InMotion Hosting Reviews and Expert Opinion

InMotion Hosting Expert Review

In a web hosting landscape increasingly populated by Endurance International-owned hosts, InMotion web hosting stands tall as a high-performing yet affordable independent hosting service. From the get-go, InMotion won us over with its breadth of features and tools that streamline the SMB web hosting process for beginners and webmasters alike.

InMotion’s investment in state-of-the-art server configuration also became clear throughout our tests, with site speed and reliability scoring high. With this kind of report card, it’s hardly surprising that InMotion has become a go-to hosting solution for businesses large and small.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Access expert support 24/7/365 through phone, live chat, email, ticketing and Skype.
• Set up your new WordPress website quickly with the intuitive BoldGrid drag-and-drop website builder.
• Simplify repetitive back-end procedures with automatic WordPress, Plugin and Themes backups.
• Securely test out new WordPress site configurations with InMotion’s free staging environment.
• Don’t miss even a single customer thanks to InMotion’s reliable uptimes.
• Choose between two US-based data centers to improve your website’s load speed.
• Keep attackers at bay with firewalls and hack and malware protection.

Cons:

• The company’s cheapest of the InMotion hosting plans comes with only 2 MySQL databases.
• InMotion’s web hosting plans lie on the more expensive end of affordable web hosting solutions.
• Although InMotion does offer unlimited bandwidth, disk space is capped in the shared WordPress hosting plans.

Pricing and Payment Methods

No matter the size of your business, InMotion has a plan that will give you the resources and tools you need to make your website a success. Micro-businesses can get a lot out of the company’s basic shared WordPress plans. Starting at $7.26 monthly, WP-1005 covers 1 website with 40GB SSD storage space and comes with nifty WordPress features like free automatic updates, a BoldGrid drag-and-drop website builder and free website transfers.

For businesses with larger traffic profiles, InMotion’s starter business plan, Launch, starts at $5.99 a month and gives you 2 websites with unlimited storage space and email accounts, preinstallation of popular CMS platforms, safe application roll-back and a backup manager. However, if you want e-commerce capabilities, you’ll have to upgrade to the next plan up.

If your business is mid-range or enterprise level, get more from one of InMotion’s VPS or dedicated plans. Managed VPS plans start at $27.99 a month and cover unlimited websites, root access, and a resource monitoring dashboard. Dedicated plans start with Essential at $105.69 per month, which includes cPanel and WHM, 500 GB SSD storage, and free SSL certs.

In general, we found InMotion’s prices tend towards the higher end of the affordable spectrum. That said, the company puts a premium on quality features and expert support, which hold their own value in terms of troubleshooting time and stress saved. You should also be on the lookout for the company’s periodic discounts, which can really lower plan prices.

Ease of Use

Our InMotion review shows the company does a good job of accommodating both beginners and developers. Beginners are given different tools to make their business’ website extraordinary, such as the free BoldGrid drag-and-drop website builder and automatic WordPress, plugin and themes updates.

If you already have a website, InMotion will migrate it for you free of charge, and other features like free SSL certificates and unlimited emails can help make waves with your customers.

As developers ourselves, we’re always especially interested in how hosting solutions handle developer needs. We gave InMotion high marks for its varied developer features, which include the latest version of PHP, multiple languages for coding and a staging environment that lets you try out your ideas before they go live. InMotion also offers mobile cPanel logins – which we loved – and the convenient Softaculous 1-click application installer for over 400 scripts.

Load Times and Reliability

Our tests discovered that InMotion performs exceedingly well when it comes to consistent uptimes and fast load times. The company guarantees a perfectly adequate 99.9% uptime, though over our several months of testing the service the actual uptime was closer to 99.95%, with the site going briefly offline for scheduled server maintenance.

With the average attention span ever-shrinking, shaving even several microseconds off of your load time can keep you ahead of the competition in terms of customer retention and SEO placement. According to our testing, InMotion comes through with ultra-fast load times of 812ms on average, far below Google’s suggestion of 2 seconds or fewer.

Features

We were very happy with the array of features that InMotion provides with even its most basic plans. You can use the free BoldGrid website builder to create a unique website, or easily migrate an existing website with the help of the InMotion support team. Businesses with little web hosting experience can also take advantage of helpful features like a staging environment for testing new website configurations and automatic WordPress updates. You also get access to InMotion hosting webmail services,

The company’s developer features also give you a bang for your buck. The Softaculous website installer gives you access to over 400 scripts, including phpMyAdmin and a slew of e-commerce platforms. You can kick your back-end up a notch with multiple FTP accounts and support for different coding languages. You can also take advantage of the InMotion nameservers to improve your website’s traffic flow and ensure your URL points in the right direction. While the company doesn’t do automatic backups, you do have the option of setting up your own automatic backup schedule and offline copies.

Finally, InMotion has taken pains to optimize your servers for speed and security. Features like SSD storage, included CDN, caching, a choice between two data center locations and a WordPress optimized stack help your website load incredibly quickly. On the security side, InMotion uses firewalls and hack and malware protection to prevent bad actors from raining on your website parade.

Customer Support

You can never have too much customer support, and InMotion Hosting is fully committed to providing a super smooth customer support experience. We were impressed by the fact that the hosting company offers phone, email, live chat, ticketing and even Skype to contact its support team 24/7/365.

InMotion claims that support staff average four years of certified hosting experience before coming onboard, and every interaction we had with a support team member confirmed that the team is staffed by people who know their hosting stuff.

If you’re a beginner, InMotion’s wraparound support services will really come in handy. In addition to the company’s expansive knowledge base, which gives you clear insight into both billing and technical issues, InMotion’s Customer Community portal gets you quick answers to your questions, 8am-9pm EST, Mon-Fri. The company also has some useful infographics you can check out to fill in the gaps about how hosting works in general.

User Reviews

As always, our expert reviews look at specific parameters to determine whether a hosting service is exceptional, merely adequate, or below-average. One you’ve finished reading our review, browse our reader reviews to discover what InMotion’s customers think about its features, performance, and service.

Conclusion

Our expert review showed InMotion to be a good choice for businesses looking for a feature-rich company that offers nuanced support every step of the way. For users just starting out with web hosting, InMotion has crafted a soft landing with an intuitive website builder, pre-installed WordPress and automatic WordPress updates.

Developers also have it good with InMotion. Support for multiple coding languages and the free 1-click application installer enable you to easily get innovative with your back-end configurations. We were also happy to see that staging servers let us test out our website quickly in a safe environment, and with how convenient it was to access our cPanel from both desktop and mobile devices.

While it’s true that InMotion is slightly more expensive than some of its competitors, you do get what you pay for in terms of a comprehensive support team and feature portfolio. All in all, we would recommend InMotion to both fledgling and established businesses that are looking to launch or improve their websites.