Over the last ten years, Inmotion has grown exponentially to become one of the top hosting providers competing directly with the likes of GoDaddy and HostGator due to its award winning customer service and ease of deployment. With its highly appreciated money back back guarantee that competes head on with DreamHost and Arvixe, it runs a highly successful marketing campaign while providing a competing service that makes it one of the most recommended web hosting companies on the web.
Unlike other companies who focus on all kinds of customers, Inmotion focuses only on small and medium sized businesses and its plans reflect the necessary technologies expected by business owners.
Let’s dive deeper to peek into its services and explore how it can prove to be ideal for your business.
Plans and Features
Like all hosting companies, Inmotion provides plans for shared, VPS and Dedicated hosting to suit customer requirements. But the shared plan in Inmotion is called business hosting as it is optimized for businesses. There are 3 types of shared plans, each varying in power and features to suit business requirements. The 3 types of plans are:
- Launch: Ideal for beginners and business owners who just want a portfolio site. It comes with enough power and features to handle up to 1000 visitors a day. Each user can host up to 2 websites that can consume unlimited space and bandwidth subject to some conditions. Unfortunately the plan does not support ecommerce hosting due to the high traffic and disk usage that hurts the performance of other users on the same block. Fortunately it supports all major programming languages and provides up to 300 apps for quick install and deployment through its 1-Click deployment service. The plan also comes with pre-installed WordPress, Joomla and Prestashop content management systems that allow users to immediately start working on their website without any need for setup or technical know-how.
- Power: It is a value for money plan and is ideal for businesses that already have a website but want more power to manage their growing users. Users can host up to 6 websites on one account and also deploy ecommerce applications that can handle upto 2500-3000 users per day. If you are using another hosting company but are dissatisfied with their service or if your monthly expenses towards your website is exceeding your income, then this is an ideal plan for your requirements. It can handle sudden bursts of traffic while preserving data and bandwidth during low usage periods.
- Pro: Meant for the tech savvy developers who like to try and test on the server, this is an ideal plan for all users who want to make the most out of their web hosting plan. As your business grows, the plan grows according to your rising requirements while providing all essential resources for consumption. You can host as many websites as you need and deploy any kind of application depending on your requirements. Moreover, as the plan is targeted towards developers, it supports all necessary developer tools including SSH access to facilitate development. Surprisingly, the cPanel maintains the same ease of user even for non technical users who just want better resources for their growing website. Unlimited sub-domains and parked domains allow users to have full control of their web applications and therefore improve their web presence.
All the above plans include solid state drives (SSD) that significantly improve web application performance as compared to magnetic and spinning hard disk drives. Users also get free advertising credits up to $300 to help them jump start their online presence. If you have a coupon, you can easily get additional discounts on your first purchase or transfer.
Performance and Reliability
Since its inception in 2003, Inmotion has remained among the top performance oriented web hosting companies with security measures that far outweighed its competitors. Its inbuilt security layer allows users to deploy ecommerce website without the need for any additional ssl certificates. Except for select instances, the hosting company has maintained its reputation for continuous server uptime and increased pagespeed over the years. Let’s explore each of the parameters to understand the performance optimization offered by the company as compared to its customers.
PageSpeed
Page speed tests carried out over a span of 6-7 months reveal average performance as compared to competition. The average result was 3.33 seconds over the period while BlueHost offered the best page speed with average PageSpeed at 3.08s. Although the difference is minuscule, the effect often compounds when hundreds of users request high volume web pages at the same time. The page speed remains stable without any spikes like HostGator or StableHost and therefore it is ideal for websites that have negligible or very few high volume pages. The below statistics reveal the stats from benchmarks.
Server Uptime and Downtime
In comparison with DreamHost and HostGator, Inmotion performs average in terms of server uptime. Although the downtime is only for a minute or two, the frequency in downtime has significantly increased in recent times. The rising number of customers and limited server equipment must be a major challenge for the organization but nevertheless, server uptime often affects customer experience. Its average uptime during the benchmarking period was 99.95% which is still pretty impressive in comparison to other major hosting solutions like Godaddy, BlueHost and Yahoo who fared even worse. Glance on the below stats to better understand its uptime to downtime ratio.
User Experience and Customer Service
Inmotion has always been popular for its excellent customer service but the hosting service definitely needs to redesign its cpanel to make it easier for beginners. Although the cPanel is deployed in its standard form, beginners can hardly understand the difference between the file system and the DNS server. Instead the company can turn it into a blog like service like WordPress where the app handled everything and the user is left only with the content that he has to manage. The below stats reveal its customer service response history over time.
Personal Experience
I recently bought a power plan from inMotion and transferred my domain name from Godaddy. Although the plan offered a free domain name, it skipped the offer as I already had one. The setup was quick and the presale support was definitely better than GoDaddy. It took around 4 days to transfer the domain name to Inmotion but I have had worse with Godaddy (which took more than 9 days to transfer). After the transfer, I installed wordpress from the 1-Click apps and the site was deployed within seconds. I went onto install plugins and one of the plugins damaged the WordPress database. I filed a support ticket just then and waited for any possible backup that I may be able to retrieve. Fortunately the support team got back within 7 mins and guided me through the whole process of restoring the database. The problem was resolved within the next 20 mins and without any expense whatsoever unlike in Godaddy and other hosting companies. Therefore I am pretty satisfied with the company and the server is definitely faster than any shared hosting plan I have ever used due to the SSD drives that push data 65% faster than traditional magnetic drives.
Conclusion
Inmotion is ideal for business users who want anytime support and uptime along with faster websites to improve their user experience. Although the prices are a bit higher than its competitors, the improved performance and support compensate for the extra dime. If you are an experience web administrator and want a perfect hosting company within your budget, Inmotion must be your first choice.
