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Brad Smith

Hosting Reviewer

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.InMotion Hosting Review

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 “Lite Plan” and set up a basic WordPress test website to monitor their uptime and speed.

Did InMotion Hosting perform well enough to get our recommendation?

Read on to find out.

General Info & Hosting Overview

Our Rating:

Our Verdict: 4.5
SPEED: 463 ms (February 2020 to January 2021)
UPTIME: 99.93% (February 2020 to January 2021)
SUPPORT: Live Chat, Phone, and Knowledge Base
APPS: 1-Click Installs of 400+ Apps
FEATURES: Unlimited Bandwidth, Free Website Builder, SSL Certificate, 10GB SSD Storage, One Website, Email Accounts, Spam Experts, 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee
HOSTING PLANS: Shared, WordPress, VPS, and Dedicated Servers
SITE TRANSFER: Free
PRICING: Starting at $2.49/mo (renews at $7.49/mo)

Pros of Using InMotion Hosting

InMotion performs well in 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. Good Uptime of 99.93%

InMotion’s average uptime clocked in at 99.93% with almost six hours of downtime based on our careful tracking and monitoring over the last 12-months.

This is not the most reliable result we’ve seen but it’s a solid industry-standard uptime and you can trust your site to be up and running.

InMotion last 12-month uptime and speed
InMotion average uptime | See stats

Last 12-month average uptime:

  • January 2021: 99.99%
  • December 2020: 100%
  • November 2020: 100%
  • October 2020: 99.95%
  • September 2020: 99.99%
  • August 2020: 99.72%
  • July 2020: 99.96%
  • June 2020: 99.75%
  • May 2020: 99.96%
  • April 2020: 99.92%
  • March 2020: 99.98%
  • February 2020: 100%

2. Good Speed 463 ms

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.

Luckily, InMotion’s average page loading time of 463 ms is fast enough to keep visitors on your site.

InMotion Speed Feb 2020 - Jan 2021
InMotion average speed  | See stats

Even better news?

InMotion Hosting has shown continuously improved speed over the past year.

A2 Hosting and Hostinger are still faster, though.

3. Customer Support

InMotion Hosting has a variety of support options to choose from: live chat, phone, email, and even Skype.

The best part?

All these support options are available 24/7/365.

We tested out their live chat option. We asked a few simple questions about their shared hosting plans and the customer rep connected within a few minutes. The replies were a bit delayed and concise, but still good enough to keep our attention and not go looking elsewhere for answers.

Inmotion Hosting live chat

Besides the abovementioned options, InMotion also offers a vast knowledge base, in case you prefer to find solutions independently.

4. 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 of business, VPS, and reseller hosting plans.

(For shared hosting options, they only offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.)

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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).

8. 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.

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, speed 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. 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).

3. Some Plan Limitations

In their defense, InMotion does go above and beyond providing free site restoration.

However, InMotion Hosting does not offer free automated data backups and it has to be purchased for $2/mo. Moreover, it only applies for the first 10GB and you would have to pay $1/mo for each additional 10GB.

It’s definitely something to consider before purchasing their services.

InMotion Hosting Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts

Here’s a quick overview of the hosting plans offered by InMotion Hosting:

Lite Plan Launch Plan Power Plan Pro Plan
Pricing $2.49/month
Renews at $7.49/mo		 $4.99/month
Renews at $9.99/mo		 $7.99/month
Renews at $13.99/mo		 $12.99/month
Renews at $22.99/mo
Websites 1 2 50 100
Bandwidth Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered Unmetered
Storage 10GB 50GB 100GB 200GB
Email Accounts 1 10 50 Unlimited
Other Features •2x Performance •3x Performance
•Free Domain		 • 4x Performance
•Free Domain		 • 6x Performance
•Free Domain

Quick Facts

  • Free Domain: Yes, starting from Launch Plan.
  • Ease of Signup: Four-step signup process. A bit lengthy. Don’t forget about the security verification too.
  • Money-Back: 90-day money-back guarantee.
  • 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, we do.

Our InMotion experience started out well.

Their uptime, speed, and support were all good. Moreover, they offer plenty of useful features with their shared hosting plans.

Sure, there were also a few drawbacks, like high renewal prices and some plan limitations. But in the bigger picture, these are not as crucial.

Visit www.InMotionHosting.com

Best alternatives for InMotion:

Further reading: The 10 Best Web Hosting Services (In 2021)

Have you had any experience with InMotion Hosting? If so, please leave a review below – positive or negative.

106 user reviews for InMotion Hosting

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    KRunek

    1  — February 11, 2021

    not so good!

    Not so good, moving all my site away from them. Currently ( February 11) they are down again!

    Alexander

    1  — February 6, 2021

    Nightmare

    We were struggling with our web page hosted on inmotion to be loaded faster than 30!!!

    We have tried all options including changing themes etc, nothing except the frustration. Support is useless. And today we have moved to another host, won’t name it to avoid biased accusations, and WOW, the page runs so fast and we pay now 1,5 times less.
    Inmotion – bad choice, avoid it if you still can.

    Alexander

    Travelster

    1  — February 6, 2021

    No longer viable

    Been with them for 15 years. Used to be awesome. Over the past year or two they have gone downhill. They move servers around and make mistakes in doing so, apparently without any concern for downtime or issues like some emails no longer working.

    Even though it’s a fair amount of trouble I’d moved away from them. Their customer support is awful. They’re going downhill so fast I was afraid they would totally go out of business any day.

    SD

    1  — October 24, 2020

    The Worst

    With over 20 years in web development, I have never experienced a “skimpier” web hosting environment. They offer the cheapest type of hosting, but without the cheap price!

    The site is down more often than it is up! Cannot edit a post, or even perform a GTmetrix analysis without hitting the resource limit!

    The only positive aspect is the support agents I’ve dealt with – “It’s not their fault!”

    Elizabeth

    2  — October 21, 2020

    Not for beginners

    Pros:
    My site ran pretty well and the speed was good.

    Cons:
    Tech support & customer service were polite, but they dropped the ball SEVERAL times over two basic issues. I hate to say it, but they seemed sloppy with the details and follow through.

    However, for someone with a lot of experience, it is probably a fine choice.

    JD

    1  — September 18, 2020

    Runnnnn

    Okay, so if you believe Tech Raider, they are great. It even sounds wonderful on the surface with a 90 money back guarantee. I’ll admit I am a novice and I didn’t even try to do much with it until after I was out of my day trial period.

    However, I finally got to do so, and the 2-step verification that I set up will not send the code. I try twice and wait for a long time but nothing. Tech support wasn’t available, even though they say that they are 24 hours. So, I send an email. Almost 8 hours later no response. I call and they get me in, so I think all’s right with the world again.

    Not so fast! I am using WordPress and I change my theme and update the associated plugin. I go to view and there is a fatal error and it tells me to check my email. Again, they take forever to send this email. When I finally get that one, click their so-called help link, and it tells me to call. Yay, that’s what I want to do is keep calling. I am using the simplest options and functions on here and none of it works and I keep having to go back to call someone. This is not convenient by any means.

    The next rep I speak to tells me that there were some servers down this morning and I may have been one of those affected. This is concerning because after this extended period of time I finally go to login and it’s down? If it’s supposed to be up 99% of the time and this brief period of time I go to try and it is down, leads me to believe that it is down more than it should be most likely. She didn’t explain what the issue was now, but honestly, I was done by this point anyway. I ask how much of a refund I would get and instead of just saying none, and that I was out of my trial period, I have to listen to a long explanation of what happens when you are in the first 30 days, and then the first 90 days and what happens then, for her to finally elude to no refund. Wasted my time on so many levels here. Didn’t seem to really care when I spoke to her either.

    All I am saying is that the only time since the first week that I try to go in and the servers are down and I am using a WordPress template with nothing special added yet, and none of this works; that’s probably some pretty solid indicators of the quality of service here. Thank the lord I didn’t have my actual site up and running and counting them yet.

    Hans D

    1  — August 30, 2020

    Used to be great, now they’re horrible

    I have had a high-dollar dedicated server for 7 years and liked them in large part because of great tech support. The last year or so, their tech support has slipped and now it’s ridiculously bad. Chat support? You wait forever. Phone? Ditto. Start a ticket, well you can go to bed because there won’t be anything till the next day. And this happened when my site was offline due to their mistake. I am migrating to AWS ASAP.

    Dean

    5  — July 14, 2020

    Best live customer support in the game

    I only say about my experience with them back in 2018. imh has the best tech support people- not outsource staff sending you copy and paste FAQ like most of them – on phone 24 hours. I only left because I quit running my unpopular Website. They were so professional, patient and polite even at 2am answering a dummy newbie like me who had zero knowledge. The girl fixed my PHP buggy script while I was on the phone for free. It took her like 5 minutes but could have cost me hundreds $. I would recommend it for serious webmasters who prefer to pay a bit more but your Website is in good hands. Not for newbies who run around looking for $1/month. Thanks!

    Anya

    1  — July 6, 2020

    No. Keep looking.

    They used to be good. That is long in the past, and anyone still reviewing them positively is getting some kickback benefit.

    Go ahead and try to get Billing on the phone — see if you spend less than an hour listening to crap music.

    They send emails with receipts for random charges for services they claim to have added to your account on which the “free trial” has ended. The first you’ll hear about the service or the free trial is after they’ve billed your card. See above for how easy that’ll be to remedy.

    The last client I ever recommended to this hosting co got hacked within the first week of a brand new WordPress install where the first things installed were a reputable security plugin. So, the InMotion servers got hacked.

    Just keep looking, people. This is not the host it used to be.

    Jaypeg

    1  — June 18, 2020

    Time to move on

    I’ve been an Inmotion customer since 2009 and was mostly happy for the majority of that time. Those days are over. I don’t know if they’re under new management or what, but their service has gone downhill fast. Sites seem to be slower and frequent outages are the norm. Recently, a “server move” (which they assured would not cause any downtime) crashed all of my sites. -meanwhile PPC ads were being clicked and potential customers were met with error messages for more than a day before I noticed. After waiting on live chat for over an hour, a rep “fixed” the issue.

    Less than 24 hours later, all of my sites were unresponsive again. I had to wait even longer to chat with a human, and it took him much longer to resolve the problem. All the while he tried to convince me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. After escalating it, the issue was finally resolved. However I lost all of the changes made between the first “fix” and the second one. Emails that were received during that time also disappeared.

    Now they’re sending me threatening emails regarding particular types of files that have been part of a site for nearly a decade. When I respond, they don’t seem to understand English. I’m done with this. After 11 years, it’s extremely difficult to find a reason to continue hosting with Inmotion.

    I would strongly advise against anyone doing business with this company.

    Carol L

    5  — April 20, 2020

    Inexperienced? No Problem!

    I transferred my work website to In Motion Hosting because they are in the USA. I am an inexperienced web developer and every stumbling block I came across, In Motion had a well defined How To page. They have assisted in web transfer, set up of new site on WordPress, and more. I am still in the learning phase of WordPress but have had a feeling of security with In Motion having my back.

    In Motion chat is the best. They answer quickly and stay with you as they help you work out any problems you may have. They also follow up to make certain that you are satisfied with their resolution. I am very pleased to be working with such professionals!

    steve

    1  — April 11, 2020

    Problems from the Get Go

    I am not a tech guy and paid a previous company to convert my website to WordPress (PHP) platform. When I signed up for Inmotion Hosting back in January, they said everything was transferred correctly. My site came up, so I was good. I didn’t need to change my website until March 2020. By then, I couldn’t retrieve my .php website from my previous hosting company. Inmotion didn’t transfer my .php wordsite over to their platform, but uploaded my .html website (non-Wordpress site), so I couldn’t access my website in WordPress Dashboard any more. I hired a web designer spending $130 to see what the problem was. They found the files but said they were .php.bin files and Inmotion would need to be saved in the proper format for them to access the correct files and upload the correct website. I’ve found Inmotion chat staff to be incompetent. Calling support is not much better. Have to wait on hold over an hour, then spend another 1 1/2 hours on the phone for them to try to fix it only to be told they’ll have to escalate it to higher up people. It’s been three days and no response. I am a small business and this kind of service/support is unacceptable for their mistakes. They also try to weasel their way out of responsibility when on the support chat or phone with them for their mistakes.

    J. P

    5  — April 4, 2020

    Superb Support

    I don’t understand the negative reviews for inmotionhosting. I’ve been through three or four hosts and inmotion hosting is by far the best. I’ve got a shared and a vps account hosted. My primary metric is support. You log into your customer portal, click on chat and unless there’s some major outage going on, you’ve got a capable tech on the line within minutes. Very few things need to be escalated so your issues are solved extremely quickly. I’ve had them migrate a vps server (CENTOS upgrade…done within 18 hours of request) and rebuild a firewall (done within 2 minutes of initiating the chat) in the last week. I have no idea how pricey they are because my time is much more valuable than any incremental monthly hosting cost. When they can solve a down time issue within minutes, that’s worth hundreds to me. Buy with confidence.

    corey a

    5  — March 27, 2020

    True Professionalism

    I think Inmotion EPITOMIZES professionalism in all aspects of their services. I usually have to contact tech support for various issues on my site and they could not be better in addressing and resolving these issues. My only challenge is their verification process and I change my PW from time to time and sometimes I forget to save the new one and then have to go through the reset process before they will help me and hey it’s not their fault but it is frustrating. I have been with them for ten years and will stay with them forever

    Adam S

    1  — March 24, 2020

    Painfully Slow

    I recently recommended InMotionHosting’s (WordPress Hosting – WP-2000s) to a few clients. I thought I was providing a superior product to what they previously were using (GoDaddy). Boy I was wrong. Front-end performance is so-so, but nothing exceptional. BUT where I was flabbergasted was their back-end performance.

    I uploaded 11 images into WordPress. These images totaled 11.2 MB. It took over SEVEN minutes to upload those 11 images. The CPU usage in cPanel was maxed out. So while I was waiting for these to upload, I went to my personal website, logged-in, and uploaded the same 11 images in less than 60 seconds. (I’m using A2Hosting on a mid-level plan that is comparable “on paper” to the InMotionHosting WP2000s plan).

    I reached out to InMotionHosting support and in summary was told that “Speeds Vary” on the backend. Which translates “Sorry, You’re Out of Luck, so pay 4 times as much for our VPS hosting”.

    I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone.

    d. s

    5  — February 20, 2020

    All my problems went away

    I shifted to a VPS plan here, closing two siteground accounts because of a recent large price hike – and thereby I not only saved a lot of money but also got remarkably better speed. Plus, the access to WHM gives me so many more options to deal with matters that otherwise required a ticket on the SG GoGeek tier. Customer service has been fantastic. I cannot say enough good things about my InMotion experience. (I have four other accounts at SG…they are going to be ported over, too.)

    If you are managing sites for multiple clients, you should be considering an InMotion VPS package.

    Nancy W

    5  — January 28, 2020

    100% Absolutely Recommend InMotion

    I am a VPS-1000 Reseller with InMotion for almost a year. After creating wordpress websites for customers in GoDaddy, BlueHost and Network Solutions I needed to bring the hosting under one umbrella because cPanel is not available at NetworkSolutions(!) and costs extra with some hosts. Same for SSL certificates. Being a one man shop, it’s hard to be an expert in web world but I dig in and try first knowing I may get stuck… so excellent 24/7 tech support was critical in my decision – which I researched extensively. Obviously by my review title, I recommend InMotion without reservation. My VPS-1000 plan is affordable, cPanel (& Softaculous), AMP and WHM have me flying through tasks I never thought I’d master much less understand. Their tech staff is 2nd to none. They’ve helped me through the dumb questions and highly technical challenges. Wait time is very reasonable (often less than 2-3 minutes) and the chat summary is automatically emailed for review and links. To round out my happiness are blazing fast websites with minimal TTFB. I could go on but need to run. Do yourself a favor and check out InMotion. You’ll be happy you did.

    Frank P

    5  — January 16, 2020

    A fantastic webhost

    I have had a dedicated VPS-based website with InMotion for 5 years and have nothing but praise for them. Before that I suffered through slow, wonky web hosts that just couldn’t handle the traffic and/or technical requirements that I needed. Once I found InMotion, I never looked back.

    I have found their uptime and speeds to be fantastic. In the past, with other web hosts, I didn’t find that to be true. And those are critical issues to me. Their support department has been excellent. 24/7 coverage by chat or email. Every time that I’ve had to use them they have been prompt and helpful.

    Now I have seen some of the other reviews complaining about speeds with InMotion and all I have to say is that this is a common problem with shared plans. It’s a matter of balance and all you need is one resource-greedy website on a shared server to slow everything on that server down. And it’s a dynamic problem that can’t be planned for. For instance, someone doing a huge download from the web host during prime time hours will kill your website. So if it’s critical to have website performance, then you’ll need to pay for a semi-dedicated or dedicated plan. There aren’t any free/cheap rides out there and there are compromises to everything.

    All that being said, I am extremely happy with InMotion and don’t plan on going anywhere!

    Wilfred

    5  — January 8, 2020

    Nothing but good for over a year

    My experience is definitely better than some of the reports below. I’m signed onto a VPS tier and have experienced zero downtime, and on my big sites, far better speed than I was getting on Siteground. (Consequently half of my five SG ‘GoGeek’ accounts have been migrated to InMotion and the rest will follow by middle of this year – I can put them all in one account!) One of the benefits of the VPS is that I can now assign clients their own cPanel.

    Of course, this makes me a hosting engineer, not a consumer of midgrade hosting. But I get to charge for that, ie, collect rent.

    Anthony

    2  — December 31, 2019

    repeated security problems with no inmotion hosting resolution

    love inmotion’s live phone tech support when an expert who knows what they are doing answers. But when someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, or doesn’t want to help answers, problems go indefinitely 🙁 Hope one day they can be more consistent with their hiring & training practices, before they allow a person to answer support calls. What would have been a 5 star review, has to go down to a 1 star on security and lack of resolution. Their backups fail multiple times. When their servers go down, their backups do not restore data. If combined sites have more than 10 gig (with emails), then ALL BACKUPS FAIL 🙁 Thankfully i have a security system to delete malware that keeps popping up on inmotion shared server hosted sites, but it’s awful that they don’t offer a way to find out how someone is able to hack into their servers and place these into the sites over and over again. I even deleted wordpress and all plugins and put a simple text/php site and still had to cleanup malware on one site ;-( When calling support, they simply want you to pay $300 a year per site to sucuri to try to find why inmotion is not able to provide secure websites as promised on their front page? Frustrated, since I don’t want the hassle of moving all files and websites somewhere else and LOVE inmotion’s live tech support. I’ve used some sites with chat support and found them to be a huge waste of time to resolve simple problems.