Why IXWebHosting is NOT Recommended for WordPress Site
IX had been our top recommended web hosting during 2008-2010 for its rich feature and low cost plans. However, it's not in our recommendation list anymore. Especially when referring to wordpress support, ixwebhosting is far beyond a good hosting provider. This article briefly introduce our wordpress website experience on ixwebhosting server and shows why it's not recommended.
We got into ix hosting service in 2008 by a famous community recommendation. It's not so cheap to host a website at that time but ix managed to provide almost everything unlimited for very good prices. WordPress is our primary choice because we would like to keep things as simple as possible. Thus wordpress is the only service we ran on hosting server. For safe choice, we selected "Unlimited Pro" plan then added all our 4 sites to account. At the very beginning, everything seems to be perfect but as our website grow up and frequent wordpress core updates, things become worse and worse.
Outdated WordPress Installer
For new wordpress setup, auto installer script is always the best option because we don't have to deal with file downloading/uploading and related database configuration. Ixwebhosting installer is still kept on wordpress 2.9 which is years back old. Comparing to the popular installer pack like softaculous and simplescripts, the ix installer is pretty outdate with very limited scripts library
That means we have to use manual option like in old days. It would be a big challenge for many wordpress beginners because not everybody can handle the process perfectly. We previously have everything migrated from another web host so there's no installation for our case, but when we decided to setup a new blog and thought their installer could do quick help, it completely disappointed us. Thus if you need wordpress auto installation especially when you need frequent installation, ix is not a good place at all.
Frequent Google webmaster warning
We can accept to setup the wordpress installation manually with no problem, but the next problem is it can't be functional properly. About 3 months after we put all websites online, we received multiple email from partner says googlebots can not access sites and it's loading very slow for some specific periods of the day. I thought it should be temperoral issue so just waited more few days but problem still. We tried to use new server account but the problem did not solve. We monitored those websites personally via third party service for more accurate reports, but surprisely it generated more problems than expectation.
Unclean Dedicated IPs
Ixwebhosting announces to provide multiple free dedicated IPs to show their service advantages. It's indeed true if you would like to have SSL certificate enabled on your domain because each certificate installation requires a dedicated ip address. From the old days, it cost around $4/mo which is pretty expensive. But problem solved by ix service. They can provide up to 15 free dedicated ip address which is beyond our needs! However, that's not what they advertise on website. They say their dedicated IP offer is "awsome for SEO". It might be true 5 years ago but google officially confirmed a dedicatd IP has no advantage comparing to shared. For SEO, content is the most important factor.
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Maybe because of their advertised advantages, lots of webmasters host website farm on ix servers on every single IP and heavily punished by search engine at last. How do we know? Because it's experienced by one of our friends who is doing search engine optimization. All his farm sites got punished by google and all sites under the IP were less ranked after the followed google updates. Unfortunately, those IPs are still offered in IX database. Thus if we're somehow assigned those IPs to account, we can not get a piece of benefit from search engine but actually in risk of being blacklisted.
Less Security
Unlike many other leading hosting providers, ix just handles your website service and nothing else. Our wordpress sites have all popular anti-spam/hacking plugins with good optimization. However, we still have to delete more than 20 spam comments on every site. Although we have disabled new user registration, we still receives new user registration notice every day. However, we never got such strange problem from other providers like arvixe. The ixwebhosting team announces to be wordpress profession by their own but we find nowhere for dedicated help resource on their website. It's absolutely ridiculous!
Best wordpress hosting choice
Other than ixwebhosting, we highly suggest the top 5 wordpress hosting providers. It's fully tested and recommended by other webmaters and our personal experience. They're not only offering rich feature wordpress hosting plans but with powerful server support and security protection. Most wordpress website stuff can be automated in control panel center with those providers. We personally host webhostpark(wordpress based) with arvixe service since 2011 and so far so good. Especially for their great tech support, highly impressed.
