InMotion Hosting Review (2023): Is It Any Good?

As a website owner myself and a seasoned SEO marketer, I understand the importance of making the right decision when it comes to selecting a host for your online business. Choosing an unsuitable host can hinder your progress before your business even has a chance to take off. Our mission is to help you avoid this pitfall.

In this review of InMotion Hosting, we will examine this widely-known web hosting platform to determine if it lives up to its esteemed reputation. We will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using InMotion Hosting, explore the diverse hosting plans they offer, and guide you through setting up a website with them.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the world of InMotion Hosting and uncover its potential for your online business success.

InMotion Hosting Overview

InMotion Hosting, unlike many other web hosts, offers highly reliable web hosting services with great security features and options for shared web hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting. They’re a little more expensive than the average web hosting business, so let’s look at what makes them worth the added cost.

If you’re looking for great web hosts for business websites or simple WordPress sites, InMotion Hosting is a good choice. In particular, the added security features are a must-have, especially if you’re using WordPress.

Let’s take a deeper look at InMotion hosting, its pros and cons, the different plans offered, and why you may want to use it.

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What We Like

1. Speed And Uptime

The most crucial factor in any host is getting reliable web hosting for your money.

InMotion Hosting has two data centers: one on the West Coast of the United States and one on the East Coast, and they pride themselves on having 99.9% uptime.

The site speed is also quite respectable, even for the lowest-tier plans. For example, our test site loaded in less than 1 second.

As a beginner affiliate site owner on a tight budget, you will probably want to opt for a cheaper shared plan or VPS plan. As long as that plan delivers good speed (which it does), it will do the job well enough.

Of course, you’ll get even faster load times (half a second or less) if you’re willing to spend more on a VPS or dedicated server.

InMotion Hosting can deliver these speeds thanks to the distribution of their data centers[1] across the east and West coasts of the United States.

2. Free Domain

Aside from the Core Plan, the lowest tier in their web hosting plans, every other tier (Launch, Power, and Pro) comes with a free domain.

However, the domain is only free for the first year. After that, you have to pay regular registration costs. For example, .com domains renew for about $14 per year, and .co domains renew for about $26.

The free domain is just a nice extra touch that InMotion Hosting provides. It’s not something that will knock your socks off, but if it’s your first time building a website, it may be nice to see that you’ll get a domain for free with your hosting account.

3. Money-back Guarantee

Unlike most hosting services with a 30-day money-back guarantee, InMotion Hosting takes it one step further by providing an industry-leading 90-day money-back guarantee.

Few hosting providers other than InMotion Hosting offer such a long guarantee period, showing how confident they are in their offerings.

4. Customer Support

When configuring our test site, We had to get in touch with tech support to get SSL set up, and we started at queue position 7.

It took a good 20 minutes to get connected with tech support, but once we were connected, they were pretty quick to resolve the issue, and the site was up and running shortly.

Despite the wait, in general, InMotion Hosting support has some of the best customer support we’ve seen compared to many hosting companies, right from email support to chat support.

And we aren’t the only people who are fans of their customer support…

5. Integrations

InMotion Hosting uses Softaculous to give you access to a wide variety of website builder tools like WordPress, Drupal, eCommerce systems like Magento and Woocommerce, forum software, image galleries for portfolio sites, wikis, and a lot more.

Softaculous is a library of open-source and commercial applications that you can deploy on your website. But, instead of pushing the code manually and setting up the databases yourself, Softaculous lets you do it with a few simple clicks.

You can easily set up and build many different types of websites on an InMotion hosting account.

6. Security

When your website is the lifeblood of your business, bad online security can mean your website can easily be hacked and taken down, causing you to lose thousands.

InMotion offers free SSL certificates on all of their plans. It’s not something many web hosts offer.

On top of the free SSL certificate and reliable hosting service, InMotion Hosting is one of the few hosting services that offer ramped-up security that helps fend off many different types of cyberattacks such as brute force, DoS, and DDoS.

InMotion Hosting has partnered up with Corero Network Security, a family of apps that helps prevent and control these attacks.

Also, InMotion’s Cpanel also has an IP blocker option, where you can choose to filter out certain types of IP addresses. You can effectively use this to block out traffic from specific locations.

7. Good For eCommerce

InMotion Hosting has an official partnership with PrestaShop, an open-source shopping cart with a massive community and many easy-to-use integrations. These include payment processors and email marketing apps.

Even if you’re not big on PrestaShop, because InMotion uses Softaculous’s library of web apps, you’ll get access to other eCommerce solutions, including:

Realistically, you shouldn’t use a shared hosting plan for an eCommerce store. Shopping carts are rather resource-heavy, and you need a VPS at the least to have a store that performs as expected and is not laggy.

Another plus point that InMotion has for potential eCommerce store owners is PCI compliance. PCI compliance is an industry standard for secure card transactions and is an absolute must to accept payments online.

8. Free Transfers

One of the biggest hassles when switching between a hosting provider and web hosting services is migrating your website from the old host to the new one.

There are a lot of migration plugins out there, but they are hit-or-miss. It can quickly become a massive headache if you have a particularly large website.

Fortunately, InMotion Hosting offers free migrations from your old host to the new one.

You just have to give them access to your old host, and they can take care of the rest.

If you’re planning on switching hosts, the free transfer service makes InMotion Hosting a very appealing choice.

Migrating a website from one host to another is a very technical process and can be daunting for both beginners and pros. When a hosting company like InMotion Hosting is willing to offer a full-service migration, that’s a huge plus, especially for budget hosts.

9. Eco-friendly

If you’re concerned about how much of a carbon footprint your website leaves on the environment, InMotion Hosting is perhaps the best hosting provider for you.

InMotion has been making a concerted effort since 2010 to cool its data centers more efficiently using outside air cooling. This reduces the dependence on air conditioning and, by extension, the amount of power they use.

According to InMotion Hosting, this has reduced their carbon footprint by 2000 tons per year!

They’ve also partnered up with Trees For The Future to promote tree planting all over the world, which makes InMotion an appealing choice if you want to work with a company that proactively works to better the environment.

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What We Don’t Like

1. Pricing Is Only Reasonable for Long-term Commitments

The pricing on all of InMotion Hosting’s plans varies wildly depending on how long you commit to them.

One of the biggest gripes with InMotion is that the lower-level plan is only available if you commit to at least one year.

There are many cases where you may wish to avoid buying hosting for a whole year. You may wish to build a website focused on a specific event just a few months into the future.

In InMotion, only the Pro plan, which is the most expensive, is available on a month-to-month basis, at $19.99 per month.

If you need a website for just six months on the Pro plan, you will pay $19.99 x 6 or $119.94 using the monthly plan, or $14.99 x 12 or $179.88 for the yearly plan.

Alternatively, you could opt for the slightly lower-level Power plan at $6.99 per month for 12 months and pay $83.88, but you may be compromising on performance.

2. No Free Backups

InMotion has pretty decent features, but one thing that is missing is automated backups.

Backups are essential! Your website and content are your biggest asset, and you need to make sure it is safe if something happens to your website!

Even on the highest tier plan, backups are not included. Instead, they’re available as an add-on for around $2 per month.

That’s not too bad, but considering that you’re already paying $14.99 per month or $19.99 per month for the highest plan, it would have been nice to include backups.

SiteGround is a similarly-priced web host that does offer free daily backups on all of their plans.

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Speed Test

We set up a standard WordPress website with a simple theme and some essential plugins to run the speed test.

Then, we set up a blog post with two images to test the loading times.

Here are the results:

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights scores were ok, but nothing to rave about. However, the FCP and LCP scores were compromised because of the large image above the fold, which was delaying the content painting.

Compressing this image or moving the image below the fold would fix this issue.

Pingdom

Pingdom’s results were good: a load time of 467 ms and a performance grade of 83. According to Pingdom, the average load time of a website should be less than 2 seconds.[3]

GTMetrix

GTMetrix was better, scoring an A right off the bat when tested from Vancouver, Canada.

When tested from Hong Kong, it scored a B, and the performance grade fell to 74%.

From Sao Paolo, the grade went back up to A, but the performance was still a little worse than Vancouver’s at 93%.

Since InMotion’s servers are based in the USA, areas that are closer to the USA will get faster speeds than areas that are further away.

If needed, you can always use a CDN that has servers worldwide to serve your website quickly to your visitors no matter where they’re coming from.

All things considered, these are promising results, especially on a shared and basic plan with no additional optimizations.

A regular website with a caching plugin, CDN, and the proper optimizations for Core Web Vitals should do very well.

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InMotion Hosting Plans

No InMotion review would be complete without looking at the various hosting solutions they offer.

1. Shared Hosting

The most basic type of hosting service that InMotion Hosting offers is Shared Hosting.

In this InMotion hosting service, hosting providers will put multiple websites on a single server. The server has limited resources (speed, memory, bandwidth, etc.), and all websites on the server split these resources amongst themselves.

InMotion Hosting shared plans come in four tiers: Core, Launch, Power, and Pro.

	Core	Launch	Power	Pro
Domain	None	Free	Free	Free
SSL	Free	Free	Free	Free
Websites	2	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Bandwith	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Performance	2x	6x	12x	20x
Email addresses	10	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Advanced caching	No	No	No	Yes
Dedicated IP	No	No	No	Yes
1 year price per month	$3.49	$6.99	$6.99	$14.99
2 year price per month	$2.99	$5.99	$5.99	$13.99
3 year price per month	$2.49	$4.99	$4.99	$12.99

To sign up for the Core, Launch, and Power plans, you must commit to one year or more. The plans start at $3.49 per month for Core and $6.49 per month for Launch and Power when you sign up for one year.

If you commit to two years, you’ll get the Core plan for $2.99 a month and Launch and Power for $5.99 a month.

And, If you commit to three years, you’ll get the Core plan for $2.49 and Launch and Power for $4.99.

Core

The Core plan lets you set up just two websites with 100GB of storage and unlimited bandwidth.

You also get ten free email addresses, and a free SSL certificate, but no free domain.

The speed optimization offered at the basic plan is also quite limited.

Launch

The Launch plan gets you a domain for free and a free SSL certificate. You can also set up unlimited websites, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email addresses, and UltraStack speed optimization.

UltraStack[4] is a suite of caching software that works to optimize your websites, so they’re delivered quickly from the server to the user’s browser.

Power

The Power plan gets you everything from the Launch plan, with more robust UltraStack speed and better caching for optimized performance.

Pro

Finally, the Pro plan gets you everything from the Power plan with even better UltraStack speed performance, caching, and an IP address. You’ll also receive a contract stating InMotion Hosting guarantees 99.9% uptime for your website.

The Pro plan is the most expensive at $14.99 per month for a one-year commitment. This is almost as much as other web hosting providers like WPX, who provide a better hosting plan at a similar price point.

2. VPS Hosting

VPS Hosting is one step above-shared hosting. A VPS creates a virtual server for your website on a single physical computer. A virtual server is like a computer within a computer.

Your virtual server lives with many other virtual servers on the same physical computer, but you get your own specific amount of resources that other sites don’t compete with you on.

VPS Hosting is much more powerful than regular shared hosting, and it’s the next best thing to dedicated server hosting. However, these servers are physical computers that only you use, which can get expensive.

InMotion has several hosting plans for VPS servers, starting from $19.99 per month for a 3-year commitment.

This plan will get you 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM, and 45 GB of disk space.

The highest tier plan is $83.99 per month, and that will get you 8 CPU cores, 8 GB of RAM, and 140 GB of disk space. Compared to Hostinger, this is considerably less: Hostinger’s $78 plan gets you eight cores, 16 GB of RAM, and 250 GB of disk space.

Using a VPS can be good for web apps or sites heavy on user interaction. Hosting a typical small-scale affiliate/content site on a VPS can seem like overkill, but if you’re looking to set up an eCommerce site with a lot of data going back and forth between your user and your website, consider using a VPS.

3. Dedicated Hosting

If you require serious power and control over every little detail of your server’s configuration, you need a dedicated server.

The InMotion Hosting plan for dedicated server hosting starts at $139.99 per month, going up to $539.99 per month.

InMotion’s dedicated hosting plans are much more robust than other providers like BlueHost. BlueHost’s highest-level plan has features similar to InMotion’s lowest-level plan, though both cost similar amounts.

Dedicated servers get you 16+ GB of RAM, 1+ TB of disk space, and multiple IPs.

Most smaller affiliate website owners won’t need a dedicated server in the early stages of their business. However, once you grow, start getting hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, and need the fastest website possible, you’ll need to invest in a dedicated server.

4. WordPress Hosting

Although you can set up a WordPress site on a regular shared hosting account, InMotion Hosting has plans for WordPress hosting that are catered a bit more specifically to WordPress users.

For example, the lowest tier WordPress plan allows for just a single website but has advanced caching enabled from the get-go, something only found on the Power shared plan.

The main advantage of using a WordPress plan instead of a regular shared hosting plan is that WordPress web hosting generally works seamlessly with the CMS and comes with some plugins pre-installed and ready-to-go.

There are also added security features that make your WordPress site less vulnerable to attacks.

5. Reseller Hosting

If you own an agency and would like to sell your own white-label hosting, you can build your infrastructure on top of InMotion Hosting.

You get robust features to provide your clients, and it looks like it’s your own company providing web hosting instead of anyone.

Reseller web hosting is usually meant for agencies that provide a 100% turnkey solution for their clients.

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Basic Website Setup Using InMotion Hosting

When you first sign up for InMotion on the basic plan, you’ll get a few upsells during checkout:

Once you sign up, the dashboard is pretty basic:

To install WordPress, you’ll need to head into Softaculous and follow the steps to get WordPress up and running.

It took less than 2 minutes to get a basic website set up. Softaculous was very easy to use.

However, the same can’t be said for the Account Management Panel. It looks like it’s from the early 90s, and other hosts we’ve tried have far better dashboards.

Once you set up your hosting, you have to point your domain to the host, so your website shows up when people navigate to your domain name. This is usually done by changing your domain’s nameservers to match those of your hosting provider.

In the InMotion dashboard, it was not very intuitive to find their nameservers. Many hosting providers show the nameservers in a very prominent location.

Here, you actually have to navigate to the page called “Account Technical Details” and find them there.

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How Secure Is InMotion for eCommerce?

InMotion is an overall secure web host, but it may not be the best option for eCommerce. This is because InMotion Hosting’s payment alternatives are restricted and you don’t get unlimited disk space and very great server management.

Nevertheless, the company offers a wide variety of eCommerce features. 

For a more feature-rich shop, you can choose one of the two open-source alternatives, OpenCart or PrestaShop (all of which are free to download). 

We experimented with OpenCart because of its feature-rich control panel for monitoring consumers and transactions across numerous shipping and payment gateways. This is superior to providers like iPower and JustHost, which add a monthly premium for eCommerce. 

E-commerce features are unfortunately limited to the Power and Pro subscriptions only. That is rather common since many web providers reserve their more advanced features for e-commerce.

After all, why would you try to earn a profit with the Lite package, which only provides one inbox? For accounts under 10GB in size, InMotion provides free remote backup services among its many security options.

WordPress websites can have malware and other security threats scanned with the help of Sucuri Security’s free plugin. 

Additionally, e-mail accounts can get McAfee spam and virus protection (for as little as $1.39 per month). SSL certificates, which have a dedicated IP address, may be purchased for $99.99 per year (plus $25 for installation).

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Customer Support 

On a weekday afternoon, I logged into InMotion’s 24/7 online chat to ask about the distinction between shared and WordPress hosting. Within seconds, an InMotion customer service employee showed up and provided the data we need.

To learn more about InMotion’s dedicated hosting options, I contacted its round-the-clock phone support team.

When I called, the support team answered promptly and patiently walked me through the subtle but significant differences in everyday language.

The support I’ve received from InMotion has been excellent.

With a 90-day money-back promise, InMotion outweighs the standard 30-day guarantee offered by most web providers. Dreamhost, on the other hand, gives a longer money-back guarantee—97 days.

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Do We Recommend InMotion Hosting in 2023?

So do we recommend InMotion Hosting? If you’re looking to set up simple WordPress websites, InMotion will do the job well, but many other web hosts in the web hosting industry streamline the process better.

InMotion seems to shine if you are deploying an eCommerce store, a forum, a back-end management system for your business, or other similar applications and want something that can get set up and running very quickly.

As a beginner, you may be hesitant because the pricing is on the higher side of things. However, we feel that the 24/7 customer support justifies the higher price and the 90-day money-back guarantee makes your website with InMotion risk-free.