InMotion Hosting Review 2023: A Flexible Host with World-Class Performance and Support

You may have already heard of InMotion Hosting.

It’s been in business since 2001, so if you’ve spent any time online in the past couple decades, then you might have come across an ad at the very least.

The bottom line: InMotion Hosting really shines in its commitment to offer high-quality servers (this means fast loading times for you) and stellar customer support. It’s probably one of the best across the entire hosting landscape, at least in this sense.

To its detriment, the company mandates lengthy contracts in order to receive competitive pricing. This means a two- or even three-year obligation is required if you want to pay a price that beats (or at least matches) many competitors.

If this doesn't bother you, then let's explore further if InMotion Hosting is right for your small business.

InMotion Hosting offers more than 20 different hosting plans to choose from, which can be a little overwhelming. But with the sheer volume of plans available, you’re bound to find one that works for your business.

There are plans that cater to nearly every style and size of website under the sun.

However, when you sign up for InMotion Hosting, there are two things to keep in mind. First, you must be ready to pay for an entire year of hosting up front. Although the plans are sold as monthly plans, when it comes time to check out, you’ll be paying for a year at a time. Second, international users are required to verify their account by phone—which can be troublesome.

Beyond that, there are no real glaring drawbacks to the InMotion Hosting plans.

With over 300,000 websites currently hosted on its servers, it must be doing something right.

Everyone—from accountants to affiliate bloggers, podcast owners, photographers, and more—will find something to love with this host. Especially those that value website performance and a support team that always has their back.

The most basic plans you’ll find at InMotion Hosting are the shared business web hosting plans. These business hosting plans are the perfect starting point for most website owners, whether you’re creating a website for your nonprofit, home-based accounting business, or small mommy blog.

With shared hosting, you’re splitting the costs of a physical server between multiple users, which helps keep costs low. It's kind of like sharing a house with roommates you don't know. You each have your own room, but you’re splitting things like rent and utilities to save money.

Now, a lot of web hosts cram all of their shared hosting accounts onto aging or underperforming servers. Since these sites usually get very little traffic, site owners won’t notice much of a difference.

But InMotion Hosting gets brownie points here by doing the exact opposite.

All of its plans, including shared hosting, get access to powerful server hardware—which means you get superfast loading speeds and incredible uptime. Uptime is the amount of time your website is online and accessible via the internet. And the reported uptime for InMotion Hosting almost always exceeds 99.9%.

Each plan is also equipped with an SSL certificate. This certificate acts as the first step in website security by encrypting any traffic that passes between your server and your visitor’s browser window. Some hosts charge for this feature, so it’s a nice free add-on.

What’s more is the higher the plan, the greater the server performance, which means superfast loading speeds, even as your site traffic grows.

VPS hosting is an excellent choice for websites that receive a high volume of traffic or are very large. Think media-intensive sites like photography and videography blogs or service websites. Even large e-commerce sites that get a ton of traffic, or sites that get unexpected surges of traffic (hello, viral blog posts), can benefit.

Before jumping into the plans below, we’ll take a brief detour to explain what VPS hosting is. VPS stands for Virtual Private Server (if that gives you any hints). With this style of hosting, you have a physical server that’s broken up into multiple virtual servers, which operate like individual dedicated servers.

Using VPS hosting gives you much-improved server performance, loading speeds, and support for higher levels of traffic than a traditional shared hosting plan.

InMotion Hosting offers two different options for VPS hosting: managed and cloud.

With managed VPS hosting, the InMotion Hosting team will be handling all the technical elements required to run a server. So they’ll be taking care of tasks like patching for security vulnerabilities, updating server and control panel software, troubleshooting, and more. All you have to do is run your site.

This is a great setup for agencies who manage their own site and the websites of their clients—or individuals who have a portfolio of websites they’re running themselves.

The other option is cloud VPS hosting. These plans are best suited for engineering, IT, and technical teams who want to deploy web applications quickly. With support for multiple programming languages and full root access, these hosting service plans are built for deploying and maintaining apps and websites.

As each plan scales up, whether a managed or cloud plan, server storage, RAM, and bandwidth increase. So you’ll get support for more substantial and higher traffic applications and websites

The price of dedicated hosting alone is enough to send most people running for the hills. But with this price, you get access to an entire physical server and all of the resources it provides.

The dedicated servers offered by InMotion Hosting come with an incredible amount of server storage and processing power. This server can support huge websites that get millions of visitors per month.

However, some types of businesses can benefit from a dedicated server right from the start. For example, if you own a financial services firm that handles sensitive customer information—and you’d like to elevate your levels of server security—dedicated hosting is the way to go.

All of the dedicated server plans come with two free hours of server management. So you don’t have to worry about keeping server software up to date or dealing with security patches. Your only job is to focus on further growing your website.

And as a bonus, these dedicated servers are equipped with a phenomenal 99.999% uptime. Other than necessary hardware upgrades, your site should never be offline.

The most significant differences you’ll find between the dedicated hosting plans are the server storage space and the server processing power, which relates to site speed. The more you pay, the more you get.

WordPress currently powers over 30% of the internet, and for good reason.1 It’s a robust and flexible platform. You can build any site you desire, from simple recipe blogs to massive news sites like TechCrunch.

If you’re running a WordPress site that’s outgrown a basic shared hosting plan, then it’s time to upgrade to WordPress hosting. Your website will thank you for it.

The big reason to choose a managed WordPress hosting service over other plans that support higher traffic is the extensive WordPress optimization. Right out of the box, WordPress can be a pretty slow platform. But the unique features offered by InMotion Hosting’s servers work to offset this.

Namely, you’ll get specialized NGINX servers that have been optimized for speed, as well as a built-in cache manager tool that works to speed up WordPress even further. All that technical jargon means one thing—your WordPress site will be incredibly fast.

Since these plans are managed hosting plans, the InMotion Hosting team will be taking care of technical site management tasks for you. This includes keeping your site up to date, patching any security vulnerabilities, automatically backing up your site, and continuously scanning your site for security threats.

Beyond the scaling price increase, each plan differs in how much traffic it can support. If your site is getting higher levels of traffic, then you'll need a higher-level plan.

Wherever you’re hosting your site, you’ll want to ensure it stays online—which means you want some solid uptime. The good news is that InMotion Hosting has a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Speed and loading times will make or break your site. Not only will a slow loading site make your visitors run for the back button, but it can kill your search engine rankings as well. Luckily, with InMotion Hosting, speed will never be an issue. Loading times with InMotion Hosting clock in at around 855ms. The industry average loading time hovers at around 890ms. So your site should be loading a bit faster than the competition.

InMotion Hosting has crowned itself the “Leader in Customer Support.” Although that’s a big claim, it does back it up. It offers speedy response time, with a highly educated and helpful support staff. You can tell that a big portion of its support team is staffed by IT professionals. You can reach technical support via phone, live chat, email request, or the ticketing system built into its site.

You’ll also find a massive knowledge base that can help guide you through any issues you’re currently experiencing with your website.

InMotion Hosting is equipped with extensive security features, even on the lowest-level plans. All plans are equipped with an SSL certificate, built-in hack protection, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, along with dedicated backups if a hack does occur. Plus, those with WordPress hosting packages have the added benefit of the bundled Sucuri Security WordPress plugin. Essentially, this plugin places a nearly impenetrable wall around your site.

So to put all that into plain English: with InMotion Hosting, your site will be very secure.

Overall, InMotion Hosting gets pretty solid reviews across the rest of the online space. There have been some reported issues with customer support response time and website loading speeds. However, nearly all of these reports can be attributed to a single widespread incident that hasn’t affected long-term performance. In other words, it’s not something to worry about.

Users that prioritize website performance and customer support will find a lot to love about this host.

With nearly 18 years in the hosting business, InMotion Hosting has heavily invested in two things that make for long-term success: high performing servers and top-notch customer support.

If you’re a small-business owner who values these above all else, then InMotion Hosting is a great choice. Although the plans might be a bit pricier than the competition, the level of support and service you receive helps offset the slightly higher cost.

Still struggling to find a domain name for your website? Check out our simple steps to choosing a domain name. You can also explore options like GoDaddy Hosting, Siteground Hosting, Inmotion Hosting, A2 Hosting, Wordpress Hosting, or the Best Website Builders for Musicians. 

We carefully considered InMotion Hosting's pricing, overall value for the money, scalability, diversity of subscription choices, customer service quality, and network performance, among other factors.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.