IX has been hosting since 1999, that is about 18 years of web hosting experience that most cannot compete with. The company guarantees that your site will be up 99.9% of the time, and offers unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and hosted domains. It’s an easy transition to IX because of their flexible plans and integration with the most popular hosting apps out there like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and more. There have been many satisfied clients who swear by IX and have been with them for almost a decade. But recently, there has been a rise in the complaints about them. Is it still “Trusted. Safe. Reliable.”?
Plans
IX offers Linux Hosting, VPS Hosting, Cloud Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Windows Hosting, and hosting tools. Because of that, it can be really confusing looking at their plans and prices, if you don’t know exactly what you want. Let’s start with their Linux shared hosting plans.
| Expert Plan | Business Plus | Unlimited Pro |
| $3.95/ mo (promo price) | $7.95/ mo (promo price) | $7.95/ mo (promo price) |
| Up to 2 IPs | Up to 3 IPs | Up to 15 IPs |
| 1 free domain | 2 free domains | 3 free domains |
Each of their plans contains core features such as unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domains, and unlimited data transfer. While they support up to a specific number of IPs, only one is free, and then it’s $2/ mo for the Expert Plan for a 2nd IP, $1.50/mo for each extra IP on Business Plus, and $1/mo for each extra IP on Unlimited Pro.
Windows shared hosting plans:
| Business Plus | Unlimited Pro |
| 3 Free Dedicated IPs | 15 Free Dedicated IPs |
| 2 Free Domains | 3 Free Domains |
If you’re not too fond of shared hosting, get VPS. IX offers two different Linux plans:
| X4 Linux | X8 Linux |
| $54.95/ mo (promo price) | $89.95/ mo (promo price) |
| 4x CPU Cores | 8x CPU Cores |
| 768MB Guaranteed RAM | 2048MB Guaranteed RAM |
| 1500GB Data Transfer | 2000GB Data Transfer |
| 50GB Storage | 100GB Storage |
| 2 Dedicated IPs | 2 Dedicated IPs |
| Choose between cPanel/ Plesk | Choose between cPanel/ Plesk |
You can also choose between 2 different Windows VPS Plans:
| X4 Windows | X8 Windows |
| $69.95/ mo (promo price) | $104.95/ mo (promo price) |
| 4x CPU Cores | 8x CPU Cores |
| 768MB Guaranteed RAM | 2048MB Guaranteed RAM |
| 1500GB Data Transfer | 2000GB Data Transfer |
| 50GB Storage | 100GB Storage |
| 2 Dedicated IPs | 2 Dedicated IPs |
| Plesk 10 | Plesk 10 |
Both VPS plans include unlimited hosted domains, burstable RAM, and complete root/ admin access.
If you opt for Cloud plans, Linux and Windows have three each and they’re a lot more costly than the previous ones.
Linux
| Professional Cloud Plan | Business Cloud Plan | Corporate Cloud Plan |
| $99.99/ mo (promo price) | $174.99/ mo (promo price) | $249.99/ mo (promo price) |
| 2x CPU Cores | 2x CPU Cores | 4x CPU Cores |
| 1GB Guaranteed RAM | 4GB Guaranteed RAM | 4GB Guaranteed RAM |
| 300GB Data Transfer | 900GB Data Transfer | 1500GB Data Transfer |
| 20GB SAN Storage | 60GB SAN Storage | 150GB SAN Storage |
| 2 Dedicated IPs | 2 Dedicated IPs | 2 Dedicated IPs |
| cPanel add- on | cPanel add- on | cPanel add- on |
Windows
| Professional Cloud Windows | Business Cloud Windows | Corporate Cloud Windows |
| $129.99/ mo (promo price) | $194.99/ mo (promo price) | $269.99/ mo (promo price) |
| 2x CPU Cores | 2x CPU Cores | 4x CPU Cores |
| 2GB Guaranteed RAM | 4GB Guaranteed RAM | 4GB Guaranteed RAM |
| 300GB Data Transfer | 900GB Data Transfer | 1500GB Data Transfer |
| 40GB SAN Storage | 60GB SAN Storage | 150GB SAN Storage |
| 2 Dedicated IPs | 2 Dedicated IPs | 2 Dedicated IPs |
| Plesk add- on | Plesk add- on | Plesk add- on |
Performance
Before you choose a host, it’s important for you to be sure that it doesn’t have any performance issues. Go to isitdownrightnow.com to check for the response time. This is measured in milliseconds (ms) and will help give you an idea of what to expect if you choose IX. If it’s under 20ms, then it’s great. But the average is 21-50ms. I checked, and it’s at 20.51ms. Average, but good enough. But a graph below showing the last ten automatic checks, show IX having an average of around 60ms. They may have made some improvements, and that’s good, but you should dig around more if you’re looking for quick loading sites.
Aside from response time, uptime is one of the most important things for you to look at for a hosting provider. IX guarantees 99.9% uptime and tier 3 redundant data center. This is great because nothing’s worse than having to deal with your site being down all the time.
Normally, a host would have your site’s data on two servers; meaning you have one back up. IX gives you two backups. That’s three servers that contain your data. So even if your site is unlucky enough to go down, you’ll still have a piece of mind. They also have two industrial diesel generators on standby in case of any power outages. It’s nice to know that they’ve gone to these lengths to make sure and to let us know, that our sites will be up and running no matter what.
In order to make sure your site is protected from hackers, IX has come up with the following:
- Spam Filtering
- Malware Monitoring
- McAfee Secure &Tested Daily
- E-commerce Hackershield
- On Staff Developers
- PCI- Compliant
- Dedicated Malware Team
- 24/7 Admin Coverage
- Data Center
IX is also e-commerce friendly with their free one click, easy install online store. They also have a selection of shopping carts that are likewise easy to install. You can get a free quote on professional web design services for your business as well as e-commerce tutorials. Their eCommerice SSL Certificate, worth $49.95 per year, is available as an add-on to help secure your business.
There are many other add-ons such as the Merchant Account & Gateway so you can process credit card payments, Website Moving Service to move your site to IX with ease, SiteLock to protect you and your visitors from hackers, and Site Builder to give you a professional looking site to decrease bounce rate and increase conversions.
While opinions on their performance and available features may vary depending on your needs, one thing everybody can agree on is the need for good customer service. And sadly, that’s what IX undeniably needs to work on. Some clients have said that while they’ve had issues about their sites going down, their deciding factor was the customer support’s failure to assist and resolve their issues.
While IX has been around long and is an okay web hosting provider, it seems that there are a few things they need to work on and their customer support won’t be able to help you out right away if you get them and have to deal with those issues yourself.
