InMotion Hosting Reviews of 2021
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Our Verdict: Outstanding Choice for Variety of Hosting Plans
InMotion Hosting stands out from other web hosting companies with its wide variety of hosting plans and exceptional technical support.
You don’t need to take my word for it. Over 600 of our users have reviewed InMotion Hosting, giving them an average score of 4 out of 5 in terms of support, quality, features, and value. This makes InMotion Hosting one of the highest rated hosts on our site.
You can get up to 50% off all InMotion Hosting plans with our special discount link. Below, we’ll go over everything else you should know about this provider.
Quick Overview
Here’s a top-level review of how InMotion Hosting differentiates itself from the competition:
| Support | 24/7 help is available in multiple forms (email, chat, phone). Knowledge base has guides for almost any topic imaginable. |
| Scalability | InMotion Hosting has plans for sites of every size and complexity. As your site grows, you can upgrade your plan accordingly. |
| Speed | Servers have built-in SSD storage to improve speed. You can also select your datacenter location on VPS plans. |
Pros and Cons of InMotion Hosting
Let’s take a look at InMotion Hosting’s overall benefits and drawbacks:
Pros
- Industry-leading 24/7 support to help you with any problems
- Free domain and SSL certificate
- Eco-friendly infrastructure
Cons
- Overwhelming number of plans to choose from
- Datacenters are only available in North America
About InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting was founded in 2001, which was pretty much in the infancy of the modern web.
Since then, they’ve grown to vast proportions, with customers hosting over 300,000 domains on their servers.
Plans Offered
InMotion offers several types of hosting plans, including:
- Shared business hosting
- WordPress hosting
- Reseller hosting
- VPS (virtual private servers)
- Dedicated servers
- Managed hosting
You can find cheaper plans elsewhere if you’re looking for the lowest price possible, but InMotion’s prices are competitive with most other hosting companies. And in most cases, I don’t think you should look for the cheapest option anyway. The cheapest hosts often provide poor quality service, though this isn’t always the case.
Infrastructure
With InMotion Hosting, you get mature infrastructure with high-speed drives, redundant datacenters, and automatic backups. You also get great support and environmentally-friendly servers.
Who Should Consider InMotion Hosting?
Overall, I think InMotion Hosting offers great value for the cost of their plans.
In particular, I appreciate the ability to scale quickly if needed. You can always find an appropriate plan for any size site you want to create on InMotion Hosting.
InMotion’s customer support is about as good as you’ll find anywhere — and you don’t need to pay any extra fee to get it. It’s reassuring to know that whenever you run into an issue, you can quickly get help.
Don’t forget to use our special InMotion discount coupon to get the best deal!
InMotion Hosting Plans
As mentioned above, InMotion offers many different types of hosting plans.
Let’s break these plans down, shall we?
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting involves a web host provider placing many websites on a single server.
The host saves money because they only have to pay for the maintenance and use of one piece of equipment for many different customers. Customers, in return, get hosting at a low cost (although it might not be ideal for highly-trafficked, resource-intensive websites).
InMotion Hosting offers three shared hosting plans:
| Launch | Power | Pro |
| $10.99 / mo | $14.99 / mo | $23.99 / mo |
| Free domain, unlimited bandwidth, security suite, free SSL | Free domain, unlimited bandwidth, security suite, free SSL | Free domain, unlimited bandwidth, security suite, free SSL |
| 50 GB storage | 100 GB storage | 200 GB storage |
| 10 email addresses | 50 email addresses | Unlimited email addresses |
| Up to 2 websites | Up to 50 websites | Unlimited websites |
| 3X performance | 4X performance | 6X performance |
| Standard customer support | Standard customer support | Pro level customer support |
Managed WordPress Plans
While you can install WordPress on any shared hosting plan, InMotion Hosting also offers four specialized WordPress plans.
These plans include the following features:
| Plan | WP-1000S | WP-2000S | WP-3000S | WP-4000S |
| Number of websites | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| Storage Space | 50 GB | 100 GB | 150 GB | 200 GB |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Email accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Price | $8.99 / mo | $12.99 / mo | $16.99 / mo | $32.99 / mo |
On these managed plans, WordPress comes pre-installed. You also have access to BoldGrid, a plugin for WordPress that acts like a website builder (we’ve got more on BoldGrid below).
WordPress is known to developers for being somewhat bloated and slow, but InMotion’s special WordPress features minimize these negative aspects of the platform.
First of all, you get access to an optimized Nginx server for improved performance. InMotion Hosting has also created their own caching tool for WordPress.
Interested in InMotion?
You can currently save up to 50% on their hosting plans with this discount link. You’ll also get a 90-day money-back guarantee.
Managed VPS Plans
InMotion offers virtual private server (VPS) hosting for more resource-intensive and highly-trafficked websites.
These plans are managed, which means that InMotion’s support handles much of the administrative work required to keep your site up-to-date, including:
- Installing updates and security patches for the operating system
- Updating core tools like the cPanel/WHM
InMotion offers three VPS plans:
- VPS-1000HA-S: 4 GB RAM, 75 GB storage, 4 TB bandwidth
- VPS-2000HA-S: 6 GB RAM, 150 GB storage, 5 TB bandwidth
- VPS-3000HA-S: 8 GB RAM, 260 GB storage, 6 TB bandwidth
With all of these plans, you get automatic backups, the ability to choose your data center, and a free SSL certificate to encrypt your traffic and improve your search engine rankings.
E-Commerce Hosting Plans
InMotion also offers e-commerce hosting. These plans come with one-click installers for platforms like:
You can choose between shared and VPS e-commerce hosting options. Both options come with a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
To keep your traffic secure, you’ll need to invest in an SSL certificate. Note that neither option is PCI compliant, though the VPS plan can qualify you for PCI compliance.
InMotion Hosting Features
One of InMotion Hosting’s most attractive features is that their shared plans come with “unlimited” disk space and bandwidth.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you truly get unlimited resources.
You only get unlimited resources as long as your sites don’t affect the performance of other sites on the shared server.
It’s a good news/bad news type of thing:
- The good news: InMotion Hosting cares about how customers are using their shared accounts. They won’t let other customers affect your sites if at all possible.
- The bad news: Your site can run slower than expected at busy times of the day. Also, if you’re using too many resources, it will affect the loading speed of your site and may cause it to not load at all in some cases.
You’ll need to monitor your website performance to see if it’s being throttled. If it is, you’ll surely want to upgrade to a more expensive plan.
Unlimited Email
InMotion’s shared hosting plans also come with unlimited email.
This means that you can create as many email inboxes as you want, and each of these inboxes comes with unlimited storage.
So, in this case, “unlimited” inboxes really does mean unlimited!
High-Quality, Fast Servers
Performance very well might be the most important aspect of hosting. If your website loads slowly, you’ll lose visitors.
Solid-state drives (SSDs) are about 20 times faster than standard HDDs for certain operations. In the case of hosting, they help servers handle requests faster and more reliably. They’re especially important for high traffic loads.
All InMotion plans, even the cheapest shared hosting plans, incorporate SSDs.
99.9% Uptime Guarantee
InMotion offers one of the best uptime guarantees in the hosting industry.
If you’re on the Pro plan or higher and you have an uptime rate lower than 99.9%, you’ll be credited with one month of free service.
However, there is some fine print here. Your site going down for server maintenance or due to an attack does not count.
The guarantee basically just covers the expected service on InMotion Hosting’s side of things.
Historical Uptime
We took a look at the uptime on our InMotion test website, using Pingdom to review the last six months (this data is taken from one test URL, so it should serve as an indication only):
- Average uptime: 96.93%
- Average site response time: 1,584 ms
Remember to keep track of how your site’s performing and take advantage of InMotion Hosting’s uptime guarantee if performance starts slipping.
Response Times
The lower the response time, the better your website is performing, as this means it’s loading pages faster. InMotion’s response times seem to vary month-to-month.
Max Speed Zone Technology
Max Speed Zone is one of InMotion’s unique features. It allows VPS customers to manually select which datacenter they want to use.
InMotion Hosting has two datacenters, with one located on the east coast of the United States and the other located on the west coast.
In general, the closer a visitor is to a datacenter, the faster the page will load for them. This is a very handy feature if you know that most of your visitors come from one particular area.
Green Server Technology
Hosting datacenters are massive, with thousands of servers that consume huge amounts of electricity. They have a significant carbon output.
InMotion Hosting is one of the few hosts that has invested in making their infrastructure more eco-friendly.
Their datacenter in Los Angeles was the first-ever green datacenter. It reduced their typical cooling costs by about 70%, and it lowered carbon output by thousands of tons per year.
If you’d like to support a company that’s trying to reduce their harm to the environment, InMotion’s green policies are a big plus.
cPanel
Once you create an account and sign up for a plan, you’ll be given access to an account panel.
This is what my account panel looks like on a shared hosting plan:
This is where you can manage your SSL certificates and domain settings.
Most importantly, there’s a link to cPanel, where you’ll spend most of your time.
Even if you have previous experience with cPanel, you should note that InMotion Hosting has done some serious customization to make this dashboard software more useful:
- Softaculous installer: This feature gives you an easy way to install over 400 applications, including content management systems (CMSs) like WordPress, Joomla, and Magento.
- Cron jobs: This feature lets you create scripts that automatically perform repetitive tasks. If you ever learn web development or hire a developer to add custom site functionality, cron jobs can be quite helpful.
- Multiple database options: You have access to both MySQL and PostgreSQL in your cPanel.
- Custom error pages: Customize the display of your website’s error pages for when something goes wrong for visitors.
- SSH access: Manage your site files through a command line — this is a feature that not too many other hosts offer.
In short, your cPanel has advanced options that give you more control over your website and server resources.
BoldGrid Premium Website Builder
BoldGrid is a plugin specifically built for WordPress that enables all sorts of customization functionality.
Basically, it allows you to easily customize your WordPress site with a drag-and-drop editor tool.
It’s intuitive to use and saves a lot of time if you regularly customize the design of your pages.
BoldGrid Themes
BoldGrid comes with over 200 professionally designed themes.
Personally, I’m impressed with these designs, and the themes are divided into categories that make it easy to find the best one for your site. You can even switch between them with little impact, and all of BoldGrid’s themes are mobile device responsive.
Staging Area
BoldGrid has a staging environment included as well.
In simple terms, a staging version of your site is a duplicate that search engines and visitors don’t see.
Whenever you edit your site in the stage area, there won’t be any consequences if you make a mistake. Then, when you’re happy with the final results, you deploy those changes to your actual site. No more panicked editing needed.
BoldGrid has a simple radio button that indicates which version of your site you’re saving changes to.
SEO
Most BoldGrid themes come optimized for the basics of search engine optimization (SEO), including above-average coding practices, XML sitemaps, and automatic canonical URLs.
These are small things, but they save you from all the time it would take to configure other WordPress plugins for these purposes.
Excellent Customer Support
If I had to pick one thing that InMotion Hosting is known for, it’s customer service.
To start with, their availability is as good as it gets. There are four different ways to contact support:
- Live chat
- Phone
- Submitting a ticket
These options are all available 24/7 for every single hosting package. Many other hosts only offer their support for higher paying customers.
90-Day Money-Back Guarantee
InMotion offers a generous 90-day money-back guarantee to those who opt for a shared, VPS, or reseller hosting plan with a six-month (or longer) contract.
If you cancel within this time frame, you’ll receive a full refund, no questions asked.
Those with dedicated servers or with VPS/reseller plans which are billed on a monthly basis are eligible for a 30-day money-back guarantee.
New Customer Onboarding
All new customers get a free 25-minute consultation with one of InMotion’s support representatives to help you get started with a specific aspect of your hosting plan.
Rather than following a single onboarding format, you can choose the topic you want to cover with your representative during this session. Options include:
- Beginner’s Getting Started (for those who aren’t sure which option to choose, this tutorial walks you through an overview of InMotion’s services)
- Account Management Panel
- cPanel
- Transferring Domains
- Transferring Websites
- Joomla
- Premium Website Builder
- PrestaShop
- WordPress
InMotion Hosting provides free website migrations.
Knowledge Base
InMotion Hosting is also renowned for their knowledge base, which is filled with support articles and tutorials.
The quality of this content is generally good, though I believe it could be improved in some cases.
What’s really impressive is the depth. There are hundreds of articles and guides. You can find a specific article for just about any hosting topic.
They’ve even created guides for using other applications like Prestashop and WordPress. Yes, they’ve created help documents for other products that they do not own, just because it might help you.
This is the best example of going above and beyond for customer service that I’ve seen in any host.
How to Migrate to InMotion Hosting
Since InMotion Hosting likes to highlight their free migration services but never shows exactly what it involves, I thought it’d be nice to go over what this process looks like so you can see how simple it really is.
Once you log in to your account, you click the “website transfer request” option on the main page.
That will give you a form to fill out. It doesn’t take very long.
Optional Priority Transfer
Free migration usually takes 1-4 days.
You also have the option of paying for priority transfer, which puts your migration at the top of the queue.
How InMotion Hosting Could Improve
I’ve yet to come across a host that is perfect, and that includes InMotion Hosting.
Here are my biggest gripes:
“Unlimited” Hosting is Unclear
You don’t get a specific amount of resources on shared plans. You’re simply told that if your website consumes too many resources, it will get slow.
So, you may eventually need to upgrade to a more costly plan if your site gets bogged down.
There Are So Many Hosting Plans
I think the huge number of plan options can be overwhelming for anyone who doesn’t have much experience buying and using hosting.
I’d like to see InMotion Hosting offer clearer support for this or even a tool that gives you specific recommendations. Or, they could simply reduce the number of plans.
Datacenters Are Only in the United States
Datacenter location can have a significant impact on website load speed. If your visitor is halfway around the world, your pages will load a bit slower.
There Can Be a Few Unexpected Costs
Having to upgrade because of resource throttling is one way you might face a rising cost. Additionally, if you migrate sites to InMotion Hosting, they will migrate up to three websites or databases for free, but you’ll be charged a small fee for anything in addition to that.
These costs aren’t too significant, but keep them in mind when purchasing a plan.
Most Popular InMotion Hosting Alternatives
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Ready to try InMotion Hosting?
Save up to 50% on their hosting plans with this discount link for our readers. You’ll also get a 90-day money-back guarantee.
InMotion Hosting Review Conclusion
Below is a handy breakdown of InMotion information that will help you make your decision about whether this hosting company is right for you.
| Migration Policy | Up to three sites migrated for free. Small fee for each additional website, cPanel account, or database. |
| Control Panel | cPanel |
| Available Datacenters | California and Virginia, USA |
| Quality of Support Materials Available on Website | Excellent |
| Money-Back Guarantee or Trial Period | 90-day money-back guarantee |
| Lowest Price for Hosting | $2.49/mo using this link |
| Backup Policy/Fees for Cheapest Plan | Backups are provided for free on all plans |
| PCI Compliance | Support will help your site pass PCI compliance scans, but only on VPS or dedicated hosting accounts |
| Website Builder | The BoldGrid WordPress site builder is included for free |
I’ve used InMotion for many years, and I do recommend it for most people.
If you think InMotion is a good fit for your website, take advantage of our InMotion discount coupon to get the best price.
Contributing writer: Katie Horne. Contributing editor: Natalie Mootz
About Dale Cudmore
Freelance blogger by day, developer by night, Dale is a freelance writer who specializes in technology and digital marketing. He studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo before becoming a freelance writer.Connect with Dale
InMotion Hosting Frequently Asked Questions
- Do I have to use a CMS on InMotion hosting plans?
On some hosts, your only option is to install a major CMS like WordPress or Joomla. It’s an option on InMotion Hosting, but far from the only one. All hosting accounts support PHP, Ruby, Perl, and Python. You also have SSH access on most plans. Put these two factors together, and it’s easy to host a custom-built site if that’s the path your developer chooses.
- Will InMotion Hosting help me get visitors to my sites?
InMotion has put together a great guide with around 100 links to small business resources. It covers many areas of marketing, from conversion rate optimization to email marketing to the best marketing tools. These will help get you started in the right direction.
- Which programming languages are supported?
InMotion’s servers support Python, Ruby, Perl, and PHP.
- What type of one-click installers are provided?
Shared hosting plans come with more than 300 one-click installer scripts. You can also ask the technical support team to install WordPress, Joomla, or PrestaShop for you.
- Will I get a refund if I cancel?
InMotion Hosting offers a 90-day money-back guarantee for shared, VPS, and reseller hosting packages that are paid in advance for six months or more.
They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee for dedicated servers, as well as reseller and VPS hosting plans that are paid monthly.
The refund is for hosting costs only and does not cover domain purchases. If you got a free domain, this cost will be deducted from your refund.
After the 90-day guarantee period ends, InMotion Hosting may refund you for unused months, providing you haven’t violated their terms.
- Does InMotion Hosting offer SSL certificates?
All of InMotion’s shared hosting plans come with access to a shared SSL certificate. You can purchase a private SSL certificate through your Account Management Panel.
- Which control panel is provided?
cPanel is included free of charge with all their hosting plans. Reseller plans, VPS packages, and dedicated servers also include WHM.
- Which payment options does InMotion Hosting accept?
InMotion accepts payment via Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, check, and money order.
- Will my website be backed up?
InMotion Hosting automatically backs up data for customers on shared hosting, VPS, and reseller hosting accounts providing the account uses 10 GB disk space or less. Backups are made every 24-36 hours.
InMotion stresses that these backups are only intended to cover emergencies. If your data exceeds 10 GB, or you have a dedicated server, you will need to pay InMotion for the service or initiate your own backups.
- Are there special hosting plans for educational users?
Yes, but only if you attend school in the US.
Students with a valid .edu email address get a 50% discount on shared hosting, while educators can get shared hosting for free. These discounts are only available to new customers and can only be renewed once.
InMotion Hosting does not offer any discounts for non-profits.
- Do I need a dedicated IP address?
Not necessarily, though having one is helpful. If you’re running an online store, you should have a dedicated IP address. You should also get one if you’re doing something like email marketing, since a dedicated IP address will make it less likely that your messages get flagged as spam.
InMotion Hosting Reviews by Our Community
Overall Rating from 654 Reviews by InMotion Hosting Customers
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| Quality | |
| Features | |
| Value |
Most Helpful Reviews
Kristy LeBlanc newworldartisan.com
Jan 27, 2017
I love InMotion. Whenever I have a support issue it’s always resolved by the end of the chat. With my previous host I waited for 20-30 mins to speak with someone, communication was always an issue, and half the time they had to escalate it to another department resolve the issue (which added several more hours to the process).
I’m very happy with the support I’ve received with InMotion and I also appreciate the ease of the dashboard and help articles. They put a lot of thought into the customer experience.
Malcolm McKay crafthouseimages.com
Sep 01, 2016
I am NOT alone, anymore…
Now things have changed. Wow, have they changed! I am now happy to say I am a proud customer of InMotion Hosting.
YAY! I bought a WordPress Template and chose InMotion Hosting to keep my files safe and sound. Needing to ask many questions about "simple little issues" relating to uploading files; set-up; log-in; WordPress; cPanel; email; terminology; and all those tricky little things formerly foreign to me.
"Simple little issues"?
Yeah, to the tech gurus at InMotion Hosting, but not to me. These matters were, most important and were causing me anxiety! InMotion Hosting make it so easy to ask a question.
Literally, everywhere I ventured on their Site I would find a button to click on where I could either launch "Chat" or submit a "Ticket". Their “Chat” is great! Very helpful, with an expert team of consultants who have either answered my "pressing" question or passed me on to someone who could satisfy my query within minutes, leaving me content and able to move on with my great adventure.
“Submitting a Ticket” is so simple and InMotion’s informed Consultants get back to me via email within an hour or so.
Leaving me time to make a cuppa and mentally review my issue. InMotion Hosting also boast a busy “Forum” with many people ready and willing to assist. There has not been a single issue I have not been helped with.
I have "bugged" at least twenty Consultants and every time am answered with enthusiasm and knowledge. InMotion Hosting have a wonderful team representing their great products and services. I gladly recommend them to you and all your friends.
Thank you InMotion Hosting. Previously the people I had chosen to host my websites have been aloof and remained distant; an entity I had difficulty dealing with. Subsequently, I left many of my questions unaddressed or researched them myself with google. Sometimes not very well, they remained a problem.
MaryAnne Nestor badgesoup.com
May 15, 2015
I have used InMotion Hosting for around 10 years. The technical documents are very good and suprisingly, most of the time I can figure out what to do by the online instruction. However, if I am unable to understand what to do and need to call, the guys at inMotion Hosting absolutely provide the best customer service.
I don’t know as much as I should about dot coms and hosting. And I am awful at explaining what I need. The people at inMotion are so patient and have the unique ability to explain how things work.
Yesterday, I worked with a guy, who explained the VPN over shared hosting, provided pricing, filled out the form my developer needed, and otherwise took care of me as if I were the only person submitting a support ticket. And this is the type of customer service I get Every time I call or write. A couple of months ago, my husband decided to use Wix for one of his sites and honestly, I was making a mess of things trying to set it up-pointing servers and such.
This amazing young man at inMotion fixed everything. A. So if you are looking for a new hosting provider, I highly recommend inMotion Hosting.
Jalal ahmed
June 20, 2019
You should have atleast 2/3 backup fo ryour clients web , so that when they are in trouble, you all can help them
silvia
July 4, 2019
Great service, great people! I recommend them!
Adrian
July 22, 2019
Up time is great, support is always responsive and helpful. I have been a customer for over two years now and I just can see me going anywhere else. Keep up the good work!!
Alejandro Fuentes
July 22, 2019
Superb customer support, I’ve had quite some hosting services in my 15+ yrs in the market, none is perfect, specially when something fails and you need them the most. What makes me switch time and again is that here and there, support is unable to help, weekends, long nights, etc. With inmotion what I’ve experienced is that they been available consistently every time, and that’s something I value a lot.
Designed by Marin
July 22, 2019
InMotion Hosting is an EXCELLENT company.
After being with GoDaddy 16 years I decided to go with InMotion Hosting because GoDaddy, in my opinion, has gotten so large that they forgot the awesome business model, and respect for customers, that ex CEO/Bob Parson had. Ever since Bob sold his controlling interest to three businessmen the company has been deteriorating. According to their own reps many people are leaving GoDaddy. My advice to InMotion is to NEVER change the business model you have established. It will be to your detriment.
Tyler A
September 24, 2019
I have had many conversation with InMotion customer support over the years, mostly due to my own self-inflicted issues. They have always been patient and thorough, and have worked hard to resolve the issue I was having. I never once hung up upset or without a resolution. Some of the phone calls were long and some short, but every call was of great benefit to myself and my company. I recommend InMotion hosting to everyone.
Buddy
February 12, 2020
I have a dedicated server. I host over 80 of my Web development clients on that server. After bad experiences with other companies, including one I had been with for over 10 years and was suddenly and inefficiently taken over with a sledgehammer and a blowtorch by one of the three major corporations that have bought up most of the industry today, I feel extremely fortunate to have found InMotion Hosting, an employee-owned company dedicated to Web security and best-in-the-industry customer support.
What do I mean by “best-in-the-industry”? Just that. How can I say “best”? Because I know how bad most technical support is and because I cannot even imagine it being any better than that offered by InMotion. They are knowledgeable, will speak to you on your level of knowledge, no matter what it is, they won’t leave you sitting for 20 minutes waiting for a response, they are smart enough to quickly ascertain the problem and deal with it without much fuss . The most important thing is – you’ll hardly ever need them. Things just work at InMotion.