It is very common for website owners to go with one of the more popular hosting brands when they are looking for a new web host or just want to switch their existing host. But research a little, and you are sure to find several hosting brands that are not so big on promotions and advertisements but offer great value for money with world-class hosting services.
SiteGround and InMotion are great examples of such hosting brands. Both the hosts have been in the hosting industry for a very long time. While SiteGround was founded in 2004, InMotion Hosting has been in existence since 2001. But if you are new to being a website owner, chances are that you might not have heard their names, especially InMotion.
But rest assured that they are quality web hosts with a hosting plan for every type of website. But what should you select if you are stuck between SiteGround and InMotion? This SiteGround vs. InMotion post will help you pick a winner.
Hosting Infrastructure
The location of the data center plays a significant role in the quality of hosting service your website receives, especially if you are looking for dedicated hosting. So, going through the hosting infrastructure is a great way to pick the best web host.
SiteGround currently has a total of five data centers at locations like Iowa, Chicago, Amsterdam, London, and Singapore. Each of its data centers has enterprise-class UPS technology, multiple power feeds, redundant N+1 power resources, and 24x7 security. Their official website offers detailed information about its data centers.
Unfortunately, InMotion is not as transparent about their data centers. Their website only mentions that they have data centers across the coast, probably the US east coast and west coast. But they do mention that their data centers use natural cooling technologies to cut their cooling costs and reduce the carbon footprint.
So, while both the web hosts have state-of-the-art data centers, SiteGround is spread across more locations as compared to InMotion.
Hosting Services
As mentioned above, both SiteGround and InMotion offer a wide range of hosting services. With SiteGround, you can select from Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Cloud Hosting, eCommerce Hosting, Reseller Hosting, and Enterprise Hosting. They also offer a few unique hosting services such as Student Hosting and Hosting for Agencies.
InMotion, on the other hand, offers Shared Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, VPS Hosting, WordPress Hosting, eCommerce Hosting, and Reseller Hosting. There are also several different not-so-popular types of hosting services like SSL Hosting, Ruby Hosting, PHP Hosting, etc. for customers looking for a dedicated solution for their website.
Also, it is worth noting that apart from hosting and domain registration, InMotion also offers other services like Custom Web Designing and Custom Built Servers.
Pricing
To effectively compare the hosting plans of SiteGround and InMotion, we will focus on the cheapest hosting plan of both the web hosts and the features they offer. The cheapest hosting plan from SiteGround is its StartUp shared hosting plan, which costs $3.95/month but renews at $11.95/month after the introductory period.
The plan comes with 10GB web space and 10,000 unique monthly visits for a single website. It also includes essential features, like free site builder, free SSL, free email accounts, free Cloudflare CDN, unmetered traffic, SSH, and free daily backups. So, while the renewal is kind of expensive, the plan does have a lot to offer in terms of resources and features.
With InMotion, the cheapest plan is their Launch shared hosting plan that costs $6.39/month for the introductory period but renews at $10.99/month. The plan comes with unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth for up to two websites. It also includes a Security Suite with free SSL, Malware + Hack Protection, and Automatic Backups.
Also, InMotion offers Marketing Tools with each of their plans. It includes Free Advertising Credits, Visitor Statistics, Drag and Drop Site Builder, and Free Domain Registration.
All in all, both SiteGround and InMotion offer great value for money, especially for the introductory period. With most other web hosts, you are generally required to pay an additional fee for features like SSL, site builder, backups, and more.
But note that InMotion also offers a free domain for a year which SiteGround doesn’t. However, the starting price of InMotion plans is higher as compared to that of SiteGround’s. In pricing point of InMotion is one of the best SiteGround alternatives.
Uptime and Speed
The next important consideration is uptime and speed of the hosting plans offered by SiteGround and InMotion. For this, we created two similar test websites with some content and images and hosted the same with SiteGround’s StartUp and InMotion’s Launch hosting plans.
Over a period of three months, SiteGround delivered an uptime of 99.98%, tad below the 99.99% uptime guarantee that is mentioned on their website. InMotion, too, delivered great results with an uptime of 99.95%. The uptime of both the web hosts is highly impressive, especially because we purchased their shared hosting plans that come with the lowest possible resources and features as compared to their more expensive plans.
Talking about the speed, both the hosts delivered almost similar results with SiteGround maintaining an average TTFB of 350ms and InMotion offering average TTFB of 370ms.
So, with regards to uptime and speed, both SiteGround and InMotion are excellent choices with the former offering slightly better results as compared to the latter.
Security
If you are just starting a small website, you mostly would not want to spend a lot of money on 3rd party security solutions for your website. You will mostly have to rely on the security features offered by your hosting provider. Both SiteGround and InMotion do not disappoint in this department as well.
SiteGround offers free SSL and free daily backups with each of their plans. More expensive plans from SiteGround come with added features like on-demand backup and more. It also offers a few paid tools like SG Site Scanner, which costs $19.80/year.
With InMotion, apart from SSL and automatic backups, you also get Malware + Hack Protection, a great free feature to keep your website protected against cyberthreats.
So, if you are only looking for basic security features for your website, SiteGround and InMotion have got you covered. Most other web hosts generally have additional charges for security features that these web hosts are offering for free.
Website Backup
One should regularly create a backup of their website so that their progress is saved and can be restored when required. As mentioned above, SiteGround offers free daily backup service even with their cheapest shared hosting plan. More expensive plans come with on-demand backup facility as well.
With InMotion too, you get the free automatic feature. For on-demand backups, you can purchase their Backup Manager tool, which costs $48/2 years.
Customer Support
Irrespective of whether you are new to running a website or have been doing it for a long time, you will definitely need customer support at some point. So, it is essential to thoroughly check the support offered by your web host.
Both SiteGround and InMotion offer 24x7 support through live chat, phone, and email. We tried to contact their support teams through phone and were already talking to a representative within 60-75 seconds. Their support representatives were knowledgeable and were able to answer our queries in great detail.
Moreover, their websites have an extensive knowledge base with hundreds of articles, blogs, tutorials, and more. But as compared to InMotion, SiteGround knowledge base explains topics in a language that could be easily understood even by people new to hosting.
User-Friendliness
You get a free website builder with both SiteGround and InMotion. This enables you to start creating your custom website even if you have zero coding knowledge. In case of any queries, you can easily get in touch with their support department or browse through their knowledge base as answers to most basic questions are available there.
SiteGround offers a 30-days money-back guarantee, whereas, InMotion is so confident of its services that it offers a 90-days money-back guarantee. It is great to see that both the web hosts stand behind their services and do not mind offering a money-back guarantee in case if a customer does not like their services.
Time to Make a Decision
You now have all the essential details to compare SiteGround and InMotion effectively. While both these web hosts do not spend a lot of money on advertising, they sure are world-class brands with excellent hosting services.
But as can be seen above, SiteGround has a slight edge over InMotion in a few aspects like pricing, uptime, and speed. Rest assured that no matter what you select between the two, you are sure to experience quality hosting that is highly secure and user-friendly.
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