InMotion Hosting are a managed hosting company based in Los Angeles, USA. They offer shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and reseller hosting.
They recently got in touch with me and gave me access to a hosting plan so that I can take a closer look at what they offer. I would therefore like to take a closer look at their company and show you all what they offer.
Hosting Packages
Business hosting is InMotion Hosting’s term for shared hosting. This is the cheapest form of website hosting available online since your website is hosted on a server with dozens or even hundreds of other websites.
Their shared hosted prices are extremely competitive. Their cheapest plan starts at only $4.89 per month and allows two websites, six domains for email, and two MySQL databases. Upgrading to the $10.49 per month hosting plan allows you unlimited websites, domains, and databases.
It is worth noting that prices are slightly higher if you choose to pay monthly instead of yearly. My advice in situations like this is to use a service for a month or so to see if it meets your requirements. This allows you to easily leave if you are not happy. If the service is really good, you can then pay a year or two in advance.
It is worth noting that the promises of “Unlimited” from any hosting company should be taken with a large pinch of salt. While you could theoretically host many websites on a shared hosting plan, your account is limited by the amount of resources you are permitted to use.
VPS hosting gives you a much larger allocation of a server’s hard drive, RAM, and CPU. It is the plan website owners upgrade to once they have outgrown the limitations of shared hosting.
VPS plans start at $29.99 per month for 4GB of RAM, 60GB of storage, and 2TB of bandwidth. This is fantastic value. At my last company KnownHost, a similarly configured VPS account would cost $70.
Dedicated servers give you complete control over a server. You can upgrade to a dedicated server for only $119.99 per month. The smallest plan, however, only comes with 4GB of RAM. Which is why I believe the advanced dedicated server at $159.99 per month offers better value. It boasts 8GB of RAM and a more powerful CPU.
Reseller hosting fills the gap between shared hosting (business hosting) and VPS hosting. These plans allow you to resell hosting on to other people, whether it be friends, family, or customers.
Shared hosting, VPS hosting, and reseller hosting plans, all come with SSD hard drives as standard. The base configuration for dedicated servers features a large 500GB SATA hard drive. You can upgrade to a more spacious 1,000GB SATA drive or a faster 120GB SSD drive for only $20 per month.
As noted above, InMotion Hosting’s pricing is extremely competitive. Their VPS plans in particular stood out to me. If I had hosted with them last year instead of KnownHost, I would have saved hundreds of dollars.
Hosting Control Panel
The account that I was given was using a customised cPanel skin. This is a simplified version of cPanel that has many has many advanced settings deactivated. I have no doubt that the InMotion Hosting will offer the full version of cPanel.
I am always of two minds of whether deactivating cPanel features is a good thing. On the one hand, it can make things easier for customers to understand and can stop them from changing settings that could cause them problems. On the other hand, more experienced users like myself don’t appreciate when hosting companies restricts the functionality of our hosting control panels. I do believe, however, InMotion Hosting will reactivate additional settings if you request them, so this is not necessarily a bad thing.
InMotion Hosting features a plethora of website building tools. Using the Softaculous script, you can install over 300 unique applications at the click of a button. This includes WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, shopping scripts, and much more.
Support
InMotion Hosting boast of having premier support. All hosting companies promise great support, though InMotion Hosting does appear to be taking extra steps to ensure support is a top priority for them.
They offer support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In their support area they have over 3,000 detailed articles and tutorials that will help you manage your websites more efficiently.
InMotion Hosting have also hired new account specialists who work entirely on helping customers who are new to hosting settle in. During business hours, you can get an an answer to any question you have within a guaranteed time of 60 minutes.
Final Thoughts
As I am sure you are aware, it is difficult for bloggers like myself to review hosting companies that are not actively hosting websites for me.
When a blogger reviews a hosting company they have used, their view on the hosting company inevitably falls into two categories: Positive or negative. This is because people tend to keep using a hosting company they are happy with, but they leave when something goes wrong. Therefore, when someone stops using a hosting company, it is usually because they are no longer happy with the service.
Since I do not currently host my websites with InMotion Hosting, I cannot comment on the quality of things like uptime or support. InMotion Hosting have been really helpful with me setting up the account for this review, but you would expect any company who is looking for a review to be helpful, so it I cannot use my experience of good support as evidence of customers receiving good support all the time. That is why this review has been focused more on facts and figures than me telling stories of InMotion Hosting providing great support to me over the years.
That being said, I was impressed with InMotion Hosting in a number of areas. While their simplified version of cPanel might annoy experienced website owners who are used to using cPanel in a particular way, I am fully aware that this is what beginners want, and perhaps more importantly, what they need. Therefore, I think they are doing the right thing for customers who are using their cheaper hosting plans.
The other area I was impressed with was pricing. Their cheapest VPS plan costs only $29.99 per month and offers more RAM than comparative VPS plans that are two or three times the price. While cost is not always the number one factor in deciding a hosting service, it is certainly something that we all need to consider.
If you are looking for a new hosting company to host your websites, I recommend checking InMotion Hosting out.
Thanks,
Kevin
