Posted on February 15th, 2011
Started in 2003, InMotion is well recognized among business hosting customers and has been awarded numerous hosting awards in the “Business Host” category. Yet, they are still less known in the cheaper shared hosting category. They are one of the few shared hosting services that offer the full range of packages while maintaining the highest level of customer satisfaction across all offerings.
Key Features
InMotion Hosting operates two data centers, one on each coast of the United States. In addition to operating their own data centers they allow customers to choose which data center they want their website to reside. Not a common option among hosting companies. They guarantee 99.9% uptime and have excellent customer service with 24/7 phone and chat support. Their representatives are friendly and knowledgeable.
Hosting Options
One of InMotion’s biggest advantages may also be a negative from a marketing standpoint. They offer 4 types of hosting, with 3 offerings per type. The number of options may confuse novice web users and dissuade them from choosing InMotion; this is unfortunate. Their “Personal/Cheap” options also do not follow suit with most shared hosting providers by advertising “Unlimited” bandwidth and storage. They set limits, which are more than sufficient for most users, but it no doubt will turn some visitors off.
Although, they offer cheap hosting options at $3, $4, and $5 respectively, their real strength is the Business Class Hosting and VPS Hosting. These options let you choose your data center, provide you multiple websites on a single account, include daily backups and higher end server hardware. With a 2-year contract their business class hosting is available at $5.95/month, surprisingly competitive to most other company’s shared hosting offerings.
A huge benefit of their vast range of packages is the ability to upgrade or downgrade your service, as you need. They can effortlessly move your account to another hosting plan on their servers with no down time.
Reliability and Network
InMotion owns the data centers they operate and therefore have better access and support for them. They advertise 24/7/365 on-site system administrators in their facilities. A nice feature is daily backups. Its common for web hosts to give you the ability to back up your own data in the control panel but most of us aren’t that diligent. InMotion does a full backup every 36 hours, which is a real benefit to site owners.
Support
InMotion Hosting gets high scores for their support as well. The technicians are all knowledgeable, friendly and patient. They provide 24/7 live phone, chat and email support. They have an intuitive ticket system and respond quickly. There are also quite a few informational videos that can be enormously helpful, and their FAQ section is one of the best out there.
Account Verification
A common complaint is InMotion’s account verification process. After you sign up online they will call you, usually within 30 minutes, to verify the account, the account holder and generally ask what kind of content your website has. This may seem like an unnecessary additional step but after using many hosts over the years I think it may actually be a great little feature. By making a simple phone call they help ensure that accounts are legitimate sites. People with intentions of creating malicious software, are spammers or any number of other things that may have adverse affects on your server or their network is decreased. It’s a very quick call and the rep is very friendly.
Control Panel
Like most hosts, cPanel is the included control panel but in this case you get the WebHost Manager admin as well. This means you are able to actually create additional accounts, restart individual server services, check server status and add/remove server functions. For those with no cPanel experience under their belt, InMotion Hosting offers a good FAQ section about how to use various features.
Overall Rating
InMotion Hosting is a top-notch web host that has earned the awards and accolades it has received over the years. Undoubtedly more targeted to business customers, this should be seen as a real positive because if businesses who have higher demands on their webhost choose InMotion, you know it’s good enough for individuals. Great support, excellent equipment and reliability and plenty of choices make InMotion Hosting a top choice among website hosts.
Best Value
- Business Class ‘Launch’ Plan 2-year Contract @ $5.95/month