InMotion vs SiteGround: Which web host is the best?

InMotion and SiteGround are two independent hosting companies providing a range of web hosting plans/packages to fit various needs.

InMotion is based in the U.S., established in 2001, and powers over 300,000 domains (as mentioned on their website) in more than 175 countries worldwide. On the other hand, SiteGround is a Bulgarian company operating since 2004 and hosts over 2 million domains worldwide.

This comparison article – InMotion hosting vs SiteGround hosting- will provide an in-depth understanding of the various types of hosting plans and features provided by the two companies to finally help you pick the best host for your new, growing, or established site, according to your business needs and budget.

Let’s begin!

To give you a better understanding of which web host is ideal for your website, we compare the key features, server uptime, site response time, and the prices of the various forms of hosting plans offered by InMotion and SiteGround.

SiteGround vs Inmotion Hosting: Features

Types of hosting

Unlike InMotion, SiteGround doesn’t provide VPS and Dedicated Servers hosting plans, two of the most popular web hosting types used by advanced users.

Website migration

The web host allows you to transfer up to three websites, databases, and cPanel accounts from an old host to the new InMotion Hosting account. If you wish to transfer more than three websites, the host will charge you an additional USD10 per item.

At SiteGround, you can manually transfer your existing WordPress sites to the new SiteGround account using the free WordPress migratory plugin. Simultaneously, you will have to pay an additional USD30/site for other types of websites for migrating it to SiteGround.

Domain registration

While InMotion offers a free domain credit (domain name registration or transfer) for the first year, SitGround provides no such distinction to its new customers. The latter charges USD15.95 – USD 17.95 per year for new domain name registration.

Website builder

InMotion provides BoldGrid, a visual drag-and-drop website builder to create, manage, update and publish a website- all without coding skills. It features over 200 professional site layouts, professional image filters, pre-built page blocks, a full suite of WordPress plugins, a built-in SEO tool, a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and a hosting plan included in all plans.

BoldGrid is included free with all shared hosting plans.

SiteGround’s hosting plans come with Weebly, the widely-used drag-and-drop website builder for creating a fully-functional website with limited or no coding skills required. The free version of the tool is included with all hosting plans.

Control panel

InMotion Hosting comes with the popular cPanel control panel – regardless of plan or package type – for easy account management. The graphical cPanel interface has many various tools to manage hosting accounts and websites. These include- file/database management, email management, DNS customization, statistics tracker, and security tools, among others.

SiteGround uses an in-house website-specific tool called Site Tools. The tool allows easy, quick switching between multiple websites, each having a separate set of site management tools.

Site Tools / Image Credit: SiteGround

Security

InMotion offers various security solutions to protect your websites from vicious cyberattacks. These include:

Shared Hosting

• Free Domain Validated SSL certificate
• Latest Hack & Malware Protection
• DDoS Protection
• Automatic Backups

VPS Hosting

• SSH & DDoS Protection
• Live-State and Scheduled Snapshots
• Corero DDoS Attack Protection
• Spam experts

Dedicated Servers

• Multi-layer defence
• Superior DDoS protection
• Automated Backup Services
• Cisco ASA 5506 Hardware Firewall

SiteGround

On the other hand, SiteGround Hosting plans come with a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate as well as advanced custom security solutions, including:

• Custom Web Application Firewall (WAF)
• AI anti-bot system to block threats
• Automatic WordPress software and plugin updates

Money-back Guarantee

Depending on the plan you sign up with, InMotion offers a full money-back guarantee on its various web hosting plans. For instance, the company provides a 90-day money-back guarantee with all its annual Shared, VPS hosting plans, while a 30-day guarantee covers monthly plans. InMotion’s dedicated servers and all monthly Reseller hosting plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

At SiteGround, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee with the shared hosting plans, while a 14-day guarantee covers the Cloud hosting plans.

Customer support

InMotion offers 24/7/365 support via:

• Phone
• Live Chat
• Email
• Online tutorials
• Community support forums

SiteGround provides support via:

• Phone
• Live Chat
• Helpdesk tickets
• Knowledge base

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InMotion vs SiteGround: Uptime

Uptime, the amount of time a server has been up and running, is an essential website performance indicator along with speed and response time. InMotion utilizes multiple data centers, smart routing technology, and SSD drives to keep the servers up and running. The company provides a 99.99% network uptime on its dedicated hosting plans.

Powered by Google Cloud, SiteGround offers an annual network uptime of 99.9%. For uptime ranging between 99.9% – 99.00%, the company promises one month of free hosting and an additional free month for every 1% of uptime lost below 99.00%.

Furthermore, we have reviewed the average uptime offered by InMotion and SiteGround in a test site over the last six month period (via).

Winner: SiteGround (99.98% uptime)

Note: It is worth mentioning that uptime depends on various factors, including the type of server – shared, VPS, dedicated – and hardware reliability, to name a few.

InMotion vs SiteGround: Speed/response time

InMotion

InMotion’s premium bandwidth providers and smart routing technology help the company provide performance gains. Besides, the company leverages:

• Cloud-powered high availability for real-time redundancy
• UltraStack, high-performance infrastructure for optimized speed and reliability
• SSDs – for 20x faster speed and performance over traditional HDDs
• Rebootless upgrades
• Max Speed Zone – claimed to deliver 6x faster web hosting

SiteGround

Apart from leveraging the Google Cloud Platform’s superfast network and SSD persistent storage, SiteGround has deployed several site speed-boosting technologies. These include:

• custom PHP handling setup
• Free Cloudflare CDN
• SuperCacher caching solution
• Faster MySQL setup

Besides, this six-month overview – from Sept 2020-Feb 2021 – shows the average response time offered by a test site hosted on InMotion and SiteGround (via):

Winner: InMotion

InMotion vs SiteGround: Shared hosting

Shared hosting is the easiest and the most affordable form of web hosting for small businesses and individuals. Both InMotion and SiteGround provide shared web hosting with the following features:

InMotion Shared Hosting

At InMotion, shared hosting is offered in three separate packages – Launch, Power, and Pro – with all plans including hosting for multiple sites, free domain name registration/ transfer, unlimited bandwidth, top-tier security, easy access to Google apps, one-Click Installs of 400+ applications, free website builder, security suite, marketing tools including USD150 advertising credits and more features.

• Launch: USD6.99/mo (1-year)

The Launch shared hosting plan allows for hosting two websites and offers 50GB SSD storage, 3x performance and speed, 10 email addresses, and 3 MySQL& PostgreSQL Databases. It is ideal for beginners.

The Power shared hosting plan includes hosting for 50 websites, 100GB SSD storage, 4x performance and speed, 50 email addresses, 50 MySQL& PostgreSQL Databases, and more features. It is suitable for heavy traffic websites.

The top-tier Pro plan allows for hosting 100 websites. It provides 200GB SSD storage, 6x performance and speed, unlimited email address, and Pro level support that gives you a 99.99 uptime guarantee on the service level agreement (SLA). It is the best option for those looking for maximum performance and speed.

SiteGround Shared Hosting

SiteGround Shared Hosting comes in three levels:

• StartUp: USD 6.99/mo (1-year)

The StartUp plan allows for hosting only one website and provides 10GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, unlimited databases, free Weebly site builder, free CDN and email, spam protection, and automated daily backups, among other features

The GrowBig plan allows for hosting unlimited websites, 20GB SSD storage, ultrafast PHP, on-demand backup copies, staging, and collaboration tools.

The GoGeek shared hosting plan all the features of the StartUp and GrowBig plans and offers 40GB SSD storage, Git, white-label access, and Priority support.

The table below compares the basic and the top-tier shared hosting plans of InMotion and SiteGround:

Winner: InMotion

InMotion vs SiteGround: WordPress hosting

InMotion WordPress Hosting

InMotion provides managed WordPress hosting with free site transfer tools, SSD storage, free CDN, automatic backups, automatic security patches and more features. It is offered in four different packages:

• WP-1000S (USD7.99/mo) – 1 Website; 50GB SSD Storage; 4x Performance
• WP-2000S (USD7.99/mo) – 2 Websites; 100GB SSD Storage 6x Performance; Jetpack Personal
• WP-3000S (USD10.99/mo) – 3 Websites; 150GB SSD Storage; 8x Performance; Jetpack Personal; Dedicated Opcode Cache Pool
• WP-4000S (USD15.99/mo) – 6 Websites 200GB SSD Storage 12x Performance; Jetpack Professional; Dedicated Opcode Cache Pool; Dedicated IP

All of the InMotion WordPress Hosting plans include:

• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Unlimited Email
• WordPress Installed
• Security – Free SSL; Malware and Hack Protection; DDoS Protection; Automatic Backups
• Marketing tools- Website builder, Free Advertising Credits, Customer Management Tools and more
• Staging environment
• Schedule backups

Further, InMotion also provides WordPress Hosting on a Virtual Private Server. Starting at USD38.99/month for a 12-month term, WP-VPS hosting plans are offered in three levels:

1. VPS-1000HA-S – 4GB RAM; 75GB SSD Storage; 4TB Bandwidth; 3 Dedicated IP’s
2. VPS-2000HA-S – 6GB RAM; 150GB SSD Storage; 5TB Bandwidth; 4 Dedicated IP’s
3. VPS-3000HA-S – 8GB RAM; 260GB SSD Storage; 6TB Bandwidth; 5 Dedicated IP’s

SiteGround WordPress Hosting

SiteGround is one of the only three WP hosting providers recommended by WordPress.org. Its managed WordPress Hosting plans include the same features as the shared hosting plans in addition to some WordPress-specific tools and features like SG-Git, SG Optimizer plugin, one-click staging tool, to name a few.

=> For an in-depth review of SiteGround’s WordPress hosting, read our previous article – SiteGround reviews .

Now, we are comparing the basic and the top-tier WordPress hosting plans from InMotion and SiteGround:

Winner: SiteGround

InMotion vs SiteGround: Hosting prices

Here are the introductory prices (prices for the initial term) of various hosting packages offered by InMotion and SiteGround.

In terms of introductory pricing, both companies are on an equal footing. However, if we look at the renewal prices – the price after the initial term expires- InMotion is cheaper than SiteGround. For instance, InMotion’s shared hosting basic plan (12 months) renews for USD11.99/mo, whereas SiteGround’s basic shared hosting plan renews for USD14.99/mo.

Winner: InMotion

Conclusion

After comparing InMotion and SiteGround hosting plans, features, uptime, and other key metrics, we can say that it is a tough fight between the two hosting providers. While SiteGround is ahead in offering better uptime and WordPress hosting.

InMotion gains an edge over SiteGround in providing a wide range of hosting services, site response time, domain credit, cheaper renewal rates, and 90-days money-back guarantee.

Wondering which one of these two hosts is best for your website? Take a look at the table below that summarizes the comparison.

Depending on your needs, both InMotion and SiteGround can be an ideal choice for your website.

Pros of choosing InMotion

• Free domain credit
• VPS and Dedicated hosting
• Low renewal prices
• Free cPanel to cPanel transfers
• Monthly hosting
• 90-day money-back guarantee
• More SSD storage

Pros of choosing SiteGround

• Higher uptime
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Multiple data centers
• Location-specific hosting
• Recommended by WordPress.org
• Weebly site builder
• Unlimited WordPress site hosting
• CDN included with all plans (Shared)
• Unlimited email accounts (Shared)