InMotion is mainly known for providing quite a bang for your buck, and a very stable service overall. Keep on reading this in-depth InMotion Hosting review to know about my experience with them.

I've found InMotion's shared servers to be one of the fastest in the business. Not only was the initial response time impressive (around 100ms), the total page loading time was nothing short of amazing for a shared hosting server.

I've regularly run page loading speed tests via Pingdom, and results have been consistently exceptional. So was the average server response time as monitored (automatically) by Pingdom. 

It's not a huge surprise considering how SSD-driven servers are generally so much faster than traditional hard drive powered ones. It's also not a surprise considering that InMotion are known to not oversell their servers, meaning that there's always an ample amount of server resources available to be used by each user account.

During the testing period, the site didn't go offline even once. Considering the testing period I'm referring to spanned 2 full months, this is pretty much as good as it gets with not just shared hosting, but any kind of web hosting.

There was only one instance when the site was loading extremely slow, but later I figured out that the issue was related to my own internet connection (I was having the same issue with a few other sites). Accessing the site via a VPN fixed the issue, and after a while things got back to normal even without the VPN.

InMotion also has a 99.9% uptime guaranty which is mentioned on their SLA (Service-Level-Agreement). In short, uptime should be the last thing you'll need to care about on InMotion's platform.

InMotion Hosting's shared hosting plans are decently priced. The main thing that differs a lot between the different plans is the number of add-on domains that you can host on a certain plan.

Their base plan, Launch, comes at $5.99/mo ($4.89/mo with discounted link). It allows up to 2 separate domains on it. One more thing, it doesn't come with the 1-click eCommerce software installation like the two higher-priced plans.

Their mid-sized plan, Power, comes at $7.99/mo ($6.29/mo with discounted link), and allows you to host up to 6 different websites. It also gives you the option to create and use an unlimited number of MySQL databases (though that still doesn't let you host more than 6 different sites).

Pro, their top-tier plan, costs $13.99/mo ($10.49/mo with discounted link), which is a bit more than what a regular shared hosting user usually looks to spend. This high-end plan gives you the ability to host an unlimited number of sites on one account.

I would recommend either the Power or the Launch plan, unless you are likely to host a ton of sites on a single shared hosting account. If you are a hardcore user with several sites under your belt, however, you'll have to go with the Pro plan.

The only major con is that, as of writing this review, these prices are applicable only for the 24-months billing term for the Launch and Power plans (and 12-months billing term for the Pro plan). If you choose a shorter billing term like 1 year, the prices get slightly increased.

Also, the minimum billing term for the two smaller plans is 1 year (i.e. monthly billing isn't an option). This may be a turn-off for some. Although if you do have long-term hosting needs, their generous 90-days money back guaranty will ensure that the money you pay for 1 year upfront can easily be recovered in case you're unsatisfied with their service.

Support

InMotion Hosting utilizes a fully US-based support team, which is a rare sight. They also offer a true toll-free phone support, along with 24x7 live-chat, Skype and email support.

Though my experience with InMotion Hosting has been limited, I've been fairly happy with their support, and they've managed to answer general queries as well as identify site or script-specific issues with relative ease. So, no complaints there.

The time they take to respond to support requests is nothing to worry about, either, and though it was quite varied in my case, from around 5 minutes to about an hour, the good thing was that the first response wasn't a fluke, an auto-generated reply or something completely unhelpful, which is the case with most cheap shared hosts.

Cheap shared hosts tend to employ (mainly outsourced to third-world countries) support staff who follow a very basic, rigid, troubleshooting steps and can be annoying to face for experienced users.

In my opinion, it's better to wait for half an hour and get a solution directly in the first response than getting an unhelpful response within 5 minutes, followed by an hour-long back-and-forth messaging before finally coming up with the solution, as I've experienced with some other hosts.

One more thing that I'd like to point out is that InMotion's knowledge-base is really helpful, especially for beginners. It allows you to search and directly find answers to queries you'd otherwise have to ask a person to get answered.

They also have a really handy YouTube channel which is filled with short, useful videos covering everything from InMotion's own features, to fixing common issues (both beginner and advanced level issues). Such as:

Other Points

Here are a few other points to consider before you either take the plunge and jump on the InMotion Hosting bandwagon, or reject it for another host if you find it doesn't really meet your requirements.

Planning to launch a personal blog? A niche site? A small company website? InMotion's launch plan may be a match made in heaven for you. Why is that? For two main reasons.

First, you get a free domain (for the first year) when you sign up with InMotion. That's a saving of around $10 on a domain right at the start.

Second, the plan is quite affordable at just $4.89/mo (discounted) and still leaves you the room to host an additional site on the same account shall you need to do it.

On top of these, InMotion runs all standard software, cPanel, Softaculous, and a standard LAMP setup means that you can get started as soon as your account is set up.

Installing popular scripts like WordPress, Joomla or an eCommerce solution like Magento or Prestashop would need just a few clicks, using InMotion's auto-installer. In fact, you can auto-install not just the common apps, but over 400 different web apps in total! Heck, you can even choose either WordPress, Joomla or Prestashop to be pre-installed during checkout.

If you're a WordPress user, you'll have the Sucuri security plugin at your disposal, which regularly scans for vulnerabilities in your WordPress installations. This offers some additional peace of mind to new users.

So, all in all, InMotion's launch plan is a beginners' paradise.

Money Back Guaranty is Best in the Business

A whopping 90-days money back guaranty is unheard of in the web hosting space, so for everyone who has even an iota of doubt about the actual quality of InMotion's support and overall service, there's the extremely generous 90 days money back guaranty.

Want to migrate your existing site from another host to InMotion? No problem. Also, this isn't limited to just cPanel to cPanel transfers. No matter what control panel your existing host uses, InMotion will be able to migrate your site without issues, unlike most other hosts who perform migrations only on the condition that your existing host must also use cPanel.

Want your website data backed up regularly (daily)? No issue, albeit free data restore being limited to once in every 4 months ($49.99 per restore if you need to do it more frequently than that).

InMotion proudly does these for free for all their users. Many cheaper or bigger hosts like BlueHost (my review of them) charge additional money for site transfers or daily backups.

Account Activation isn't Instant for Everyone

There are a few claims made by a few of InMotion's current users that InMotion's account setup isn't instant for most non-US customers. That is, for non-US customers, they probably run some additional verification (fraud protection?) tests before setting up their hosting account.

Some even claimed that InMotion is pushing phone verification for most new customers. While this is praiseworthy from a fraud-protection standpoint, but it might put off some people, especially international users.

Free & Effective DDoS Protection

InMotion's partnership with network security firm Corero Network Security, allowed all of InMotion's servers to be protected by their proprietary Smartwall Threat Defense System or TDS. It's basically a sophisticated DDoS protection solution, and one of the most effective ones at that.

So, in short, you'll be able to sleep at night knowing that even a hardcore DDoS attack won't be able to do much (if any) damage to your website's uptime or performance.

INODE Limit

This basically means the amount of files (quantity of individual files) you can store in your account. This limit isn't clearly mentioned on their sales page (at least it didn't catch my eye), but it's set at just 50,000 files. 

Though it should be more than enough for 90% of users, if you're a heavy user with a lot of disk space requirements (and thus got lured by their 'unlimited disk space' claim), you need to keep this tight INODE limit in mind.

Free SSLs from Comodo Integrated in cPanel

InMotion Hosting's cPanel comes pre-equipped with the ability to generate and install free SSL certificates from Comodo across all of your sites. Though this is becoming more and more common with many web hosts offering something similar, it's still very handy considering the importance of SSL and running https sites whenever possible in present times.

Heck, HTTPS is even a ranking factor of Google. And we've also been hearing about how Chrome will soon mark non-https websites featuring forms and other input fields as 'not secure'.

Databases Limit - What It Means for You

InMotion's launch and power plans come with limits of up to 2 domains and databases, and 6 domains and 6 databases respectively. At first glance, it may seem nothing unusual. After all, a standard WordPress site only uses 1 database, so having 2 databases for 2 different domains seems perfectly fine, right?

It should be fine for most of the users, but not for some people. Here's why: 1 domain isn't necessarily equivalent to 1 website. For example, TechTage.com is a WordPress-powered blog (taking up 1 database), whereas there could be a forum.techtage.com - a different forum software installation (like SMF or vBulletin) which would need its own database.

And, this is not even counting developers, who tend have many different script installations on each subdomain, for example:

• demo1.domain.com
• demo2.domain.com
• demo3.domain.com

Each of them tend to be separate installations of scripts like WordPress, each taking up (usually) 1 database. Some scripts may even need more than 1 database. That's when things can get problematic really quickly.

InMotion's reasoning behind setting a strict database limit is to prevent abuse of their cheaper plans and ensure consistently good server performance in a shared environment for all their users.

So, if this is a must-have for you, it's better to either get their Pro plan which doesn't have this limit, or avoid InMotion altogether if it's over your budget.

Hassle-free Scalability

If your website ever outgrows the scope of standard shared hosting, you'll have a few options from InMotion itself, without needing to move your site anywhere else:

• VPS Hosting (Managed & Unmanaged)
• Dedicated Server (Managed)
• WordPress Hosting (not too different from standard shared hosting)

And the good news is that, intra-InMotion site migrations are free, i.e. their tech support will handle it for you at no extra cost (this may not be applicable in case of downgrades, but I'm not too sure about that).

InMotion Hosting is one of those old and reliable shared hosting providers like SiteGround (click this link for my review) & A2 Hosting (review) that have seen and survived it all, without compromising on its quality, or succumbing to an EIG-acquisition.

InMotion's shared hosting plans are neither too cheap nor too expensive. They sit right in the middle of the pricing chart. However, when you take all of their features into account, you can realize that you're actually getting a much more value-for-money deal than you'd be getting with cheaper hosts. It's hard to argue about the prices, given how my test site experienced no downtime, and posted incredible performance stats throughout the testing period.

The only potential con I can come up with is the add-on domains limitation for the lower-tier plans. But that's unlikely to be a major issue for either newbies who won't have many sites, and web hosting power users who can go for the premium plan.

Overall, InMotion Hosting offers a good bang for your buck. If you're looking for a fast and reliable host that offers solid uptime, you may give InMotion a try.