InMotion Hosting is one of the biggest names in web hosting. Headquartered in the United States, it was founded in 2001. In the 20 years it has been around, it has cemented its place as a web host to look out for, with lots of features and competitive shared hosting plans.
Today, InMotion hosts a few hundred thousand websites on its servers. A wide array of web hosting packages are available to choose from – shared hosting, WordPress, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans. It comes with a lot of plans and features, but just how good is it at hosting?
Stay with us as we run you through everything you need to know about this web host. When you’re done reading, you should be able to decide if it’s the right choice to make for your website.
Quick Review
- Good Uptimes
- Decent response and page load times
- Excellent 24/7 customer support, with phone, live chat, and a great knowledge base
- Shared hosting, WordPress hosting, VPS hosting, Reseller hosting, and Dedicated hosting
- Free domain and SSL
- Unlimited bandwidth
- cPanel available
- 90-day money-back guarantee on VPS and reseller plans
- Free website migration
- Free and easy-to-use website builder
- Environmentally-friendly hosting
- No Widows servers
- Datacenters are all based in the United States
Overview
InMotion Hosting is obviously not a web hosting company that believes in focusing on a few packages. No, they would rather be a Jack of all trades, thank you very much. Notwithstanding the size of your business or what your web hosting needs are, you will find a plan tailored to your preferences. Unless you prefer Windows servers, that is. All of InMotion’s packages are Linux-based.
On InMotion, you will find shared hosting plans, as well as Virtual Private Server (VPS), WordPress, dedicated, and reseller plans. It also has a number of e-Commerce and website builder tools.
Shared Web Hosting
The most affordable web hosting plan as well as the most popular, shared hosting has to do with multiple websites sharing hosting space on a server. These websites are each allocated a certain amount of storage on the server, and get to share the server’s resources such as bandwidth and processing power.
Shared hosting is great for website owners on a budget because of how relatively inexpensive it is. It is also more often than not the go-to option for webmasters just starting out.
InMotion hosting has four shared web hosting plans. Each of these plans come with one-click installs, a drag-and-drop website builder, and unlimited bandwidth. The Lite plan is the most basic of these plans. It comes with just 10 GB of storage, one email account, and hosts a single website. It starts at $2.49/mo.
Up next is the Launch plan. It doubles the number of websites that can be hosted to two and offers 50 GB of disk space. The price for this plan starts at $4.99/mo. The Power plan starts at $7.99/mo., and comes with a more impressive 100 GB of disk space. You also get to host up to 50 websites on it. Finally, you have the Pro plan that offers up to 100 websites, and 200 GB of disk space. It is priced at $12.99/mo.
InMotion’s shared hosting plan is not the best we’ve seen. It is lacking in some of the features on web host providers like HostGator, which comes with unlimited disk space and emails.
VPS Web Hosting
Your website may outgrow the constraints that come with shared web hosting. Or your business may be too big for shared hosting from the get-go. Because there are multiple websites sharing the resources on one server, there may be strains on the server due to spikes in traffic to one or more websites. Maybe you just want more control over the server resources.
If any of those scenarios is the case, then VPS web hosting may be the solution for you. It is a significant step-up from shared hosting. You could consider it the middle ground between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. In VPS hosting, websites are allocated virtual servers that they can exert a measure of control over. It is great for websites with mid-level traffic.
InMotion offers a choice between fully managed VPS servers and Cloud VPS servers. Each VPS plan comes with dedicated IPs and free website transfers. You also get unlimited domains, emails, and MySQL databases.
The managed VPS plans are a practical solution for a lot of customers, as InMotion’s support gets to handle most of the technical tasks required to keep websites up and running. Pricing for these plans starts at $29.99/mo.
The alternative is unmanaged cloud VPS which is suitable for webmasters secure in their advanced technical abilities. Plans available range from $5/mo. all the way to $160/mo.
Dedicated Web Host
Dedicated web hosting is the option for big websites that expect to attract a large in-flow of traffic. Here, a website is not required to share a physical server with any other websites. It is allocated an entire server to itself by the web host provider, along with all the resources that come with the server.
Because of the freedom to a server and resources dedicated hosting grants, it is the most expensive form of web hosting. It also requires a high level of technical know-how to maintain, control, and customize the server. Luckily, InMotion takes care of that problem if you don’t have the advanced knowledge.
There are two sides to the dedicated hosting plan, and your choice depends on your confidence in your ability to administrate the server. Managed dedicated hosting is the ideal choice for most website owners and lets InMotion do most of the hard work for you. It starts at $139/mo., for an annual subscription.
The Bare Metal plan, on the other hand, lets you customize and control the server by yourself. It is suitable for owners who possess the necessary technical ability to manage a dedicated server. This plan starts at $99.99/mo., for a 12-month package.
Pros
Now let’s examine what we like about InMotion.
1. Good Uptime
It is essential that your website does not suffer from poor uptimes. It is one of the most essential attributes to look out for when choosing a web hosting provider.
Constant downtimes absolutely can take your business down with it. Even a few downtimes here and there can have disastrous financial effects on your website and business and cause your brand to lose credibility. It also has a direct correlation with lost SEO rankings.
WebHostBros set up a test website to monitor InMotion’s uptime. Using the Pingdom tool, we tested the uptimes over a 2-month period. In that time, the average uptime clocked in about 99.91%. It is a decent result. Trust me, we have seen many far worse.
But we have also seen better. SiteGround brought back a 99.99% uptime, which is excellent.
Like most other web hosts, InMotion has an uptime guarantee in place. This guarantee states that if your website suffers an uptime rate lower than 99.9%, you will be eligible for a month of free credit. There are terms associated with this condition though. It is only applicable for website owners on the Pro plan and higher. In addition, scheduled downtimes due to server maintenance do not count.
2. Good Speeds
Just as important for the health of your business and website is the speed your website loads. Ask Amazon. It was discovered that a single second latency in page speed costs them about $1.6billion in sales a year. That’s ONE BILLION, SIX HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS! Speed also plays a very important part in how Google ranks websites.
Over the test period, InMotion’s site response and page load speeds fluctuated from month to month. We calculated the average response time to be around 280ms. Again not the best, but it is definitely comfortably faster than many other options.
If speed is a major priority for you, then you may want to check out A2 Hosting or SiteGround.
3. Excellent Customer Support
If there is one area InMotion really stands out, it is in the quality of the customer service. There are several modes of contacting customer service – phone, Live Chat, email, and Skype. We reached out to support using both Live Chat and phone and got almost instant responses. The responses were friendly and very efficient too.
All of the customer support options are available 24/7/365, which is great for overseas customers. But you don’t even need to contact support for less than advanced issues. There is a very robust knowledge-base available, with lots of FAQs, tutorials, and walk-throughs. There is even a YouTube channel.
4. 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Most web hosting companies have a 30-day money-back guarantee on offer for customers who are unimpressed by the hosting service. This is the industry standard. InMotion does significantly better than this, with a very generous 90-day money-back guarantee.
The money-back guarantee is an indication that the company is confident in its services, and does not think you will decide to leave. This guarantee does not cover the shared hosting plan though, which has a regular 30-day money-back guarantee.
Dreamost’s 97-day refund policy has this beat by a week.
5. Free Website Migration
Like many other web hosts, InMotion offers a free website migration if you are moving your website from your current host. To take advantage of this, you are expected to fill and submit a Transfer Request Form which is available on the website.
The migration covers your website files, databases, cPanel settings, domain records, and email accounts. Migration takes between one to four days. If you prefer to jump the queue, you have the option to pay for a priority transfer.
6. Great Support for e-Commerce
If your website is e-Commerce focused, then InMotion has you covered. It has several e-Commerce options, including support for WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop, and OpenCart.
Even better, these options are free to use, which is not the case with some rivals. You simply pay for a plan, pick an e-Commerce application and make use of the one-click installation. There are integrations with a number of payment processing options, to make things easier.
7. Eco-Friendly Hosting
The process of web hosting can be very unfriendly to the environment. InMotion’s initiatives in this area place them among the most environmentally-conscious hosting providers.
InMotion has eco-friendly initiatives in its offices, data centers, and servers. It has significantly exerted effort to reduce its carbon footprint by reducing the overall energy use by 65%. It also has a partnership with Trees for the Future, a not-for-profit organization, to help increase the number of trees planted around the world.
Cons
You are not going to find a perfect web host company, and InMotion certainly isn’t one. Even though it has a number of advantages, there are certain drawbacks you should look out for.
1. Expensive Renewal Prices
The seemingly affordable prices on offer by InMotion only apply to first-time users. On renewal, the fees dramatically increase. This is a con that is not exclusive to InMotion. Many other web host companies also apply this.
For example, the Launch shared host plan starts at $4.99/mo. On renewal, this plan just about doubles to $10.99/mo.
2. Datacenters Are Only US-Based
The location of a web host’s data centers and servers has a significant impact on its response and page load speeds. The closer your visitors are to the server your website is hosted on, the quicker it will be for them to access the content.
With all of its data centers located in the United States, InMotion may not be the best option for websites with the bulk of traffic coming from elsewhere.
3. No Windows Servers
All of InMotion’s servers are Linux-based. It has no support for Windows frameworks like ASP.NET. As a result, it is not an option for website owners who are seeking Windows server options.
Summary
With a very wide range of web hosting plans, there is an option for you to choose from no matter the size of your website or business. InMotion has good uptime and performance, and you will be impressed by the quality of its customer support.
Still, it has weaknesses you should watch out for. Not all of its plans allow month-to-month payments, and there are no Windows servers on offer. Additionally, all of its servers are based in North America, which can prove a thorn if your visitors are based far away.