Hi Friends, I am a blogger and I manage some wordpress website. You have reached to this page that means you are going to buy a new hosting service for you. Thats awesome!!! Hosting plays a big role in the success of your blog. It is very difficult to choose best hosting service as everyone is claiming for best services with very competitive price. I started using shared hosting around 3 years back with Ipage, then I moved to Inmotion hosting, Hostgator and finally joined SiteGround hosting.
Note: My purpose of writing this review is not to provide any negative review though I was highly frustrated by inmotion hosting. The only reason of writing this article is to aware bloggers/site owners to take informed decision.
Getting a true review on internet about webhosting is difficult as these hosting companies offer high commission for referring customers to them. I was seduced by such a review and took wrong decision. It might be possible that the difficulty that I faced with Inmotion is not true in all cases. There may be a lot of happy customer. So this post is not a general opinion. This post is restricted to my personal review only.
Let me tell you about my website statistics. I was using 3 wordpress websites 2 was very new without any traffic and one was old with traffic approx. 150 visits per day.
Ipage Experience
Lets start now, I choose Ipage as my first hosting service provider. Plan was very cheap and cost me only $1.99 per month with a complementary site backup functionality. There was no restriction on number of websites. They were providing php version 5.3 with HDD drives.
My experience with iPage is good as it costs very less for new customer hosting plans. Support is also good. The only issue that I found with ipage was load time of website which is not good as SiteGround but Yes It was better then Inmotion hosting. After completion of your hosting time period renew will cost you approximately $11 for the same service, whch is relatively high.Since my promotional offer was expiring and renew of the account was much expensive there I decided to move to another host. I purchased 3 years hosting at $1.99 after 3 years renew cost was $11 per month.
Good About Ipage
- Simple and easy to use interface
- WordPress and other script installation
- Good Support (My rating 7/10)
- Unlimited website no restriction
Bad About Ipage
- Slow website loading for WP sites
- Renew cost is high
Inmotion Hosting Experience
After my research on Internet(by reading those promotional fake reviews) I decided to go for Inmotion as they were offering Php7 and SSD drives. So I was expecting better performance with there $4.49 per month power plan.
After joining everything was smooth, website was loading in 5-7 seconds but technical support was poor as compared to Ipage. As I learned every thing like transferring website, connecting database with my previous host so I managed everything by my self. However, at Ipage support guys ready to do all for you. When you will ask Imotion guys for any technical support like database error or website speed is slow they will reply, “It is beyond the scope of support”.
After 33 to 40 days of joining Inmotion I experienced that website is loading very slow and taking approx 20-30 seconds while there were no change made by me in the WP files except publishing 8-10 articles. I contacted Inmotion chat support. That support agent refused to provide any active support he said your website is using too much server resource. He said traffic has increased go for the VPS package which was starting from $30 per month. I told him that my website is still is in very low traffic only 100 visits in a day. Then he again replied in robotic words. Server having problem with your site. (I was surprised that same website was running on Ipage without any issue)
He refused to create a ticket for that. I asked him to provide my supervisor’s email id. I wrote a complaint to that email is but email bounced. I wrote another complaint mail including this mail bounce story to support email id. and also created a ticket for the same. I got a reply with some instruction like use super cache plugin, use php version 7 and some other changes.
I made all those changes recommended by inmotion support and my website started loading within 5-8 seconds again. I was happy!!!
But now twist in the story, I got an email that your account is suspended/blocked. I checked my website URL there was an ad of inmotion hosing. Them I got an email in which they advised me to install supercache plugin (but I was unable to do because they blocked my entire account):
I immediately contacted support via chat but they said I have to reply on that email. It was very surprising that chat support don’t have connection to system team. Any way I replied to that email. After not getting any response for 12 hours I tweeted this issue with Inmotion hosting. Next day when I didn’t received any reply I tweeted the same with Inmotion CEO. (See images below)
You can feel he frustation that I had. My website was down and I was waiting for a reply. You wont believe, I got a reply from system team in next 10 minutes once I tweeted this issue to Inmotion CEO. In which they clearly said purchase VPS or go to ANOTHER HOST.
I was help less, instead of purchasing VPS I decided to go for alternate hosting. So I replied to that mail and requested for account activation for taking backup of my website data. After waiting for couple of hours I contacted support via chat, please see the conversation below. How they was redirecting me from here and there (Instead of connecting me to system team they redirected me to 3 different agents:
Now point to remember, Inmotion claimed to have 24*7 support but its true for sale and AMP only. If inmotion’s system team is having load there is no ETA when they will contact you the only thing you can do is wait for their email. While in Ipage hosting all support available 24*7 via email/ticket/chat/call and they respond to your query in couple of minutes. In case you want to contact inmotion’s system team who have blocked your account please see the chat response:
Could be a reason why they block account
There could be some reasons that I were thinking when I was blocked:
- Completely block your account for couple of days. And put their ad on your homepage.
- They forced you to opt for VPS as most of us dont have other choice.
Many of us who join shared hosting are newbie and non tech persons. After settling up for more than one month most of the customers are not able to migrate completely and forcefully accepted VPS or any other higher plan recommended by them. I also asked them do I really need a VPS service for a wordpress blog having 100 visits in a day.
However, without php7 and without SSD drives my websites was running perfectly fine on ipage with $1.99 plan only.I was lucky because all this happened to me when I was in 90 days money back guarantee. So was able to get my money back.
Hidden facts you should know about Inmotion:
Support Team: Tech support is very poor while System team is the worst. You will fell like they guys are not willing to help you. Every time they will say, Ït is out of the scope of support.” while I never got this reply from Ipage hosting or Siteground.
27×7 Support: Remember you can not connect with system team 24×7, while this is the team who have complete power over your sites. If your site is suspended by them, you have no option to contact them instantly. You have to wait and they will reply via email. Normally you will get one email/day as a reply. So resolution of your issue may take 3-7 days and your account will be suspended during this time period.
Free Website Migration: The service which they called free migration is very slow. It takes 3-4 weeks to migrate your site that means you should have one month remaining with your previous host. Also remember that during this period they will advise you not to update anything in your websites becouse it may overridden.
Speed of the Website: As you can see, my whole issue was started when I complained them about my website is loading in 25 seconds. At least in my case I never feel that I am using anything better than Ipage. (Ipage was better)
My Recommandation:
During last 5 years I have tried Ipage, Bluehost, Inmotion, Hostgator and Siteground hosting. I have not very much experience about Hostgator. But I can say there tech support was not very good. After my decision of leaving Inmotion I signed up with Hostgator. I was having a backup in Mysql 5.6 version while hostgator support upto MySql version 5.5. Since 5.6 version is not compatible with 5.5 their support was not able to load my backup.
After trying these hosting services I signed up with SiteGround and till the date, I really feel that was my best decision.
There support is extremely qualified. They guys are able to help me anytime, anything via chat. What I feel like they are hungry of helping their customers ;). I was surprised that my website which was loading between 12-25 seconds at inmotion and between 8-15 seconds at Ipage was loading between 1-4 seconds. (as per pingdom results).
In case you are out of budget and looking for a suitable hosting go for Ipage. Ipage is much better than other so called premium host. They are very good in support. I used Ipage for 3 years and I never got any “No” from them. If there Level 1 team is not able to resolve your tech issue they will transfer it to 2nd lvl team which will take 2-6 hours to resolve your issue.
Siteground is little bit costly but they are just awesome. Highly recommended by me. Currently I am using this service. You can contact them via chat any time and they will connect you within 15 seconds. In some rare complex cases, thier support agent refer you to advanced support team by creating a ticket. Advanced team guys will surely respond with a solution to your query within 15 minutes. Below is my referral link in case you want to go for SiteGround.
Hope this article will help you to take the right decision for your website hosting. I will love to answer all your query related to this in the comment section below. Please also share your experience regarding your web hosting journey.
Please feel free to ask any question related to these three webhosing providers (ipage, hostgator and Inmotion). I will be happy to help you.
Thanks for reading!!!
Site Title 