If you’re in search of a web host for either personal or professional websites, check out InMotion Hosting. This web hosting service boasts shared, dedicated, reseller, virtual private server (VPS), and WordPress hosting, as well as numerous free e-commerce tools. InMotion’s lack of Windows servers and a few other minor issues prevent it from reaching the heights of DreamHost, HostGator, Hostwinds, and Liquid Web, PCMag’s overall Editors’ Choice winners for web hosting services, however.
Shared Web Hosting
Building a website doesn’t need to be an expensive endeavor. If you want to dabble in cheap web hosting, shared hosting is worth a look. With shared hosting, your site is in a roommate situation with many other sites on a single server. You split the server cost and the available resources. As you may have guessed, shared web hosting isn’t very powerful. Sharing the resources means that if one site starts using a lot, there are fewer for the rest.
InMotion offers three Linux-based shared web hosting plans. The most basic, Launch ($7.46 per month with an annual subscription), supports two websites and up to six domains. Power ($9.99 per month with an annual subscription) nets you six websites and up to 26 domains, while Pro ($15.99 per month with an annual subscription) offers unlimited websites and unlimited domains. All InMotion shared hosting plans include unlimited email, storage, and monthly data transfers, which is a nice touch.
That said, HostGator gets the nod as PCMag Editors’ Choice award winner for shared web hosting services. InMotion’s rival also offers unlimited domains, email, storage, and monthly data transfers, and it adds the choice of Linux- or Windows-based servers. The Windows option is important for sites that have software that runs on an ASP.NET framework.
VPS Web Hosting
In terms of power, VPS hosting offers more pop than shared hosting. That’s due to the fact that your site lives on a server with far fewer sites competing for resources than with shared hosting. Plus, the web hosts supply your site with a guaranteed minimum of resources. As a result, VPS hosting is more expensive than shared hosting, but it’s a far more powerful and reliable system. You can think of VPS hosting as living in your own apartment; you’ll have neighbors, but they aren’t all up in your bandwidth to the same extent that shared hosting-stlye roommates can be.
InMotion offers solid VPS web hosting that starts at $41.64 per month and tops out at $154 per month. You get respectable top-level specs, including 8GB of RAM, 6TB of monthly data transfers, and 260GB of storage. Unlimited email, domains, websites, and MySQL databases are included, too. InMotion has a good VPS offering, but it isn’t as robust as the PCMag Editors’ Choice for VPS hosting, Hostwinds.
Hostwinds has stacked and flexible VPS offerings that start at $7.50 per month for 1GB of RAM, 25GB of disk space, unlimited monthly data transfers, and unlimited email. Its offerings scale up to $129 per month for 18.5GB of RAM, 130GB of disk space, unlimited monthly data transfers, and unlimited email.
An Inmotion rep stated that the company’s VPS plans double as its cloud hosting plans. In fact, there are no separate cloud hosting packages listed on InMotion’s site. We recommend checking out DreamHost11 Ionos, the co-Editors’ Choice, is the way to go.
Dedicated Web Hosting
With dedicated hosting, your website lives on a server all by itself and leverages the system’s full power. In other words, you don’t share your server with roommates—you have the whole house to yourself. As a result, dedicated hosting is an extremely powerful type of web hosting. It’s one that you should look into if you expect your website to receive a large amount of traffic. Mission-critical sites that can’t go down (or slow down) should be on dedicated servers.
You can configure the company’s Linux-based dedicated web servers (starting at $136 per month) with 3TB of storage, 15TB of monthly data transfers (which tops SiteGround’s 10TB), and an impressive 64GB of RAM. Many of the web hosts I’ve tested offer just 16GB.
Inmotion has solid dedicated web hosting plans, but AccuWeb, the PCMag Editors’ Choice for dedicated hosting, has better all-around packages. AccuWeb offers dedicated hosting packages (starting at $99) that can be outfitted with up to 2TB of storage and 512GB of RAM. They boast 50TB of monthly data transfers, too. You even get a choice of Linux- or Windows-based servers for extra flexibility.
WordPress Web Hosting
WordPress is one of the top names in web hosting, as the service is the content management system for roughly 30 percent of the internet. If you’re looking for WordPress hosting, InMotion offers solid packages. The web host’s Linux-based, WordPress-optimized servers (starting at $8.99 per month, with an annual plan) come with the content management system pre-installed, and they offer free daily backups and automatic software updates. In a nice touch, InMotion will automatically update your third-party WordPress plug-ins. It also has the ability to bolster your WordPress installation with a custom-configured NGINX stack and an in-house caching system.
The $8.99 per month WP-1000S plan offers 40GB of solid-state drive storage, roughly 20,000 visitors, the ability to host one website, and unlimited email and monthly data transfers. WP-2000S (starting at 12.99 per month) ups matters with an 80GD SSD drive, 50,000 visitors, and the ability to host two sites.
That said, A2 reigns as the WordPress hosting champ. The Editors’ Choice award-winning service boasts Linux-powered servers that offer unlimited storage and monthly data transfers at each tier. It also has several managed options for those who want their sites to receive the white glove treatment.
Reseller Web Hosting
If you’re looking to get into the web hosting game, but you don’t want to spin up your own servers or worry about providing bandwidth for them, check out InMotion’s reseller packages. The three plans, starting at $27.99 per month, don’t offer unlimited monthly data transfers and storage as Hostwinds’ plans do, but you do get unlimited email, which is a nice touch.
The entry-level R-1000S plan comes with 90GB of storage, 800GB of monthly data transfers, and unlimited cPanels. The mid-tier R-2000S plan ups the storage to 120GB, and the monthly data transfers to 1,200GB. R-3000S boasts 160GB of storage, and 1,600GB of monthly data transfers. InMotion provides 24/7 customer support, too, and it gives you a choice of Linux- or Windows-based servers, too. The plans are quite respectable, though they don’t quite measure up with Hostwinds’ robust, Editors’ Choice award-winning offerings.
Setting Up a Website With InMotion
I chose the Launch plan for my testing. I am disappointed that my only option was to sign up for a full year. Like most web hosts, a discount is applied to the first term (for up to three years). InMotion discloses its renewal rates, so you don’t get any surprises. There are no month-to-month options, unfortunately.
I was initially a bit dubious when the confirmation page said that an account specialist would contact me by phone to complete the setup process; I couldn’t log in until that happened. However, the call was prompt and helpful, and I wasn’t pushed into making additional purchases. The representative asked a few questions about the type of website I wanted to build, and then emailed me the appropriate welcome materials.
You access your general account settings from the Account Management Panel (AMP), but managing the website requires a separate cPanel login. I had some trouble finding and installing the basic site builder, which is, oddly enough, called the Premium Website Builder. Eventually, I contacted web chat support, but the person I chatted with referred me to email support. Thankfully, I got a quick response, and after I supplied my AMP password, the support team was able to set me up.
The service’s website builder requires yet another login and password, but building a website is an otherwise straightforward affair. You have three site types to choose from (site, blog, or photo gallery), you can select themes and colors, and you can pick the types of pages you’d like to include on your site. In addition to standard pages such as Contact Us and About Us, you can add special pages, such as Flash Intro and eShop. Next, you can add a map, poll, RSS reader, or script module into your pages. The Premium Website Builder doesn’t produce particularly attractive pages, however; my site looked dated. Alternatively, you can use WordPress to create your site. That opens the door to many site-enhancing WordPress themes and WordPress plug-ins.
E-Commerce and Security
Inmotion has many e-commerce options. You can add an eShop page using the Premium Web Builder and build a simple store. Payment options are limited, though. You can also download OpenCart or PrestaShop (both free) for a more robust store. I gave OpenCart a try; it offers a comprehensive dashboard for tracking customers and sales and multiple shipping and payment options. This beats other hosts like iPower and JustHost, which charge an extra monthly fee for e-commerce. Unfortunately, e-commerce isn’t available with the basic Launch plan.
InMotion offers several security features, including free remote backup services for accounts under 10GB in size. For WordPress sites, a free Sucuri Security plugin can be used to scan for malware and other security risks. McAfee spam and virus protection (starting at $1.39 per month) is also available for email accounts. You can purchase SSL certificates ($99.99 per year, with a $25 installation fee), which include a dedicated IP address.
Rock-Solid Uptime
Uptime is an incredibly important aspect of the hosting experience. If your website is down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services. That is a nightmare scenario. Thankfully, InMotion showed dependable uptime in my testing.
I use a website monitoring tool to track my test sites’ uptime over a 14-day period. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings my website and sends me an email if it is unable to contact the site for at least one minute. The data revealed that my InMotion site went down briefly during the testing period. Overall, InMotion is stable and dependable, but it’s worth noting that some services, including A2, didn’t go down at all during testing.
Customer Service
I fired up InMotion’s web chat on a weekday afternoon to learn about how shared hosting differed from VPS hosting. A representative appeared a few seconds later, and I got the information I needed.
I later called InMotion’s customer support squad to learn about reseller hosting. Someone quickly fielded my call and gently explained the differences in everyday language. I am very pleased with InMotion’s customer service.
InMotion has a very generous 90-day money-back guarantee that bests most other web hosts’ refund policies. Dreamhost’s 97-day money-back guarantee bests InMotion’s offers by a week, however.
A Worthy Web Host
InMotion’s lack of Windows servers and cloud hosting prevent it from entering our upper-echelon of top-rated web hosting services. Still, it’s an extremely solid pick thanks to good uptime, numerous free add-ons, free e-commerce features, unlimited email at all levels, and a lengthy 90-day money back guarantee. Check out the Editors’ Choice winners, DreamHost, HostGator, Hostwinds, and Liquid Web, our very best overall web hosting services.
If you need tips on creating your website, please read our primer. You might also want to check out our story on how to register a domain name for your website.
