With a customer base of more than 570,000 users, InMotion has made a huge name since it appeared on the web hosting market in 2001. The company’s mission is to bring tools, platforms, and excellent customer service to anyone who wants to transform their online presence.
InMotion is a reliable service that guarantees high performance and uptime of 99.9%. Operating on UltraStack, users can be assured that they’ll get speed, resources, and features to help them successfully run their businesses.
In this review, we will explore InMotion’s managed VPS plans and see whether they offer great value for the money. We’ll cover everything there is to know about the service and help you decide whether it’s something worth purchasing.
Getting Started with InMotion VPS Plans
InMotion’s website has a clean design that’s super easy to navigate. Their offer on VPS plans can be found on the menu between WordPress and Dedicated Servers.
InMotion offers four managed VPS hosting plans built on UltraStack infrastructure for high performance. The plans are VPS 4GB, VPS 8GB RAM, VPS 12GB RAM, and VPS 16GB RAM, each offering excellent features for a different price range.
Since the service is managed, you won’t be bothered with configuring and managing your VPS because InMotion takes care of the technical part. Since that’s out of the picture, you’ll have more time to focus on growing your business. This also indicates that the plans are suitable for beginners, even people who are not tech-savvy.
The entry-level plan, the most affordable among the crowd, comes with two vCPU cores, 4GB RAM, 90GB SSD, 2 T.B. bandwidth, and two dedicated I.P.s.
As the price of the plans rises, you’ll be able to get up to 8 vCPU cores, 16GB RAM, 360 GB NVMe SSD, unlimited bandwidth, and ten dedicated IPs. As you can see, the amount of resources you’ll be getting depends on the price you’re willing to pay. All four plans will give you full root access, so you can configure your server with the technology you want.
Since the main difference in the plans is in the number of resources, it’s fair to check what the plans have in common. All four InMotion VPS plans include unlimited supported websites, free launch assist, free SSL certificate, unlimited email, free WHM license, five cPanels, FTP, SFTP, and FTPS.
Each InMotion VPS plan has a 90-day money-back guarantee, which is great because you can get a full refund of your money if you’re unsatisfied with the service.
It’s time for testing! There’s no better way to test a product than purchasing it, so it’s time to shop. I will buy the VPS 4GB plan because the main difference between the plans is in the number of resources, and I won’t need a lot to test the service.
Before you click on the plan you want to get, you must choose the period you’re planning to use the service. InMotion’s plans can be purchased for one month, three months, 1,2, and 3 years. If you need a VPS service for longer, purchasing the yearly plans is more affordable. For instance, if you purchase the entry-level plan for three years, you can save more than $1,000 or more than $2,000 on the most expensive VPS 6BF RAM plan.
Since I’ll be purchasing for test purposes only, I clicked on the monthly term and then selected the VPS 4GB plan.
Once I clicked on Select, I instantly got to my order. The first thing I had to do was to customize my plan and choose a data center. I had two options: Washington, D.C, and Los Angeles, CA.
The next step is to choose between the Control Panel options. We already mentioned that the plan includes a cPanel Admin 5, but InMotion offers you more cPanel options for an additional price.
Choose a configuration. The PHP configuration is included in the plan, but you can also pick Standard or WordPress Configuration.
The last step before you submit your order is to choose whether you want a backup manager that will get your daily automatic backups saved to InMotion’s secure backup service. The backup manager costs an additional $2 a month.
My order is ready, so I’m headed to the checkout.
Before I’m taken to the billing section, I have to choose a domain name. You can purchase a new domain, use the domain you already have, or decide later.
Fill in the billing details. Enter your email and personal information and select a payment method. You choose from paying with a credit or debit card, PayPal, or U.S Purchase order or check.
My order was processed in less than a minute, and I was welcomed to InMotion Hosting!
Setting Up an InMotion VPS Plan
Before entering my account, I had to answer a few profile questions about my business. If you have time, answer the questions, but if you don’t, you can always click on “I’ll do this later”.
Here’s what InMotion’s Account Management Panel looks like. On the top menu, you can find My Account, Billing, Domains, MarketPlace, Specials, and WebPro. We’ll look at those in detail later in the review.
The Manage My Account section contains all the features that will help you easily manage your account.
Account Notification keeps all your read and unread notifications.
You can add a new credit card to your billing or edit the existing one through Update Credit Card.
Use the Change AMP Password to upgrade your logins, passwords, and paraphrases. In this section, an account management panel will enable you to change the username, email address, and password and even add two-factor authentication.
If you want to change your hosting plan, click on Purchase New Hosting. You can choose from business hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated servers, Reseller hosting, and WordPress hosting.
You can also Register Domain and Transfer a Domain super easily through the Manage My Account section.
Other options in the Manage my Account sections include: Pay Bill, Sucuri Website Security, Submit Support Ticket, Leave Feedback, General Data Protection, View Invoices, and WebPro: Manage Other Accounts.
Below the section Manage My Account, you’ll find a section that contains everything you need to manage your server.
Through Manage My Cloud Server, you can access information about your server’s resource utilization. You can monitor the usage of the bandwidth, disk space, RAM, and load average. You can also set up a Server Snapshot that will maintain a snapshot of your server files, databases, and configuration from a specific moment.
Click on the cPanel button to access your Control Panel. Through the cPanel, you can manage your email accounts, create mailing lists, track delivery, check email disk usage, filter your emails, and more.
You’ll also get easy access to your Files, including a File Manager, Web Disk, Backup Wizard, Images, FTP accounts, Directory Privacy, FTP connections, File and Directory Restoration, Disk Usage, and Backup.
Access your phpMyAdmin, MySQL Datasets, MySQL Database Wizard, and Remote MySQL through the Databases.
In the Domains sections, you’ll find the WordPress Toolkit, Subdomains, Dynamic DNS, Site Publisher, Aliases, Domains, Redirects, Addon Domains, and Zone Editor.
All applications needed to run your site are in the Top Applications section. You’ll find Joomla, WordPress, Magento, Drupal, and many other apps that will help you run your site smoothly and successfully.
Through the Metrics, you can get access to Visitors, Errors, Bandwidth, Raw Access, Awstats, Webalizer, Webalizer FTP, and Metrics Editor.
Regarding security, you’ll be able to access and manage the SSH Access, IP Blocker, SSL/TLS, API Tokens, Hotlink Protection, Leech Protection, ModSecurity, and even set up a Two-Factor Authentication.
In the Software section, you have WordPress Manager by InMotion Hosting, PHP PEAR Packages, Perl Modules, Site Software, MultiPHP Manager, MultiPHP ININ Editor, Softaculous Apps Installer, and Cache Manager.
The Advanced feature sections include Terminal, WebHost Manager, Cron Job, Track DNS, Indexes, Error Pages, Apache Handlers, and MIME Types.
Lastly, you have Preferences, where you can change the password, security, language, style, contact information, and User manager; and Applications, where you can find the WordPress Manager.
Since we’re done exploring the cPanel, let’s get back to the other features for server management. Through the WHM and Root WHM, you can access the Web Host Manager.
You can see all technical information about your plan and server using the Account Technical Details. If you’re unsatisfied with your plan and want to change it, you can easily do it with one click on Change Hosting Plan.
You can add, and edit email accounts, add email forwarders, update MX records, set up Spam assassin, and email client configuration through the Email Section.
You can subscribe to a Google Workspace, download BoldGrid and set up Softaculous.
Through this section, you can also Purchase Dedicated SSL Certificate, Purchase Dedicated I.P., and Request Root Access.
Lastly, you’ll be allowed to edit the DNS Zone, request a transfer of your website, and restart your VPS plan.
Now let’s get back to the Main menu we briefly discussed at the beginning of this Setting Up an InMotion VPS Plan section. Most of the abovementioned things are included in the My Account, Billing, Domains, and Marketplace sections. Since I don’t want to repeat myself, I’m only discussing Specials and WebPro.
When you click on Specials, you’ll get a chance to claim $50 in free clicks from Amazon Products and ads and $100 in Microsoft Advertising credits.
Through the WebPro, you’ll get access to the WebPro Dashboard, and you can easily manage your accounts. You’ll be able to send requests to link to other existing accounts, access your client’s cPanel and WHM directly and share your contact details with your client’s AMP.
InMotion also offers a great referral program. You’ll get one month of free hosting if you share your custom referral link with your friends and colleagues. There’s no limit to the number of friends you can refer, so if you manage to get 12 friends to join InMotion, you can get a whole year of free hosting, which is awesome.
Overall Reliability – Performance and Security
InMotion praises its VPS service as an ultra-reliable, high-performance VPS hosting solution suited for growing businesses and developers. Since the service is managed, you won’t need to bother about technical issues, and you’ll have more to focus on growing your business. Their VPS plans are beginner-friendly; even people without tech experience can navigate and use them.
InMotion has two data centers, one on the West Coast in Los Angeles and one on the East Coast in Ashburn, Virginia. Both centers are in highly-developed regions with modern network infrastructures that provide high-performance web hosting services for users worldwide.
The VPS-managed plans are built on UltraStack, guaranteeing to outperform the competitors. The optimized configurations will help you handle 20x more traffic, which is an excellent perk for websites that attract a wider audience. The level entry plan I got has SSD drive storage, but the NVMe available in the other three plans is 20x faster than spinning drives, which is extremely helpful for big projects.
Regarding uptime, InMotion believes in offering the fastest and most reliable network possible. The company guarantees an uptime of 99.9%, making their VPS plans ultra-reliable, with little to no chances of your website crashing.
Regarding security, all the VPS plans come with an SSL Encrypted certificate and Corero DDoS attack protection. You can rest assured that your site will be protected from cyber-attacks. InMotion keeps you extra secure by offering unlimited SPASafe Email with IMAP, live-state, and scheduled snapshots. Through the cPanel, you can also enable the ModSecurity module that filters the traffic and prevents malicious attacks. The two-factor authentication is also available, and it’s a great way to add more protection.
InMotion Customer Support
InMotion offers a variety of customer support options, which is a huge plus in my book.
First, you have 24/7 live chat available and a phone number where you can reach tech support anytime. You also can contact the tech team through email and the ticketing system, but that can take a while.
The live chat support has an estimated wait time of 0-15 minutes, so I had to check whether that’s true.
I got an answer from tech support in less than 1 minute. I must admit I was impressed. I asked the support about their money-back guarantee, and they were very helpful and got me an answer in no time.
What I especially liked about InMotion’s support is its Support Center. Their support center contains more than 5,000 helpful articles and guides where you can find answers to all of your questions. Everything is even decided into sections, so you can easily find anything you need. You can find excellent Product Guides, Website Tutorials, Email Tutorials, Domain Name Setup Info, and Billing FAQs.
Another incredible thing you can find in the Support Center is the Education channels, where you can find a list and a direct link to channels that will help you become more knowledgeable in the different software used to manage all the aspects of your account.
In the center, you can also find a link to subscribe to InMotion’s YouTube Channel, where you can watch useful videos on how to manage your website and hosting account.
Lastly, if you can’t find an answer in the support center, you can ask in the Community Forum.
Specific Features of InMotion VPS
Let’s see what makes InMotion’s VPS plans stand out from the crowd:
- Managed hosting that allows you to take the hands-off approach
- High availability servers with two data centers, one on the East and the other on West Coast
- UltraStack infrastructure for top performance
- Resource monitoring dashboard for a clear insight
- Optimized configuration to handle 20x more traffic
- Free WHM license
- User-friendly cPanel
- Up to 20x faster NVMe Solid-State Drives
- SSL certificate, Corero DDos Attack protection, and live state and scheduled snapshots
- Guaranteed uptime of 99.9%
- 24/7 live chat support; email support, ticketing, and excellent Support Center
Pros and Cons of InMotion VPS
Pros:
- User-friendly service with cPanel
- Leading performance and uptime
- Robust security (SSL certificates, Corero DDoS attack protection, scheduled snapshots)
- Helpful and fast customer support
- Excellent freebies (unlimited websites, free web transfer, free launch assist, unlimited email)
- Optional full root access for tech-savvy users
- 90 days money-back guarantee (30 days on the monthly plan)
Cons:
- Only two data centers, both located in the US
- No free backups; only Snapshots are available
- A domain is free for six months, and longer plans only
Summary
InMotion VPS plans are reliable and excellent for hosting small to medium business websites. Since the plans are managed, you don’t have to spend your precious time solving technical issues, so you’ll be able to focus completely on growing your successful business. The Account management panel and cPanel are super user-friendly, and even if you don’t have any tech knowledge, you’ll be able to successfully navigate through them.
Regarding pricing, inMotion is not the most affordable option on the market, but it’s good value for the money, and you’ll get a guaranteed uptime of 99.9% as a bonus.
There were two things I didn’t like about InMotion. First, they only have data centers in the US, which can be a little problematic for European users. The other is that you have to pay additional money to get backups.
Nevertheless, you’ll get an ultra-reliable service, high performance, and excellent features perfectly suited for growing businesses and developers!
