Our Verdict
A solid, professional web hosting company with excellent technical support, InMotion Hosting is a top choice if you know a thing or two about website development.
For
- Excellent after-sales support
- Impressive performance
Against
- Requires some technical knowledge to set up
- Big jump in prices after the first term
Why you can trust Creative Bloq
InMotion Hosting is a US-based web hosting provider that caters to everything from small portfolio sites to high-end enterprise websites. For smaller sites, you can use the WordPress content management system or the BoldGrid website builder or install one of hundreds of other website platforms using a one-click installer. This makes InMotion Hosting a versatile choice, no matter the type of website you want to create.
In our InMotion Hosting review, we explore whether it’s one of the best web hosting services for creatives today. When you've decided, check out these great website builder options.
InMotion Hosting review: Plans and pricing
Few creatives need enterprise-level features, so we’ll focus on InMotion Hosting’s shared hosting, website builder, and WordPress plans. Plans are available on a monthly, annual, or bi-annual basis, with significant discounts for paying two years up front.
For basic web hosting, the cheapest option is the Launch shared hosting plan. If you pay two years in advance each time, it costs $5.99 per month for the first term and $10.99 a month for subsequent terms. You get a healthy 50GB of SSD storage, free SSL (the data transferred between your website and your customers is encrypted), advanced security features, and marketing tools. It includes access to the website builder tool.
Plans that focus on the website builder tool and WordPress are similar in specification and cost $6.99 per month for the first term and $8.99 per month for subsequent terms. But even the cheapest plan includes a staging feature, which means you get a test environment for your website that you can make changes in before putting them live to your customers.
InMotion Hosting’s pricing is therefore slightly higher than most competitors, but you are paying for the higher performance and increased disk space.
InMotion Hosting review: Features
InMotion Hosting has many plans, but the features available for each one are roughly equivalent. For example, the shared hosting plans all include the website builder, which is based on WordPress, so you don’t necessarily have to choose the WordPress plans to leverage the power of the content management software.
The more expensive plans typically add additional web space, processing power, and email addresses. All shared hosting plans get free email addresses, support for multiple websites, unlimited bandwidth, and one-click installation of over 400 popular apps.
BoldGrid WordPress Website Builder
Most website hosts now offer a website builder, which is software that you can use to build a website without touching a line of code. InMotion Hosting uses BoldGrid, which is a website builder for WordPress. It makes creating a WordPress website simple, thanks to the drag-and-drop interface and over 200 templates that you can build upon. For visual design artists, BoldGrid is arguably the easiest and quickest way to create a WordPress website.
WordPress
Instead of having to set up a WordPress website yourself, you can choose an InMotion Hosting WordPress plan. These include a free domain for the first year, malware and hack protection, unlimited email accounts, $150 of advertising credits, and free website transfers.
Importantly, all WordPress sites at InMotion Hosting use a WordPress optimized stack, Jetpack, advanced server caching, and a Content Delivery Network as standard. Essentially, this just means your WordPress website will load quickly for your visitors.
High performance and security
InMotion Hosting is a web hosting provider that focuses on providing fast load times and reliable uptime for your website. Besides hosting your website on high-performance servers, it also has automated scheduled backups, web application firewalls, and protection from malware.
InMotion Hosting review: Interface
Getting started with InMotion Hosting is quite easy. After signing up, you receive a welcome email with a few PDFs explaining how to start a new website or transfer your existing one. The Account Management Panel (AMP) contains everything that you need to manage your website, though another popular website management console, called cPanel, is available.
In our performance testing, InMotion Hosting performed slightly above average in speed and website response time.
InMotion Hosting review: Support
InMotion Hosting’s support website is packed with articles aimed at everyone from the beginner to the pro. Searching for answers is easy, and each article is well-written and includes links to related information.
If you prefer, there’s 24/7 support via phone, live chat, and email. During our testing, we fired off several queries regarding the service and received prompt and knowledgeable answers.
InMotion Hosting: Should I choose it?
InMotion Hosting costs slightly more than most competing services, but you get higher performance servers and a platform with which to build an outstanding website. The BoldGrid website builder is also one of the top options for designing great-looking WordPress websites.
InMotion Hosting gives you all the tools to create an excellent website, though some features will go unused if you only need a personal site or portfolio. Still, we recommend it to creatives who know their way around website hosting and don’t need too much hand holding.
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out of 10
A solid, professional web hosting company with excellent technical support, InMotion Hosting is a top choice if you know a thing or two about website development.
Richard brings over 20 years of website development, SEO, and marketing to the table. A graduate in Computer Science, Richard has lectured in Java programming, and has built software for companies including Samsung and ASDA. Now, he writes for TechRadar, Tom's Guide, PC Gamer and Creative Bloq.