From $3.99/month
InMotion Hosting Review
Intro
Founded in 2001, InMotion Hosting offers a variety of solutions for business, VPS, dedicated, reseller and WordPress hosting. Los Angeles, CA-based InMotion also strives to provide excellent service. As a result, each support agent receives 160 hours of training so they understand open source, email clients, CentOS and more.
For small business owners looking to build their website from the ground up, InMotion can prove to be a great return on investment. The hosting provider has tools that assist in outfitting your site with extra bandwidth, email accounts and even provides access to premium themes and plugins.
This includes access to InMotion’s library of WordPress themes and plugins for $12.99/month with the purchase of a year subscription. When you commit to a two year WordPress Hosting Plan, it will cost you just $10.99/mo.
Like most hosting providers, you can customize your experience and unlock more or fewer features as needed. Sometimes for free, and other times for an additional fee. InMotion is no different and offers fast web hosting, secure servers, easy setup with one-click installers and access to a free drag-and-drop website builder.
Hosting Packages & Pricing
InMotion offers hosting plans on a monthly, annual and biennial basis. Depending on the length of the package you select, you may qualify for discounts designed to decrease the amount you pay to unlock more features.
The hosting provider’s plans are slightly more expensive (a few dollars per month) when compared to other, similar providers, but have a lot to offer in terms of bandwidth, security and more. In this case, the old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ is especially true.
Simply put, InMotion Hosting has some of the most feature-rich plans in the world of hosting. In total, InMotion offers five plans that range from $3.49/month for a Business Hosting Plan to $489.99/month with the purchase of a one-year Dedicated Hosting Plan.
Shared Business Hosting
InMotion’s Shared Business Hosting is great for small business owners searching for faster and more secure hosting. Both speed and security are achieved via InMotion’s use of SSH technology which provides protocols for operating network services securely over unsecured networks.
If you plan to hire a developer to build and manage your website, know that InMotion supports the following languages:
- Perl
- PHP
- Ruby
- Python
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
You can find InMotion’s pricing and plan specs, here:
Plan | Pricing
(Biennial) |
Pricing
(Annual) |
Pricing
(Six Month) |
Specs |
Launch | $3.99/mo | $4.99/mo | N/A |
|
Power | $5.99/mo | $6.99/mo | N/A |
|
Pro | N/A | $7.49/mo | $7.99/mo |
|
With the purchase of a hosting plan, you’ll even reap the benefits of hassle-free site migration. After purchasing a plan, submit a transfer request to have site files, databases, cPanel settings, domain records and email accounts migrated.
Note: Email accounts are only included with cPanel migrations. If you choose a non-cPanel migration, it may require you to manually migrate important data.
VPS Hosting
Virtual Private Server Hosting starts at $19.99/mo for self-managed hosting. For fully-managed hosting, plans start at $27.99/mo. Each of InMotion’s VPS Hosting plans includes three core features: free server management, access to reliable cloud infrastructure and CPU cores for fast processing.
Self-Managed VPS Hosting
With-self managed servers, you can do a lot, and the plans are geared more toward those who want to customize their servers for efficiency, speed and, security.
If you want your small business website to experience high uptime and to benefit from the extra processing power, this is the plan for you. The other major benefit is total server customization. There’s also free backup and DDoS Attack Protection, which helps mitigate unplanned downtime.
Let’s explore both InMotion’s Managed and Self-Managed Hosting Plan Pricing:
Plan | Pricing
(Annual) |
Pricing
(Six Month) |
Specs |
Self-Managed VPS-1000 | $19.99/mo | $24.99/mo |
|
Self-Managed VPS-2000 | N/A | $49.99/mo |
|
Self-Managed VPS-3000 | $64.99/mo | $69.99/mo |
|
Managed VPS Hosting
Managed Hosting Servers eliminate the need to worry about uptime, updates and automatic backups, as the process is fully managed for you. Another perk of Managed Hosting, especially for small business owners is that updating emails, databases and domain settings is made simple via the InMotion cPanel.
The biggest convenience of Managed Hosting is the fact that the entire server management and configuration process is taken out of your hands. For small business owners, this can free up tons of additional time to put the focus on growing other areas of your business.
In addition to the features listed below, you’ll gain access to:
- Max Speed Zone (Choose your data center)
- 90-Day Money Back Guarantee
- eCommerce Optimization Tools
- Free cPanel & WHM
- Free Backups
- Secure Email
- Root Access
Plan | Pricing
(Biennial) |
Pricing
(Annual) |
Pricing
(Six Month) |
Specs |
VPS 1000 HA-S | $27.99/mo | $29.99/mo | $24.99/mo |
|
VPS-2000 HA-S | $44.99/mo | $49.99/mo | $59.99/mo |
|
VPS-3000 HA-S | $64.99/mo | $74.99/mo | $79.99/mo |
|
Dedicated Hosting
InMotion’s Dedicated Hosting comes with free SSDs and provides high performance via its single and dual processor Linux servers. Its servers also come with monitoring, provided by a Dedicated Server Hosting Team, who are also available for custom configurations.
Each Dedicated Hosting Plan even gives you free access to the InMotion cPanel and WHM.
In total, there are six plans that range in price from $99.99/mo to $489.99/mo, based on one year plan hosting figures. The higher the plan you choose, the more features you unlock. For the purposes of this review, we have selected three plans, InMotion’s Essential, Elite and CC-2000 Plans.
Plan | Pricing
(Annual) |
Pricing
(Six Month) |
Specs |
Essential | $105.69/mo | $115.99/mo |
|
Elite | $238.99/mo | $259.29/mo |
|
CC-2000 | $519.49/mo | 561.49/mo |
|
Managed Hosting is perfect for websites with high amounts of traffic. Dedicated Hosting means users have their own server, creating a more browser-friendly experience.
Note: Each data center location has numerous configuration, pricing, and setup options.
In addition to the above features, each of InMotion’s Dedicated Hosting Plans comes with the following additional features:
- Free Automatic Website Backups
- 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
- Advanced Server Caching
- Free cPanel with WHM
- 1-to-1 Sysadmin Time
- Robot-less Upgrades
- Multi-Layer Defense
- CentOS Experts
- Tier 1 Network
- Free SSD
Reseller Hosting
The benefit of reseller hosting is that you can use the allocated hard drive/bandwidth space for your business and to provide hosting services for profit. This game-changer could help usher in an additional revenue stream for your business.
InMotion offers six Reseller Hosting Plans in total. For the purposes of our review, we have chosen to highlight three.
Plan | Pricing
(Biennial) |
Pricing
(Annual) |
Pricing
(Six Month) |
Specs |
R-2000S | $19.99/mo | $27.99/mo | $31.99/mo |
|
R-3000S | $27.49/mo | $38.49/mo | $43.99/mo |
|
Reseller VPS-3000 | N/A | $89.94/mo | $95.24/mo |
|
Here are some additional features offered to Reseller Hosting Plan Holders:
- 90-Day Money Back Guarantee
- Free Server Management
- eCommerce Optimized
- 24/7 Customer Support
- Live-State Snapshots
- Free Domain Reseller
- Free Billing Software
- Root Access Allowed
- Free Auto Installer
- IMAP, POP, SMTP
- Free SSD Drives
- Free Backups
- Site Transfer
- cPanel
WordPress Hosting
There are countless benefits of WordPress Hosting. For starters, InMotion Hosting understands the importance of WordPress’s CMS, and therefore created additional security measures, updates and even work to ensure fast site speeds.
There’s also access to InMotion’s knowledgeable support team, who is available 24/7/365.
If this isn’t enough, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and independent practitioners can take advantage of the drag-and-drop website building platform used to design beautiful and customizable websites. Not to mention, there are endless WordPress eCommerce plugins.
Plan | Pricing
(Biennial) |
Pricing
(Annual) |
Pricing
(Six Month) |
Specs |
WP-2000S | $10.99/mo | $12.99/mo | N/A |
|
WP-4000S | N/A | $29.99/mo | $32.99/mo |
|
WP-6000S | N/A | $114.99/mo | $124.99/mo |
|
One of the biggest advantages of this plan is its eCommerce for WordPress feature, which allows you to build a WordPress-based eCommerce store. It is recommended you choose a WP-2000S Plan or above to reap the full benefits.
If you’re looking for more features — this plan likely has something you are looking for:
- Pre-installed on Checkout, Launch in Under an Hour
- Drag-and-Drop Page Builder with WordPress Plugin
- Staging Site Plugin to Conduct Tests
- 90-Day Money Back Guarantee
- eCommerce and other Plugins
- Full Design & Hosting Support
- Access to Free Themes
- Image Gallery Editor
- Scheduled Backups
- Easy SEO Plugin
With its eCommerce specific features, small business owners can move their physical business online and install plugins such as WooCommerce, WP eCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, Ecwid and add products in a few short minutes.
Which InMotion Hosting Option is Best for Me?
InMotion’s WP-2000S Plan – tailored to the needs of WordPress sites- is a great bargain for small businesses, and at just $10.99/month for a two-year plan, you can see why.
In this respect, not only is InMotion’s pricing on its small-biz oriented plans quite fair, but they come loaded with features such as a free domain, two websites, 50,000 monthly visitors, 80GB of SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth, as well as premium themes and plugin subscriptions.
For small businesses on a budget, this is a feature-rich plan that keeps giving and provides tons of value to you and for site visitors. This is largely due to the fact that InMotion does not cap its bandwidth, which improves the data loading time of your website(s).
Its WP-2000S Plan gives you peace of mind with a 90-day money-back guarantee. All of InMotion’s WP plans are customizable and allow you to increase and decrease elements such as storage, disk space, the number of websites supported and the number of domains.
You will want to keep this in mind if you plan to grow your online business.
Standout Hosting Features
Customer Support
InMotion offers 24/7/365 support based in the U.S., and its support team receives 160 hours of specialized training to provide top of the line support to customers around the world. You can reach support via phone, email, live chat, Skype or InMotion’s ticket system.
Security
Through password protect directories, leech protection, and countless other features, it is clear that InMotion values customer security. The hosting provider also offers countless other features like HotLink protection as well as free SSL certificates and TLS managers to protect sensitive information across the web.
Free Data Backups
Through InMotion’s Shared and Managed Hosting Plans, enjoy the security of knowing your site’s data are backed up. You can also perform manual data backups via the ‘Backup database’ located in the cPanel.
It takes three simple steps to manually backup data with InMotion Hosting:
- Login, under the files section and click ‘Backup.’
- Next, under the ‘Download a MySQL Database Backup’ section, click on your database’s name.
- Finally, you’ll see a compressed .sql.gz file which will serve as a hard copy of your site’s data and can be stored on your computer.
Unlimited Bandwidth
Many of InMotion’s Hosting plans include unlimited bandwidth.
Control Panel
This powerful feature is the backbone of your experience with the hosting provider. InMotion’s cPanel interface is easy-to-navigate and enables users to create email addresses, manage SSH logins, and set up multiple FTP users.
One-click Install
InMotion Hosting’s plans offer over 400 easy-to-install apps designed to create a simple installation and management process for blogs, image galleries, social networks, calendars, ad management, eCommerce, project management and more.
eCommerce Apps
If you run an online eCommerce store, you can install ZenCart, BoxBilling, AbanteCart and over ten other eCommerce-related apps to provide a seamless online shopping experience.
Domain Registration
InMotion offers both 12 and 24-month plans, both of which come with a free domain or domain transfer. If you simply want to purchase a domain, you can do so as well, and it will cost you a one-time fee of $14.99.
If you’re looking for a .com, .net, .org, .us, .biz, or .info domain, you can purchase any of these top level domains.
Each registration includes access to free 24/7/365 U.S. – based support and secure transfer locking, which protects domains from scammers. You will enjoy the convenience of automatic domain renewal and an easy-to-navigate and rather intuitive control panel for managing all of your domains under one roof.
Payment Terms & Conditions
InMotion Hosting stands behind its service, offering a guarantee of reliable hosting, professional and helpful support as well as a 90-day money-back guarantee with the purchase of a Business, VPS or Reseller Hosting package with a term of six months or longer. All Dedicated, VPS and Reseller Hosting packages qualify for a full refund for up to thirty days.
InMotion Hosting accepts the following forms of payment:
- Visa
- Discover
- MasterCard
- American Express
Uptime
InMotion Hosting offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Bottom Line
InMotion Hosting has very public signs of not only stability but great service. First, CNET has given the company much praise for outstanding service. In addition, so has the Better Business Bureau, giving the company an A+ rating (the highest grade given to companies). Not only does the company focus a lot on providing quality support, it wants to make the hosting process simple for users. InMotion makes this apparent from the implementation of its user-friendly cPanel, which is perfect for small business owners. Finally, there are so many features dedicated to security, which should be at the top of the list of requirements for business owners who deal with sensitive customer data.
Pros
- 24/7/365 knowledgeable customer support, including Skype support.
- The hosting provider offers free data backups.
- InMotion Hosting has a high uptime guarantee (99.9%).
- Its Control Panel is easy-to-use.
- The hosting provider offers free site migration.
Cons
- You have to pay in bulk for hosting services (if you choose a six-month plan or above)
- InMotion plans are more expensive than other leading competitors.
- You have to create separate logins for each add-on you enable.
- InMotion data centers are only located in the United States.