A well-known, large web host with mixed reviews.
InMotion describes itself as the top web host for UK-based customers. Over 300,000 domains are currently registered under them on Unix & Linux servers, and generally, these guys are improving everyday.
If you are looking for a WordPress optimized host, this may be the one for you. You will get a good value-for-money package, with generous features and free backups on all plans.
Let's dive a little bit deeper.
‘Satisfactory’ Reviews ⭐
This unusual company is employee-owned, based in Virginia and California. We like smaller hosting companies due to the extra attention they pay to their customers. And, around since 2001, this is no newbie on the block.
Overall customer-based InMotion hosting reviews range from “a satisfactory service” to “a great service,” depending on what source you look at. But what about their performance? Take a seat back, we will cover all the bases…
Our Verdict ⚖️
A Sophisticated Mid-Tier Provider 🥂
Uptime, speed, as well as support, are spot-on for the most part.
But our InMotion hosting review decided that too many fumbles makes this a risky option - if you want reliable high-performance.
This isn’t one of your great free web hosts, though. You still need to pay.
The pricing is great, although it is the typical intro offer that increases when you automatically renew.
And there are loads of cool features that come free, such as protecting your site with free backups & site restoration.
FOR
CONS
InMotion Hosting Pros and Cons
What to Expect 🗭
Customer Support 
One of the perks of visiting a chic local chain is the extra special attention you are paid. You end up feeling special 
. In this case, IM has a very cool number of communication methods for obtaining technical help - including Skype.
But also:
- InMotion Hosting Live Chat
- Email Ticketing
- Phones
InMotion Hosting Live ChatThey have generally good customer InMotion hosting reviews, which indicates that IM provides fast solutions. And, of course, they are available 24/7 - 7 days a week.
Very Secure Smartwall TDS (Threat Defence System)
Cyberterrorism is an established, constant online reality. Good to see InMotion has spared no expense in protecting their customers. Working with Corero network security, they offer a unique security solution.
SmarWall TDS can find, quarantine, and destroy DDoS virulents and attacks. In technical jargon - It’s a slimline DDoS security tool that uses 10 Gbps full duplex - with the option for a 20 gbps uni-directional performance in 1/4 wide 1RU form factor.
… If that means nothing to you, take it on our word that this is an extreme security system. Another big win in this InMotion hosting UK reviewer’s eyes.
Cool Free Features
On even the basic plan, you get backups for free. This is not common practice amongst the best UK web hosts - you tend to get what you pay for, with most.
Get up to 10 GB free backups in an easy-to-use application. They have a direct link with Google Apps, so you can find all of the specific tools that you need for your site.
(As seen in our GoDaddy review, it is a clear cut example of a top web host who forces users to pay for an email client not as good as standard ones available in the Google App store.) 
Add to the list:
- a free transfer
- 90-day money-back guarantee.
a free transfer A Bit Unreliable
We will cover this in a bit more detail in the speed section of this InMotion hosting UK guide. On average, these guys are not bad for uptime. They deliver what you would expect for an industry-standard web host.
We would have a hard time recommending this provider for businesses who have mid-to-high levels of traffic.
They clock in at about 99.94%, based on figures captured between 2018 to 2019. Not bad, but certainly not the top-of-the-range numbers seen in higher-ranking top-tier UK hosts.
Annoyingly Slow Signup Verification
Our InMotion Hosting review mentioned earlier that InMotion scores high in terms of security. Unfortunately, they took it upon themselves to require every new signup to verify with them - by phone…
Unlike everyone else, InMotion decided that instant signups are not secure enough. In some cases, you may even need to submit a picture of your identification.
InMotion Hosting Review
How Dependable Is It? 🚘
Overall, this company is among the top web hosts ever. (We only deal with those types). Think of it as a “lower-down” top provider.
You will have industry-standard speed, uptime, and advanced features… most of the time. (See later sections on speed & uptime).
Our InMotion hosting UK review thinks this is a good option if you are okay with:
- a year-long contract
- a limited number of sites - until the third tier
- higher price points than better-value web hosts
- slip-ups in performance
InMotion Hosting Pricing 💰
Breaking It Down 🦠
We are getting accustomed to advising our readers to look at the fine print. InMotion joins the list of web hosts who pump up their prices significantly after the purchased term.
And, if you want access to the lowest introductory rate, you will have to purchase a two-year plan. They do have a 90-day money-back guarantee, so you can test them out for longer commitments.
In all truth, even a month-and-a-half isn't enough time to really test a provider. That’s what our InMotion UK guide is here for!
Have another look at our uptime/speed sections, to see whether IM matches your performance needs for the next 24 months.
Available Plans
Shared
This is the most basic solution for getting online. There are three tiers, arranged by necessity:
- shared hosting for any skill level
- best choice for small business
- for developers/growing businesses
Core ⭐
- ☑️ 2 Websites
- ☑️ 100GB SSD Space
- ☑️ Unlimited Bandwidth
- ☑️ 10 Email Addresses
- ☑️ 2x Speed and Performance
- ☑️ Security Suite
- ☑️ Free SSL
- ☑️ Hack & Malware Protection
Cost of Core, the cheapest package is £1.99 per month.
Launch
- Unlimited Websites
- ☑️ Unlimited NVMe SSD Storage
- ☑️ Unlimited Bandwidth
- ☑️ Unlimited Email Addresses
- ☑️ Marketing Tools
- ☑️ Security Suite
- ☑️ FREE domain & SSL
- ☑️ 6x UltraStack Speed & Performance
All of this for £3.99 per month. You get a bit more with the Power Plan...
Power
- ☑️ Advanced Caching
- ☑️ 12x UltraStack Speed & Performance
At an introductory rate of £3.99 /month.
Pro
- Pro Support SLA
- ☑️ 20x UltraStack Speed & Performance
- ☑️ Dedicated IP
Starting from £10.39 /month.
Top Tips
These prices are pretty competitive - if you are willing to opt for 24 months.
Business with a regular customer stream?Consider hopping onto the Pro Plan, which gives you Pro Level support for a surprisingly affordable monthly fee.
VPS
Expect much more bite from a top VPS host. They should rename this the viper plan. It’s worth noting that a great free VPS may also outperform a shared plan.
Either way, you get a virtual single server, which means more resources to play with. There are three plans… (Note: these are more expensive than other options out there.)
VPS-4GB RAM ✅
- 2 CPU Cores
- 4GB RAM
- 90GB NVMe SSD Storage
- 2TB Bandwidth
- Free Hosting SSLs
- 2 Dedicated IPs
- Free WHM License
£15.99/month
VPS-8GB RAM ✅
- 4 CPU Cores
- 8GB RAM
- 150GB NVMe SSD Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free Hosting SSLs
- 3 Dedicated IPs
- Free WHM License
£31.99/month
VPS-16GB RAM ✅
- 8 CPU Cores
- 16GB RAM
- 360GB NVMe SSD Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Free Hosting SSLs
- 3 Dedicated IPs
- Free WHM License
£47.77/month
Dedicated
InMotion has a crazy assortment of plans, all of which are wackity arranged. This option is for if you have high numbers of visitors. All of the best dedicated hosting solutions offer you a whole server, catering to this need.
Rather than going through all of the various plans, we're going to focus on the cheapest, the best value, & the utmost highest performing.
IM really revs up the dedicated hosting resources available on the super-highest tiers - one of the most powerful plans we've seen at the most costly levels.
Three selected gourmet tiers:
Essential 🍴
- 4 Core/8 Thread
- 16GB DDR3 RAM
- 1TB SSD Primary
- Intel Xeon E3-1246 v3
- 5 Free IPs
- 1Gbps Unmetered Bandwidth
£111.99/month
Advanced 🥢
- 4 Core/8 Thread
- 32GB DDR4 RAM
- 2TB SSD Primary
- Intel Xeon E-2134
- 10 Dedicated IPs
- 1Gbps Unmetered Bandwidth
£150.99/month
CC-2000 🤖
- 12 Core/24 Thread
- 192GB DDR4 RAM
- 2x2TB NVMe SSD m.2
- Dual Xeon® 4214
- 15 Dedicated IPs
- 1Gbps Unmetered Bandwidth
£429.99/month
InMotion Hosting Uptime
A Few Quirks
We often mention the 2019 downtime crash Costco experienced on Thanksgiving. Sometimes, downtime can be experienced as a lack of availability for customers to access services or products, even though the website is not technically down.
They may get a message saying that there was high traffic “and the site is experiencing capability issues.” Our InMotion hosting review takes all into consideration.
Such issues are equally a problem - one example of this is 2015, when the website Gymshark had the biggest Black Friday crisis, and went down for 8 hours straight.
Customers were not able to purchase anything although they could access the website.
Gymshark lost an estimated £105,000 in sales.
Tests
Let’s look at how IM performed in a 12-month period:
- Nov 2019: 99.78%
- Oct 2019: 99.99%
- Sep 2019: 100%
- Aug 2019: 99.74%
- Jul 2019: 99.99%
- Jun 2019: 99.95%
- May 2019: 100%
- Apr 2019: 99.99%
- Mar 2019: 99.98%
- Feb 2019: 99.98%
- Jan 2019: 99.94%
- Dec 2018: 99.97%
Three months with underperforming uptimes of 99.8% or less is not the best pattern. We usually give the benefit of the doubt to companies with one bad month in a year.
To put things into perspective however, their average is still 99.94%, which is industry-standard.
This series of tests were run over a period of 24 months, averaging to about 5.5 hours of downtime a year. We’re going to give them a pass. A few many quirks is what you would expect of a chic local barista chain. 
Overall, they get the job done in keeping your own website online. Unless you are a mid to large sized company, this is not too much to worry about - except on high-grossing times of the year, such as national holidays. (Think of Costco).
Something to think about, long-term. Major losses on highly profitable days - or during rarer periods of high traffic - can break smaller companies.
- Nov 2019: 729 ms
- Oct 2019: 706 ms
- Sep 2019: 658 ms
- Aug 2019: 665 ms
- Jul 2019: 674 ms
- Jun 2019: 760 ms
- May 2019: 1096 ms
- Apr 2019: 944 ms
- Mar 2019: 915 ms
- Feb 2019: 950 ms
- Jan 2019: 935 ms
- Dec 2018: 902 ms
- Nov 2018: 923 ms
- Oct 2018: 976 ms
- Sep 2018: 944 ms
- Aug 2018: 901 ms
Tests - Server Response 🗣️
What we noticed right away is that London has the highest server response time of all the cities tested. This makes sense, as the servers are based in the US. Still, fast providers like A2Hosting will blow InMotion out of the water.
Though they do boast excellent dedicated hosting for users in the UK, their shared web hosting packages may not be ideal for UK clientele.
InMotion Hosting Speed
Higher Than Non-Top Web Hosts
In the information age, with an increasing inability for consumers to hold their attention, your website needs to load quickly.
A few interesting figures:
- 57% of visitors exit a website if it takes over 3 seconds to load
- 80% of those never return
- Almost half of those let your friends know how slow you are
A few more interesting facts:
- Walmart increases that conversions by 2% for every 1 second of load time
- Amazon loses 1% in sales for every 100 milliseconds of load time delay
I would trust Amazon in those estimates, considering their AI intelligence.
Tests - Loading Speeds
One of the reasons we rank InMotion as a top web host, is because its server speeds are strong and it has fast loading times.
Figures obtained for this company are above the industry-standard by around 7%. Giving you the edge in competing against other websites for visitors.
A 16-months gathering of data:
InMotion Hosting Support
IM have a great reputation for professional, friendly, and expert staff. In one or two minutes, you get connected to live agents - answering all your questions using the InMotion Hosting Live Chat service.
Skype
We are always interested when there are signs of a company innovating.
We especially love the variety of ways that you can call in - Skype is an unusual option, offering audio-visual help. You have to have Skype already installed in order to access this feature.
Select the category that you need help in, and then allow the browser to communicate with the application by pressing OK when the prompt occurs.
When Skype opens up, press select and Show Dial Pad. This will allow you to choose the department you need.
This is a very cool feature, in that it allows you to make a call without worrying about phone fees. As long as you have a data connection, you'll be able to connect with one of IM’s reps. This InMotion hosting UK review likes 
.
Email & Phone
Still, you have the regular phone-ins and email ticket systems too. Each of these have a good reputation, with some variations, depending on the InMotion hosting review source you go to.
If you need a quick solution, the phone is obviously more suitable. If getting a reply in a few hours is okay, then choose an email ticket system approach.
Pro Level Support
If you choose the Pro Plan you get assigned priority support. Good to know for businesses out there.
InMotion Bonus Features ⭐
Another chance for IM to shine. One good thing about signing up with this host is that you won't be lacking in the advanced features department.
SSD Drive Storage 💽
All of InMotions’s hosting services use hardware with SSD (solid state drivers), rather than traditional rotating hard drives. This gives you a much faster transfer of files through the cloud - bumping up your website’s loading speeds.
In fact, the vast majority of web hosts don't have the option for SSD storage. Some even charge an extra fee for the privilege. This comes free as part of all IM plans. Very impressive.
Choose the Location of Your Data Center ⛚
This is quite a funny one for UK-dwellers…
IM gives you the flexibility to try out the result of switching out your servers, as a personal experiment. This kind of innovation gets our tongues salivating. Sadly, there are only two data centers across the world owned and run by IM.
Choose the West Coast … or the east coast of the United States. This does not exactly give you a distance advantage, but you may notice some slight variations - for the benefit of your website.
Open-Source App & WP Integrations 🔌
These are lovers of Open Source projects, so naturally they have allowed a good selection of apps and WordPress optimizations. You can grab over 310 OS applications + all the regular Google App ones.
This includes eCommerce applications and, of course, massively used Content Management Systems like WP. They also offer a premium Sucuri plugin for WP users. This undertakes regular security checks on virus, spam, and remote backups.
Free Site Migration 🏹
Transfer your site for free. This comes free on all plans, from shared to reseller hosting sites.
InMotion Hosting FAQ
Let's get your concerns answered speedily. Push that buzzer, our Game Show is about to begin 
...
Is InMotion Hosting Worth It? (Round 1)
As long as you don't need rock-solid performance in an environment of high traffic and sales-oriented business, IM is a fine choice. It is not the best web host available, but is an interesting boutique option 
.
You get loads of features for a decent price, like free custom InMotion Hosting webmail - but you have to commit to 2 years. Also note that higher renewal fees kick in at the end of that term.
We recommend InMotion for small businesses & individuals - at least, as an option. But for medium businesses, or even small businesses that are moving towards that direction, there are more reliable and speedier options.
Is InMotion Hosting Good for WordPress? (Next Round)
InMotion isn't one of the three that come with recommended officially by WordPress, but they have awesome WP integrations. It would not do too badly on a review of the best WordPress hosts.
Grab a 1 Click installation for WP. Also, you can get access to specifically made security tools for the design software.
In general, this hosting company is designed to work with any of the major Content Management Systems out there, so it will work just fine with WP.
How Do I Cancel InMotion Hosting? (Final)
To delete your account subscription with IM, contact the support team through email. Send a cancellation request to the email address: Support@InMotionHosting.com with a short description of what you want.
At the top of your email, write down the last four digits of your credit card that they have on file, as part of the verification process. Or, you can include your current Account Management Panel (AMP) password.
Note that - if it is under 90 days since you first subscribed with IM - you will be entitled to a full refund of any money paid thus far.
Game-show over. Thanks for playing.
Conclusion 🔍
What Have We Learned?
This company outperforms many of its competitors in terms of price. Sure, there are some caveats such as:
- Having to apply for a 2-year contract minimum
- The need for phone security verification before you can set up your contract.
Still, we think this company is one to watch for in the future. They have shown several Innovative approaches to the hosting business, such as offering technical help through Skype and the ability to choose the location of your data Center.
Many of the bigger web hosts could learn a lot from this company 
. But there are drawbacks, such as the unimpressive CMS. Other web hosts offer impressive website builders for free when you get the basic plan.
There's also a question mark around the reliability of the provider’s performance.
In terms of overall hosting choices, this contender is more of an underdog than a favorite - a bit of a riskier bet.
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