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Is InMotion Hosting Worth The Money?

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InMotion Hosting ranks among the top independent web hosting companies worldwide. Since 2001, they have been in business and recently celebrated their 20th year anniversary. They are known for being transparent and reliable web hosting services that can be used by businesses and organizations.

InMotion Hosting Plans

They offer web hosting services that range from shared up to VPS as well as dedicated and custom products like WordPress or Reseller Hosting.

Hosting shared

Web hosting is the mainstay of website hosting. Each account is hosted on its own Linux server. They can run WordPress and pretty much any other software you wish. It is a great and cost-effective way to manage most websites.

InMotion Hosting offers four web hosting packages.

* Prices per month for a 36 month subscription

Plans as Low as $2.29 Per Monthly

Managed WordPress Hosting

WordPress can be run on shared hosting but many hosting companies offer separate WordPress hosting plans to meet customer demand and meet the hardware requirements of WordPress.

Hosting companies often offer WordPress hosting which is identical to their shared hosting plans.

InMotion Hosting’s WordPress plans offer something completely different.

They have a different architecture and are actively managed. This guide will help you learn more about WordPress Hosting. InMotion Hosting offers several WordPress hosting plans, depending on your needs.

* Prices per month for a 36-month subscription

Get WordPress from InMotion Hosting

VPS Hosting

VPS hosting allows you to have a limited amount of server resources without the need to lease an entire server. You have greater control over the server resources than shared hosting, even though your website is located on the same server as others.

This guide will help you learn more about VPS Hosting. InMotion Hosting offers a variety of VPS plans at very affordable prices. They offer both managed and unmanaged options.

Get a VPS from InMotion Hosting

Hosted by a dedicated server

You can lease a server, get support and bandwidth along with dedicated hosting. This is the best way to host large sites with predictable traffic. Sites with unpredictable traffic tend to choose cloud hosting. InMotion Hosting offers a variety of dedicated server options, depending on your expertise and resources.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting can be described as a shared, VPS or dedicated server plan that allows for third-party billing and management. Reseller hosting allows anyone without having to start a hosting business. This guide provides more information about Reseller Hosting. This is a great way to earn recurring revenue for your agency and offer additional value to clients. InMotion Hosting offers a variety of reseller hosting services.

Private Cloud

InMotion Hosting’s Private Cloud is for companies and organizations that need cloud hosting to support their internal IT needs without having to use Amazon, Google, Microsoft or incur the cost of creating their own architecture. This guide provides more information about cloud-hosting. InMotion Hosting offers a variety of IT and cloud solutions.

Website Builder

InMotion Hosting created the BoldGrid drag-and-drop builder WordPress. BoldGrid is now a separate company. However, InMotion Hosting includes BoldGrid into its WordPress hosting plans. You get many of the same benefits as a hosted website builder, such as Wix or WordPress.com. I reviewed InMotion Hosting’s Website Builder . You can find out more about it.

Other Products

InMotion Hosting also provides a variety of products to complement hosting services for freelancers and businesses, such as domains, email hosting, and design services.

Alternatives to InMotion Hosting

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The Best Web Hosting

What is InMotion Hosting?

InMotion Hosting, an independent provider of web hosting, offers complimentary products like domain names, website builders and web design.

Is InMotion Hosting Legit?

InMotion Hosting is one of few stable, large hosting companies that is not owned by any of the three large web services holding companies (ie. GoDaddy, Endurance and Web.com). also has all the resources and expertise needed to host websites for organizations, businesses and long-term projects.

They host websites for small and large businesses. The founder and CEO have been with them since 2001. They are open about the information they have on their employees, locations of data centers, capabilities, and products. InMotion Hosting offers a reliable hosting service. They are not a cheap web hosting service.

What is InMotion Hosting used for?

InMotion Hosting hosts websites and web apps. Their marketing focus is on growing businesses and organizations. They offer a complete range of products for websites, including domain names, hosting, email and web design.

InMotion Hosting provides hosting for the site you are viewing. Since 2015, many of my web properties have been hosted on InMotion Hosting’s reliable servers.

As I have stated in my reviews of hosting companies, it is all about finding the right company for you based on your needs and goals. As an InMotion Hosting customer, here are my pros and cons as well as an overview of InMotion Hosting products.

Pros of InMotion hosting

There is no perfect hosting company. My belief is that there is no “best” hosting company. It all depends on your goals.

Apart – Actually, I created the best Web Hosting guide in order to match your needs with the right company.

This is the point I understand – here are 6 major advantages I found with InMotion Hosting.

Amazing Customer Service

InMotion hosting places customer service at the forefront of its marketing. The company boasts a U.S.-based tech support staff that is available 24/7/365 via chat, email and ticket system.

Anyone who’s ever managed a website knows that customer support can be easy to forget and skimp on. But you will always require support at some point and when you truly need it.

The tricky thing about customer services is that you can’t always judge them as a whole. You don’t know when you had an isolated incident, or when it’s indicative of a company’s culture (i.e. does the company consider customer service a cost or an investment).

For example, back in 2013. However, my first chat I had with an InMotion hosting rep was not encouraging…

Over the years, I have also received complaints from readers about their InMotion Hosting customer service. Although it was a compelling tale, I had to help troubleshoot the issue. For example, trying bulk host adult images that were copyrighted for a forum.

My customer service experience with InMotion Hosting has been exceptional since I started my side-project. They also helped me set up my VPS server. This server is more complicated than a shared server, but it’s what most businesses need.

Whatever your opinion, the point is that these anecdotes can only be described as anecdotes. With my best hosting reviews, I’ve tried looking for external indicators to see what their internal service culture was like.

An investment into tools & content (ie. are they easy to use & thorough) or support channel accessibility (ie. are there multiple options to solve your problem depending on your situation & expertise). These are the best indicators I have found.

InMotion Hosting is very strong on these indicators, plus a few other strengths.

First InMotion Hosting offers a lot of resources both in their knowledge base as well as in the comments. Although knowledge bases are not uncommon in hosting companies, I found it useful that knowledge base articles start a discussion so users can post related problems to the thread and InMotion Hosting representatives respond to them. This makes it much easier to do self-directed troubleshooting.

InMotion Hosting offers a ton of in-depth guides for their customers.

They rank highly in Google for many support queries from Internet users. The top-performing support pages on their organic pages are all high-ranking.

It is obvious that they invest a lot of money in creating useful content.

Second offers a variety of support channels that all respond quickly. Their site has a number, chat, and email that are all available.

Some companies require that you call in order to get an answer. Email is slow and not always possible. Chat may be unavailable so you will need to email. The support channels at InMotion Hosting (which I have personally experienced) work well and serve their purpose. I have received quick responses from support staff via email and phone.

In addition, I have found that the representatives I spoke to seemed to really know what they were talking about and weren’t following a script. This has allowed me to skip the “yes I’ve tried all the basic troubleshooting steps”, and instead discuss the root cause.

Readers have written to me to tell me that InMotion Hosting was the only company to address the root cause (in one case, a conflict between their WordPress theme and their current version of PHP).

I upgraded a few accounts to PHP7 during the Christmas break. This is the current fastest version. Although the front-line representative couldn’t perform the actual installation, I was able to tell him that it would require a prerequisite upgrade of my Apache version. This would require a server restart.

To ensure that the process went smoothly, he passed my ticket to a server administrator. He smartly scheduled the upgrade at 3 AM. Excellent handling of a potentially difficult situation.

InMotion Hosting offers great “onboarding”. This is the jargon that describes the process new users go through in order to get started. They customize support articles according to how you plan to use your account (i.e. WordPress users receive WordPress-related emails). Many potential support issues can be solved by the onboarding process.

This process may seem unhelpful and generic since they have many customers. They seem to be very dedicated to “triaging” customers to the correct reps and right information.

Fast web hosting

However, customer support is not the purpose of having a website host.

The job of a web hosting company is to secure your website files and provide them to all your visitors whenever they request them.

There are many ways to gauge hosting performance. You can get into server specs and technical jargon that isn’t very useful for small businesses or people who just want to put up a site. Website speed is also affected by a lot of variables.

The Time to First Byte, or TFB is a quick indicator of cheap hosting. It measures how long it takes for the server to respond to a request from a user. This is important because it influences everything that follows.

This test has been running for years on every host I review. InMotion Hosting tends to be much higher than average for hosts. This is what you want. You can use all other website speed factors if your host has consistently high TTFB speeds.

Here is my latest TTFB testing with InMotion Hosting using an “out of the box” WordPress installation on a shared hosting account with minimal caching or a few plugins.

This number will fluctuate a bit for shared hosting accounts. TTFB should be viewed as a trend and not a guideline for speed.

InMotion hosting is certainly the fastest of all webhost I have worked with. SSD drives are used for their servers instead of spinning-tape hard drives. This is a benefit for shared/business hosting companies.

Their sales materials indicate that they don’t overload their shared servers with websites, as many shared hosting companies do. This means that some hosting companies will overbook their shared servers with websites, hoping for a spike in traffic. InMotion Hosting claims that they do not do this, so shared servers with some cache will be able handle traffic spikes if needed.

They have a strong reputation for delivering their 99.9% uptime promise. They maintain a status page at status.inmotionhosting.com that reports on their real-time network and server status.

InMotion Hosting experienced downtime (as do all hosts, Amazon, and Google), and they will continue to have them in the future.

Problem with large downtime events is that you don’t know if this is a one-off problem that the company can learn from, or if there are root causes in underinvestment or poor planning.

With every host, the problem is not when they will go offline.

InMotion Hosting is solid and transparent, in comparison to my experiences at GoDaddy’s outages.

Ease-Of-Use

Hosting companies must tread carefully when creating a backend that isn’t overwhelming to new users, but still allows for flexibility for customers who have already mastered the basics and wish to make adjustments.

My recommendation is to use cPanel for a backend and Softaculous as a single-click installation. It’s easy to use, it’s free-source (so you can find tutorials everywhere), and it is very basic but it works well.

InMotion Hosting is unique in that they allow cPanel access right from your account management dashboard. This means you won’t need a separate login to access billing/domains or your cPanel. The one-click installer is also available within your account dashboard.

InMotionHosting.com has one login. You can click over to cPanel.

They also use the latest version of cPanel, which is cleaner and more accessible, but also offers a free Comodo SSL certificate, i.e. a brand name, a free SSL.

Another problem with the Account Management Panel is their lack of many in-house upgrade options. You can easily upgrade if your site grows in size.

Value-based Pricing

InMotion Hosting is slightly more expensive than other hosting companies. They also don’t offer the deep 1st year discount that some other companies will. Without having to break out the chart matrix, I can tell you that all their plans offer a very high value for money compared with direct competitors.

InMotion Hosting is a company that strikes a good balance between quality products and affordable pricing in an industry where “you get what you pay for”.

They also offer a variety of freebies and guarantees that are often up-selling to competitors.

InMotion Hosting offers an industry-leading 90 day money-back guarantee. Industry standards are a 30- or 45-day guarantee. This guarantee is particularly helpful if you prepay for a whole year to receive better pricing.

InMotion hosting has launched a free Comodo SSL certificate. These certificates are integrated into their cPanel configuration and make HTTPS easier to access.

You will also receive useful freebies that match your InMotion Hosting plan. For example, all but the most basic business web hosting plans get free Domain registration/transfer, Google Ads credits, Google Apps Integration, & BoldGrid Website Builder. This is in addition to unlimited bandwidth and data backups, large disk space on SSD drives (though not unlimited), and high MySQL database limits.

WordPress hosting plans include JetPack (which is something I’ll briefly touch on), and custom caching. VPS plans include scheduled snapshots, resource monitoring, and cPanel license.

They also offer packages that maximize your monthly pricing. Their second-cheapest tier, which is comparable to many companies’ intro options, allows for 2 websites instead of the usual 1. This means that a new blogger/business website can have a primary website and a microsite under the same plan.

Independent Company

I don’t believe that a company’s size or shape determines the quality of its service. A large company often has more resources than a smaller company. A large company can also create unnecessary distance from its customers, even with the right processes.

Newfold Digital and GoDaddy control nearly all brands in the hosting industry. This is the secret of the industry. InMotion Hosting remains one of the few large and independent companies in the host industry.

InMotion Hosting is also one of two independent companies that has a significant size (the other being siteGround).

InMotion Hosting has the position to be able to compete with other features (like custom built drag and drop builders), while aligning their company to their values and mission, rather than Wall Street’s or venture capital’s demands for growth.

InMotion Hosting is a for-profit company. I understand that they prioritize good service…because they have a profit motive. But, I believe that the way a company spends their sponsorship money can speak volumes about their internal culture.

I have already mentioned how GoDaddy’s advertising practices and company culture are problematic. It’s also possible to have a positive culture within an organization if they support excellent community and industry initiatives.

InMotion Hosting is a major sponsor of WordCamps, and open-source core software development. They sponsor Joomla camps. They also support environmental initiatives. These are all signs of a company culture that is both meaningful and smart marketing.

Many customers are looking for a hosting company that isn’t owned by a big brand. InMotion Hosting can be independent, but still offer competitive features.

Cons of InMotion Hosting

There is no perfect hosting company. You’ll find many InMotion Hosting complaints and raves all over the internet.

Some are justified (ie. see price point), while others aren’t justified (ie. they are hiccups you’ll find at all hosts). These are the big-picture disadvantages and cons that I have found with InMotion Hosting.

Large Product Support

InMotion Hosting aims to be a reliable and solid hosting company that can handle all types of business uses.

They are able to maintain server compatibility and expertise across a variety of programming languages and specifications.

They offer WordPress hosting but aren’t strictly a WordPress-focused host. Same for Joomla. Same with Drupal. Similar with Ruby, and all other website options from VPS to Cloud.

The company recently launched a new managed VPS hosting product that is available to developers and sysadmins.

They also offer unlimited email hosting and a drag-and-drop website builder…while also offering Hosted Private Cloud and Kubernetes Container products.

These products are all great. InMotion Hosting truly is a hosting company. Their broad product focus means they appeal to many customers and not just one. This is important in two ways.

It means that InMotion Hosting is more likely to be an early adopter than a first user of new hosting features. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.

InMotion Hosting took a while to create a WordPress Hosting Plan. However, it worked really well.

Similar to their Reseller Hosting overhaul. The same applies to “platform” features such as a theme marketplace, which they are currently rolling out. They don’t have to be experts in any particular category, but they do roll out the changes when they are ready…but it might not be as good as the specialist in that specific category.

InMotion Hosting is second in difficulty with specialist hosts in each category. InMotion Hosting doesn’t have a WordPress specialist hosting, so it is difficult to compete with WP Engine and Kinsta . It is difficult to compete with Web because they are not a developer-focused host. They have so many developer-focused plans that it can scare off a lot of general website owners who prefer Bluehost, HostGator or GoDaddy.

InMotion Hosting is a web hosting company that makes an inherent tradeoff. It cannot be a specialist or boutique hosting company.

InMotion Hosting offers a variety of products but it is important to know what your specific needs are (e.g. WordPress or Joomla, Drupal, Windows).

Confusing Pricing

You can find a hosting company that suits your needs. I don’t believe in counting pennies. But paying the right price for the right features , especially if you are just starting to do web design.

InMotion Hosting offers several affordable plans. However, they do have some limitations. Their price point is slightly higher than that of other shared hosting providers for unlimited plans.

They’re still an excellent deal and very affordable. They are however more expensive than their competitors based on a comparable comparison of account features. This is a con.

They also have a separate brand Web hosting Hub (Review), which focuses on unlimited plans at a slightly lower rate. Although they offer some promotional offers, they don’t offer as many hosting deals as their direct competitors.

Another thing to note about pricing is that it is mandatory to sign up for a full calendar year. The discount is not available for contracts longer than two years.

InMotion Hosting offers a money back guarantee. However, if you aren’t sure how long your project will last, InMotion Hosting may be too expensive for new websites.

You can get deep discounts by signing up for at least one year.

There is no pro-rated refund beyond the 90-day guarantee. It is acceptable to pre-pay for the full year. If you’re not sure about the length of your project, monthly plans like offered by HostGator may be worth it.

Not the best for beginners

InMotion Hosting’s onboarding is excellent. They provide all the necessary information to help website owners get up and running quickly. They even offer a quick-start web design service for businesses and organizations.

For beginners and bloggers, however, the onboarding process can seem daunting and confusing, especially when compared to Bluehost (see my Bluehost review). (Plans) which specialize in onboarding anyone building WordPress websites.

InMotion Hosting offers a JetPack subscription as part of their WordPress Hosting Plans. I also like the fact that they offer basic perks and auto-install. However, I have found that bloggers and beginners are more successful with hosts who focus on this market.

Is InMotion Hosting worth it?

This concludes my InMotion Hosting review. They are a reliable and well-respected web host company. They are a great choice for hosting this website.

They are the best choice for those who only need to host a few websites and are willing to pay a little more for excellent support and performance. InMotion Hosting can be viewed here.

Learn more

InMotion Hosting might not be a good fit for you (i.e. you value pricing or are looking for small projects), you can check out my hosting guide. This will take into account your preferences and offer some suggestions and alternatives.