Kinsta vs InMotion Hosting: which provider is better?
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Kinsta and InMotion Hosting appear pretty different at first glance. The former is heavily focused on WordPress hosting and provides loads of specialized tools for the ever-popular content management system. Meanwhile, the latter is well-known as an affordable and effective option for many use cases.
But can we pit the two against each other and find the better overall service? We’ll compare Kinsta vs InMotion in many hosting-relevant categories and hopefully answer that question. So stick around to find out which provider is better regarding speed, security, ease of use, and more.
Kinsta vs InMotion hosting: general info
| TOP Choice | |||
| Bluehost | InMotion | Kinsta | |
| ⭐ Rating: | |||
| 💵 Price: | From $1.99/month | From $2.29/month | From $35/month |
| 📑 Uptime guarantee: | 99.9% | 99.9% | 99.9% |
| 🔥 Coupons: | Bluehost coupon 83% OFF | InMotion Hosting coupon 79% OFF! | Cybernews Web Hosting Coupons |
| Storage space (from): | 10 GB SSD | 100 GB SSD | 10GB |
| ✂️ Free domain (first year): | Yes | Yes | No |
| 🔒 Free SSL certificate: | Yes (first year) | Yes | Yes |
| ➡️ Site migration: | Free WordPress migration (1 site) or paid (up to 5 sites) | Free automated WordPress website transfers | Free WordPress migration service |
| 💾 Automated backups: | Daily Website Backups (Free 1st year), not with Basic Plan | For an extra fee | Free (daily) |
| 📧 Email accounts: | Free (up to 10 accounts) | Free (up to 10 accounts) | No |
| 👨💻 24/7 live support: | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 💰 Money-back guarantee: | 30-day | 90-day | 30-day |
| Get Bluehost |
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Kinsta vs InMotion plans and pricing
Both Kinsta and InMotion Hosting offer varying and scalable plans for specific hosting needs. The critical difference is starting prices. InMotion subscriptions begin at merely $2.29/month, while Kinsta starts at $35/month. Naturally, the subscription price will further increase depending on which hosting type and plan you’ll opt for.
| Hosting type | InMotion Hosting | Kinsta |
| Shared hosting | ✔️ | ❌ |
| WordPress hosting | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| WooCommerce hosting | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Cloud hosting | ❌ | ❌ |
| VPS hosting | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Reseller hosting | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Dedicated hosting | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Visit InMotion Hosting | Visit Kinsta |
The majority of potential customers search for shared hosting options as they are the cheapest and most versatile paths. Unfortunately, Kinsta doesn’t offer such plans. Instead, it focuses on Managed WordPress hosting.
Firstly, let’s look at each provider’s cheapest plans and their primary perks.
- Kinsta’s Starter plan ($35.00/month) includes 1 WordPress install, 10 GB of disk space, 25K visits, and more.
- InMotion Hosting’s Core plan ($2.29/month) supports 2 websites, free SSL, 100 GB SSD storage, 10 email addresses, and other benefits.
From a numbers perspective, InMotion Hosting is clearly in the lead. It’s noticeably cheaper, supports more websites, grants more storage, and even includes email. Additionally, subsequent tiers don’t increase costs dramatically yet grant significant performance boosts. Meanwhile, Kinsta customers can pay thousands of dollars per month without gaining unlimited storage or websites.
Let’s look at the other end of the pricing spectrum to showcase the maximal advertised benefits these providers can grant.
InMotion’s Shared Hosting plan culminates with the Pro option, which costs $10.99/month when you sign up for two years. It touts unlimited websites, storage, bandwidth, and email addresses. If that’s not enough, you also gain a free domain, a dedicated IP address, and pro customer support.
The 3-year Launch plan is the most cost-effective InMotion Hosting subscription. The initial cost is $179.64 for the whole period and renews at $431.64 for the following three years.
Kinsta customers can pay upwards of $1 650.00/month for the Enterprise 4 plan, which costs, maxes out WordPress installs to 150, increases disk space to 250 GB, and supports 2,5 million visits. Additionally, you can contact the sales team and get a custom plan if your needs are much greater.
Naturally, both hosts offer loads of alternative pricing options available if you’re not into the cheapest or priciest extremes. Best of all, there’s no need to fully commit to either provider from the get-go. Kinsta subscribers enjoy a 30-day money-back guarantee, while InMotion users gain a 90-day refund time frame.
Overall, InMotion Hosting is superior in the pricing category. It offers a lengthier money-back guarantee, significantly lower prices, and a greater plan selection to suit everyone’s needs.
Hosting management: ease of use
You’ll have no trouble achieving your personal or business goals if the hosting provider is easy to use. Conversely, a clunky and hard-to-navigate dashboard will result in your website's squandered potential. Therefore, it’s vital to overview the dashboards of Kinsta vs InMotion Hosting.
Management and control panel
InMotion doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel and opts for a native Account Management Panel (AMP) and cPanel. This approach is straightforward and should appeal to anyone looking for an already-familiar user experience.
InMotion Hosting customers are greeted by the AMP the first time they log in. As the name suggests, it’s the go-to place for taking care of account details, billing information, and other bureaucracy-related issues. From there, you can easily go to the cPanel to manage domain-specific issues.
Web hosting newcomers may find it difficult to distinguish between the two panels since they’re pretty similar. This is further exacerbated by the fact that some security features typically reserved for the cPanel also make an appearance on the AMP. For example, SSL certificate management and email configuration. However, that’s practically negligible once you familiarize yourself with the intuitive interface.
Kinsta takes a completely different approach and uses a custom dashboard called MyKinsta. On the one hand, it’s an excellent solution because customers aren’t overwhelmed by the finer details cPanel customization brings. But on the other hand, it can feel limiting if you’re detail-oriented and want to fine-tune every aspect of your site.
In terms of appearance, the dashboard is similar to the Kinsta website. It’s a one-stop shop for managing multiple sites and migration, plus overseeing various analytics. Naturally, the WordPress-oriented service offers loads of tools for customizing the CMS to suit your needs best.
As a whole, both providers are pretty simplistic in terms of the ease of use. While getting started with a custom dashboard appears daunting initially, MyKinsta is both easy to use and feature-rich. However, we grant the ease of use victory to InMotion due to its inclusion of already-familiar tools like cPanel.
Website migration
Migration is a crucial part of any hosting provider because it’s the first thing new customers with already existing websites have to deal with. Accidents during this procedure can result in data loss and other anomalies that can make potential customers flee in fear.
Since InMotion Hosting offers various hosting plans, it provides an equally-diverse selection of migration options. For starters, expert users can roll up their sleeves and do everything manually. Alternatively, you can choose between free automated WordPress migration or paid professional site transfer. Naturally, you can also utilize cPanel if your previous provider supported it.
Kinsta is ideal if website migration is your least favorite part of switching to a new web host. The provider offers unlimited free migrations from hosts like GoDaddy, DreamHost, Bluehost, and more. Best of all, the service’s team of experts will completely take care of the migration process. Naturally, they’ll also support you upon completion to guarantee that no data was lost.
Hosting performance
The two hosting providers facilitate excellent performance using vastly different implementations. That means picking between InMotion or Kinsta will be straightforward if you know your goals.
We had the opportunity to put InMotion Hosting to the test for a two-month period. Uptime results were excellent, with 99.99% uptime and only 8m of expected monthly downtime. Response time averaged around 600ms, which leaves room for improvement compared to other performance-focused providers like Hostinger.
The test site was hosted in a US data center, leading to peak results for American visitors. The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score maxed out at only 425ms, making InMotion Hosting arguably one of the fastest web hosting providers available.
No real-world test would be complete without putting some pressure on the website. And so, we conducted a stress test with 50 simultaneous visitors to the site. This might not sound like much to the uninitiated, but 50 consistent visitors every minute will add up to tens of thousands of visitors every month. Thankfully, InMotion Hosting handled this spike without batting an eye. You’ll find a more detailed summary of the tests in our InMotion Hosting review.
We didn’t have the chance to thoroughly test Kinsta at the time of writing this comparison. However, it has impressive features that should lead to excellent results.
For starters, it runs a cloud-based infrastructure with 35 data centers across the globe to provide peak performance for users worldwide. Secondly, it employs CDN (Content Delivery Network) and Edge Caching technology to improve content loading times even further. These perks are included regardless of which pricing tier you choose.
Despite this, we bestow the victory medal on InMotion Hosting. We verified that it’s an extremely affordable and well-performing host with excellent results in our tested categories. Meanwhile, the jury is still out on whether Kinsta can deliver the results that would justify such exorbitant prices.
Security features
The two hosting services provide a solid foundation on the security front. The common ground includes free SSL certificates and automatic daily backups. Besides that, customers are blessed with some unique features that warrant further investigation.
Here’s a brief overview of what Kinsta brings to the table.
- Cloudflare firewall. All Kinsta plans include Cloudflare integration with accompanying DDoS protection and a firewall.
- Hack-fix guarantee. The host promises to restore your website for free if it's ever severely damaged by cyber-attacks.
- Wildcard SSL support. Unlike standard SSL certificates, Kinsta supports securing one root domain and unlimited subdomains using the wildcard symbol.
- HTTP/3 support. You can enable the modern HTTP/3 protocol for enhanced performance and security.
In contrast, here’s a peek at the security arsenal of InMotion Hosting.
- Hack and malware protection. The service offers tools for scanning the website for malicious software.
- DDoS protection. This feature is powered by Corero and prevents excess traffic from taking down your webpage.
Unsurprisingly, the services offer extra perks if you require even greater protection. However, it’s clear that Kinsta offers a more comprehensive security suite.
Kinsta vs InMotion Hosting: customer support
Both services offer 24/7 customer support via live chat and phone calls. If that’s not your cup of tea, you can peruse their extensive knowledge bases for relevant guides too. However, some notable differences put Kinsta ahead of InMotion Hosting.
Firstly, Kinsta subscribers can receive assistance in 5 languages (English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish), although the non-English options aren’t available around the clock. Additionally, the service claims that its customer support specialists are hardcore WordPress experts that actively contribute to the open-source project. Plus, there are no support tiers, meaning customers of every plan have the same priority.
On the other hand, InMotion only offers support in English. Moreover, phone support isn’t included in the Core subscription plan, meaning not all customers get the same level of assistance. But unlike Kinsta, InMotion users have additional communication channels, such as Skype and a ticketing system.
Ultimately, the two hosting companies are well-equipped to assist their customers’ specific needs. It just so happens that Kinsta requires a more impressive arsenal to support a diverse customer base.
Kinsta vs InMotion: final verdict
This Kinsta vs InMotion comparison should have highlighted the vast differences between the two hosting providers. Namely, that one is extremely expensive and specializes in one area. Meanwhile, the other is an affordable and approachable option best suited for different projects and uses.
| Feature | InMotion Hosting | Kinsta | Verdict |
| Price | InMotion is the clear winner regarding pricing. It starts at only $2.29/month, while Kinsta begins at a whopping $35.00/month. | ||
| Ease of use | You’ll have no trouble managing sites with either hosting provider, but InMotion is potentially more approachable with the familiar AMP and cPanel combo. | ||
| Performance | Both options are excellent if you need minimal downtime and lightning-fast loading times. | ||
| Security | Kinsta outshines its competitor regarding security with the inclusion of Cloudflare. But InMotion is also solid and provides DDoS and malware protection. | ||
| Customer support | Both providers support multiple communication channels and are available 24/7. Yet Kinsta can be considered superior due to multilingual support. |
I believe that such a pricey and one-dimensional service like Kinsta is not what most people need. Instead, the victory goes to InMotion Hosting, thanks to its affordability, accessibility, and versatility.
Alternatives to Kinsta and InMotion Hosting
Perhaps you need a middle-ground hosting option that would combine the best aspects of InMotion and Kinsta. For example, maybe you need an affordable service with a diverse selection of shared and WordPress hosting plans. In that case, check our recommended hosting service alternatives.
Bluehost
Bluehost is the ultimate choice for those needing excellent hosting results at a great price. The provider starts at only $1.99/month yet includes a free domain, a powerful and intuitive interface, and plenty of customization features for creating the best website to fit your needs.
Hostinger
Hostinger is a solid option combining affordability and versatility. Subscriptions start at merely $2.78/month and provide excellent perks, such as 24/7 customer support, 99% uptime, and a beginner-friendly interface.
DreamHost
Consider DreamHost if you’re looking for a hosting provider that offers both shared and WordPress hosting at excellent prices. Both options start at $2.59/month and grant airtight security via SSL, daily backups, domain privacy protection, and more.
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Kinsta vs InMotion FAQs
Is InMotion Hosting any good?
Yes, InMotion Hosting is a solid choice for users looking for an affordable, versatile, and effective provider. It offers loads of hosting options, including WordPress, VPS, dedicated, and shared server hosting.
What is Kinsta used for?
Kinsta is primarily used for WordPress hosting. It’s a premium option with expensive plans, loads of servers worldwide, excellent connectivity, and reliable security features. Additionally, you can also use it for application or database hosting.
Is InMotion Hosting fast?
Yes, InMotion Hosting is fast, especially if your audience is located in the US, as that’s where providers' data centers are located.
Is Kinsta only for WordPress?
No, Kinsta isn’t strictly for WordPress. The service also offers application and database hosting.
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