http://www.bluehost.com and http://www.ipage.com
Choosing a hosting plan is one of the most important decisions you’ll make when setting up your own website for business or recreational purposes. Each company has a great selection of website tools, depending on your needs and future plans for your business. Here, we’ll compare hosting plans to provide you with the best information in which to base your decision.
Plan Features and Pricing
Bluehost has a plethora of features to offer for their fee of $6.95 per month, including the regular suite of standard products such as unlimited hosting space, unlimited domains, and a free site builder. iPage offers a similar suite of services at a fee of only $3.50 per month, but Bluehost has extras that iPage lacks, such as an autoresponder, a free domain forever, and 1000 additional FTP accounts, which are important if you are looking to the future and building up your business.
Reliability
Bluehost, providing hosting services since 1996, has a proven track record as far as uptime and reliable servers and promises a 99.9% uptime guarantee. iPage is a relatively new service, launched in October of 2009, and does not provide an uptime guarantee. In addition, Bluehost owns their own data center, and has an outstanding power backup strategy in case of power outages. This is an important factor since downtime equals lost sales, lost traffic, and lost potential customers.
Support
Bluehost provides customer support 24/7 through Live Chat, a toll-free phone line, a forum, blog, and help center and email. iPage also provides similar support, but again, Bluehost has a seasoned customer service staff while iPage is still relatively new. Good customer support is a necessity when establishing your own business, and both hosting companies provide a variety of ways in which to contact them should you run into problems.
General Aspects
iPage seems suited to small and medium-sized web sites, while Bluehost offers solutions to businesses who need room to grow and have plans for the future. While the suite of basic services are very similar, Bluehost has a proven history for reliability, uptime, and customer service support. If you are just starting out and don’t plan on future growth, iPage might be the hosting solution for you. However, if your goals include growing your business to its fullest potential, Bluehost has everything required to accommodate increased traffic and provides you with the tools necessary to handle your business’s development and growing needs.
Overall, your future plans for your business play a big part in choosing your future hosting service. For a small to medium-sized business or a personal website, it might make sense to utilize the services of a cheaper web hosting service, or if downtime is not a concern. However, if your future goals include growth and guaranteed uptime with solid customer service, Bluehost is definitely the choice for you.
Visit the BlueHost Website (http://www.bluehost.com)
