InMotion Hosting vs SiteGround – Which Web Host is Best?

In this article, we are going to compare two completely different, yet really strong names in the web hosting industry: InMotion Hosting and SiteGround. First off, we are going to share some important details about InMotion, including the main advantages and disadvantages of their services. We will examine it in terms of customer support, reliability, free tools and features, prices and user feedback.

People constantly praise InMotion for its strong customer support team. This is definitely one of their strong suits with immense knowledge and fast response times. On the other hand, we have SiteGround, which is a quite small company if you compare it to the big names in the industry right now. However, the reason why it receives so many positive feedbacks is because of its client-oriented solutions.

At SiteGround, you have a better chance to find a hosting plan that perfectly suits your website needs and provides good value for your money. By the end of this article, it will be crystal clear for you what to expect from these providers. This will make it easier for you to decide which one works best for you. Without further ado, let’s begin!

Pros & Cons of InMotion Hosting

InMotion is the company that has found the perfect balance. Usually, there are two different types of customer bases that praise a company. It is either praised by the ones that have joined a couple of months ago or by the more experienced, loyal users that have a long history hosting there. InMotion is the type of highly popular company that is constantly praised by both sides.

Their many years of experience in the business greatly contributed to their success. It all started back in 2001 with two guys, a single server and a router. The customer service, billing, maintenance and all the tasks related to the business were handled by these two people. No investors, no budget to start with. They started growing bit by bit and it eventually evolved into a huge company.

If you start something from scratch, you really have the time to understand all the different parts of it. This is why up to this point they know exactly how to satisfy the needs of many different target audiences such as experienced website owners, business owners, bloggers, developers and more. Today, InMotion offers various dedicated hosting plans as well. If you consider them too expensive, there are various shared and VPS plans to choose from.

Right now, the company is among the biggest names in the industry. People know it as a stable, reliable and affordable solution. Without further ado, let’s go through the best features this provider has to offer!

Pros of InMotion Hosting

• 90-Day money-back guarantee – InMotion Hosting has great confidence in their services. They offer a 90-day guarantee for users that are not satisfied with their plan. With such a long time period, there will be no pressure on you whatsoever. You can start your server and pretty much try out everything that comes with their hosting service. If you don’t like it, you can simply leave with your money.
• Generous hosting plans – What you would generally expect from a web hosting provider is to offer a few unlimited features and then surprise you with an unexpected fee. People usually pick the provider based on whether the unlimited features included in the package suit their website needs. InMotion has a pretty good deal for its users. Their plans include unlimited storage and unlimited data transfer. You can get these extras even by signing up to their cheapest plan. How good is that? It is especially great if storage and data transfer are the two features you particularly need for your website. If you don’t, then it won’t make much of a difference for you.
• Lots of extras included – InMotion gives you a domain name right off the bat, so you don’t need to worry about finding a domain registrar and buying a domain there. You can get it for free just by registering to one of their plans. Besides that, you can start to advertise your website on the most popular search engines including Bing, Google and Yahoo with the free credits that InMotion gives you. Automated backups are also included in their pack of freebies, guaranteeing that your website data never gets damaged or lost. Nowadays, you can’t really grow an online business without the safety of backups.
• Tech-savvy customer support – Websites and servers are such complex entities that you can unexpectedly run into problems at any time. In these cases, it is good to have a customer support staff you can rely on. With InMotion, you can get professional help 24/7; you just need to ask using the available channels. Their staff can be contacted through emails, contact form, live chat and phone with quick response times. Regarding its size, InMotion is still considered as one of the smaller companies in the game. However, they are definitely more professional than many of the other, bigger ones. This is especially true when it comes to customer support. Of course, if you don’t need direct help, you can solve many issues just by browsing the guides, FAQ and video tutorials on their knowledge base. Many common problems are documented there that can be solved in a couple of minutes. All you need to do is type the keywords in to the search bar and click Search.
• Powerful servers – InMotion Hosting invested a lot into their hardware to ensure lightning speed for their users. Providers can always somewhat optimize the speed of their servers with software, but this is always mainly based on the different hardware parts the server consists of. With the latest hardware, they are able to establish a quick and stable connection between the websites and the server. As we mentioned, InMotion is a somewhat smaller company than many of the other big names in web hosting. They have established only 2 data centers and they are both located in the USA. They are not available in any other continent, but the company surely has a strong presence in the areas around Ashburn and Los Angeles.
• Convincing uptime – Their servers are online more than 99% of the time. This is the information website owners are mostly interested in before they pick a web hosting provider. And it makes sense, as no one wants to disappoint their visitors (or customers) with an offline website. On the other hand, server downtime can result in a significant amount of revenue loss. InMotion Hosting runs Linux on their Dell servers, and the infrastructure is based on Cisco components. It is quite a strong combination, and the result speaks for itself. You can hardly stop these machines from working and they are monitored all the time. Besides software, there is the human component as well. The company employs a team of experts that are not only able to resolve issues, but also to prevent them from causing the servers to crash.
• Secure hosting – The provider includes some strong tools in their packages for security. You get a spam filter, which ensures that only real emails will be accepted in your inbox. No matter what type of website you want to create, you will eventually start to receive regular spam messages, so there is really no other way around it. In addition, you get Sucuri and Patchman. Sucuri is a popular website security platform that protects your site from malware. It guarantees that you can continue building your online brand without the need to worry about threats. Patchman, on the other hand, makes sure that everything on your website is properly patched, preventing vulnerabilities. It also does regular malware scans and removes them if detected. It is basically another bodyguard for your server.
• Environment-friendly – Since it requires a lot of energy to run a server, data centers are extremely polluting. Fortunately, carbon footprint can be greatly reduced by using green energy. Web hosting providers usually invest into wind energy and thus contribute to a better environment. This is becoming increasingly popular among hosting companies and even InMotion Hosting is following these footsteps. By signing up to their hosting plans, you can also help decrease pollution.

Cons of InMotion Hosting

• Expensive scaling – One downside of InMotion Hosting is that they have expensive and cheap plans in their repertoire, but nothing in between. This might be a problem if you start to run out of resources and want to upgrade to the next plan, as it will require you to invest a significantly higher budget. We compared the company to the other popular ones in the hosting industry and it turns out that their prices are higher than average. However, you need to take into account that you get high quality for the price. Your only option is basically to sign up for at least a yearly contract, which is not convenient for those websites that need the service for only a couple of months. At least they have a pretty long money-back guarantee period of 90 days. Within the 90 days, you can decide whether it is appropriate for you to run your website on their server for long term. This is plenty of time to think, but according to the reviews, the prices are already a big enough turnoff for potential clients to leave.
• Limited basic plans – Their starter plan might not be enough for everyone, as it limits the user to a maximum of 2 websites and 2 databases. You might need to go upgrade to the next plan just to be allowed to host more websites, even though you don’t need as many resources yet. What this means is that plans at InMotion are not really balanced for everyday users, forcing them to spend on unnecessary upgrades. If you want to establish a solid online presence, the basic plan surely won’t be enough for long. Other providers offer basic plans where you can steadily build up your online revenue to the point where you feel comfortable to upgrade. This is definitely not the case with InMotion Hosting.
• Takes too long to start – You need to go through an unnecessarily long sequence of pages and forms until your account and website are ready to roll. This can take away a big chunk of your time, whereas accounts at some of the other providers can be set up in a couple of minutes. InMotion overcomplicated these things without any apparent reason.
• Free backup is limited – It is quite generous by the provider to create regular backups of your website data, although this also has a limit. And unfortunately, this limit is pretty low. If you want regular backups, you need to keep the size of your website below 10GB. Otherwise, your only option is to start paying for the backups. Also, backups older than 4 months are automatically deleted, so don’t expect to go back farther than that in time. All the other services related to backup are considered as extra, paid services.

Pros & Cons of SiteGround

What SiteGround tries to prove the most is that they can provide exactly what they promise on their website. There are dozens of hosting providers that are simply not able to fulfill their promises. Once you sign up to their plan, you usually discover that there are various upsells and unexpected fees waiting for you behind the agreement.

At SiteGround, you can find all types of web hosting packages that work as described. There are solutions for WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal, PrestaShop and WooCommerce users as well. On top of that, there are shared, reseller, cloud and dedicated hosting plans. They can provide everything that helps your website get online and grow. Without further ado, let’s see some of the main aspects of this company that we consider as advantages!

Pros of SiteGround

High-speed hosting – What most website owners look for in a web hosting provider is fast page loading speed. Since the Internet is full of highly competitive websites, ensuring high speed became mandatory for everyone who wants to establish a solid online presence. There is no other way around it. Visitors need to be able to seamlessly browse through your content until they find what they want. If you slow down this process by picking a slow service, they will simply decide to leave and find it elsewhere. SiteGround is one of the hosting providers that keep up a high standard when it comes to speed. This is mainly thanks to the numerous data centers established in strategic locations all over the World. Once you sign up, you just need to pick the nearest location and you are set.

Lots of freebies – Besides a strong hosting plan, SiteGround also gives you a wide range of free tools and features to help you grow. For example, they allow you to create as many email accounts and databases as you want. The company keeps your website data safe by creating daily backups. If your website crashes and you don’t know why, there is always the option to go back to a previous version. The fact that SiteGround provides a cPanel license only highlights that they want to keep things simple and user-friendly. People switch providers from time to time and cPanel is the control panel they most likely got used to. It can be a huge advantage for them to continue using it.  Furthermore, they help you kickstart your website by including a free domain and website builder in the package. That’s a lot of value for the price.

Unquestionable security – SiteGround doesn’t make unnecessary promises when it comes to security. They just do it, and you will have nothing to complain about. Your website will be monitored against malware and all kinds of hacker attacks around the clock. They applied the latest security measures to the hardware and software infrastructure of all their data centers in 6 different locations. With high performance comes high-level security, no wonder they have so many satisfied clients. Their servers are physically and virtually untouchable.

Effective and helpful support – Running an online business comes with the responsibility to keep your website up and running 24/7. If a problem comes up in the middle of the night and causes it to crash, you need to be aware of it and act as soon as possible. The same is expected from the provider. They need to quickly get to the problem and start working on it, every minute counts. Thankfully, SiteGround offers a high level of support with its team of experts. They can fix technical issues quickly and effectively, so that you can lay back and relax instead of refreshing your offline site over and over after midnight. Once you report the issue, you shortly get a friendly answer and it won’t take much time until it gets resolved. If you have a Joomla, Drupal or WordPress based site, you can get help for those platforms as well.

Available in many countries – SiteGround is a huge company right now, so who would have thought that it all started in the small country of Bulgaria? As their services gained popularity, they made them available worldwide. Since their headquarters is located in Bulgaria, it already sounds promising for European users as it’s rather close to all the countries there. Their other data centers and offices are located in Singapore, London, Milan, Chicago and Amsterdam. It turns out that they can provide high-speed hosting services, no matter where you are on the planet. They even let you switch to the currency that is the most convenient for you to pay with. All in all, SiteGround is a convenient option for people both geographically and economically.

Optimized for WordPress – If you prefer to run your websites on WordPress, then signing up to a SiteGround hosting plan will be highly beneficial for you. You will be able to install the CMS with a single click and start working right away. No experience required whatsoever, and you can save a lot more time with the additional one-click install scripts provided by SiteGround as well. They have made WordPress and WooCommerce much easier for users on their shared, cloud and dedicated server packages.

Cons of SiteGround

• Small disk space for the price – The Company is quite generous with the free domain names and databases they include in each shared plan. They also allow you to run numerous websites on each plan and to install plenty of useful software. But, as it turns out, the disk space they give you with a shared hosting plan is not quite enough for long term. The other specs are good, but you can’t expect your website to survive for long with a basic plan that gives you only 10GB of storage. That is a strict limit that can only be surpassed if you upgrade to the next plan. Not to mention that there are several other hosting providers that give you unlimited storage in at least one of their basic plans.
• Prices rise too high – We can say that SiteGround offers some awesome discounts from time to time and their normal prices are not too high either. However, this is true only for the first year of subscription. After the 12-month subscription expires, they significantly increase the prices, requiring you to invest much more into web hosting. Their plans are great for that time period, and then we only recommend you to renew your subscription if you are truly satisfied with their services. The increase in price is often times so painful for businesses and individuals that it basically forces them to switch to another provider. Thanks to their billing method, you can face some unexpected fees while paying for your month-to-month hosting plan. The advantage of month-by-month billing is that you can stop whenever you want. Since the contract lasts for only 30 days, you don’t need to worry about additional expenses in case things don’t go well with your website. Unfortunately, SiteGround charges you $14.95 if you decide to leave. Of course, you will only find this out after leaving the provider.
• Mostly benefits businesses – The services offered by the provider are more suitable for businesses than for individual projects. Despite this fact, SiteGround still advertises itself as an all-round solution recommended for everyone. We would say that their plans are quite costly for a blogger or someone who wants a website for other personal purposes. Yes, it is full-featured and you will most likely not have any issues, but there are many other affordable options available offered by other companies. SiteGround is not the type of provider that gives you a pack of features and leaves you alone. They are also willing to give you support and help your business grow.

SiteGround vs InMotion – Which One is Better?

Since InMotion got established by two guys back in 2001, the company has grown a lot. Now it is considered one of the fastest growing companies among hosting providers. They don’t just want to expand, they also want to improve. In order to achieve their goal, they take a different approach and confront all the complex elements that make their service a good deal for the clients.

This is why they include such a specific and versatile set of features in every one of their plans. In addition, their long money-back guarantee and complete independence as a company are the things that cater to people the most. SiteGround is also a strong competitor when it comes to free tools and features.

They are dedicated to provide high-speed servers that ensure an outstanding user experience for website visitors. SiteGround is available in more regions than InMotion, as they focus on reaching a wider audience. While they expand, they also manage to offer top-quality services. A great customer service is another thing you will have access to while hosting your website there.

As you can see, both SiteGround and InMotion are quite strong alternatives when it comes to web hosting. What you need to do here is to take every little detail into account and pick the hosting plan that fits to your website needs the most.