Based within the land of chilly winter however heat folks (sure, we imply Canada), iWeb is a long-standing website hosting firm with a historical past going again to 1996 when it began out below the identify of Formatek. Two years later, its founders, Eric Chouinard and Martin Leclair consolidated Formatek and the remainder of their assortment of web providers into iWeb (often known as iWeb Applied sciences), in addition to established the corporate’s first colocation and server internet hosting services in Montreal (Canada).
At this time, iWeb operates three further eco-friendly knowledge facilities in Montreal, in addition to PoPs (factors of presence) in Toronto (Canada), New York (the USA), Dallas (the USA), Santa Clara (the USA), Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and Singapore (Singapore). As of at this time, these knowledge facilities present internet hosting for 1000's of companies in over 150 nations across the globe.
In 2013 iWeb was acquired by INAP, an IT infrastructure big from the USA and the corporate behind the primary commercially accessible cloud computing service primarily based on OpenStack.
Lastly, in 2021 iWeb was acquired by Leaseweb, a Dutch-based cloud computing and web providers firm with workplaces around the globe.
iWeb’s official web site appears to be like considerably gloomy (an excessive amount of grey for our style), but it feels very skilled, user-friendly, and crammed with all the mandatory info. The identical might be mentioned for iWeb’s official weblog if it didn’t undergo from a illness plaguing comparable blogs and that's not being up to date for years (since 2019, to be exact).
Sadly, the identical rule applies to their Fb and Twitter accounts. 
Plans and pricing
iWeb’s scope of providers appears to be meant for high-end customers with its cloud servers, personal cloud, devoted servers, server clusters, server administration, colocation, and more. Nevertheless, even in case you’re not looking for one thing at this degree you'll want to stick round since there are some good (though not low-cost) choices for much less bold customers as nicely.
Let’s take iWeb’s VPS-like cloud servers for instance. With any of those plans you’ll get limitless inbound and outbound visitors, 100Mbps of public bandwidth, one public (WAN) IP handle, one personal (LAN) IP handle, a 100% uptime assure, and use of their Montreal knowledge heart.
Along with the entire above, the least costly plan begins at $43.80 monthly (or $0.02 per hour) and contains 1GB of RAM, 1 CPU, and 50GB of storage (SSD). With all accessible plans, you possibly can select between Linux and Home windows servers, with the latter being (not surprisingly) costlier.
iWeb guarantees a so-called 30-day satisfaction assure, which, in idea, ought to perform as a regular money-back assure. The method is much less hassle-free than we anticipated, but it surely's good figuring out that the choice in query is on the market nonetheless.
The supported fee strategies with iWeb embrace bank cards (Visa, MasterCard, and American Specific), checks, wire transfers, automated financial institution withdrawals, and money funds.
Ease of use
To launch your cloud (or some other) server with iWeb, the very first thing you’ll have to do is to create your account with them, or just check in if you have already got one. Additionally it is advisable to learn SLA earlier than going any additional.
Creating an account entails surrendering a great deal of your knowledge together with a full identify, a phone quantity, and a bodily handle. Seconds upon sending a request on your account to be created, you’ll proceed to iWeb’s Management Heart, a stripped-back console the place you’ll (lastly) be capable of deploy a server.
There you’ll discover each ready-made and utterly customizable hybrid options on supply, so in case you’re undecided which one is greatest suited on your wants, you possibly can Try your luck with iWeb’s gross sales employees. In any case, step one is to determine between co-called sensible servers, cloud servers, and traditional (devoted) servers. After coming into all of your fee info, you’ll be supplied to determine in regards to the package deal particulars together with GB of RAM, variety of vCPUs, and OS (a couple of variations of Linux and Home windows can be found).
After making a fee and wrapping all the things up, your server needs to be up and operating in lower than a couple of minutes, and impressively so. iWeb doesn’t present industry-standard cPanel with its cloud and sensible internet hosting packages, however a minimalistic custom-made management panel talked about above (Management Heart) with which you’ll be capable of monitor and handle your server.
Nevertheless, in case you went with a devoted server, iWeb presents each cPanel and Plesk (relying on the OS you selected), two of the preferred management panels in the marketplace. Customers with no less than some expertise ought to really feel of their ingredient immediately and people with out it shouldn’t fall far behind.
Pace and expertise
Among the many the explanation why to decide on them, iWeb highlights their efficiency, reliability, and nice worth for the cash. To measure the pace efficiency of iWeb's official web site we employed GTmetrix (our software of alternative) and carried out a number of checks all through the day. The outcomes had been fairly comparable, warring between A and B as a closing grade, each of that are fairly good. The positioning took 6.1 seconds to completely load, which is swifter than the common outcome, though not image excellent.
As for uptime, iWeb presents an SLA-backed 100% community uptime and energy assure, which is nice to have though there's a good probability you received’t need to name on it. We are saying this as a result of throughout our two-week testing interval (through UptimeRobot) we failed to trace down any downtime in any respect and just a few minor oscillations in response time, the common being 340.33 milliseconds.
Assist
Though iWeb's help employees claims that “your satisfaction is their priority” this doesn’t appear to be true in case you haven’t subscribed for his or her providers but. Previous to signing up we despatched them a message through chat with a couple of easy questions on their refund coverage and haven’t obtained a reply to this date. After creating an account with iWeb we awaited a welcome e-mail with details about our account in useless since none had been despatched.
Perhaps your expertise with iWeb's pre-sales help might be utterly totally different from ours, and we'd merely be unfortunate. Nevertheless, critiques from their (we suppose former) customers on platforms similar to HostAdvice, TrustPilot, and HostSearch are unusually much like ours, which is one thing to think about particularly if competent buyer help is one thing you care about. In any case, iWeb's help employees is on the market through “live” chat, ticket, and phone.
There’s not a lot to be advised about iWeb's self-help choices besides that their knowledgebase appears to be like dated but it surely’s fairly complete. Additionally it is accessible in French and Spanish along with the English language.
The competitors
If eco-friendly internet hosting is your factor, each GreenGeeks and iWeb are good candidates to think about. Each hosts present all kinds of internet hosting choices with server areas everywhere in the world. Nevertheless, GreenGeeks goes a step additional by offering entry-level shared internet hosting packages at pocket-friendly pricing for customers with less complicated wants. They're considerably stronger by way of buyer help as nicely.
One other worthy various to iWeb is a US-based HostGator. Each hosts are a good selection for tech-savvy customers who don’t want plenty of hand-holding, nonetheless, those that do are higher off with HostGator.
Bluehost and iWeb are considerably comparable by way of internet hosting choices and options, however differ in relation to pricing, with Bluehost being rather more inexpensive, significantly for individuals who determine to commit for no less than a yr. Along with this, Bluehost’s how-tos are extremely straightforward to know and comply with, making all the things simpler for brand new customers.
The final (however not least) host we’re going to call is DigitalOcean, a US-based website hosting big with a decade of expertise below its belt and knowledge facilities everywhere in the globe. Though each DigitalOcean and iWeb are geared in the direction of customers with some quantity of technical know-how, DigitalOcean is the perfect match for builders who wish to deploy cloud infrastructure that received’t go away a gap of their pocket. However, iWeb presents a money-back assure (whereas DigitalOcean doesn’t), so you possibly can verify them out for your self with none worries.
Remaining verdict
In case you are a veteran webmaster looking for a reliable host that may give you customizable and simply scalable devoted IT infrastructure options, iWeb is price testing. Nevertheless, if you have not had a lot expertise with all of this, the silence of iWeb’s help employees will make you're feeling at a loss, and any further providers from the technical group will increase the (already appreciable) value.
For a superior number of beginner-friendly internet hosting options that may match most budgets, check out hosts similar to HostGator, GreenGeeks, and Bluehost.
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