Are you in search for the fastest hosting company? If so, check out this SiteGround vs InMotion hosting battle. Both hosting providers boast about their speed performance, but let’s see which company comes out on top.
Similar to our SiteGround vs Bluehost hosting review, we will show the differences between the page load response times, hosting cost, features, and more.
About both hosting providers.
SiteGround was founded in 2004 by a few university students. SiteGround has grown into one of the largest and most powerful hosting companies in the world. With over 400 employees SiteGround hosts well over 800,000 websites across the world. SiteGround hosting is about craftsmanship, quality, passion, integrity, and fun.
InMotion is an industry-leading provider of Business Class Web Hosting based in California. InMotion was founded in 2001 and currently has 201-500 employees. InMotion works with many brands such as Parallels, Level3, gtt, Cisco, and more.
Datacenter comparison
Why do data centers matter? More data centers usually mean faster load speeds for your visitors. If you have Australian visitors, do you think that they will access your site faster when your servers are in the U.S. or when you have data centers in Australia? Australia of course!
SiteGround provides 5 different data centers in 3 different continents which is extremely rare for a web hosting company. InMotion on the other hand has a data center in Los Angeles and one outside Washington DC. InMotion offers N+2 or N+1 power systems with multiple battery and diesel power sources.
Pricing comparison
SiteGround offers some of the cheapest hosting plans in the industry. Shared hosting with SiteGround starts at $3.95/mo. Depending on what you need, SiteGround also offers a $5.95/mo web hosting plan and a $11.95/mo semi-dedicated shared hosting plan. All shared and semi-dedicated servers run and operate with 1H Software.
SiteGround offers a cloud VPS hosting plan with innovative technology, IP Tables Firewall, 1 Dedicated IP, and Private DNS Server Setup for $80.00/mo to $240.00/mo. Their 4 VPS plans give you 2 to 4 CPU Cores, 4GB to 10GB Memory, 40GB to 120GB SSD Space, and 5TB Bandwidth. All their VPS hosting plans come with cPanel.
InMotion does not offer cheap web hosting services like some other companies.
InMotion’s shared business hosting plan starts at $4.89/mo. Their top-selling package is their Power plan. This plan costs $6.29/mo. If you are a developer or need help for a growing business, then you might desire their largest shared plan which is their Pro plan for $10.49/mo.
Managed optimized web hosting for WordPress is going to cost the same as their shared hosting plans. These plans are fine-tuned to deliver superior performance, and security, and provide the best WordPress Hosting.
InMotion offers Managed SSD VPS Hosting powered by the Cloud. Their VPS hosting plans can be purchased for $29.99/mo. Their VPS-1000HA-S plan offers affordable & abundant dedicated resources. Their best VPS plan for the price is their VPS-2000HA-S plan. This plan costs 49.99/mo and is for those who need flexibility & value for their growing business. This plan offers 6GB RAM, 150GB Storage, 5TB Bandwidth, and 4 IP Addresses.
Their VPS-3000HA-S plan offers maximum power and performance and costs $75/mo. This plan gives your business 8GB RAM, 260GB Storage, 6TB Bandwidth, and 5 IP Addresses.
Web hosting performance comparison
SiteGround easily wins the performance battle between web hosts. They both offer awesome servers for their customers. However, SiteGround has a 99.99% monthly hosting uptime while InMotion offers a 99.97% monthly hosting uptime. Also, due to the various speed features such as SSD drives, NGINX web server technology, PHP7 and HHVM and more SiteGround has a 300ms load response time.
InMotion hosting has teamed up with some of the world’s largest ISPs and peering exchanges to create direct data connections. This will lead to having a faster site. InMotion on average offers a 450ms – 500ms load response time. Although this is above average, SiteGround is clearly a faster web hosting company, which will lead to more business revenue and happier site visitors.
Free domain name freebie
With InMotion when you purchase any 12 or 24-month hosting plan, you will receive a free domain name for the first year. SiteGround does not offer a free domain name for the first year of your hosting plan.
To be given the ability to host an unlimited number of websites with InMotion, you will have to choose their Pro plan. Their Launch plan gives you 2 websites and their Power plan gives you 6 sites. From experience, I can honestly tell you that you are going to want more than two sites. You will end up needing the Power plan or the Pro plan.
The StartUp Plan allows for one site. However, the GrowBig and the GoGeek SiteGround package allow for an unlimited number of sites at a cheaper cost than InMotion. Never underestimate what multiple domains can do for your revenue streams.
Web hosting features comparison
SiteGround web hosting features
- Unmatched resource efficiency and website speed.
- Fasted setup – 3 clicks to set up a new website
- Free SSD
- Free CDN & Multiple Locations – 5 datacenters
- SSH & WP-CLI
- Static and dynamic cache, plus memcached.
- Apache/Nginx & CentOS
- HTTP/2 Enabled Servers
- Free site transfer
- RAID 10 (the fastest RAID option)
- eAccelerator
- Free Daily Backup
InMotion web hosting features
- Web design services – Free design assessment from our web design experts.
- Free SSD – Up to 20x faster than spinning drives.
- RAID cards with battery-backed non-volatile caching.
- 90-Day full money-back guarantee
- Install Over 400 Applications
- Max Speed Zone
- Free drag-and-drop website builder
- Google Apps Integration
- Free data backups
- Site files are scanned and patched for vulnerabilities and malware.
- Pro Level SItes
- SSH Access
Refund policy comparison
Most hosting providers offer a 30-day refund policy such as SiteGround. However, InMotion is one of the only hosting providers that offers a three-month refund policy. A 90-day money back is extremely rare to have.
Which platform is more popular?
Popularity matters because it tells us what most people are choosing and having success with. SiteGround is currently the most popular hosting company. When we compare SiteGround to InMotion, we see that SiteGround is easily the more popular company in Google statistics and customer satisfaction.
When I checked keyword stats, “SiteGround” receives 100K – 1M average monthly searches. “InMotion” receives 10K – 100K average monthly searches. Out of a 5-star rating system, InMotion has a 4.1-star rating with over 500 reviews. SiteGround has a 4.8-star rating out of 1000 reviews, which says a lot about its hosting service.
Support comparison
Like all the best web hosting providers, SiteGround gives you 24/7 phone, chat, and email web hosting support. The SiteGround team processes 1500+ tickets, 1000+ phone calls, and 3000+ chat requests per day. New customers are given a free WooCommerce eBook to help them properly run an e-commerce website.
You are given a large knowledgebase where you can get help for your website, domain & DNS, email, FTP, SSL certificates, website security, website migration, and more. Also, you are given WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and Drupal Tutorials. Lastly, SiteGround customers are given SiteGround Webinars and blog support to stay updated on what is happening with SG.
InMotion also offers 24/7 web hosting support for their customers. InMotion offers great community support where you can ask questions and receive help from the InMotion community. The InMotion team regularly records YouTube videos to help with frequently asked web hosting questions.
InMotion also offers unique tools and helpful resources such as a Blacklist Checker, Visual Domain Routing Tool, InMotion Hosting Quick Tagger, Bounce Back Parser, Email Configuration, and more. Lastly, InMotion offers various website tutorials, email tutorials, and product guides to help you get started with your new site.
Which is better?
SitGround hosting is clearly the better performing web hosting provider. InMotion does have some advantages that can’t be denied such as their free domain freebie and their longer money back guarantee, but you want a hosting company for performance. SiteGround has more data centers to accommodate your visitors all around the world.
SiteGround has better overall web hosting features. SiteGround has a better web hosting uptime. SiteGround has the faster servers for better load speeds. Lastly, SiteGround is the cheaper hosting company and the easier company to setup with. Let’s set up your site below with the hosting winner.
SiteGround walkthrough!
SiteGround offers an awesome preinstall wizard that allows you to setup your site in 5 minutes or less.
- Start SiteGround here (60 off%)
- Under WordPress services, select WordPress hosting.
- Get started with StartUp or any other plan.
- Add a domain and proceed.
- Enter details and proceed.
- Use preinstall option
- Select a theme for now.
- Create username and password.
- Login!