The web hosting field is a crowded one, so it takes a special service to stand out from the ever-expanding pack. InMotion Hosting, with its many capable offerings, falls into that category. The web hosting service has a rich feature set that satisfies many personal- and business-related web hosting needs with its reasonably priced and well-rounded shared, dedicated, reseller, virtual private server (VPS), and WordPress plans. Its uptime and customer service are excellent, too. As a result, InMotion Hosting joins top competitors, such as DreamHost, HostGator, and Hostwinds, as an Editors’ Choice pick.
Shared Web Hosting
Building a website doesn’t need to be an expensive endeavor. If you want to dabble in cheap web hosting, check out shared hosting. With shared hosting, your site is in a roommate situation with many other sites on a single server, so you split the server cost and the available resources. Shared web hosting isn’t very powerful, but it’s a solid solution if you don’t expect tremendous website traffic.
InMotion offers four, Linux-based shared web hosting plans. Three of these four plans, however, require an annual or longer contract, and cannot be purchased on a per-month basis. The most basic is the simple Core plan ($3.49 per month with an annual subscription, renewing at $9.99 per month). It lets you host two websites, and offers 100GB of SSD storage, 10 email addresses, and unlimited monthly data transfers. The Launch plan ($6.99 per month with an annual subscription, renewing at $13.99 per month) builds upon that with unlimited websites, unlimited email accounts, and unlimited NVMe SSD storage. It also introduces InMotion’s unique 6x UltraStack server configuration for faster speed and improved performance.
Next up the ladder is the Power plan, which gives you the same unlimited websites, unlimited email accounts, and unlimited NVMe SSD storage, but grants 12x UltraStack configuration and advanced caching. Its annual plan costs the same as the Launch plan, but it renews at $15.99 per month. Pro is the highest shared hosting tier, and it has the same unlimited features as Launch and Power tiers. However, it bumps the UltraStack speed to 20x and offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee. Sadly, Pro is the only InMotion tier that doesn’t lock you into an annual contract. It starts at $19.99 per month, with additional discounts for an annual commitment ($14.99 per month, renewing at $24.99 per month). On the upside, all InMotion Hosting shared hosting plans include unlimited monthly data transfers, free SSL, and a free domain.
That said, HostGator remains the PCMag Editors’ Choice pick for shared web hosting services. InMotion’s rival offers unlimited email, storage, and monthly data transfers with each plan, and adds the choice of Linux- or Windows-based servers. The Windows option is important for sites that have software that runs on an ASP.NET framework.
VPS Web Hosting
In terms of power, VPS hosting offers more pop than shared hosting. That’s due to the fact that your site lives on a server with far fewer sites competing for resources than with shared hosting. Plus, the web hosts supply your site with a guaranteed minimum of resources. As a result, VPS hosting is more expensive than shared hosting, but it’s a far more powerful and reliable system. You can think of VPS hosting as living in your own apartment; you’ll have neighbors, but they aren’t all up in your bandwidth to the same extent that shared hosting-style roommates can be.
InMotion Hosting offers managed hosting and unmanaged cloud VPS web hosting. Managed VPS starts at $79.99 per month (or $59.99 per month with a one-year plan), while unmanaged, scalable cloud VPS starts at $6 per month. You get respectable top-level specs for the managed offerings, including 16GB of RAM, unlimited monthly data transfers, 10 dedicated IPs, and 360GB of NVMe SSD storage. Unlimited email, domains, websites, and MySQL databases are included, too. The scalable cloud VPS tops out at 32GB of RAM, 32 CPU cores, 540GB of SSD storage, and 12TB of monthly data transfer for a hefty $192 per month. InMotion has a good VPS offering, but it isn’t as robust as the PCMag Editors’ Choice for VPS hosting: Hostwinds.
Hostwinds has beefy and flexible VPS offerings that start at $4.99 per month for 1GB of RAM, 30GB of disk space, 1TB monthly data transfers, and unlimited email. Its offerings scale up to $328.99 per month for 96GB of RAM, 750GB of disk space, 9TB monthly data transfers, and unlimited email. Hostwinds gives you more room to grow.
Dedicated Web Hosting
With dedicated hosting, your website lives on a server all by itself and leverages the system’s full power. In other words, you don’t share your server with roommates—you have the whole house to yourself. As a result, dedicated hosting is an extremely powerful type of web hosting. It’s one that you should look into if you expect your website to receive a large amount of traffic. Mission-critical sites that can’t go down (or slow down) should be on dedicated servers.
InMotion uses the latest Intel Xeon tech and more Linux OS options, including CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu, making the company’s dedicated and bare metal plans are a strong choice for large websites. Bare metal dedicated servers start at $129.99 per month and offer 16GB or DDR3 RAM, 1TB SSD storage, 10TB of monthly data transfers, and one dedicated IP. This climbs up to the $299.99 Elite plan, which features 128GB of DDR4 RAM, 2x2TB SSD, 1GB of unmetered monthly data transfers, and 15 dedicated IPs. If you need greater specs, check out InMotion’s custom build services that let you can plan, build, and customize the hardware as you see fit.
InMotion has solid dedicated web hosting plans, but AccuWeb, the PCMag Editors’ Choice pick for dedicated hosting, has better all-around packages. AccuWeb offers dedicated hosting packages (starting at $105 per month) that can be outfitted with up to 8TB of SSD storage and 128GB of RAM. They boast 20TB of monthly data transfers, too. You even get a choice of Linux- or Windows-based servers for extra flexibility.
WordPress Web Hosting
WordPress is one of the top names in web hosting, as the service is the content management system for roughly 30 percent of the internet. If you’re looking for WordPress hosting, InMotion offers solid packages. Your digital footprint will reside on a server that exclusively hosts only WordPress websites. This is a huge advantage in terms of load times and reliability. Your WordPress website sits in a WordPress-only ecosystem which translates to some big benefits. Server settings such as cache, PHP workers, and more are dialed-in to the specs recommended directly from WordPress. No more having to host your website on a server where one website is running Concrete5 and another is running Joomla. All sites now live in a WordPress world of harmony, speed, and reliability.
InMotion Hosting’s Linux-based, WordPress-optimized servers come with the content management system preinstalled, and they offer website staging and automatic software updates. In a nice touch, InMotion Hosting automatically updates your third-party WordPress plug-ins. It also bolsters your WordPress installation with a custom-configured NGINX stack and an in-house caching system.
Much like InMotion’s shared hosting servers, the first three WordPress server tiers can only be purchased in annual contracts, so you cannot renew on a per-month basis. The WP Core plan ($4.49 per month with an annual plan, renewing at $11.99 per month) offers 100GB of SSD storage, the ability to host two websites, 10 email addresses, and unlimited monthly data transfers. WP Launch (also $8.99 per month, renewing at $16.99 per month) boosts that baseline to an unlimited NVMe SSD drive, Jetpack Personal, unlimited emails, and unlimited websites. Next is WP Power. Also $8.99 per month with an annual plan, it renews at $21.99 per month. WP Power gives you a better performing server and adds dedicated Opcode caching for better website loading. These first three plans have no month-to-month subscription options.
WP Pro starts at $39.99 month-to-month ($16.99 per month with an annual plan, renewing at $30.99 per month) and includes all previously listed perks, but also improves performance, adds a dedicated IP, and swaps Jetpack Personal for Jetpack Professional. Finally, there’s the WordPress VPS plans, which mirror the pricing on the managed VPS plans above. These are top of the line packages fully-managed by in-house pros, giving you unlimited sites, dedicated resources, a dedicated IP, up to 120GB of storage and unlimited monthly data transfers.
Lastly, InMotion offers WordPress Dedicated hosting plans. Starting at $169.99 per month for a month-to-month plan ($89.99 per month for an annual plan, renewing at $149.99 per month), it offers managed hosting on a dedicated server that includes up to 30 dedicated IPs, website migration, and the option to add a software RAID.
That said, A2, Bluehost, and WP Engine reign as the WordPress hosting champs. The co-Editors’ Choice award-winning services feature top-tier WordPress plans that represent some of the biz services in the businesses. Check out those individual reviews for more information.
Reseller Web Hosting
If you’re looking to get into the web hosting game, but you don’t want to spin up your own servers or worry about providing the bandwidth for them, check out InMotion’s reseller hosting packages. The six Linux-based plans (starting at $35.99 per month), offer up to 1600GB in monthly data transfers, unlimited email, and multiple cPanel accounts (depending on your account). InMotion Hosting provides 24/7/365 customer support, as well. The plans are quite respectable, though they don’t match Hostwinds’ robust, Editors’ Choice award-winning offerings. Hostwinds offers a Linux servers with unlimited email and storage.
Setting Up a Website With InMotion
We were initially a bit dubious when the sign-up confirmation page mentioned that an account specialist would contact us by phone to complete the setup process; we couldn’t log in until that happened. However, the call was prompt and helpful, and we weren’t pushed into making additional purchases. The representative asked a few questions about the type of website that we wanted to build, and then emailed the appropriate welcome materials.
The service’s website builder requires a separate login and password, but building a website is an otherwise straightforward affair. You have three site types to choose from: Site, Blog, or Photo Gallery. The website builder lets you select themes and colors, as well as the types of pages you’d like to include on your site. In addition to standard pages, such as Contact Us and About Us, you can add special pages, such as Flash Intro and eShop. Next, you can add a map, poll, RSS reader, or script module into your pages. The website builder doesn’t produce particularly attractive pages, however; our site looked dated. Alternatively, you can use WordPress to create your site. That opens the door to many site-enhancing WordPress themes and WordPress plug-ins.
E-Commerce and Security
InMotion Hosting has many e-commerce options although payment options are a bit limited. You can also download OpenCart or PrestaShop (both free) for a more robust store. We gave OpenCart a try; it offers a comprehensive dashboard for tracking customers and sales and multiple shipping and payment options. This beats other hosts, such as iPower and JustHost, that charge an extra monthly fee for e-commerce. Unfortunately, e-commerce is only available on the Power and Pro plans. That’s not unusual; many web hosts save e-commerce for their more robust offerings. After all, are you going to attempt to make money on a Lite plan that offers a single email account?
InMotion offers several security features, including free remote backup services for accounts under 10GB in size. For WordPress sites, a free Sucuri Security plugin can be used to scan for malware and other security risks. McAfee spam and virus protection (starting at $1.39 per month) is also available for email accounts. You can purchase SSL certificates ($99.99 per year, with a $25 installation fee), which include a dedicated IP address.
Excellent Uptime
Uptime is an incredibly important aspect of the hosting experience. If your website is down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services. That is a nightmare scenario. Thankfully, InMotion showed dependable uptime in our testing.
We use a website monitoring tool to track our test sites’ uptime over a 14-day period. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings our website and sends an email if it is unable to contact the site for at least one minute. The data revealed that our InMotion site didn’t go down at all during the testing period. So, you can count on InMotion to build a rock-solid website.
Cool Customer Service
We fired up InMotion’s 24/7 web chat on a weekday afternoon to learn about how shared hosting differed from WordPress hosting. An InMotion customer support representative appeared a few seconds later, and gave us the information we needed. We later called InMotion’s 24/7 customer support squad by telephone for details about dedicated hosting. Someone quickly fielded our call and gently explained the differences in everyday language. Overall, we’re very pleased with InMotion’s customer service.
InMotion has an extremely generous 90-day money-back guarantee that bests most other web hosts’ 30-day refund policies. Dreamhost’s 97-day money-back guarantee bests InMotion’s offers by a week, however.
A Worthy Web Host
Featuring a multitude of hosting types, excellent customer service, tremendous uptime, and a lengthy money-back guarantee, InMotion Hosting is a web hosting service that has the chops to meet your personal- or business-related hosting needs—provided that you don’t need a Windows-powered server or short-term hosting. Still, if those aren’t deal-breakers, InMotion is worth checking out. It earns our Editors’ Choice award for deftly balancing price, features, and functionality.
If you need tips on building a website, read How to Create a Website. In addition, you should check out How to Register a Domain Name for Your Website.
Mike Williams also contributed to this review.
https://me.pcmag.com/en/web-hosting/14522/inmotion-web-hosting
