Bluehost is an all-around web hosting service that powers millions of websites around the globe. Bluehost is perfectly suited for beginners.
InMotion Hosting is widely recommended as a superior small business web host, InMotion Hosting is well worth considering.
InMotion Hosting has been around for more than a decade and they offer affordable, high-performance, and independent web hosting. The packages available will allow you to host your website with them for just over $5 per month.
Bluehost and InMotion; how do they compare?
InMotion Hosting Pros
These are loads of superb things worth highlighting, but here are the main advantages of InMotion Hosting’s shared web hosting services:
- Lots of features are included for free (other competitors offer as paid upgrades). InMotion offers free website transfer, free automatic daily backups, free SSD drives are included with all hosting plans, and a free domain name for one year is included with all plans.
- You get lightning-fast and reliable hosting thanks to Max Speed Zones , a peering-based network-level feature with CDN-level usability that ensures your site loads blazing fast for all visitors in as many different locations as possible. You also get to choose from 2 different server locations; US East Coast (which gives faster connectivity to Eastern US, Europe, Africa and South America) and another in the West Coast (Western US, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific).
- Optimized for WordPress. You can choose to get WordPress pre-installed by a technical expert, and you’ll get auto-updating of core WordPress and security patches, free backups and WP-CLI integration. You also get free SSDs for up to 20x faster load speeds and improved performance and stability on their CloudLinux platform with OptimumCache, PHP 7, and custom built-in enhancements.
- 90-day money-back guarantee (is industry-leading) along with anytime money-back guarantee for all new orders (not for renewals). The guarantee does not apply to add-ons such as SSL certificates or domain names.
InMotion Hosting offers a near-perfect solution when it comes to hosting. But, it does come with a couple of disadvantages as well.
The main one is it’s difficult to sign up for an account because you have to go through a physical phone verification process first. This is so they can banish fake users.
InMotion Hosting Cons
The main reasons not to use InMotion Hosting include:
- No instant account setup. InMotion requires all new customers to be manually verified for security purposes (which is good) which means it can take a bit of time (which is bad) before your hosting account is activated, setup and ready to be used.
- While InMotion offers free automatic website backups, any site exceeding 10GB won’t be backed up and you can only restore files once every four months for the sites that do get backed up. If your site exceeds 10GB in size, then you will need to contact them to arrange backup services at an additional cost
Bluehost Pros
Apart from the cheap pricing, why should you consider signing up with Bluehost for your website or blog?
- Free domain name. You get a free domain name for one year when you sign up for web hosting with Bluehost.
- Is WordPress friendly. Bluehost is good for web hosting beginners and WordPress beginners. They offer easy WordPress 1-click installation that makes it easy for you to start your website or blog. Plus, Bluehost is officially recommended by WordPress.org
- The brand. Bluehost hosts over 2.000,000 websites worldwide so they are obviously doing something right.
- Good hosting features. Bluehost plans come with built in Cloudflare CDN and Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate.
Bluehost Cons
There are cons too. So what are the cons of using Bluehost to host your site?
- Site migrations isn’t free. If you’re looking to switch host and move to Bluehost then they do offer to help migrate your site to them, however for a fee. Bluehost will transfer up to 5 sites and 20 email accounts for the price of $149.99.
- Lots of upselling. Bluehost constantly tries to sell you (often unnecessary) upgrades and addons.
- Owned by Newfold Digital (formerly EIG). Bluehost is owned by Newfold Digital that is well known in the hosting industry for aggressive cost-cutting at the expense of support and performance.
- Slow load times. Bluehost’s load times aren’t always the fastest either. Plus reports of server errors like bad gateways or internal server errors aren’t very comforting.
- No daily backups. Site backups are a courtesy so you can’t depend on your data to be backed up daily. You must set up and run your own backup via the cPanel. Automatic backups is a paid upgrade called Site Backup Pro, it’s a paid addon that creates regular and automated backups of your site.
- Confusing pricing. Bluehost’s pricing borderline on being shady, because their $2.95 per month is an introductory price and it’s based on paying 3 years upfront.
InMotion Hosting vs Bluehost
How does InMotion compare to Bluehost? Let’s take a closer look at some of the must-have features:
| InMotion Hosting | Bluehost | |
|---|---|---|
| Free Domain Name | Yes for 1 year | Yes for 1 year |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 90 days refund | 30 days refund |
| Solid-State Drives (SSD) | Yes for free | Yes for free |
| SSL Certificate | Yes for free | Yes for free |
| Free Data Backups | Yes every 24-36h | Yes once a week |
| Site Transfer/Migration | Free (3 cPanel accounts up to 5GB) | $149.99 (5 sites & 20 email accounts) |
| Pricing | From $3.49/mo | From $2.95/mo |
Bluehost vs InMotion Hosting: Summary
As you can see, yes there are a few reasons not to use InMotion Hosting. But I think that the pros outweigh the cons, and I highly recommend InMotion Hosting (and so does Jerry Low over at WebHostingSecretRevealed.net who hosts his site with InMotion). In my opinion, InMotion is the clear winner when comparing Bluehost vs InMotion Hosting.
So, to quickly recap, which one is the better web host, Bluehost vs InMotion Hosting? Definitely InMotion Hosting!
