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Our independent research projects and impartial reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no extra cost to our readers.
Website hosting can be a bit of a mixed bag. You’ll want a hosting provider that can customize your service, checking all your boxes of features you need without charging you for ones you don’t. With so many options out there today, we’re going to break down what you need to know about InMotion Hosting.
This company offers everything one would need to get started with building a website. InMotion is also perfect for customers who are looking to transfer over from a different web hosting service. To date, the company is about 300,000 domains strong and continues to grow.
As one of the foremost and growing hosting companies out there, InMotion has a wide range of plans that can take customers from first-time website creation to e-commerce site utilization and even larger, multi-website business ventures. The company does all this while keeping customers educated, informed, and cared for.
Does InMotion Hosting live up to the growing hype? Keep reading our InMotion hosting review to find out.
Founded in 2001, this U.S.-based web host might not be at the top of the list of most well-known web hosting companies, but it certainly does have a good track record. With offices and data centers on both the east and west coasts, InMotion keeps it simple for mid-sized businesses looking for a strong and fuss-free online presence.
The company has three offices headquartered in Los Angeles, California; Denver, Colorado; and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Among all its locations, it employs around three hundred employees.
By keeping its team relatively small, InMotion invests in the wellbeing of its employees. Not only does this give the company’s customer service a personal touch, but it keeps its operations running smoothly and reliably. With affordable rates and a money-back guarantee, InMotion is all about workplace satisfaction, which translates to customer satisfaction.
InMotion has strategically placed its data centers for optimal processing speeds. Both are close to well-known Internet Exchange Points (IXPs), which guarantees lightning-fast response times. Beyond that, the company’s data centers are highly secured and monitored to protect your data and your hosting speed.
The web host is also known for its environmentally-conscious operations. Not only is it involved in tree-planting efforts internationally as a part of its core mission, but it utilizes cutting-edge cooling systems that put its data centers at the forefront of industry standards.
When it comes down to it, InMotion is not the only option you have for web hosting. Many other companies offer similar services. If you’re not sure that InMotion’s offerings are for you, or perhaps you’re put off by pricing or customer complaints, here are other companies that are comparable to InMotion Hosting.
InMotion offers a free domain, though this isn’t included with the cheapest plan of $4.99/mo. They also offer WordPress Optimization and 99.9% uptime.
Coming in second, we have Bluehost. Bluehost offers a free domain starting at just $2.95/mo., uses WordPress optimization, and 99.98% uptime. Although InMotion is one of the top hosting sites in the industry and is continually growing, many experts will recommend Bluehost first.
Founded in 2003 in Utah, this U.S.-based alternative website hosting company is now headquartered in Massachusetts. Prior to its move, it was acquired by Endurance International Group and underwent some big changes which seem to have made a positive difference for customers.
This company tends to offer similar and even more extensive services as InMotion does at more affordable prices, with currently over 2 million domains served. Customers who are discouraged that InMotion doesn’t offer a domain name with every plan or who are turned off by prices will likely find a good match in Bluehost.
While it utilizes many similar components as InMotion (for example, the use of cPanel as its preferred control panel), Bluehost does so at what some customers consider more reasonable prices.
With Bluehost, customers can access website-building features, marketing and advertising services, and excellent customer education and support. Marketing and advertising services can be expensive on their own, so the benefit of bundling them with a hosting package is attractive not only in convenience but also cost-efficiency.
HostGator is great for small businesses and individual use. Their plans start at $2.75/mo. and they offer 99.9% uptime.
If you’re looking for a company that guarantees 100% uptime, check out DreamHost. Their plans start at $2.59/mo. and include a free domain and WordPress optimization.
InMotion truly does have an outstanding array of product offerings to cater to customers at every step of the process of website building. For newbies, it offers web-building tools, and for more experienced customers, it offers seamless and quick website migration.
The company also has a great track record with uptimes and data storage, proving its reliability. Besides this, the company has also demonstrated its commitment to the environment as well as to employees and customers both.
The money-back guarantee is hard to beat. Their money-back guarantee is 90 days where as most platforms have a 30-day money-back guarantee. Its WordPress optimizations cater to what is arguably one of the most popular platforms you’ll find. InMotion web hosting offers all of this and more at great speeds and with great service options.
Compared to other companies, InMotion doesn’t offer a free domain name with its most basic plan. While it may pace with other hosting services in other feature categories, this is one area that knocks InMotion back a few notches.
Perhaps most disappointing of all, InMotion offers no Windows-based servers for customers who are more comfortable with Windows services. Despite the many customization opportunities offered within its more extensive packages, customers cannot purchase any add-ons for Windows-based services.
Now that you’ve seen why InMotion warrants a deeper look for your web hosting needs, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of all the plans, features, tools that the company offers. First up, let’s look at the types of hosting that InMotion offers. Please note that all pricing will rise after the first term.
InMotion’s basic shared business hosting is a great way to get started with taking your business online for the first time or with the creation of your first website.
Because of the extensive capabilities of the servers and control panels used by the company, most small businesses or single (up to several) website-utilizing customers won’t need to pay to have a whole server or control panel to themselves.
Shared hosting plans are a less expensive and easy option because it allows the company to host many different domains from the same server or control panel. Imagine a community table at a fancy restaurant. If you don’t need a huge, full table to yourself, why wait in line for one to become available when the community table has seats open?
InMotion offers several plans for shared hosting, including their Lite, Launch, Power, and Pro plans. All services include free SSL, unlimited bandwidth, Security Suite, and marketing tools.
You’ll find the main services offered and the differences between each plan below.
Lite includes one website, 2X performance, and 10GB SSD storage.
Launch includes two websites, free domain, 3X performance, and 50GB SSD storage.
Power includes 50 websites, free domain, 4X performance, 100GB SSD storage, and advanced caching.
Pro includes 100 websites, free domain, 6X performance, 200GB SSD storage, advanced caching, and pro support SLA.
Essentially, WordPress hosting is any type of hosting that a company specially develops to run WordPress. Even if you’re new to website building, WordPress is likely a familiar name. It’s one of the most popular sites for web building and can cater to just about any website needs.
Since it’s such a popular platform, InMotion’s WordPress hosting optimizes your WordPress site. All plans include free domain and SSL, unlimited bandwidth and email, Security Suite, marketing tools, and advanced caching.
These special plans cater to everything you’ll need to host your WordPress website.
WP-1000S includes 1 website, 4X performance, and 50GB SSD storage.
WP-2000S includes 2 websites, 6X performance, 100GB SSD storage, and Jetpack Personal.
WP-3000S includes 3 websites, 8X performance, 150GB SSD storage, Jetpack Personal, and dedicated Opcode Cache Pool.
WP-4000S includes 6 websites, 12X performance, 200GB SSD storage, Jetpack Personal, dedicated Opcode Cache Pool, dedicated IP.
Although these plans are a little pricier than the basic shared hosting plans, keep in mind that the utilized servers match the unique requirements of the WordPress platform. This ensures that your website (or websites) will run smoothly and can integrate as much content as needed.
InMotion’s Linux-based VPS hosting is the next step up for website needs that exceed its shared hosting and WordPress hosting plans. If your website and business growth are outpacing storage and server capabilities, then you’ll want to invest in VPS hosting.
In short, VPS hosting ensures that your server is, as the name suggests, private and used only for you. While you will still share the same physical server with other customers, VPS technology allows one physical server to function, in different parts, as multiple private servers for multiple customers.
This involves individual operating systems and software separated from that of other customers by a virtual wall. It truly offers the height of customization and website ownership.
Below are the multiple VPS hosting plans that InMotion offers and the differences between them. All plans include 1 dedicated IP, free SSL, free website transfers, server setup, cPanel, and WHM.
The 2GB Ram plan includes 2 CPU cores, 45GB SSD storage, and 4TB of bandwidth.
The 4GB Ram plan includes 4 CPU cores, 75GB SSD storage, and 5TB of bandwidth.
The 6GB Ram plan includes 6 CPU cores, 105GB SSD storage, and 6TB of bandwidth.
The 8GB Ram plan includes 8 CPU cores, 140GB SSD storage, and 7TB of bandwidth.
Again, you’ll notice that these prices far outstrip that of InMotion’s basic plans. However, for the turn-key website hosting services offered within these plans, the prices are of great value.
As for all the plans, you’ll notice that there are different pricing levels for each based on the length of the contract you choose. If you’re confident in the services, a longer contract length will save you even more money.
But if you feel more comfortable trying out the plan before committing to it, a month-long contract will let you get a good feel for what the plan can do for you. As we mentioned before, InMotion Hosting does offer a money-back guarantee, so even if you purchase a pricier one-month contract, your satisfaction is protected by a refund.
Whereas VPS hosting allows you to use a server of your own while still sharing one physically, dedicated server hosting reserves a physical server for your personal use. This is the best bet for customers with large networks of sites that experience high traffic and must have high output capabilities.
Perfect for agencies and business owners, these dedicated server plans offer multiple types of processors equipped for high-density memory configurations and tons of storage to ensure your website is always accessible and running smoothly, no matter what you have designed it to do.
InMotion Hosting offers two specialized dedicated server hosting plan families based on operating system and software preferences.
The first group is as follows:
The Essential plan includes 4 Core/ 8 Thread, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 15TB Data Transfer, 1TB SSD Primary, and 5 Dedicated IPs.
The Advanced plan includes 4 Core/ 8 Thread, 32GB DDR3 RAM, 15TB Data Transfer, 2TB SSD Primary, and 10 Dedicated IPs.
The Elite plan includes 6 Core/ 12 Thread, 64GB DDR3 RAM, 20TB Data Transfer, 2X1TB SSD RAID, and 15 Dedicated IPs.
The next family of dedicated server plans offered by InMotion Hosting offers the use of Intel® Xeon® processors, which are the industry standard and optimized for business servers and workstations.
CC-1000 includes Intel® Xeon® Silver 4214, 2x1TB NVMe SSD m.2, 128 GB ECC DDR4 RAM, Software RAID1, 25 TB Data Transfer, and 15 Free IPs.
CC-2000 includes Dual Intel® Xeon® Silver 4214, 2x1TB NVMe SSD m.2, 192GB ECC DDR4 RAM, Software RAID1, 25 TB Data Transfer, and 15 Free IPs.
With these plans, business owners don’t have to worry about loading their operating system or processor. InMotion saves customers time and effort by offering these options that still put the customer in complete control while not having to sweat the small details of how they run their servers.
However, for customers who want to be involved in all the details of their server’s operation, InMotion Hosting also offers a Bare Metal Servers family of dedicated server plans. These plans come pretty standardly, allowing customers to choose their own operating systems and control panels or data centers.
For those who have the know-how and the time needed to invest in their server, these plans can save a great deal of money. For customers who prefer a hands-on method and full root access to their servers, the Bare Metals Servers plans offer complete freedom backed by InMotion’s reliability and support.
For the entrepreneurs among us, reseller hosting is like sub-letting. You pay for server space that you can, in turn, use to host domains for third parties. You pay the plan fees upfront but can profit from charging third-party customers for what is, more or less, server rent.
While the plans offered for reseller hosting are not as extensive as some of these most recent ones we’ve discussed, they do offer great, foundational services that are perfect for starting a reseller hosting business.
When you purchase one of these basic plans through InMotion Hosting, here are the features you’ll get and how they differ from plan to plan:
The R-1000S includes 80GB SSD Storage, a free dedicated IP, and 25 cPanel accounts.
The R-2000S includes 120GB SSD Storage, a free dedicated IP, and 50 cPanel accounts.
The R-3000S includes 1600GB SSD Storage, a free dedicated IP, 80 cPanel accounts, and Launch Assist (2 Free Hours of Managed Hosting).
For those getting started in the reseller hosting industry, these plans cover just about every feature that you could need. However, for those who have plenty of experience or who are looking to take their reseller hosting business to the next level, InMotion Hosting offers a Reseller VPS plan.
This plan combines the best of both worlds between reseller hosting and VPS hosting for your profit. If you’re looking for more capacity, then this place is the best value. It offers a 1-month contract price of $54.96 and a 1-year contract price of $46.64/month.
If your head is spinning, then it’s simply a testament to the thoroughness with which InMotion offers its services. From the most basic necessities to the little luxuries, InMotion offers a plan guaranteed to make any customer satisfied.
You can choose from four different shared hosting plans that vary based on storage and the number of websites that they support. If you want to employ a small number of sites for personal or small business use, shared hosting is the way to go.
If you specifically want to work with WordPress-supported hosting, you can choose between InMotion’s four WordPress-specific plans. These plans also vary based on storage amount and number of websites supported, but they all come standard with support and migration services.
The next step up is to VPS hosting, which allows you to occupy a part of a server as if it were your own. The four plans that InMotion offers in this category vary based on the number of CPUs and bandwidth offered for each.
If you’d like to have a full server truly to yourself, then dedicated server hosting will be the right choice for you. Within this family plan, you can choose plans that allow you to use already-made server configurations or create those specifications yourself.
You have three plans to choose between in the base plan family, each different in the number of IPs that InMotion will allot to you. The next range of plans offers two different types of pre-configured processors, and the last Base Metals plans allow differing customization options dealing with control panels and operating systems.
InMotion offers one last range of plans specifically for customers interested in utilizing reseller hosting as a business. These three plans allow for different numbers of supported sites and data usage.
These FAQs will help you determine if InMotion is the right platform for you.
When looking for a web-hosting service, most customers will be most concerned with several issues. Among these topics are critical issues like site migration, uptime, data security, and available disk space. Let’s have a quick rundown of how InMotion performs in these specific areas.
For companies or individuals who have a pre-existing website, the ability to transfer it from a different web hosting service is a big deciding factor. Website migration is, therefore, one area in which InMotion really shines.
Thankfully, InMotion offers complimentary website migration with all plans and packages. The company guarantees zero-downtime migration facilitated by experts. InMotion will do everything needed to get your website switched over to their services and will do it quickly and with no hassle.
The company includes free transfers for up to three websites or databases per customer. For extra transfers beyond this number, the company charges a $10 fee.
For newbies, uptime is the percentage of time that a web-hosting server was able to keep its domains up, running, and available for the year. For example, if your website were up for 99% of the year, it would have been down for about 3.5 days.
Although 99% may seem like a high number, it starts to seem less desirable when broken down into days. The majority of consumers report that they’re not very likely to give a website a second chance after having a bad experience with it.
So even if your host services have an uptime of 99%, any traffic you might receive within those 3.5 days is lost, and the bad impressions made during that time will be hard to shake. The industry standard, for that reason, is around 99.9%.
If this seems picky, note the difference between 99% and 99.9%: 7 hr and 18 min downtime per month versus 44 min per month. It’s a huge difference! That’s why many experts will encourage you to look for uptime percentages with up to five decimal numbers.
When it comes to InMotion Hosting, the company dedicates its time and attention to improvements. It has a guaranteed and reliable uptime of 99.9%, which is on par with the industry average. However, given that some companies offer 100% uptime, InMotion’s offerings in this category might seem average instead of exceptional. Depending on the traffic and workload of your site, though, you may find this uptime perfectly satisfying for your needs.
InMotion Hosting understands the importance of security for all its domains. Especially today, when hacks and leaks are becoming more common as many vital business processes move online, preventative security measures are vital.
Not only does InMotion offer security tools for its customers, but it is also proactive about offering education as well. On its blog, InMotion helps to educate customers about the importance of data security for small businesses, preventative security measures for websites, evaluating current protection measures, and more.
InMotion’s go-to web-hosting control panel, cPanel, is equipped with many security measures and generally known as one of the most secure and popular control panels used nationwide. As with any control panel, weak spots can emerge if not updated or utilized properly, which is all taken care of with InMotion’s hosting plans.
The company offers many security tools tailored to different website needs, including SSL/TLS Manager for e-commerce data safety, HotLink protection, and even SSH/Shell Access for secure, advanced online file management and transfer.
Disk space is arguably one of the most critical factors that will be on your mind when researching web-hosting services. Disk space is the amount of space on the company’s servers you use for your website.
High-traffic or more dynamic websites will use more disk space than other types of websites. The more pages your website utilizes, the more disk space it will need to store all that information.
Many of InMotion’s hosting plans, including even some of its least expensive and most basic offerings, include unlimited disk space. This way, it’s easy to grow your site and let the sky be the limit.
Additionally, InMotion makes it easy to keep track of your disk space usage through its cPanel capabilities. This article details the step-by-step process users can enable to keep tabs on how much disk space they’ve used.
We’re sure that you’ll now agree that InMotion Hosting truly has its bases covered with a wide array of plan offerings that are sure to fit any potential customer’s wants and needs.
Impressively, InMotion goes beyond basic plans and offers a truly customizable experience for those who feel they don’t fit into any standard box.
InMotion offers website-building tools and services to help you get your feet off the ground if you’re unsure of where to start. Their BoldGrid Website Builder tool comes standard in their WordPress optimized plans.
If you want to take it a step further, InMotion also offered custom website building services that truly do it all for you. You can choose from anywhere between a completely hands-off approach to a do-it-yourself method and anything in between. If you’re curious, InMotion will go through a free consultation with you to see what kind of web design service is best for you.
InMotion also has capabilities for private cloud hosting on multiple levels. Given how popular and crucial cloud technology has become for the business world, it’s easier than ever to jump into cloud storage and computing with InMotion’s offerings.
The company even allows a “cloud test-drive” for free with the creation of a new account. And as always, InMotion is available with certified professionals to offer help or assistance with getting started or overcoming any obstacles you might face.
Beyond its product offerings, InMotion also offers community and a wealth of information for its customers.
With its dedication to green initiatives, it’s no surprise that the company also aims to provide its customers with education about the industry and the empowerment they need to not only understand an often-complicated industry but use it well to build their businesses.
InMotion’s blog offers a wide range of educational information on any kind of hosting, data security, or technological topic you might imagine. It can help customers learn how to better utilize SEO for their marketing goals or help them choose which hosting solution is best for them.
If you’re more of a visual learner, InMotion also offers WordPress-specific tutorials to help you get your WordPress site off the ground. It goes beyond just basics and has offerings that can improve the website of any skill-level customer.
With such a wide range of customers with many different skill levels and concerns, InMotion does its best to meet each need and address each concern. Live chat help is available on its site and a customer service number for reaching a representative.
If community support is more your style, InMotion also facilitates forum-like spaces for customers to chat with each other and help flatten the learning curve often associated with website creation and maintenance. Not only will you get helpful feedback from other customers in the support chats, but support team representatives will also respond.
Included in many hosting plans are packages for increased levels of customer support and assistance. Launch assistance is a common add-on in which a representative can walk you through the initial steps of taking your website live to nip troubleshooting in the bud before it even starts.
Premier support is the customer support level included in every hosting plan. It guarantees assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, with five different communication channels available. With its premier support program, InMotion promises to always speak to your level of expertise with its premier support program and not above it, like many tech-oriented services tend to do.
InMotion caters to any type or size of business, but they’ve especially perfected their services for small businesses, freelancers, bloggers, and growing websites.
InMotion provides plenty of onboarding materials that will get a website owner up and running almost immediately. For businesses and organizations, they provide a quick start web design service. With the quick-start web design service, InMotion will develop a one-page WordPress website in 2 days.
If you are a small business looking to grow your web presence quickly, this is an excellent option. InMotion will develop a website that highlights your business, links to your social media accounts, and displays your contact information. In addition, there is a pre-installed SEO tool that will target keywords associated with your business to increase your web presence.
According to InMotion’s billing policies, all fees and related charges must be paid within the 30-day term of the invoice. If an invoice goes unpaid for seven days after it was initially received, the customer may be charged a late fee of $15, along with being charged any outstanding payment. This amount will also be charged an interest rate of 1.5% per month unpaid or the maximum amount permitted by applicable law (whichever is less).
For any amounts left unpaid, InMotion has the right to terminate the agreement immediately or suspend services. If this occurs, the customer must pay a minimum of $50 to reinstate the account.
If a customer check is returned for insufficient funds, InMotion can charge a $25.00 processing fee. For any credit card chargebacks or wire transfers, the customer must agree to pay a $35 fee.
All billing is renewed automatically for customers with card or bank payment info. Customers who pay by check, or those who request it, will be sent an email invoice prior to billing. No payment by cash is accepted.
Here are some commonly asked questions.
New account purchases can usually be activated within minutes on the same business day as the purchase. Standard server configurations for dedicated servers can take 1–2 hours, while custom configurations could take several days.
Yes, upgrades will take effect on the same business day for standard upgrades. Custom dedicated server upgrades can take from 1–2 business days.
InMotion uses Dell PowerEdge servers on CentOS operating systems. The company monitors its servers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Back-up services, including InMotion Hosting’s Backup Manager, are available as add-ons for an extra $2/mo. This facilitates automatic backups.
Since ASP requires Windows servers, InMotion cannot support it and uses Unix Servers instead.
Yes, InMotion allows domain name purchases for certain extensions with or without an accompanying hosting plan.
Yes, InMotion allows customers to add certain services a-la-carte to their current plans should they find themselves growing beyond the services in their chosen plan. Without upgrading your whole plan, you can increase your bandwidth, email accounts, subdomains, and more.
When registering for a term, the initial term agreement will be set forward for the customer including the length of the term and what it offers. After the initial term, the client will automatically be billed for a new term unless they cancel the renewal term within the length of the initial agreement.
If a customer chooses to cancel their plan before the end of the term, the customer will be charged an early termination fee of a $50 minimum. Any withstanding amount paid for the full term will not be refunded and must continue to be paid on time unless the circumstances meet the conditions of the money-back guarantee.
InMotion Hosting is the kind of web hosting company that most customers can feel good about supporting. With 300 employees, American-based data housing, and a commitment to a greener future, InMotion can help customers give back while also moving forward in their businesses.
Any potential customer should be able to find a package within the company’s offerings that suitably address their needs and, if not, they can often customize to help them find exactly what they’re looking for.
Although the prices for certain plans might be intimidating, the company does allow customers to only pay for what they use. Utilizing the monthly rate and the money-back guarantee is a great way to test-drive plans to find the one that is the best value for you.
We hope this in-depth InMotion Hosting review gave you everything you need to make a confident and informed choice. With their guarantee and their commendable goals, InMotion Hosting definitely deserves a chance to be your web-hosting provider.
