support is responsive and of professional quality compared to other players in the web hosting industry.
We see IPOWER.com as a highly professional web hosting provider. They have made their homework and provide highest hosting quality at very affordable price in both, the Linux and the Windows platform.
