IX Web Hosting Review

IX Web Hosting got their start in 1999 and have grown to own their own datacenter in Columbus, Ohio equipped with their own staff managing and maintaining their service. They boast hosting over 500,000 websites and continuing to grow.

Shared Hosting Packages Review

I thought I would include the above screenshot to reference my review of their current pricing and the way their web hosting plans work at the time of this review (and has been my issue with this provider for years now).

If you look carefully at the image above, there are three plans and it looks like the “Unlimited Pro” plan offers more features over the other 2 cheaper-to-renew accounts. However, based on our in-depth research, this is not the case. In fact, the only discernible difference we found was at the bottom, the free domain registrations. Everything else, as far as we can tell, are all the same.

They all offer unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and unlimited domains to be hosted. Again, if you reference the image, the “Unlimited Pro: has “Unlimited” next to the checkmark whereas the others don’t, which, to normal people, would indicate that the other two have limits in place when, in fact, they don’t.

Regarding dedicated IPs, if you don’t read that tiny text in italics, you aren’t going to get 15 free dedicated IPs if you select the middle plan. The are giving you one free with the ability to get more IPs as needed for the price referenced (which, OK sure, that’s another item that changes depending on the plan).

On a positive side of things, IX Web Hosting does offer many great things with their plan. Their service provides a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a free site builder, 24/7 support, and an above-standard 90-day money back guarantee. Most hosts only offer a 30-day guarantee so this is a nice upgrade from the standard.

Pricing Review

The above is frustrating to me, but then I ran a fake checkout and found more surprises. The pricing shown all require a 2-year commitment. Additionally, if you want to register for less than a year in advance, you can expect to pay a $30 setup fee. Here’s the breakdown on two of their plans so you can see the full picture.

Automatic Add-Ons Enabled

When you are checking out with your chosen web hosting plan, be sure to watch for automatically enabled add-ons that you likely don’t need. At the time of this IX Web Hosting review, we found “SiteLock Basic Plan” enabled by default for $1.25/mo. This offers a scan of your website for spyware and viruses, however, every decent web host already scans their services to protect all customers on a server.

Our Observation

Unless you need more “free domain registrations,” just pick the Expert Plan. In fact, register your domains at a domain registrar like GoDaddy and make your decision easier.

Additionally, we found that their “Why IX Web Hosting” page shows conflicting information. That page shows a 30-day guarantee while other pages are showing a 90-day guarantee. We took a look at their “Terms of Service” page and found both policies in place.

• 30 Day Money Back Guarantee – Your first 30 days, if you don’t like it, you can get a full refund.
• 90 Day Money Back Guarantee – After your first 30 day period is over, you can still request a refund, however, it will only cover your current month plus whatever services you’ve prepaid in advance. It will not cover setup fees, over-usage fees and you’ll pay for your domain registration.

This is the first hosting company I’ve seen offer 2 guarantee policies. THey should just switch to an “Anytime Refund Policy” and cover refunds based on what is left on a customer’s prepay. To me, that would be far less confusing and much more comforting to the new customer signing up.

The Upgrade Path

Should you need to upgrade from shared hosting to a stronger server package, they do offer a very nice upgrade path. They offer VPS Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Windows Hosting and more if needed.

Customer Support Review

IX Web Hosting offers technical support via a toll-based telephone number, a ticket system, email support and live chat. We wrote this review really early in the morning, 1AM and found the live chat system available for accepting questions.

Other customer support options considered in our review include the company blog, social media (Facebook, Twitter and Google+), tutorials section, FAQs and more. For the company blog, we found it outdated with the last post over 7 months old at the time of this review. A quick glance at their Twitter account indicates inactivity with the last non-retweet being over 7 months old.