Web Site Hosting Reviews

Overview

Ipowerweb started in late 2001. Even though they are not as old as many of the other web hosting companies we have reviewed, they have grew to become one of the largest web hosting companies on the internet today. They now have over 220,000 web hosting clients. Their simplicity of their offerings and huge advertising campaigns throughout the net helped sparked this convention. However, along the way, they experience some growing pains in customer service, but light years in hosting technology with their revolutionary Vdeck control panel software.

Features

Ipowerweb don't have a wide range solutions with difference in space, bandwidth, email accounts and other. They offer only two packages: one for Linux and other for Windows platform.
Their Linux-Based Bussiness-Pro is complete and all-inclusive solution for everyone - beginners, professionals and businesses. It includes 400 Email accounts, Browser-Based email, CGI-BIN, Perl, MySQL, PHP, SSI, Web stats, E-commerce features, Java Plug-Ins, Marketing and Promotion tolls and much more.
If you prefer Windows OS platform you can subscribe Windows Pro which has similar features but costs about $2 extra.

Control Panel

iPowerWeb develops and uses its own control panel software - vDeck. It has been using CPanel for the last few years. New customers will now be placed on servers using the new vDeck. iPowerWeb have also integrated the iPage Web Builder and Marketing Center directly into the new control panel.

Customer Support

Customers can interact with iPowerWeb's customer service team using a number of different methods. They offer e-mail, live chat, and toll-free telephone support for customers in the U.S. and Canada. iPowerWeb is generally pretty responsive using all three methods, probably because they have 80 people serving customers at all times. Responses to e-mails are generally fast, and somebody is always present in their live chat sessions. Telephone support (1-310-314-1608) is also fairly responsive if you prefer to use this method. iPowerWeb also has an enormous help section which probably answers 70% of the questions they receive via e-mail, live chat, and telephone. The help section features 170 questions and answers, and includes an interactive flash tutorial for customers who need help in setting up and configuring their web site. Out of all of the hosts I have reviewed, iPowerWeb probably offers the most resourceful on site self-help. This is probably because they have been in business for so long and have literally been asked the same questions over and over again.

Ipowerweb Tutorials
iPowerWeb has prepared over 100 tutorials for their customers, which can be located in the new 'Support Center'. You can find walkthroughs and flash videos on common tasks and various software configurations. The tutorials have been divided into 4 categories - email, file transfer, vDeck control panel and misc. Email tutorials show you how to configure your email software, such as Outlook Express and Eudora. File transfer tutorials show you how to configure and use your FTP clients, such as WS_FTP and CuteFTP. vDeck category has the most tutorials. It will show you how to use all the features in your vDeck control panel.

iPage Web Site Bulder
This tool is easy to use and is able to design professional looking web sites using their web templates. There are some flash tutorials on how to use iPage in their support center. iPage is an original tool created by iPowerWeb and can be found inside the control panel.

Marketing Center. This is an area where you can find a lot of articles and free tools. There are over 50 articles related to designing and marketing your web site here. For free tools, you can use the link submitter to submit your site to all major search engines, and use the link checker to check for bad links on your website. You can also create meta tags for your web pages, check your web site position in search engines, etc.

Conclusion

iPowerWeb is one of the fastest growing web hosts available today. They are doing a great job in customer support and have a good reputation in handling their servers and network infrastructure. However, their free promotional tools are not officially supported, so if you get stuck, or have a question, you're on your own. We imagine that for a novice webmaster, this might prove awkward. Worse, their promotional package is on a two-week trial only, which you only learn on the date of expiration.