InMotion Web Hosting

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If you're on the hunt for a Web host that lets you quickly create personal or professional websites, then do yourself a favor and check out InMotion Hosting. The Web hosting service offers free e-commerce tools, shared Web hosting, dedicated Web hosting, virtual private server (VPS) hosting, and managed WordPress hosting; in fact, InMotion's managed WordPress hosting is so complete that the Web host is now the PCMag Editors' Choice in that category.

InMotion has a generous 90-day money-back guarantee on most of its plans that bests Arvixe's 60-day money-back guarantee, but slightly trails Dreamhost's incredible 97-day money-back guarantee. Read InMotion's terms of service for full details.

Launch, Power, and Pro Shared Hosting Plans
InMotion offers three shared hosting plans. The most basic, Launch ($7.99 per month with an annual subscription), supports two websites and up to six domains. Power ($9.99 per month with an annual subscription) nets you six websites and up to 26 domains, while Pro ($15.99 per month with an annual subscription) offers unlimited websites and unlimited domains. All shared hosting plans include unlimited email, which is a nice touch.

VPS Hosting Plans
InMotion offers decent VPS hosting, but it starts at a pricey $44.99 per month. Of the VPS services we've tested, only Media Temple with its insane RAM (64GB) and storage (600GB) capacities, costs more money. Still, you get decent specs, incluing unlimited email, 8GB of RAM, and 4TB of monthly data transfers with InMotion. Note, hoewever, that Bluehost has very similar specs for $29.99 per month.

Arvixe, the PCMag Editors' Choice for VPS hosting, has top-level RAM and storage capacities that are half those offered by InMotion, but as part of a more well-rounded offering. Arvixe boasts unlimited monthly data transfers (InMotion has a 4TB cap) and a choice of Linux- or Windows-based servers (InMotion only has Linux servers).

Dedicated Hosting Plans
You can configure the company's Linux-based servers (starting at $189 per month) with 1.2TB of storage, 15TB of data transfers per month (which tops Arvixe's 10TB and SiteGround's 5TB), and an impressive 64GB of RAM (the majority of Web hosts we've tested offer 16GB). 

Inmotion has solid dedicated Web hosting plans, but HostGator—the PCMag Editors' Choice for dedicated hosting—has better all-around packages. HostGator's servers have up to 25TB of data transfers per month and a choice of Linux or Windows operating systems option.

Setting Up an InMotion-Hosted Website
We chose the Launch plan, but were disappointed to learn that we had to sign up for a full year. Like most Web hosts, a discount is applied to the first term (for up to three years). InMotion discloses its renewal rates, so you don't get any surprises. In this case, we paid $4.89 per month, discounted from the regular rate of $7.99 per month.

After we chose a domain, funtechtimes.com, the upselling began. First, we were offered an upgrade to the Power plan, then domain privacy ($9.99 per year), managed hosting services, and email protection packs from McAfee. Finally, we were offered the option to add a free content management system (CMS) to our account: WordPress, PrestaShop, or Joomla. At checkout, there was an option to pay by purchase order or check, which we hadn't seen before.

We were worried when the confirmation page said that an account specialist would contact us by phone to help us get started; we couldn't log in otherwise. However, the call was quite helpful, and we weren't pushed into making any additional purchases. The representative asked a few questions about the type of website we wanted to build, and then emailed us welcome materials, including WordPress installation instructions, since we had told her we wanted to create a blog.

We managed the general account settings from the Account Management Panel (AMP), but managing the website required a separate cPanel login. We had some trouble finding and installing the basic Web builder, which is oddly enough called the Premium Website Builder. Eventually, we contacted Web chat support, but the person referred us to email support. Thankfully, we got a quick response, and after supplying my AMP password, the support team was able to set us up (we were nervous about sharing our password via email, though).

The Premium Website Builder requires yet another login and password, but building a website was a straightforward affair. You can choose between three types (site, blog, or photo gallery), select themes and colors, and then you can pick the types of pages you'd like to include on your site. In addition to standard pages such as Contact Us and About Us, you can add special pages, such as Flash Intro and eShop. Next, you can drag-and-drop a map, poll, RSS reader, or script module into your pages. Unfortunately, the Premium Website Builder doesn't produce very attractive pages; my site looked very dated. Alternatively, you can use WordPress to create your site.

Setting Up a WordPress Blog
There are two ways to get WordPress up and running on an InMotion Hosting server: You can install WordPress on a standard Linux-based server environment you get through the Web hosting plan or just sign up for managed WordPress hosting (starting at $7.99 per month). It's the latter in which InMotion Hosting excels, and why we named the Web host the PCMag Editors' Choice for managed WordPress hosting.

Like other managed WordPress hosts, InMotion Hosting's managed hosting environment is specifically designed for installing WordPress and associated plug-ins. In fact, you don't have to install the CMS at all, as it comes preinstalled. Once you're logged into WordPress, you can create posts, pages, and galleries as you would with any other self-hosted WordPress site.

InMotion Hosting tops the competition by tossing all limitations to the wind. It offers unlimited websites, page views, disk space, and data transfers per month. Many of the managed WordPress hosts we've reviewed have caps in place that limit the plans in some regard. Unlike WP Engine and Pressable, InMotion Hosting doesn't make you go to a third-party Web registrar like GoDaddy for email accounts and domain names—it's all included as part of the package. In fact, InMotion Hosting's managed WordPress hosting includes a free domain name, which is a plus. Other features include daily backups and Google Apps integration.

Unfortunately, e-commerce isn't available with the basic Launch plan. Regardless, InMotion Hosting is an excellent managed WordPress host.

Setting Up Email
Like Netfirms, InMotion includes unlimited email with its shared hosting plans. Other competitors, like iPower and JustHost only offer that on their top-level plans. Email setup is simple and the interface includes a password strength indicator. InMotion lets you access your email through desktop programs like Outlook, or Web-based or mobile clients. As you set up email, you're offered McAfee protection once again.

Setting Up a Store
InMotion has many e-commerce options. You can add an eShop page using the Premium Web Builder and build a simple store. Payment options are limited, though. You can also download OpenCart or PrestaShop (both free) for a more robust store. We gave OpenCart a try; it offers a comprehensive dashboard for tracking customers and sales and multiple shipping and payment options. This beats other hosts like iPower and JustHost, which charge an extra monthly fee for e-commerce.

Security
InMotion offers several security features, including free remote backup services for accounts under 10GB in size. For WordPress sites, a free Sucuri Security plugin can be used to scan for malware and other security risks. McAfee spam and virus protection (starting at $1.39 per month) is also available for email accounts. You can purchase SSL certificates ($99.99 per year, and a $25 installation fee), which include a dedicated IP address.

Customer Service
As mentioned earlier, we were required to speak with customer service to activate our account. The wait time was just one minute, and the representative was very helpful; she emailed us documents to get us started.

We later used the Web chat to learn how to install the Premium Web Builder. Before we spoke with a customer service representative, the Web chat prompted us to key in our question. It returned help links, but none were relevant. We started the human-based Web chat, and were immediately connected to a representative. We were a bit put off at the first comment. We said that we were having trouble installing the builder and the reply was, "So it's not installed, it FTPs the information to the website." Not only was that not relevant to the problem, but the company's own instructions use the word "install."

After asking a few more questions, we found that the Web chat representative was unable to help, so we had to email support; within a few hours our issue was resolved.

A Very Worthy Web Host
InMotion Hosting is an easy-to-use Web host with numerous free add-ons, free e-commerce features, unlimited email at all levels, and a lengthy 90-day money back guarantee. That would be enough to recommend InMotion Hosting more than many competing services, but its excellent managed WordPress features make it the PCMag Editors' Choice for managed WordPress hosting.

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