Chances are that you’re familiar with InMotion Hosting.
Maybe you haven’t used them, but you’ve heard of them. Or seen them around. A vague recollection of their name or ads somewhere some time.
That’s because they’re BIG.
Since 2001, InMotion has grown a customer base of over 300,000 domains with two data centers in Los Angeles and Virginia Beach. (Fun Fact: turns out they also own Web Hosting Hub, which is more targeted towards bloggers and beginners.)
As one of the older and more established names in the industry, they also boast grandiose claims of being numero uno in transfers, support, and industry guarantee.
But here’s the thing:
Many times, the largest companies are the worst offenders. Coasting by on their brand recognition or flashy ad campaigns while neglecting the things that made them successful in the first place.
Is InMotion an established company that’s keeping the quality which made them successful? Or are they just another large enterprise getting by on reputation alone?
To find out and provide an unbiased review, we purchased an InMotion “Launch Plan” back in June 2015 and set up a basic WordPress test website. Stats like uptime & speed can be seen here (click “History” to dig deeper).
This review relies strongly on data, such as uptime, load time (speed) and customer support experience.
Pros of Using InMotion Hosting
InMotion performs well on three big areas of uptime, speed, and support. They also provide a few additional features which can make your experience more enjoyable.
Let’s take a look:
1. Above-Average Uptime of 99.95%
InMotion’s average uptime clocked in at 99.95% based on our careful tracking and monitoring over the last 24-months. This puts their uptime in our top 20.
Last 12-month average uptime:
January 2020 average uptime: 100%
December 2019 average uptime: 100%
November 2019 average uptime: 99.75%
October 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
September 2019 average uptime: 100%
August 2019 average uptime: 99.74%
July 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
June 2019 average uptime: 99.95%
May 2019 average uptime: 100%
April 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
March 2019 average uptime: 99.98%
February 2019 average uptime: 99.98%
2. Customer Support – 10 out of 10
InMotion Hosting claims that they’re a leader in web hosting customer support.
Frankly, this isn’t a particularly bold assertion to make. Web hosting customer service has been historically unreliable and ineffective, and the industry is notorious for turning even the simplest issues into a multi-week fiasco.
As such, we don’t exactly have high hopes when any particular hosting company claims to be a “Leader in Customer Support”.
Reviewing InMotion Hosting, we were pleasantly surprised. During the course of this review, we investigated the quality of their support team and conducted a thorough “Background Check” with actual customers to ensure that our interaction was not anomalous.
We’re proud to report that the entire ‘investigation’ yielded nothing but positive results. We presented the customer service representative with 3 simple but telling queries designed to gauge their product knowledge and general efficacy.
As you’ll see below, the results were outstanding!
Within 2 minutes of submitting our ticket, we were connected with a live agent who quickly and professionally answered all of our questions. While we’re compelled to mention that their account activation is not instant when you are using InMotion outside the U.S., our overall experience with their customer support team was surprisingly and delightfully pleasant.
3. 90-Days Money-Back Guarantee
Standard industry practice for money-back guarantees typically falls around the 30-day mark. But not InMotion. They’re so confident in their service, that they provide up to 90 days business, VPS and reseller hosting plans.
(For shared hosting options, they only offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.)
4. Integrations & Apps (WordPress, too)
Another claim InMotion makes on their website is that they’re a leader in supporting Open Source projects.
Again, those boasts are backed up with a portfolio of over 310 applications (!). You can find everything from popular content management systems like WordPress and Drupal to shopping carts or eCommerce systems like Prestashop and Magento.
5. Premium Sucuri Plugin for WordPress Users
InMotion’s WordPress Hosting comes with the Sucuri security plugin that regularly scans your sites for exploits and security risks, in addition to ongoing remote backups, anti-spam, and anti-virus protection.
6. Free Site Transfer
The good news is that, like other web hosts, InMotion Hosting offers to transfer your site for free from your current host.
The bad news is that they DO NOT promise zero downtime during the migration process (which other hosts regularly guarantee).
7. Great for E-commerce Support
InMotion is one of the few web hosts with active partnerships between Prestashop and other leading eCommerce services (SiteGround being the other).
They make your eCommerce experience even better by providing easy integrations with payment processors, helping you side-step an otherwise huge pain in the… neck.
8. Free Data Backups
Many web hosts charge for backups. Or they include ridiculous Terms of Service clauses that make their backup service useless for most customers.
InMotion hosting is different. They will regularly create a backup of your account up to 10GB, and also provide an easy-to-use tool to manually backup your site.
9. Google Apps Integration
Last but not least, InMotion also provides a handy little three-step wizard for connecting with Google Apps.
Some web hosts (GoDaddy comes to mind) force you to pay for their subpar email clients. While setting up a Google App integration to use your new domain with Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more isn’t exactly brain surgery, it can be a frustrating process if you’ve never edited MX records before.
10. Super Secure Smartwall Threat Defense System (TDS)
The recent Equifax security breaches illustrate just how clear and present the danger of cyber terrorism really is, and with the continual rise of brute force, Dos, and DDoS attacks, it has become more important than ever before that every website owner has a clear understanding of the security protocols being used by their web hosting provider.
Luckily, InMotion Hosting spares no expense to ensure the security of their user’s private information.
Partnering with Corero Network Security, InMotion security now offers a unique security measure called the Smartwall Threat Defense System or TDS.
Corero’s TDS is a family of DDoS protection appliances that detect, mitigate, and eliminate DDoS attacks in real-time.
Boasting an impressive array of technical specs, Corero’s TDS delivers the following to all of their customers:
The SmartWall is a slimline DDoS protection appliance that delivers 10Gbps full-duplex or 20Gbps unidirectional performance in a ¼ wide, 1 RU form factor.
1 RU delivers up to 80Gbps, and 4 RU delivers up to 320Gbps.
For those of you who aren’t well versed in technical jargon, it suffices to say that the Threat Defense System employed by InMotion Hosting and their partner, Corero Network Security, is among the most impressive in existence.
With InMotion Hosting, you can sleep soundly at night knowing that you and your website are protected from even the most aggressive brute force and DDoS attacks
Cons of Using InMotion Hosting
InMotion is mostly perfect. Of course, there’s always gonna be a few drawbacks to providing good uptime or excellent customer service. Here are InMotion’s:
1. Low Advertised Pricing ONLY for 24 Month Signup
Yes, InMotion’s pricing currently looks on par with much of the competition. An excellent value considering all of their positives, right?!
Unfortunately, the only way you can get this low advertised rate is by signing up for 24 months. If you’d prefer a shorter timeline (like 12 months), that cost rises a little bit.
This is a VERY common trick employed by MANY web hosts, making the too-good-to-be-true price – actually too good to be true.
2. Slow Server Speed
Fast loading times aren’t just great for user experience. Speed is also factored into Google’s algorithm for dictating where in the rankings you’ll show up (you know – the whole SEO thing). How fast your page loads has one of the biggest impacts on your bottom line, forcing half your traffic to bounce if it doesn’t load within two seconds.
Unfortunately, InMotion’s average page loading time of 824ms isn’t very impressive.
Last 12-month average load time:
3. Delayed Verification Process
InMotion requires all new customers to be verified by phone for security purposes. That means NO instant account access after signup for many, especially outside the U.S.
In rare cases, they might even need a picture of your ID card.
While we applaud their security efforts, this understandably might turn off many potential customers (especially international ones).
4. Some Plan Limitations
In their defense, InMotion does go above and beyond providing free backups and site restoration.
But there are limitations to these services. For example, any sites exceeding 10BG won’t be backed up. And you can only restore files once every four months for the sites that do get backed up. If you need something more frequent, there’s a $49 fee.
InMotion Hosting Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
Here’s a quick overview of the hosting plans offered by InMotion Hosting:
Shared Hosting: Their shared hosting, also stated as “business hosting,” comes with three plans:
Launch plan: This plan starts at $3.99 per month. It supports 2 websites, 2 MySQL databases, 6 parked domains, and 25 subdomains.
Power plan: This plan starts at $5.99 per month. It supports 6 websites, 50 MySQL databases, 26 parked domains, and 100 subdomains.
Pro plan: This plan starts at $13.99 per month. This plan supports unlimited websites, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited parked domains, and unlimited subdomains.
All shared hosting plans come with unlimited storage and bandwidth and are backed up by their generous 90-day money-back guarantee.
WordPress Hosting: Their WordPress hosting plan is similar to their shared hosting plans in every way, but it is fine-tuned for WordPress.
Free Domain: Yes!
Ease of Signup: Four-step signup process. A bit lengthy. Don’t forget about the security verification too.
Payment Methods: Credit Card, Check, Purchase Order.
Hidden Fees and Clauses: There’s a limit of 50,000 files per account for users.
Upsells: A few upsells.
Account Activation: Account activation can take a while. Usually, they verify orders by phone before activating accounts.
Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Softaculous for one-click install of popular apps and CMSs.
Do We Recommend InMotion?
Yes and no.
Our InMotion experience started out well.
Their uptime and support were all good. But over the last few months, things have started falling off the rails a bit. Both speed and uptime slips have been disappointing, so they’ve fallen down in our overall rankings to the 22nd place.
You can try InMotionHosting.com for yourself if you’re curious.
P.S. If you want to see hosting providers that ranked above InMotion Hosting, check our best performing hosts here.
