Web hosting service listings are full of well-known names like HostGator, SiteGround, DreamHost, GoDaddy, InMotion and Bluehost. Among these, InMotion and Bluehost stand out. Both have been in business since the early 2000s, making them seasoned industry veterans.
But between the two, which is the better option for your web hosting needs?
To help you make an informed decision, we’ll compare these hosting giants, giving you an in-depth look at what each offers.
InMotion vs. Bluehost: Overview
InMotion Hosting opened its virtual doors in 2001, with Bluehost following closely behind in 2003.
Both companies serve similar audiences and have nearly identical product portfolios that include similar types of web hosting plans. However, Bluehost offers managed WordPress options on their Pro plan, while InMotion offers managed WordPress through their Cloud VPS.
In addition, the two web hosting companies offer free domain names and SSL certificates with many of their plans.
But there are far more differences between InMotion and Bluehost than similarities when making a hosting comparison. Each has unique strengths and advantages in areas like performance, ease of use and pricing.
InMotion vs. Bluehost: Features
These two web hosting providers each have strong features, so it’s no wonder they place highly in web host rankings. However, each focuses on different types of features, so it is important to compare to find the best web hosting for you.
Performance and security
InMotion
InMotion offers a Service Level Agreement (SLA) uptime guarantee of 99.9% with a promise of a month’s service credit if InMotion misses the mark. That sounds great on the surface, but the SLA makes users jump through hoops to actually see that benefit.
InMotion only accepts their in-house monitoring as proof of downtimes, and customers have to request a physical uptime check no more than once every 30 days. Plus, if excessive downtime is found, customers have to request the promised credit in writing within a week.
CodeIn also measured InMotion’s average response time — the time taken by a server to start sending content to a visitor after they click on a link on your website — over 90 days at 185.79 milliseconds. This is faster than Google’s maximum recommended response time of 200 milliseconds.
InMotion also provides features like SSD storage and custom server caching to help ensure fast loading times.
Security-wise, InMotion Hosting offers a robust suite that includes DDoS protection and proactive hack and malware defense with all plans, making sure you’re well protected. However, while native backups are included in WordPress plans, automatic backups are an add-on for most plans.
Bluehost
Bluehost has a great uptime track record, with no downtime recorded for the last 90 days, according to tracking metrics from CodeIn. Plus, the 90-day average for response time was a respectable 245.22.
Fast SSD storage and server-level caching are also available with Bluehost. However, with Bluehost, you also get a free Cloudflare content delivery network (CDN) to ensure fast page load times regardless of location. If you already have a Cloudflare account, you can configure it to work on InMotion.
Bluehost takes the lead in website security, offering features like free SSL certificates with the option to purchase additional security tools such as Sitelock, which provides malware detection and removal, database scanning and advanced firewall security.
Its higher-tier plans also come with extra security perks like free domain privacy for the first year and free daily website backups for the first year on several plans.
Control panels
InMotion
InMotion uses the industry-standard cPanel for most of their plans, which offers powerful tools and extensive functionality. They’ve put a custom skin on this tool so it blends seamlessly into the host’s native interface, but it comes with all the standard functions.
You can access the cPanel directly from InMotion’s main dashboard, the Account Management Panel (AMP). Only a few cPanel functionalities, like SSL and email management, are also directly accessible from the AMP without clicking through to cPanel.
Bluehost
Bluehost also uses cPanel, but with a great ease-of-use twist that integrates most cPanel functions into its main account dashboard.
Rather than requiring drilling down into additional menus, Bluehost lets you perform most hosting management tasks from the main dashboard of your account. You can still access the full cPanel by clicking the Hosting tab on the dashboard. A quick link to it will be visible on the bottom right.
Website builders
InMotion
InMotion’s only website builder is actually third-party builder BoldGrid, offered through a partnership. It’s tailored for ease of use, with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, making WordPress website customization straightforward.
The builder comes with pre-designed templates, which you can customize further. It also includes a number of themes as well as additional tools, such as plugins for creating unique design components.
Bluehost
Bluehost’s in-house website creator is WonderSuite, a comprehensive suite of web-building tools thoughtfully designed for both beginners and experienced users.
These tools include features like WonderBlocks, which offers a vast library of customizable block patterns and templates. Additionally, WonderSuite includes WonderHelp, an interactive AI-powered guide that provides step-by-step instructions and guidance throughout the website-building process.
Overall, WonderSuite ranks highly for ease of use and customization ability.
Customer support
InMotion
InMotion provides 24/7 customer support via live chat and email, with phone tech support limited to higher-tier plan customers. All customers can use phone support for billing and account questions during U.S. business hours. Otherwise, technical support can be found in a knowledge base, YouTube tutorials or by asking the community.
Another notable hiccup is that users must provide their name and email to initiate a live chat. This gatekeeping requirement could slow support response and be problematic for prospective customers still weighing their options.
Bluehost
Bluehost offers 24/7 live chat assistance, and you can start chatting with the support team right away, even if you’re not a customer. Higher tier shared hosting, VPS and dedicated hosting customers also get customer support 24/7 by phone.
Overall, users report faster support response times from Bluehost than InMotion.
Beyond direct support, Bluehost offers a comprehensive knowledge base on its website. This resource is packed with helpful material, including articles, guides and video tutorials on a wide range of web hosting, web management topics and a WordPress Academy series.
eCommerce features
InMotion
InMotion supports several eCommerce platforms plus custom-built stores. These include Drupal, Magento, OpenCart and WooCommerce. Powered by VPS Cloud infrastructure, these plans come with a hefty price tag, making them a less economical choice for small business owners or entrepreneurs who are just starting out. PrestaShop is also available as shared hosting.
InMotion’s eCommerce plans are best suited to enterprises with larger product catalogs or those anticipating high traffic volumes.
Bluehost
Bluehost offers specialized WooCommerce plans and WordPress online store hosting designed with individuals and small to medium-sized businesses in mind.
For WooCommerce, you get a choice of two online plans, both of which come with WooCommerce pre-installed, to simplify the setup process. The plans also include extra eCommerce features like unlimited products, secure online payments, shipping labels, gift cards and product search and filtering. Plus, the Online Store + Marketplace plan supports multi-channel inventory management for growing brands.
The Online Store WordPress hosting plan includes over $450 worth of eCommerce plugins to help you quickly and easily create a full-featured online store within WordPress. This plan includes features like secure online payments, wish lists, gift card capability, product filtering, shipping labels and unlimited products.
InMotion vs. Bluehost: Hosting plans
Shared hosting plans
InMotion
InMotion offers tier-based shared hosting with four primary plans: Core, Launch, Power and Pro.
All plans include a free SSL certificate and email accounts, with the Launch plan and higher including a free domain name and the ability to choose their own data center location.
The Core plan comes with a storage capacity of 100GB SSD, but all other plans offer unlimited NVMe SSD storage.
Each plan includes a security suite with hacking and malware protection plus DDoS protection. However, automatic backups are an add-on.
Additionally, all InMotion plans come with a 90-day money-back guarantee.
Bluehost
Like InMotion, Bluehost also has a quartet of shared hosting plans: Basic, Choice Plus, Online Store and Pro.
All four plans include a free domain name and SSL (first year only for the Basic plan), custom WordPress themes and a free CDN. From the Choice Plus plan and up, users also get malware scanning for the life of the plan, plus daily website backups and domain privacy for the first year. Storage starts at 10GB SSD for the basic plan to 100GB for the Pro plan.
Bluehost offers unmetered bandwidth for its plans. That means your bandwidth speed isn’t dependent on how much data is transferred.
InMotion vs. Bluehost: Shared Hosting Plans Comparison
| InMotion | Bluehost | |
| Total plans | Four | Four |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unmetered |
| Number of websites | Core plan: 2 Launch plan: 25 Other plans: Unlimited | Basic plan: 1 Choice Plus plan: 3 Online Store plan: 3 Pro plan: 5 |
| SSD storage | 100 GB-unlimited | 10 GB-100 GB |
| Free domain | Included in Launch plan and higher | First year included with all plans |
| Free SSL | Included in all plans | Basic plan: First year Other plans: Included |
Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting plans
InMotion
InMotion boasts a broad selection of VPS hosting options with seven distinct plans.
All seven plans come with free SSL, DDoS protection and free website transfers. Free server setup is also available for managed VPS plans paired with cPanel or Control Web Panel. All but the lowest tier plan also includes unlimited bandwidth.
Since no CDN is included (but you can connect your Cloudflare account), users also get the liberty to choose their own data center location and free dedicated IP addresses.
Bluehost
Bluehost offers three VPS hosting plans, each designed to cover wider sets of website needs. The entry-level plan comes with less RAM and CPU cores than its InMotion counterpart, but it packs in more SSD storage, which is vital for sites with large media files or extensive databases such as eCommerce.
InMotion vs. Bluehost: VPS hosting plans comparison
| InMotion | Bluehost | |
| Number of plans | 7 | 3 |
| RAM | 4 GB-32 GB | 2 GB-8 GB |
| CPU Cores | 4 core-32 core | 2 core-4 core |
| SSD Storage | 90 GB SSD-540 GB NVMe SSD | 120 GB-240 GB |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unmetered |
| IP addresses | 2-10 | 1-2 |
Dedicated hosting plans
InMotion
InMotion offers customers seven dedicated server hosting plans with managed and unmanaged options. Server location options for InMotion’s dedicated server plans vary by plan.
Bluehost
Just like with VPS hosting, Bluehost offers a smaller selection of dedicated hosting plans, with a total of three plans. All plans come with unmetered bandwidth.
Bluehost includes features like fast provisioning by a team of experts, RAID1 storage configurations, dedicated support and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
InMotion vs. Bluehost: Dedicated hosting plans comparison
| InMotion | Bluehost | |
| Number of plans | 7 | 3 |
| RAM | 16 GB DDR3-512 GB DDR4 RAM | 8 GB-30 GB |
| CPU (Cores) | 4 core/8 thread-32 core/64 thread | 4 core/8 thread-8 core/16 thread |
| Storage | 1 TB SSD-2×3.2 TB NVMe SSD | 1 TB HDD-2 TB HDD |
| Bandwidth | 1 Gbps Unmetered Bandwidth-10 Gbps Unmetered Bandwidth | Unmetered |
| Processor | Aspire plan: Intel® Xeon® E3-1246 v3 or equivalent Elite plan: Dual Xeon® Silver 4314 | Intel Xeon-D CPU for all plans |
WordPress hosting plans
InMotion
InMotion offers four unmanaged WordPress hosting plans, WP Core, WP Launch, WP Power and WP Pro, plus a new set of managed WordPress options. All unmanaged plans come with free domain and SSL, unlimited bandwidth, native backups and website migration.
Users of WP Launch and higher enjoy unlimited email addresses, advanced caching, unlimited SSD storage and a choice of data center location.
Bluehost
Bluehost also offers four WordPress hosting plans. All plans included automatic WordPress installation, a free domain name and SSL for the first year, free CDN, automatic WordPress updates and useful onboarding tools to help you set up your website faster. Higher-tier plans include a free SSL for the life of the plan.
However, Bluehost is recommended by WordPress and has been since 2005, so you can trust their hosting is optimized for WordPress. Bluehost also offers in-house managed WordPress hosting options on its Pro plan.
InMotion vs. Bluehost: WordPress hosting plans comparison
| InMotion | Bluehost | |
| Number of plans | 4 | 4 |
| SSD Storage | WP Core plan: 100 GB NVMe SSD Other plans: Unlimited NVMe SSD | 10 GB SSD-100 GB SSD |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | Unmetered |
| Free SSL | Available on all plans | Basic plan: First year Other plans: Life of plan |
| Free Domain | Available on all plans | First year |
| Free CDN | No | Available on all plans |
| Number of websites | WP Core plan: 2 WP Launch plan: 25 Other plans: Unlimited | Basic plan: 1 Choice Plus plan: 3 Online Store plan: 3 Pro plan: 5 |
InMotion vs. Bluehost: Pricing
While everyone would love unlimited budgets, the reality is that price matters. Both InMotion and Bluehost offer competitive packages, but InMotion prices go higher.
Both companies bill for the life of a plan even though pricing is listed per month, so if you purchase a 12-month plan, you pay for all 12 months upfront.
Starting Price Range (per month)
| InMotion | Bluehost | |
| Shared hosting | $3.49-$11.25 | $2.75-$9.95 |
| VPS hosting | $14.99-$74.99 | $29.99-$69.99 |
| Dedicated hosting | $89.99-$739.99* | $89.98-$139.99 |
| WordPress hosting | $3.49-$14.99 | $2.95-$9.95 |
InMotion
InMotion pricing offers a slightly lower entry point for shared hosting at $2.49 per month when paying for three years upfront, but its dedicated hosting plans present a broader range of options resulting in higher costs, with the managed dedicated hosting plans topping out at $739.99 per month.
Plan term lengths vary from one to three years for most plans, with only the most expensive plans being available on a monthly basis.
Bluehost
Bluehost’s lowest cost shared hosting plan starts at a competitive $4.95 per month for three years, saving customers more over a one-year term with higher renewal rates. Plus, it offers more affordable WordPress hosting and dedicated hosting plans than InMotion. In fact, its most expensive plan, the Premium dedicated hosting plan, is only $139.99 per month when purchased on a three-year term.
Plan term lengths are available in one-year and three-year terms, with dedicated hosting and VPS hosting only available in three-year terms.
Final thoughts: InMotion vs. Bluehost
Both InMotion and Bluehost have plenty to offer, but ultimately, the right hosting company for you depends on your specific circumstances and hosting requirements.
Bluehost is the frontrunner for individuals and small businesses seeking a user-friendly hosting experience with excellent customer support, especially if you are working with WordPress websites. If that sounds like you, explore Bluehost hosting plans today to find the right plan for your needs.
FAQS
Yes, Bluehost is a highly reputable hosting provider known for high-quality, user-friendly services. It offers affordable hosting plans with world-class support.
Bluehost is good for WordPress. It holds the distinction of being the longest officially recommended host by WordPress.org. Plus, it comes with features designed to streamline setting up and managing a WordPress site — like one-click installations, automatic WordPress updates and a user-friendly website builder.
Yes, both InMotion and Bluehost allow you to buy and register domain names directly on their platforms. Many of their hosting plans also include a complimentary domain name as part of the package.
The post InMotion vs. Bluehost: Discover the Best Web Host for Your Needs appeared first on Bluehost Blog.
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