Hostinger vs InMotion (2024)

PJ Fancher

By: PJ Fancher

PJ Fancher

PJ is a professional web developer with more than 20 years of experience. His background began with writing small web applications using Perl, PHP, and MySQL in 1998. He has well-rounded experience with all aspects of web development, from server and database configuration to scripting, styling, design, and SEO.

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Editor: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian brings more than 30 years of editing and journalism experience to our team. She has written and edited for major news organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the New York Times, and she previously served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Florida. Today, she edits HostingAdvice content for clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement.

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Sean Garrity PJ Fancher Hosting Expert
“We tested InMotion & Hostinger — The winner is InMotion!”

Hostinger is one of the most reputable titans in the web hosting industry. This host prioritizes affordability without sacrificing performance, even for its cheapest shared hosting plans. Hostinger shows its dedication to feature-rich plans by removing restrictions on the number of websites, databases, FTP users, subdomains, and parked domains users can have. Our other web host, InMotion, is equally impressive. InMotion offers lightning-fast dedicated, shared, and VPS hosting plans. Premium customers can access even more unlimited features for a slightly higher monthly cost. We’ll admit, the competition is tough this round. Let’s find out which web host has the best offering.

Overall Rating
4.9/5.0 ★★★★★
Visit InMotion »
Overall Rating
4.8/5.0 ★★★★★
Visit Hostinger »

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Overall Hosting Comparison

Best Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

Offering a wider range of services than most — including shared, dedicated, VPS, and even WordPress-specific plans — InMotion Hosting features a great combination of industry-leading hardware, always-there support, and mass scalability for all hosting needs.

InMotion Hosting has ultra-modern SSD drives on its shared plans, which give an added speed boost to your site. If a little extra speed is worth a few dollars more a month, then InMotion is a good choice for you. 

The company's customer service and reputation are excellent in the shared space, though InMotion tends to be a bit higher priced than some competitors.

In testing InMotion servers and account backends ourselves, there are a few things InMotion does that we especially appreciate.

First and foremost, we like to see free and automated backups included with each plan, as data security is vitally important.

The company also offers zero-downtime site transfers, which makes switching to InMotion or between its hosting plans a breeze.

Finally, multiple datacenters and the ability to choose which will house your site appeals to speed freaks like us.

Regardless of your hosting needs, InMotion seems to have your bases covered. If you value great hardware and support, all at a reasonable price, we highly recommend InMotion as your next host.

  • FREE SSD drives included with all hosting plans
  • Zero-downtime website transfers and migrations
  • FREE backups, SSL, and DDoS protection
  • Choice of East Coast or West Coast datacenter
  • Multi-language support for PHP, Ruby, and Perl
  • Get started on InMotion now.
Money Back Guarantee
90 days
Disk Space
100 GB SSD - Unlimited
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Best Overall Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

Behind a mission to make life easier for website developers and their customers, Hostinger provides fast, stable, and streamlined services at a price that is very hard to beat.

Founded in 2004, the bootstrapped company hit the 10 million users mark a decade later, achieving ICANN accreditation and localizing services in 39 countries.

Now, Hostinger serves more than 29 million customers and sees an average of 20,000 new users sign up each day — roughly a new customer every five seconds.

The company's team of roughly 1,000 employees maintains several international offices and a strong force of remote workers to ensure Hostinger services and support are always running and responsive.

As such, Hostinger is able to offer around-the-clock live chat support and a 99.9% service uptime guarantee. The company concentrates on resource-rich shared hosting and scalable virtual servers.

The former boasts WordPress-friendly optimizations and an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder, along with daily or weekly backups and a free domain name for annual plans. Hostinger clearly aims to strike the perfect balance on price versus performance.

Instead of offering subpar services at the lowest price in the industry, the company equips its infrastructure with high-powered solid-state drives and recently even completed a self-imposed challenge to achieve a perfect score on Google PageSpeed Insights.

Finding SSDs and that level of performance at a price lower than most competitors is a striking victory for the company.

  • 24/7/365 ticket and live chat support
  • 99.9% network uptime guarantee
  • FREE domain, site builder, backups, and SSL certificate
  • Unlimited bandwidth, databases, and email accounts
  • Speedy SSDs optimize performance
  • Get started on Hostinger now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB SSD - 200 GB SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Cheap Hosting Comparison

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.7/5.0

#6 out of 10 in Cheap Hosting reviews

InMotion Hosting offers an excellent business-class shared hosting plan — with a price tag lower than several other budget hosts.

For the IT crowd in the audience, you’ll appreciate SSH access, as well as support for PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, WP-CLI, and other popular languages.

You’ll also appreciate the 20-times faster speed, which comes from all-SSD storage and your choice of datacenter locations.

You needn’t worry about data security, as InMotion plans include automatic data backups.

For the rest of us, we can appreciate the convenience of the free website transfers and 24/7 US-based support.

A free domain registration and WordPress website builder with eCommerce support are also appealing.

The overall package and business-class hardware make InMotion’s shared hosting a great choice for businesses or those looking for a little higher-end hardware.

And, as one of the few remaining independently owned hosting providers left on the market, InMotion has taken every effort to remain cost-competitive.

  • FREE BoldGrid site builder and templates
  • FREE website, domain, and cPanel migrations
  • SSD storage makes your site load up to 20x faster
  • Security suite includes SSL and hack protection
  • Unlimited bandwidth and email accounts
  • Get started on InMotion now.
Money Back Guarantee
90 days
Disk Space
100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Cheap Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

#1 out of 10 in Cheap Hosting reviews

As the shared hosting market becomes increasingly saturated, unlimited storage, bandwidth, and email accounts have become surprisingly average.

Hostinger, however, extends the routine, expected metrics to greater lengths — the number of websites, databases, FTP users, subdomains, and parked domains are all unrestricted for most customers.

Hostinger clients who opt for the slightly more expensive (but still quite reasonable and remarkably affordable) Premium and Business hosting packages enjoy unlimited computing power and a free domain name registration, along with free backups.

Premium customers will see performance that measures up to two times faster than the company's cheapest shared hosting plan, while Business users benefit from speeds up to four times faster.

Those consumers will also receive daily backups (instead of weekly), deluxe support, a free SSL certificate, and twice the processing power and memory.

The company's lowest tier of shared hosting services, geared for small, single sites, gets below the $3-per-month benchmark.

While perfectly adequate for new projects, professional résumés, and new blogs, we recommend users sign up for one of the more upscale plans; room to grow is important, and the forward-thinking decision eliminates any potential hassles with upgrading services or migrating files.

Overall, we appreciate how Hostinger doesn't sacrifice performance and functionality when trying to appeal to budget-minded site owners.

The company's all-SSD infrastructure, combined with the inclusion of an easy-to-use site builder, maxed-out speed boosts, and options for a free SSL certificate and domain name, are sure to facilitate lasting and long-term hosting relationships.

  • Unlimited everything, from storage to databases
  • FREE site builder & WP performance upgrades
  • FREE daily or weekly backups
  • Custom control panel and auto-installation scripts
  • SSH access & unlimited FREE SSL certificates
  • Get started on Hostinger now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB SSD - 200 GB SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Dedicated Hosting Comparison

Dedicated Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

#1 out of 8 in Dedicated Hosting reviews

InMotion Hosting offers amazingly fast and reliable dedicated hosting on market-leading hardware — making it an easy choice for anyone seeking a premium dedicated server host.

From free SSDs to a fanatical support team, InMotion has all the bases covered for both small-scale and large-scale operations.

Unlike some hosts, InMotion gives SSH and root access to its servers. Each plan comes in bare metal or fully managed flavors. The latter includes two to four hours of dedicated time with a system administrator, which is an excellent help in getting your site configured to meet your needs.

Managed servers also come set up with free cPanel and WHM for easy management, while unmanaged server operators can choose among CentOS, Debian, or Ubuntu operating systems.

Plenty of CPU power, RAM, and storage come with each plan, as well as lots of dedicated IP addresses.

Perhaps our favorite feature of InMotion is the company's zero-downtime, rebootless kernel updates, which are partially the reason for InMotion's superb 99.999% uptime.

InMotion has a 30-day money-back guarantee on their dedicated plans, which is fairly rare and just another reason you can’t go wrong selecting the company as your dedicated host.

  • Bare-metal or managed servers available
  • 1-on-1 time with a server administrator
  • 99.99% uptime via Smart Routing™ technology
  • Tier 1 network with redundant bandwidth
  • SSH root access and DDoS protection on all servers
  • Upgrade for cPanel, migration, and auto backups
  • Get started on InMotion now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
1 TB SSD - 3.2 TB SSD
Domain Name
New or Transfer

Dedicated Rating

N/A

Hostinger does not currently offer this type of hosting. We would not recommend choosing this host for this hosting category.

VPS Hosting Comparison

VPS Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

#7 out of 9 in VPS Hosting reviews

Boasting market-leading VPS hardware, slick management software, and free SSD drives and backups, InMotion Hosting competes to win when it comes to managed VPS hosting packages.

The host initiates its VPS customer relationship with free website migrations and up to two hours of launch assistance from an experienced sysadmin.

Customers then enjoy highly available servers, seamless scalability options, and premium support — at a fair price.

Enjoy SSD storage arranged in a RAID-6 array, DDoS attack prevention powered by Corero, and routine server snapshots and rollback options.

Performance and security are clearly priorities for this hosting company. When it comes to bandwidth, disk space, and other usage allowances, we found these VPS packages to be competitive with other industry leaders.

All plans run on the CentOS Linux operating system and feature a license for cPanel and WHM, making it super easy to resell some unused server resources, too.

Ultimately, InMotion Hosting's reputation for uptime is second to none.

With a solid track record as a large-scale host, the company's sweet spot is found in its virtual, cloud, and dedicated server offerings. Should you get stuck, the support team is available 24/7.

Based on our experience, we'd highly recommend InMotion to those seeking flexible/easily configurable and cost-competitive virtual private servers backed by equally available support.

  • HostingAdvice readers get 67% off the first term
  • FREE site migrations and 2 hours of Launch Assist
  • 2 - 3 dedicated IP address options
  • FREE cPanel/WHM licenses included
  • Highly available servers with real-time redundancy
  • Get started on InMotion now.
Money Back Guarantee
90 days
Disk Space
90 GB SSD - 360 GB SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

VPS Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

#1 out of 9 in VPS Hosting reviews

Hostinger's laser focus on providing affordable hosting solutions shines brightest with the company's VPS packages. The company provides six different virtual server plans, including one that costs less than $5.

Regardless of which plan customers choose, both site owners and visitors will enjoy the all-SSD infrastructure that loads pages up to 30 times faster than many shared hosting services.

Although disk space, RAM, and bandwidth capacities are all a slight touch lower than those of many mainstream competitors, Hostinger's prices reflect the limitations.

Site administrators likely won't miss an extra 10GB of storage, but they're more likely to notice and appreciate the $5 or so per month they save on high-powered hosting.

A key distinction to be aware of, though, is the lack of managed services. Experienced developers should have no problems using the company's powerful control panel, however, and we have faith that the Hostinger support team is prepared to handle any task or challenge thrown its way.

Customers can manage computing resources through the admin portal, which enables admins to reboot servers or turn them on or off.

Users can quickly install or update operating systems or applications with just a few clicks, or view performance statistics or manage root access passwords.

Those who prefer cPanel can opt to manage backups and restores, among other components, in the familiar interface. Unlike Hostinger's shared hosting services, virtual server plans do not include a free domain registration. However, the ICANN-accredited registrar offers incredibly cheap domain registrations.

Addresses ending in .com and .net cost less than $10 per year, while .biz and .org domains are still a few dollars more affordable when registered through Hostinger, compared with most competitors. Domains with those extensions cost about $12 per year.

  • Cloud-based SSD storage for speed and reliability
  • Double your RAM with burst periods
  • FREE dedicated IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
  • Custom control panel for reboots and OS installs
  • HostingAdvice readers enjoy more than 50% off
  • Get started on Hostinger now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB NVMe - 400 GB NVMe
Domain Name
New or Transfer

WordPress Hosting Comparison

WordPress Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

#5 out of 8 in WordPress Hosting reviews

InMotion Hosting, long known for affordable and high-performance shared hosting options, entered the WordPress space with a solid option built upon the company's reputation for great support and reliability.

Build on an all-SSD infrastructure, InMotion's inherently quick speeds make the infrastructure a perfect fit for delivering rapid WordPress page loads.

Options like integrated staging help take full advantage of the nice, modern hardware, and ample server caching tools are a good perk.

The choice of datacenters (East or West) is nice, as well, as it allows you to target your local audience with better load times.

InMotion offers four levels to its WordPress hosting offerings, which allows you to tailor the hosting to your needs or budget.

For those needing ecommerce support, the company's middle or top offerings have you covered, while all three include InMotion's drag-and-drop BoldGrid page editor.

Each hosting package InMotion offers comes with a free domain, unlimited disk space, unlimited emails, and free data backups for data security.

If you need it, each plan also has support for PHP, Ruby, Perl, and Python, and includes SSH access.

InMotion Hosting has made a name for itself on support and reliability. While not the cheapest of the budget WordPress hosts, the packages offered are solid in performance and feature sets.

  • Up to 12x faster WordPress hosting
  • FREE SSL certificate and SSD storage
  • Automatic WordPress plugin, theme, and core updates
  • Features a FREE drag-and-drop WP page editor
  • Premium themes and plugin subscriptions
  • Get started on InMotion now.
Money Back Guarantee
90 days
Disk Space
100 GB - Unlimited SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

WordPress Rating

★★★★★ 4.9/5.0

#3 out of 8 in WordPress Hosting reviews

As much as we love WordPress, one of our biggest pet peeves is when hosting providers exploit the popularity of the world's most-used content management system by offering so-called WordPress hosting that, in reality, is exactly the same as the host's shared server plans.

Fortunately, Hostinger's ultra-fast infrastructure and easy access to SSL certificates and backups sets up the company to outperform the vast majority of the violators of our admittedly made-up rule.

One prime benefit to WordPress hosting with Hostinger is that customers can enjoy the same affordable rates for which the company offers shared hosting. For less than $5 per month, users will benefit from optimal hardware, unlimited features, and better-than-average security programs.

When setting up a new hosting account, users are asked if they want to install WordPress as soon as they log into the account management portal.

Hostinger does an exceptional job at streamlining the installation and setup process for even the least-experienced site owners.

In addition to the more performant storage on solid-state drives, Hostinger's top two shared plans come optimized for WordPress by increasing page load performance between three and five times more than the base package.

Also, the top-tier Business plan comes with twice the processing power and memory. Otherwise, site administrators can enjoy unlimited MySQL databases, phpMyAdmin, and the ideal InnoDB storage engine.

Although we'd like to see more features specific for WordPress, such as caching tools and automatic updates, Hostinger includes server security from BitNinja and SpamAssassin protection for email. Most WordPress users will be very well served by choosing Hostinger to house their website.

  • 1-click WP install, PHP 7+, HTTP/2, and NGINX
  • All-in-one security protections from BitNinja
  • WordPress optimizations boost performance
  • No price markup for WordPress services
  • Daily backups and FREE SSL certificate
  • Get started on Hostinger now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
100 GB SSD - 200 GB NVMe
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Site Builder Hosting Comparison

Website Builder Rating

★★★★★ 4.8/5.0

If you're aiming to build a dynamic, user-oriented website — an active blog, a photo gallery, an ecommerce store — check out InMotion Hosting.

The InMotion team is extremely knowledgeable in the hosting industry, and they're attuned to the ever-evolving needs of the end-user — from the ultra-novice to the über-experienced.

Evidence of the team's attention to user needs can be found in BoldGrid. The proprietary website builder platform was received so well by the market that InMotion decided to spin the web builder off into its own company.

BoldGrid functions on top of WordPress, bringing intuitiveness and ease of use to a content management environment notorious for bringing beginners frustration.

With hundreds of templates and a nice WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, getting started with a new site is a fairly quick and easy process. You can play around with the plethora of site templates, preview the site that could soon be yours, and get a feel for which look most closely matches your intended design or brand.

BoldGrid comes free on all of InMotion's shared hosting packages, which come with all the essential hosting goodies and some of the best support money can buy.

Each plan offers powerful hardware, a free domain name, and free data backups — that last one being an extremely valuable feature.

InMotion does have lengthy signup periods for their best deals, but they offer a 90-day money-back guarantee to help you feel confident that they are the right host for you.

  • FREE site builder comes with all WordPress plans
  • FREE domain with tons of options to customize and scale
  • 200+ easy-to-edit blog, gallery, and ecommerce themes
  • Customizable templates come with industry-specific starter content
  • Easy SEO tools and mobile-friendly designs
  • Get started on InMotion now.
Money Back Guarantee
90 days
Disk Space
100 GB SSD - Unlimited SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)

Website Builder Rating

★★★★★ 4.6/5.0

#3 out of 9 in Website Builder Hosting reviews

Whether you're taking your first foray into website hosting or are a developer looking to save some time, a strong website builder can dramatically streamline the creation process and enable users to launch a website in five minutes or less.

Fortunately for customers, Hostinger has invested heavily in crafting an impressive visual editor sure to appeal to users of all levels of experience. More than 2 million websites have been created through Hostinger's free tool.

The drag-and-drop interface can be launched in a single click from customers' hosting account management panel. Site owners can choose from hundreds of templates, which are organized into dozens of categories.

The overall designs might not be as flashy as the templates found on well-known site builders, including Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace, but users will have plenty of modern options from which to choose.

From there, the WYSIWYG platform intuitively guides users through various steps of adding and editing text, organizing navigational menus, and managing SEO settings.

While some drag-and-drop editors actually make adding and aligning elements surprisingly difficult, Hostinger assists users by having images, text boxes, and the like snap to a grid — ensuring your design has the greatest impact.

All in all, we have a soft spot for hosts that deploy in-house solutions for website builders, as opposed to those companies that white-label third-party products.

As with other Hostinger services, the company shows a refreshing dedication to providing top-notch services and experiences for their customers.

  • Drag-and-drop design from custom tools
  • FREE access to hundreds of specialized templates
  • Built-in ecommerce and payment processing
  • Easily switch among widescreen, desktop, tablet, and mobile previews
  • Support for 31 languages and 99.9% uptime
  • Get started on Hostinger now.
Money Back Guarantee
30 days
Disk Space
50 GB SSD - 200 GB SSD
Domain Name
FREE (1 year)
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InMotion vs. Hostinger - Our Conclusion

Sean Garrity PJ Fancher Hosting Expert
“We tested InMotion & Hostinger — The winner is InMotion!”

Hostinger is a perfect choice for personal websites and small business owners. Its shared plans offer plenty of storage, speed, and bandwidth to operate your website for an affordable monthly price. For users who need a little extra power, InMotion’s dedicated and VPS plans are built with market-leading hardware to give your site the boost it needs. Keep our reviews of each host in mind when making your choice.

Overall Rating
4.9/5.0 ★★★★★
Visit InMotion »
Overall Rating
4.8/5.0 ★★★★★
Visit Hostinger »

About The Author

PJ Fancher is a professional web developer with more than 20 years of experience. His background began with writing small web applications using Perl, PHP, and MySQL in 1998. He has well-rounded experience with all aspects of web development, from server and database configuration to scripting, styling, design, and SEO. Today he brings his passion for web development to the team at Digital Brands Inc., helping to develop unique, high-quality, highly-optimized websites. He is ready to share his extensive knowledge and experience with the world of web hosting.
Sean Garrity