InMotion vs SiteGround - Which One Should You Go For? (2024)

InMotion vs SiteGround

Are you trying to decide between InMotion vs SiteGround? If you're down to these two hosts we know you've got the interest of your website very much at heart. We get your passion for fast, reliable sites. We've been through this ourselves. And we have sites hosted with both these hosts...this is our real, genuine experience of working with these two companies.

We have no bias towards either of these companies. 

We host this website (CollectiveRay.com) on InMotion hosting but we also have several other sites hosted on SiteGround. We've just revisited this web hosting review in March 2024 to make sure all new details have been added and the article is kept fully updated.

InMotion vs Siteground Pricing Comparison Table

Below is a quick summary of pricing for both companies on a per month basis in US Dollar.

       SiteGround   InMotion (includes CollectiveRay discount) 
Shared/Business Hosting    $2.99 – $7.99       $2.29 – $12.99​
WordPress Hosting    $2.99 – $7.99​    $3.49 – $14.99
VPS Hosting    N/A    $19.99 – $59.99
Dedicated Hosting    N/A    $89.69 – $269.99
Cloud Hosting    $100 – $400    $7.00 - $21.00
Reseller Hosting    $4.99 – $100    $16.99 – $39.99
Website    Visit SiteGround    Visit InMotion Hosting

 

*The above monthly rates shown are the SiteGround, InMotion initial discount prices for new customers. These prices are for the first term only, and renew at the regular rate – always check these renewal prices before signing up and see what makes sense for let's say 5 years. 

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InMotion vs SiteGround

SiteGround has slightly cheaper pricing plans for the first year but InMotion is the best overall web hosting company. They both have fast servers, free daily backups, and a full money-back guarantee. Both have excellent support but with CPanel and ROOT access on WHM, but we got better performance from InMotion hosting.

  inmotion hosting vs siteground siteground vs inmotion
  Overall  5/5  4.5/5
  Ease of Use  5/5  4.5/5
  Reliability and performance  5/5  4/5
  Support  5/5  4/5
  Value for Money  5/5  4.5/5
Price for new clients $2.29/month (CollectiveRay exclusive 47% OFF on InMotion hosting plans) $2.99/month (70% OFF regular price for new clients) 
Renewal Price  $14.99/month $14.99/month
Free Trial No No
Money back guarantee 90-days for Business, Reseller, VPS, 30 days for Dedicated  30 days for shared plans / 15-days for cloud plans
Datacenter location US (Los Angeles on the West Coast / Virginia on the East Coast), Amsterdam US, London, Amsterdam, Singapore
Uptime guarantee 99.99% 99.9%
VPS WHM including ROOT Access Cloud hosting (no ROOT)
CDN Support Cloudflare (Manual installation) Cloudflare support built-in
Customer Support Great - resolutions on the spot most times Very Good - Live Chat + Technical support via Tickets
Channels Phone / Email / Live Chat / Knowledgebase Phone / Email / Live Chat / Knowledgebase
Free HTTPS Let's Encrypt Let's Encrypt
Disk Space 100 GB 10 GB
Traffic Supported Unlimited visits ~ 10,000 visits
Websites on cheapest plan 2 1
Backups Full VM snapshot, Full CPanel (VPS) or via WHM No CPanel backup, daily backups limited by the number of files (inodes)
Freebies Free domain, free $150 advertising credit, free YP business listing, free website migrations  Free website migrations
Environment Friendly Green data center, Trees for The Future partner Green friendly, Google Servers 100% renewable
Unique Hosting Features Max Speed Zone NGINX direct delivery, multiple levels of caching
Free Domain
Performance  Winner in our speed tests  Great
  What we liked  Performance + MaxSpeedZone  Advanced Technical Setup
   Superior customer support  CDN Built-in
   VPS ROOT access  Staging setup (GoGeek)
  What we didn't like  No Windows infrastructure  No ROOT access
     Lots of upselling
  Support avoids some tough questions
Winner 🏆  
Website Visit InMotion Hosting Visit SiteGround

 

Let's start digging into the details of this comparison between SiteGround and InMotion hosting. 

InMotion Hosting

logo

Personal Experience: Collectiveray.com has been hosted with InMotion hosting since December of 2015, that's more than 8 years in succession. This is a strong testament of how happy we are with the service offered to host our most important site. We use a VPS which has been going strong and reliably for all these years.

InMotion Hosting, founded in 2001 has been rated as one of the leading web hosting companies for the last 24 years with an A+ rating on BBB.org. They offer fast performance for 300+ pieces of software including WordPress hosting, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, and Prestashop.

The excellent performance of their infrastructure is achieved through a number of conscious decisions:

  • Platform-specific optimized stacks and use of NVMe (Non Volatine Memory Express) High Availability clusters
  • Keeping the number of accounts on each server fairly low (compared to other cheap hosts)
  • Hosted in the US catering primarily for businesses or sites with a primary audience in the United States

InMotion hosting is fully US-based including its customer support center.

Freebies offered by InMotion hosting include:

  • Jetpack Personal or Professional in some WordPress plans.
  • Free domain name.
  • $50 in free Amazon ads.
  • $100 in free Microsoft advertising credits.
  • Free business listing with YP.com.

Of course, there is also the whole host of other popular software to power your websites.

The company has been around for 23 years, which is a VERY long time for a web hosting company, where companies bloom and fade away in a matter of months.

Only the greatest web hosting companies stay around for such a long time. Since its inception, this company has always been a leading service provider.

They've got a 3/3 star CNET rating since 2003 - that's more than 20 years of constant top ratings on CNET, and an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureaucnet three starsbbb

Over the years they’ve made massive strides in their infrastructure, hardware and networking capabilities. They may not be the cheapest web hosting plan around, but it's no surprise that they have one of the fastest and most reliable networks in the world.

The difference with their service is this: they do not overwhelm their accounts.

This is why InMotion hosting servers and websites hosted on them perform so well. With over 500,000 satisfied customers, and a variety of web hosting services it's no wonder that they have carved a niche with regards to performance.

Their data centers are primarily based in the US, they have two main data centers, one on the West Coast (Los Angeles) and one on the East Coast (Virginia), together with a more recent new setup in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 

InMotion Hosting review

If you're not looking for a comparison between these two companies, but are looking to see how the service racks up, we've created a full InMotion hosting review here - you might want to have a look at this too. 

We also have an exclusive offer of 47% OFF for CollectiveRay readers ONLY until the end of March 2024 - just click the button below.

Visit the InMotion Hosting website now

SiteGround

siteground 

Personal Experience: We use SiteGround to host a number of secondary and client sites we own. We are also very happy with the performance of the service and in general we're satisfied with the hosting, but when it comes specifically to our high performance websites, we host them on IMH because we have managed to push the performance further.

SiteGround was founded in 2004 by a group of university friends in Bulgaria but is today headquartered in Washington, D.C, though they still have much of their operations out of their Bulgaria offices. They use cutting edge technology and their constant innovation has enabled them to grow steadily over the years to become one of the most established names in the industry.

SiteGround has expanded significantly and now has data-centers in locations in Chicago and Iowa in the United States, Amsterdam, and London in Europe and Singapore in the APAC region.

Recently SiteGround has been moving some of their infrastructure to Google's cloud hosting platform. As we have seen from other web hosting providers (such as Kinsta) who use Google cloud hosting, this is great news for performance. They are also one of the web hosting services recommended by WordPress.org. 

They also have offices in the US, UK, and Spain. Since the very beginning, they have shown themselves to be a differentiator when it comes to WordPress hosting and other technology platforms. 

SiteGround has seen tremendous growth over the last few years, mostly thanks to sponsoring events around WordPress and Joomla and their base of more than 3,000,000+ domains. Their satisfied customers are all very keen to praise their services, they have a 98% satisfaction from customers.

This company uses technology to the advantage of their customers. They roll-out many hosting features that few companies roll-out ever. That's why their servers perform so beautifully.

When it comes to reputation and history comparing SiteGround versus InMotion hosting, they are mostly head-to-head.

InMotion vs SiteGround - Network, uptime and reliability

InMotion hosting has data centers in Los Angeles, California on the West Coast and Ashburn, Virginia on the East Coast, together with Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

SiteGround's data centers are in Chicago (US), London and Amsterdam (Europe) and Singapore (APAC).

Both SiteGround and InMotion hosting have a 99.99% uptime guarantee.

The choice of where to host your site is up to you such that the servers are as close as possible to your website's visitors. If your primary users or clients are coming from the US, we would recommend that you host your site there.

If your site is more localized, for example, you operate mostly for local users, we would suggest that you host your site on a data center that is closest physically to your users. 

User Interface - InMotion vs SiteGround

Our next comparison when it comes to SiteGround vs InMotion hosting is the user interface.

InMotion hosting UI

InMotion hosting have a mixture of a custom UI called the AMP or Account Management Panel and the traditional and well-established use of WHM and CPanel. We find this mix a good balance of custom vs established.

The AMP makes sense from a user's point of view, because it contains stuff that is completely unique to the InMotion hosting experience. With access to everything you need from one dashboard, this is a highly intuitive user interface.

inmotion hosting amp account management panel

As you can see in the above screenshot, the AMP gives you access to most of the important stuff via the dedicated icons.

From here you also get access to CPanel and WHM, the traditional software used by most web hosting companies.

inmotion hosting cpanel

SiteGround UI

SiteGround have their own custom UI for management of the account. 

Once again, this is a fairly intuitive interface with access to the most important tools immediately, though for those who are not familiar with CPanel might feel a bit lost until they get used to the actual UI.

siteground management panel

InMotion vs SiteGround Performance Tests

Next up on our SiteGround vs InMotion hosting comparison: performance.

The servers of both InMotion and SiteGround will maintain a level of accounts that keeps performance good for all website. Furthermore, SiteGround has regular monitoring of performance and will shut down any account that is consuming too many resources beyond fair use. 

This ensures that if there is a rogue process or a website that is suffering and creating a bottleneck, it won't affect all the other sites on the same server.

SiteGround also has some fancy technology such as Auto Scaling and their custom SuperCacher plugin.

To make sure that our review is free from bias, we have performed a number of speed tests and will present the results of these performance tests.

We wanted to perform our own group of tests rather than rely on the testing of any other 3rd party available online. There is nothing quite as good as running your own tests.

This is our testing environment:

  • Default WordPress installation
  • Default Joomla installation
  • WordPress with Astra + Starter Template

To run the test, we created a core installation of WordPress and Joomla on both InMotion and SiteGround's servers. We then performed tests using the main speed testing services available using primarily Pingdom Tools, because this is the most trustworthy test. 

This is a semi-scientific test where we try to eliminate most variables. We wanted to perform a real-world test, under real-world circumstances.  Our tests have not been tweaked or re-touched. They are pure real-world testing results, so you can compare and reach your own conclusions.

Check out our full SiteGround vs InMotion hosting performance tests: 

  inmotion vs siteground performance siteground vs inmotion performance
Core WordPress 435ms 426ms
WordPress with Astra + Outdoor Adventure  1.09s 853 ms 
Core Joomla 976ms 1.2s 
Core Joomla + Sample Data  1.55s  1.6s

 

Analysis of tests

It is quite clear from the results that both hosting providers have a great infrastructure. While there were some marginal differences, both sites have performed exceptionally well.

We can see that in terms of actual performance InMotion servers are almost identical to SiteGround's. The difference we see is marginal and most times can be attributed to variables that are outside of the control of the actual server setup (internet traffic at the time of the test can play a role, as does the internet route the traffic takes during the test).

Although in terms of performance we believe InMotion hosting is faster, you might want to perform your own tests and see what would work best for the visitors of your website, especially considering the location of the servers available. If you're opting for SiteGround, go for the higher tier hosting plans, which should eliminate some of this performance impact.

But truth be told, when it comes SiteGround vs InMotion performance, there is very little difference.

Personal Experience: As we have said before, we host sites with bost services and have never had any issues with performance with any of the sites. You might want to get a trial account with each hosting service and run some tests, if performance is a concern.

Try InMotion Hosting NOW

(47% OFF for CollectiveRay visitors until the end of March 2024)

Try SiteGround Now

Read More: SiteGround vs Cloudways - which comes out on top?

InMotion vs SiteGround Technical Support

In those few hours or the days when something goes wrong with your website, a good customer support experience can be the difference between a great experience or a very frustrating situation.

So next up, on our SiteGround vs InMotion comparison, we'll look at how these two companies perform when it comes to customer support services.

SiteGround: responsive and technical

SiteGround support vs InMotion

SiteGround offers customer support response times that are one of the best we have ever experienced. Whenever we opened support tickets of chats, waiting time is low most times, that you can say it is almost zero, at least during the times we have used the support chat.

You will surely get a response within a few seconds of trying their customer chat, though this could possibly vary during peak times.

They have various channels to get in touch, you have the option to get customer support via email, chat and opening support tickets via their portal.

This is first-line support, so if your problem is a complex one, you might not solve the issue immediately. You will then have to escalate to 2nd line support, where the response time is a bit longer.

Typically, you'll get a response time (in my experience) within 15 minutes to an hour of creating a ticket with customer service. One needs to note that we have a GoGeek account, so this account has priority support, which is why we get quite a good response time. But we believe the times are fairly short for other account types too.

This doesn't mean you will have a resolution because sometimes the issues take a few back and forth responses. 

One thing which is quite nice about this support team is the ability to ask for Technical Services and Advanced Technical services. These include things like the website being down, mail or domain assistance, WordPress or Joomla assistance, Password changes, etc.

Advanced Technical services include queries why the website response time is slow, creating website backups and performing of restores, transfer of websites and other advanced procedures.

Overall, the levels of help and customer support at SiteGround are great. There have not been many times where we were not satisfied with the response times we got, although they tend to pitch upgrades quite often.

For example, ROOT access is not available with their Cloud plans, and they will pitch you a dedicated server any chance they get. It's a bit annoying to get pitched for an upgrade, for something which should be a given. 

Availability is 24/7 and based out of their Bulgaria offices.

SiteGround Support chat

Visit Siteground Hosting Now 

InMotion hosting: US-based and fast resolutions 

InMotion's customer support is based out of its US offices. They are also 24/7 and can be accessed via various channels including chat and a ticketing system deployed recently. We typically get in touch with them via chat and we've experienced different response times, typically less than 5 minutes.

Also, fairly recently, the InMotion Customer Support center has been rebuilt from scratch, for improved performance, better-searching capabilities and stability.

We've also spoken to the InMotion hosting management team, and know that they have been investing heavily in their support center. This means that these days, they are providing even better customer support than usual with shorter than ever waiting times.

At CollectiveRay, we frequently get in touch with the customer support team for quite advanced questions. We've never been let down, felt disappointed or kept waiting for long by InMotion's customer support.

When you are connected to a support agent, they know what they're doing. Even if it is the case that they need to escalate to 2nd line support, they will not disconnect without giving you a resolution. 

They will ask you to wait a few minutes and in the meantime, they get in touch with their 2nd line technical support agents. Rather than having to open a new ticket and wait for a resolution, you will get a response time (even a technical one) there and then.

This is quite attractive about InMotion. Once you're on the call, you know that before you get disconnected, you will have an answer to your query.

 IM Support Chat transcript

 

When it comes to SiteGround vs InMotion's technical support, both companies have excellent support. We have always had an overall great experience working with both companies.

Try InMotion Hosting NOW

(47% OFF for CollectiveRay visitors until the end of March 2024)

Let's now have a look at any specific features SiteGround vs InMotion have when compared to each other. Next, we will see Pros and Cons of both companies. 

InMotion vs SiteGround – Pros and cons

Both InMotion and SiteGround have strengths and weaknesses, just like any service.

Here are what we consider the pros and cons of each.

SiteGround Pros

1. WordPress and Joomla Core AutoUpdates

SiteGround has developed a system automatically install all the latest core WordPress updates on your site to make sure your site is not vulnerable to hacking attacks.

This is a great feature which we implement on all of our sites - it's really worth it.

2. Security + Let's Encrypt

SiteGround is proactive when it comes to newer technologies but they're also very proactive when it comes to security. One of the things we like about SiteGround is how they use their technology to make sure that hack attacks that have not yet been patched are stopped by custom rules on their firewalls.

When there is a risk that is actively being exploited, they apply new rules to reduce the risk.

They've also been one of the first companies to embrace and implement free SSL certificates through Let's Encrypt - this is a group of companies who are striving to ensure that HTTPS is implemented across as many websites as possible, making the whole web implicitly more secure.

3. WordPress + Joomla custom tools for faster and better maintenance

SiteGround have developed their own technologies for making websites fast, including, SuperCacher, the SGCache plugin (custom caching modules for Joomla and WordPress hosting), WordPress and Joomla admin toolkits, GIT repositories and staging sites for the testing of any updates before applying them to live sites.

We've used such tools as the SiteGround nginx, Dynamic Cache using the Speed Optimizer plugin and SuperCacher together with Memcached technology.

Besides this, they are quick to embrace newer technologies like HTTP/2, Nginx, and the latest version of PHP. For example, below we can see the possiblity of changing the PHP of the account.

change php version siteground

4. Staging Sites

Staging is one of those gems from SiteGround which makes life so much easier when you are testing things out and want to make sure things work well before trying them out on your site.

create staging copy

With SiteGround Staging, you can create a copy of your live website so that you can test out things on your "Test" website, or staging server - before you apply the changes on your live website.

This ensures that if there are any issues with the new function or change you are testing, you can make sure this is ironed out before applying it on your live server.

This feature is quite a unique feature of SiteGround shared hosting, and only high-end managed hosting companies such as WP Engine and Kinsta offer similar functionality.

5. Technology

SiteGround have also keen renown for using an impressive technology stack. They are typically the first to release new technology to get the latest performance from the software and hardware they use.

For example, as soon as new versions of PHP are released, they are some of the first to make them available on their servers.

Their Speed Optmizer plugin is also a great custom developed plugin for both WordPress and Joomla that creates a caching setup that is customized to their own setup, so it does push the envelope when it comes to performance.

SiteGround are industry leaders when it comes to taking advantage of technology.

SiteGround Cons

1. Limits on inodes/disk space

While SiteGround suggests on their sales pitches that you can host unlimited websites, you'll find that if you are a power user you will quickly reach the limits. The fastest way we've hit the limits is through the number of inodes.

Inodes are the number of files that your account is using, made of such stuff as installation files, backup files, logs files and everything else. Keep in mind that the hosting itself generates a number of working files as part of the normal running of the server, so the number of inodes can grow very quickly.

The first problem is that as soon as you reach a specific number of inodes (which varies by account), the whole account will be EXCLUDED from backup. 

We find this to be a serious drawback.

To make things worse, if the number of inodes keeps increasing beyond the maximum allowed, your account will actually be suspended until the problem is fixed. This is a problem.

2. Plans are more expensive than InMotion's

SiteGround's plans look cheap if you take a look at the list price. This is because they have very aggressive (cheap) pricing when it comes to new accounts, but renewals are actually quite expensive compared to other hosts.

For example, in 2018, they increased pricing by up to 85% making the renewals very expensive.

Of course, this is a strategy, because once you have moved or started with a host, very few people change. But this is very disappointed when people see this. Their cheapest prices are also for 3-year plans. In our opinion, being tied to a company for 3 years is way too long.

3. No ROOT access on WHM

While SiteGround does provide access to underlying server infrastructure via WHM, you never get ROOT access to the server. This means that the stuff you can do on the server is fairly limited.

In reality, with WHM access but without ROOT is just dangling a carrot in front of you. 

ROOT access is only available with dedicated servers. 

Read more about their technology

InMotion Hosting Pros

InMotion hosting has also got several advantages as compared to SiteGround.

1. Full Snapshot Backups

Performance of a website is crucial, and we've seen that InMotion hosting is on par with SiteGround when it comes to performance.

But where they really excel is in backups. Using our VPS, we are able to take a full snapshot backup, which can be used to revert to the previous state of the server. This is great because we do like to experiment with our server to push for better performance or get the most out of the hosting.

So we do stuff like upgrade the underlying databases, change PHP versions, install custom web servers such as LiteSpeed enterprise and other heavy customization. Of course, these drastic changes are not without risk.

Having full snapshot backups allows us to experiment with the full peace of mind that if something goes wrong, we can quickly bring the system back to the previous state without any negative consequences.

Of course, over and above this, you can create daily backups or scheduled backups via CPanel, or via WHM.

2. Affordable VPS hosting

Server virtualization is very important when it comes to growing a website and this is where this host shines when compared to its rival. 

With prices starting at $14.99/mo, the InMotion hosting VPS solutions are extremely affordable. If you are a freelancer or a small digital agency, this is a very attractive package which you can use to host your clients' websites. Click to see our specific InMotion VPS review.

Their machines are highly specced and fast, with good amounts of RAM, starting at 4GB burstable RAM with 90GB of storage and 2vCPU cores, much more than the cheapest Cloud Hosting solution offered by SiteGround. 

There is also NO CPU lockdown and you also get ROOT access, something which cloud servers provided by SiteGround do not offer. 

This means that your site doesn't get constrained by a lack of raw CPU power. Again, this is the reason why we've seen such good speeds on their platform.

3. Up to $150 in free advertising credit + Free domain

A free domain is great and we love that because if you are just starting out, you can just go for a casual domain. More than that, however, is the $150 you get in free advertising credit for use with any Business package or above. 

4. Let's Encrypt

InMotion hosting has also implemented Let's Encrypt functionality on their services. A free SSL certificate is available very nicely via AutoSSL providers. As soon as the SSL certificate is about to expire, it is automatically renewed. We've implemented this on several of our sites and have found it to be very reliable.

Try InMotion Hosting Now

(47% OFF for CollectiveRay visitors until the end of March 2024)

InMotion Hosting CONs

1. No Windows Infrastructure

InMotion hosting uses Linux based servers running some variation of a LAMP stack (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP). This typically excludes any applications that require a windows-based infrastructure such as anything running .NET applications, or software that requires the use of the IIS server.

While does is not a drawback for most people, it is good to be aware of this limitation.

InMotion vs SiteGround Pricing

Let's start with a little bit of a premise. You are looking at two leading web hosting providers. We are not looking at cheap web host services here. So you won't see much of a real difference when it comes to SiteGround vs InMotion hosting prices.

So buyer beware, either go for multi-year deals or be prepared for a significant bump when the renewal comes. Always get a quote of what it will cost you in subsequent years.

But - you get what you pay for. Premium service demands premium pricing. But even at premium pricing, you'll find that neither of the services we are comparing comes close to managed services such as Kinsta or WP Engine.

If you are looking for the cheapest hosting services - you might as well go elsewhere. However, given all of the premium services being offered by both companies, you are getting a fantastic deal out of both companies.

They also both provide such features as good disk space, plenty of bandwidth, free domains (addon), data backups, security, email accounts, CPanel, SSD drives, etc. 

In reality, for shared hosting, whether you use CPanel or not is a question of preference.

InMotion Hosting Pricing

CollectiveRay has partnered up with InMotion hosting to give you an exclusive offer of 47% OFF regular prices. (even higher discounts on VPS).

If you apply for an account through CollectiveRay, your pricing for launch will $2.29/mo instead of the regular price of $8.99/mo.

For the Power package which is the recommended package for shared hosting you'll be paying $4.99/mo instead of the regular $15.99 per month and for the PRO package, it's $12.99/mo instead of the regular $22.99 per month.

We like to think that this a great bargain, for a great hosting package. At least that's what the many users who have already taken advantage of this offer tell us.

Remember that you also get plenty of free stuff such as a free domain, free YP.com business listing, and advertising credits.

There main WordPress hosting plans are:

  • WP Core: $3.49 per month
  • WP Launch: $6.99 per month
  • WP Power: $6.99 per month
  • WP Pro: $14.99 per month

 

Visit and Redeem Offer Now

(47% OFF and up to 51% OFF for CollectiveRay visitors until the end of March 2024)

VPS Pricing

If you want to top-notch speeds on your site, we'd recommend going for a VPS. Our site is hosted on an InMotion hosting VPS. You'll be able to take advantage of the same offer, with an even better discount of up to 51% OFF.

VPS hosting plans are great options for reseller hosting or anybody whose site is mission critical. 

Visit and Redeem Offer Now

(47% OFF and up to 51% OFF for CollectiveRay visitors until the end of March 2024)

 

Testimonials for InMotion Hosting

Now that we've been with this company for more than 8 years, we can truly offer a testimonial of their service. But, what do other people say about it?

The below is a 5-star rating by none other than Syed Balkhi of influential site WPBeginner. Does it get any better than that?

syed balkhi testimonial

Here's another review from HostingManual, where they get a 4.5-star rating out of 5. This is a website that runs hundreds of reviews, so they can compare good companies to bad ones.

hosting manual testimonial

As for the crowd-sourcing reviews site G2Crowd, they get a 4 out of 5-star rating and the Leader Award for the summer of 2019 as can be seen below.

g2crowd reviews

Check out more customer testimonials

SiteGround Pricing

With typical offers, prices start at $2.99 per month for the first year, which is 50% off the regular price of $14.95 per month. We always recommend that you go for the GoGeek plans, which are the servers that have got all of the juicy, boosted hardware.

These are $7.95 per month for the first year which is also 50% off the regular price for subsequent years.

Unfortunately, we don't have a discount with SiteGround - we like to think that they are already a good deal.

It may not be the cheapest service but rest assured that you will see a significant improvement between the Startup and GoGeek plans. As your site grows in traffic you can always scale up to their Cloud Hosting or Dedicated servers. Transfers between all of these are completely free.

Check current offers

SiteGround Testimonials 

Just like they've given InMotion hosting a good rating, WP Beginner also gave SiteGround a good rating of 5 stars out of 5, because like we said, both of these companies are at the top of their game.

siteground testimonials

And here are what 73 people on G2Crowd think, for an average rating of 4 out 5 stars.

g2crowd reviews

InMotion vs SiteGround – Which has better WordPress integration?

Both web hosts fully support WordPress and provide the tools you need to launch and run a website.

InMotion

InMotion offers WordPress hosting that includes support for 2 websites on the cheapest plan with NVMe drives, free SSL, DDoS protection and a range of other features.

Higher tier plans include unlimited websites.

All plans include unlimited bandwidth, no visitor limitations and unlimited email addresses.

Depending on the plan you buy, you may also get security and marketing plugins and a Jetpack account and plugin as part of the deal.

InMotion also offer free migration tools, performance tools such as WP-CLI, Imagemagick, PHP 8, NVMe drives, support for caching and support for WordPress Multisite.

SiteGround

SiteGround also provides WordPress hosting but limits you to 1 site on the cheapest plan and unlimited on higher tiers.

Plans have visitor limitations starting at 10k visitors per month for the cheapest plan, increasing to 100k and 400k on higher tiers.

You also get unlimited bandwidth, a free domain, free migration, free SSL and caching already set up for you.

SiteGround uses Google Cloud, which is driven largely by SSD drives. Slower than NVMe but cheaper to buy and run.

Of the two, InMotion seems better on paper for those faster drives and the avoidance of arbitrary visitor limits.

InMotion vs SiteGround Frequently Asked Questions

Is InMotion hosting good?

Yes, InMotion is a good, reliable and fast web hosting service. We host our own website with InMotion and have been using them for the last four years and we are very happy with the performance. They have good support, good features including great backups, VPS with ROOT access for advanced users and a solid overall set up.

How do I install WordPress on InMotion?

To install WordPress on InMotion you can either use the WordPress Manager application that is available for free. This will install WordPress and keep it updated with the latest versions. Optionally, you can create a MySQL database manually and install WordPress yourself by downloading the core files from WordPress.org and uploading them to your File Manager in CPanel.

Where are InMotion servers located?

InMotion Servers are located in the United States, they have two data centers, one in Los Angeles, California and the other in Virginia. Check our article details above to see which location is best for your own website, depending on the primary location of your own visitors. 

Is SiteGround any good?

SiteGround are also a good web hosting service. While they are slightly more expensive than InMotion overall, they have very fast servers because they use an advanced infrastructure stack and make use of the latest technology. A very good web hosting service overall.

Does SiteGround offer a free domain?

No, SiteGround does not offer a free domain as part of their service.

Is SiteGround a Russian company?

No, SiteGround was founded in Sofia in Bulgaria in 2004, it is still held privately by the same original owners.

Is Siteground owned by Google?

No, SiteGround is privately owned, though they have recently (since 2020) shifted their hosting services to the Google Cloud platform which offers a number of advantages to their customers.

SiteGround vs InMotion Conclusion: Who should get your money?

Time to wrap up our SiteGround vs InMotion web hosting providers showdown.

Really and truly, both SiteGround and InMotion have got a good setup going on.

We've worked with both and found it to be a pleasant experience to work with both of them. Yet, so far, we feel that InMotion hosting has got that slight edge. We can't help feel that SiteGround is growing too fast and what once felt like special attention, no longer feels the same.

It feels that like the bigger companies, for SiteGround you are now a number rather than a customer.

InMotion Hosting, as we have seen still, has the edge in terms of performance and that is one of the main things for us.

We've tuned our setup with MariaDB instead of standard MySQL, together with OpCode caching, PHP 8 and plenty of other optimizations that we aren't able to get on SiteGround. We have a TTFB (Time to First Byte) which is consistently less than 0.5seconds, even under heavy load. Infact, our site loads lightning-fast, less than 2 seconds on most pages.

Want to go with SiteGround? We won't stop you - you are not making the worst of choices. However, if we had to choose which company to put our site online, we would go for InMotion (this site is hosted with them). Even though they might not seem as cutting edge as SiteGround, things just work. And they work fast.

That's why when going for an InMotion vs SiteGround choice, we'd take InMotion.

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About the Author
David Attard
David has been working in or around the online and digital industry for the last 21 years. He has vast experience in the software and web design industries using WordPress, Joomla and niches surrounding them. He has worked with software development agencies, international software companies, local marketing agencies and now is Head of Marketing Operations at Aphex Media - an SEO agency. As a digital consultant, his focus is on helping businesses get a competitive advantage using a combination of their website and digital platforms available today. His blend of technology expertise combined with a strong business acumen brings a competitive edge to his writings.

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