InMotion Hosting Review

InMotion Hosting has been around since 2001; it started off as a Southern California company dedicated to helpìng small business owners get online. These days, InMotion has more than 300 employees at three offices in the United States; the company's data centers are located in Southern California and Northern Virginia. In 2018, InMotion reported that it had set an internal hosting records with more than 300,000 registered domains.

The company made headlines in 2010 by opening the first Green Data Center in North America; this was accomplished by implementing Outside Air Cooling technology in order to reduce the carbon footprint generated by cooling systems. In addition to standard web hosting packages, InMotion also offers shared solutions, virtual private servers, hosting reseller packages, dedicated solutions, WordPress optimization, Cloudflare CDN, custom server deployments, and even website design.

InMotion Hosting has been able to amass a nice portfolio of business clients, most of them owners of small and mid-sized businesses across many industries. The reseller option has attracted many freelancers, self-employed web developers, and e-commerce specialists.

This company also operates Web Hosting Hub, an affordable provider of web hosting services geared towards sole owners of companies, artists, bloggers, and micro e-commerce operators. Whereas Web Hosting Hub limits its services to shared packages and WordPress, InMotion Hosting offers more comprehensive hosting options with greater flexibility.

The technology used by InMotion runs on stacks of Dell servers connected by routers, switches, and controllers manufactured by Cisco and Brocade. The InMotion backbone (concentrated in the United States) is housed in two large data centers; one in California and the other in Virginia, but CloudFlare CDN is available for clients with specific geolocation requirements.

All servers run Linux instances powered by Intel processors on solid state drives for maximum performance. InMotion stands out as being one of the first to switch to all-SSD data centers. InMotion Hosting SSL security and automated data backups are provided for free.

The network uptime marketed by InMotion is 99.9%, and this claim historically holds up on benchmark tests conducted by trusted sources such as Pingdom.com. In March 2019,  example, the recorded uptime was 100% with a single downtime period of just two minutes the following month. "InMotion Hosting down" status messages and outages are not very common and generally last under a minute.

Ping response times for InMotion Hosting status are fantastic across North America and Europe, particularly for clients who subscribe to the VPS and Business Class packages that feature Max Speed Zone options. With all this in mind, the chances of seeing an "InMotion Hosting down" message are slim.

Even though uptime should be the most important hosting factor for prospective clients to consider, quite a few will focus on page loading speed. The average InMotion Hosting review places this provider near the top in terms of speed, and this can be attributed to the peering arrangements that the company has in place with ISPs from around the world to support direct data connections; this results in average page loading times of 755 milliseconds, which is about 6% faster than the competition.

You can test Inmotion speeds from their Max Speed Zone page, which allows you to download 5MB and 10MB files from their two data centers. It should be noted that Max Speed Zones are made available to Business Class hosting clients.

Unlimited bandwidth and disk space are major selling points of InMotion shared hosting plans; however, users should pay close attention to their terms of service. While there is no metering of bandwidth in the shared plans, this refers to website files. If you plan on using InMotion as a digital storage solution for your personal files, you will notice that the quality of service no longer applies.

In the case of VPS plans, the bandwidth will be limited by the terms of your contract; should you exceed it, you will see an InMotion Hosting cPanel screen alerting you of the situation, and your pages will not be served until the contract rolls over to the next month. Users who expect significant traffic spikes should consider implementing a CloudFlare CDN solution within their InMotion Hosting plans.

There are different types of hosting plans that each have their own pros and cons. For someone just starting out, the hosting types available is of crucial consideration, since this largely determines infrastructure scalability. Thankfully, InMotion Hosting offers a wide array of options that cater to both small businesses and large enterprises.

The most popular option for the average website owner, shared web hosting, can be augmented to Business Class for a speedier performance. Additional options include optimized WordPress Hosting, allocated InMotion Hosting webmail, customized server solutions, dedicated servers and reseller programs.

From the types of hosting above, the most affordable InMotion Hosting plan is Business Hosting. It starts at $6.39 per month. This includes multiple email accounts plus free domain registration and SSL certificates. WordPress hosting is also very popular, and it starts at $6.99 per month.

Launch Assist is a special feature ideal for beginners and seasoned webmasters alike; this shared hosting plan allows you to publish and manage two websites, but you can always upgrade to six websites with the Power Plan, which include extras such as hosting on servers that offer more CPU power and RAM.

At the higher end of the InMotion shared hosting spectrum, the Pro Plan gives you unlimited websites, a suite of security tool, marketing and SEO features, and greater server performance for just $10.49 per month; this plan provides the best value for clients because they can host unlimited websites including landing pages

A big consideration when choosing the right host for you lie on the features included in packages. While many hosting providers have their own perks, in the highly competitive hosting market, InMotion Hosting stands out thanks to the following extras:

This is a $15 savings right off the bat, and it is not offered by many competitors.

You have the choice of backing up all your website data with just one click or through automated scheduling.

The InMotion proprietary website builder allows you to design stylish websites with ease. The intuitive user interface follows a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get philosophy, and you also have numerous add-ons such as eShop, image galleries, themes, message boards, advanced templates with JavaScript elements, and more.

The Account Management Panel (AMP) offers two-factor authentication (2FA) functionality. If you opt for a VPS or dedicated server plan, you can set up root access and authorization. If you choose cPanel (Read more: cPanel Guide) to manage your websites, the InMotion Hosting login module can be accessed from AMP or from specific URLs.

The savings provided by this option range between $7 and $100 per year. InMotion is compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), but if your websites host databases that contain personal financial information, you may want to look into purchasing your own SSL certificates.

Further security is provided by Patchman, a free software agent that scans websites for issues and provides automatic fixes as well as updates whenever they are needed.

InMotion is a leading hosting provider for WordPress applications. The starter $6.99 WP plan is hosted on an optimized stack, which means that it runs on servers configured specifically to run WP. When it comes to designing a WP site, you can do it on your own by using BoldGrid, a special InMotion builder that offers a staging environment where you can conduct various tests before going live. A more comprehensive WP design solution involves professional design by InMotion specialists; this costs $99 and takes just a couple of days.

Your options for supercharging your WP projects can be enhanced with the WP-2000S plan, which at just $7.99 per month gives will cover two websites and enough bandwidth to handle 50,000 monthly visitors. The WP-3000S plan allows management of three WP sites to welcome 125,000 monthly visitors, and it only costs $10.99 per month.

Dedicated hosting plans allow you to use Gmail and Google Docs

If you intend to code your own websites, you will find that InMotion Hosting supports various programming platforms and updates.

When it comes to customer service, the first thing to notice about InMotion Hosting is that their testimonials page features dozens of positive comments from clients who have agreed to be contacted about their opinions. The preferred method of handling technical and billing issues is through online chat, and initial contact messages tend to be responded in minutes.

InMotion Hosting support is considered to be among the best in the industry, and the company goes as far as offering a 90-day money back guarantee on their VPS, business, and reseller hosting plans.

Telephone support is also provided, but it is limited for the starter shared hosting plans; once you get into Business Class plans, you can expect a higher level of customer service from telephone support channels. InMotion agents who provide technical, billing, and sales support are based in the U.S., and they are available around the clock.

While upselling does take place from time to time, it is always provided within context; for example, if you exceeded your allotted bandwidth within your VPS plan, you will be reminded that other plans can handle more web traffic, but you will not be pushed into them.

Users who prefer making web hosting decisions based on the known pros and cons of providers will be happy to know that InMotion Hosting offers more advantages than disadvantages:

In the end, choosing InMotion Hosting in 2019 is a smart idea. The uptime and money-back guarantee make InMotion hosting very attractive for both individuals and business owners, and the value-added features as well as the solid customer service cannot be ignored.

The InMotion Hosting status as a quality provider of website hosting services has improved in recent years, and it looks as if it will continue to do so in 2020. Accordingly, The Nomad Intel highly recommends this hosting provider. If you need another recommendation, then check out our Siteground review.