SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting: which shared hosting provider should you choose?
Find out which is the best web hosting service between SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting. In this comparison article, I’ll go over pricing, ease of use, performance, security, and customer support.
SiteGround is known for features that rival enterprise-level hosting solutions, such as white-label, collaboration, and website staging. This provider definitely appeals to businesses and manages to be on top of our recommended lists in every category.
Going against it we have InMotion Hosting. This provider offers a classic cPanel control panel and a huge focus on business with its speed and stability.
In this article, I performed an in-depth analysis and tested both SiteGround and InMotion. In this comparison, you’ll find all there’s to know before picking the right provider, whether that is for personal use or for your business.
SiteGround vs InMotion: general info
Both SiteGround and InMotion Hosting offer affordable solutions for beginners as well as advanced users with various options to choose from. To get a better understanding of how these providers differ from each other, here’s a quick summary of the features that matter the most.
But if you’re interested to see my final verdict on these providers, click here to go right to the conclusion of this comparison article.
| Feature | InMotion Hosting | SiteGround |
| Rating | ||
| Price from | From $2.29/month | From $2.99/month |
| Free domain | No | No |
| Payment types | Credit card, PayPal, check, money order | Credit card |
| Hosting types | Shared, Managed WordPress, VPS, Reseller, and Dedicated server hosting plans | Shared, WordPress/WooCommerce, and cloud hosting plans |
| Control panel | Account management panel +cPanel | Custom control panel Site Tools |
| Average speed | 759ms | 217ms |
| Monitored uptime | 99.98% | 99.99% |
| Uptime guarantee | 99.99% | 99.9% |
| Server locations | The USA | The USA, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Singapore |
| Security | SSLs, malware and DDoS protection, WAF | Free SSL, server monitoring, weekly/daily backup, DDoS protection, 2-factor-authentication, AI anti-bot protection, and a Security plugin |
| Support | 24/7 live chat, tickets, phone, and Skype | 24/7 live chat, email, and phone |
| Website migration | Free automated WordPress website transfers | Free automated WordPress migration or paid professional site transfer |
| Extras | Email account | Staging, caching, emails, white-label, collaboration tools, and CDN |
| Money-back guarantee | 90 days | 30 days |
| Website | www.inmotionhosting.com | www.siteground.com |
SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting: pricing comparison
SiteGround’s entry plan sells for $2.99/month. InMotion Hosting is a tad cheaper, offering shared hosting plans for prices that start from $2.29/month.
For different needs, you can choose from a set of different hosting packages:
| Hosting type | SiteGround | InMotion Hosting |
| Shared hosting | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| WordPress hosting | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| WooCommerce hosting | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Cloud hosting | ✔️ | ❌ |
| VPS hosting | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Reseller hosting | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Dedicated hosting | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Visit SiteGround | Visit InMotion Hosting |
The most popular type of hosting is shared. Here’s what SiteGround and InMotion Hosting offer in their entry plans:
- SiteGround (StartUp - $2.99/month) - 1 website, 10GB SSD storage, unmetered traffic, free SSL, daily backups, and free email. Besides the basics, you will also get access to speed-boosting features, such as SuperCacher and SG Optimizer.
- InMotion Hosting (Core - $2.29/month) - 2 websites, 100GB SSD storage, unmetered bandwidth, free SSL, 10 email accounts.
As you can see, not only is InMotion Hosting cheaper, but it also offers 1 more website and 10x more storage. On the other hand, SiteGround has not only the essentials, but also daily backups included even in its cheapest plan.
Besides the entry plans, both providers offer different tiers of shared hosting options. So, which plans should you opt for?
SiteGround has 3 plans. They start at $2.99/month and go all the way up to $7.99/month.
If you own a small business or just need an option that supports a lot of traffic, take a look at the GrowBig plan. Besides offering 100,000 visits monthly, it also offers some great extra features – staging, on-demand backups, and unlimited websites. All of these combined should be enough to convince you that this plan provides the best value out of the three for business hosting.
SiteGround’s cheapest price doesn’t come with the longest subscription period. If you subscribe to the plan for 12 months you’ll be paying $47.88. That equates to a lower monthly fee when compared to the 3-year subscription that is worth $377.64 in total.
Now, InMotion Hosting has 4 plans to choose from. The prices range from $2.29/month to $12.99/month.
The plan that holds the most value is the Core plan. The amount of SSD storage, combined with unmetered bandwidth, and 10 email addresses, make this the best plan for a single website or even for a small business with the potential to expand. The plan also offers free SSL, but it does lack a few server resources that you can purchase as add-ons, such as domain security and malware protection. Nonetheless, the Core plan is the one I recommend.
To get access to the cheapest price you will need to opt for the 3-year subscription. By opting for the 3 year Core plan subscription you’ll pay $82.44, saving up to $241.20. After the 3-year period, the renewal prices are higher, but for the first 3 years, you’ll be paying a lower monthly fee.
An interesting thing to note is how both providers offer very different money-back guarantee periods. While SiteGround comes with a standard 30-day money-back guarantee, InMotion Hosting triples that and offers 90-day money-back guarantee.
All in all, considering the price and value ratio, InMotion Hosting takes the crown in this round. The provider includes a free SSL, 100GB disk space, and even allows hosting 2 sites even on its cheapest plan.
Hosting management: ease of use
SiteGround opts for a native hosting control panel which not only is very easy to use but also includes time-saving features that come in handy. InMotion Hosting also delivers in the ease of use category, but in a different way. Using a native user control panel and a cPanel, InMotion Hosting allows users to access every function with just a click.
In 2020, SiteGround traded its cPanel for a completely custom Site Tools control panel. This brand new interface is user-friendly even to those who are not at all familiar with any control panel. SiteGround users will be able to customize their page and pin the frequently used tools on top of the dashboard, such as managing domains and emails.
Another feature that makes SiteGround attractive is the WordPress staging functionality. With this tool, you make a copy of your live website. SiteGround will then allow you to experiment with changes on the staging version without disrupting the live version, making the process of improving your website way easier.
The collaboration feature is also great at increasing the workflow and overall security. Collaborators can be added to specific projects they need to work on, which will translate to higher efficiency.
InMotion Hosting opts for a hybrid interface, mixing a native panel and a cPanel. The mix is easy to use but might take a little to get used to. The account management panel has shortcuts to cPanel management modules (email, SSL management, and Softaculous), while the cPanel is just what it is – a standard and functional control panel for the everyday hosting management tasks, such as managing databases, accessing file manager, and updating PHP versions.
The panels are user-friendly and very clear. The visuals are similar between the two panels, but the cPanel is where you can access most of the main tools. That includes domains, security, email accounts, file manager, among a few others. In the cPanel, you will also be able to install WordPress. Overall, the experience is good and the cPanel is similar to most service providers in functionality.
In the ease of use category, if you’re looking for an interface that is simple and functional, SiteGround offers all that. It gives its users all the functionality that they could crave, with staging and caching management. InMotion Hosting does a good job, but the mixture between the native and cPanel feels weird at times.
SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting performance
As far as performance goes, SiteGround was more reliable and extremely fast. InMotion Hosting wasn’t at the same level. While it delivered good results in uptime and website speed, the average response was subpar with room for improvement.
Uptime and response time
Uptime-wise, SiteGround was solid. 99.99% of average uptime, totaling just 7m of downtime over 2 months of testing is amazing.
The average response time was also blazing fast. 217ms is among the best you’ll find on the market, and well below the market average of 600ms, making SiteGround an incredibly appealing option.
InMotion Hosting was disappointing when compared to the results posted by SiteGround, even though the overall results were pretty good.
Between February and April, the uptime was 99.98%, just a smidge below SiteGround. Over 2 months, I registered 3 outages that amounted to a total of 16 minutes of downtime.
Where InMotion Hosting failed to impress was in the average response time. 759ms won’t cut it. Not only is it considerably slower than SiteGround, but it’s also above the market average of 600ms.
In terms of uptime and response time, SiteGround is tough to go against. It posted a better uptime rate but also far outdid InMotion Hosting in response time. InMotion Hosting is still a decent web host, but the difference in average response time can’t be overlooked. SiteGround is the clear winner.
Website speed
In our website speed test, InMotion hosting gave incredible results, that were tough for SiteGround to beat.
When reading this part, you have to look into two main scores:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) corresponds to the time in which the biggest piece of content is loaded. By Google’s standards, 2.5s or below is good. The faster the LCP, the better the website will rank in search engines.
- The Fully Loaded Time is the time a website takes to become fully interactive with the user. It should take less than 3 seconds to provide a good user experience.
SiteGround was fast. One of the fastest web hosting providers in the market, with an LCP of 872ms, it clears the 2.5s barrier with ease and with room to spare. The Fully Loaded Time was also 1.1s, also well below the 3-second reference mark.
If SiteGround was fast, InMotion Hosting was even faster. The website speed results for this provider were nothing short of amazing. With an LCP of 663ms and a Fully Loaded Time of 825ms, it’s among the fastest tests we have conducted.
In website speed, the winner is InMotion Hosting, beating SiteGround in the two most important measurements tested. Both are fast hosting providers, but InMotion Hosting managed to edge out SiteGround.
Although the website speed provided by InMotion Hosting was amazing, it’s important to refer that its servers are only located in the US, while SiteGround has servers in Europe, Singapore, and the US. You will benefit from having a server closer to the location of your website visitors, which results in faster speeds – make sure to keep that in mind when choosing the location of your server.
Performance was not an issue for either of the web hosting services. However, the overall winner of the category is SiteGround simply because it doesn’t have a weak link. InMotion Hosting put up good results in every aspect except one: response time. That factor gives the performance title to SiteGround.
Website security
In the security department, SiteGround is one of the best in the business, offering a wide range of security tools to the user in their most basic plan. InMotion Hosting was less impressive, making its users pay for more advanced security features.
SiteGround, being one of the most secure hosting providers, offers top-notch security without charging you extra for it. These are the features included in the plan:
- Free SSL certificate;
- Monitoring system;
- Smart web application firewall;
- Anti-bot AI;
- Security plugin;
- Daily automatic backups.
The only main feature that is not offered for free with the plan is domain privacy. It will set you back $12 in the first year, and $24 after that. It’s not exactly cheap, but after all, it’s the only security aspect in which the provider is lacking.
InMotion Hosting includes some basic security features in its plan:
- Free SSL certificate;
- Basic web application firewall;
- DDoS protection;
- Malware protection.
Automatic backups can also be in the mix but for an extra of $24/yr.
If security is one of your main priorities, as it should be, SiteGround is the way to go. InMotion Hosting offers the basic security you can find in most competitors but SiteGround kicks it up a notch. Every essential need to have is there.
Customer support
Both SiteGround and InMotion Hosting have multiple channels available 24/7. You can choose from live chat, phone support, ticketing, and knowledge bases. InMotion Hosting additionally offers Skype support.
SiteGround’s help center asks you right away to specify your issue so that it can better respond to the high volume of support requests. Some requests go into the ticketing system, and others are redirected to phone or chat support. Once you’re connected with an agent, the problem will most likely be solved in no time.
The InMotion Hosting live chat option has an almost instantaneous response time, but once you’re connected, expect some waiting time between messages. The personal assistant that came to my assistance was serviceable and competent, explaining step-by-step what I should do to take care of the problem at hand.
No matter which provider you choose, the customer service experience is good in both cases.
SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting: final recommendations
Both providers showed to be a great option for shared hosting, but SiteGround gave very strong results throughout every category and test conducted. InMotion Hosting delivered good results across the board but fell a little bit short. So, in the SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting battle, it’s safe to say that the better host is SiteGround.
| Feature | SiteGround | InMotion Hosting | Verdict |
| Price | Pricing is the section where SiteGround and InMotion Hosting are more evenly matched. The first offers more hosting features but has a higher price point, while the latter is cheaper but misses a few essentials. | ||
| Ease of use | The interface presented by SiteGround is superior to InMotion Hosting. SiteGround’s custom Site Tools are nothing short of amazing, while InMotion Hosting’s mix of native and cPanel was easy to understand, but nothing extraordinary. | ||
| Performance | Performance was great in both cases, but SiteGround was amazing across all the tests, from uptime and average response time to website speed, while InMotion Hosting had problems in the response time. | ||
| Security | The most secure option is SiteGround. When compared to InMotion Hosting it has more features included in the plans and fewer paid add-ons. | ||
| Support | SiteGround’s service was fast and accurate, having live chat, phone, and ticketing all working 24/7. InMotion Hosting also has those 3 channels plus a Skype option. But the overall experience was better with SiteGround. |
While SiteGround is a very secure and fast hosting provider, InMotion proves to be just as competent. The later offers simplicity, good performance, and very reasonable security for significantly less. This option will surely suit any project, may it be a personal or a business-oriented one.
But either way, if you're looking for a secure and fast WordPress hosting for smaller business sites, SiteGround is a very good option.
Alternatives to SiteGround and InMotion Hosting
Not convinced by SiteGround or InMotion Hosting? You can take a look through our best website hosts category, but to make things easier for you, I picked out 2 the most suitable alternatives:
HostGator
HostGator boasts some of the best reviews on the market for a reason. It’s an affordable option that can consistently perform great in the major categories we test. Performance-wise is one the best in its price tier (starting at $2.75/month) and it’s suited for beginners and pros alike.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy in the last few years emerged as a solid competitor in the web hosting market. The pricing (starting at $1.99/month) is average for the market, but what makes it a strong option is the ease of use and performance. Every essential tool will be easily found on the dashboard and its performance is among the best we have tested as well.
Other SiteGround comparisons you might like to check out
- SiteGround vs HostGator
- Cloudways vs SiteGround
- SiteGround vs Bluehost
- Flywheel vs SiteGround
- SiteGround vs WP Engine
- A2 Hosting vs SiteGround
- SiteGround vs GoDaddy
- SiteGround vs DreamHost
Other InMotion Hosting comparisons you’d like to read
- InMotion Hosting vs Bluehost
- HostGator vs InMotion Hosting
- DreamHost vs InMotion Hosting
- A2 Hosting vs InMotion Hosting
SiteGround vs InMotion Hosting FAQs
Is SiteGround better than InMotion hosting?
SiteGround is better than InMotion Hosting in every category. It provides better performance, with great uptime and response times, along with fast website speeds, an interface that’s more appealing and easy to use, stronger security, and solid customer support.
Which is cheaper: InMotion Hosting or SiteGound?
InMotion Hosting is cheaper than SiteGround, with an entry-level price of $2.29/month versus $2.99/month.
Which is better for WordPress hosting: SiteGround or InMotion?
For WordPress hosting, SiteGround offers incredible security features, a great price, and an SG Optimizer plugin that allows you to manage cache settings directly in your WP admin dashboard.
Is SiteGround overpriced?
Quality often comes at a price. SiteGround is more expensive than most of its competitors, but the tools it offers, along with everything it allows the user to accomplish, make SiteGround worth the extra money.
Is InMotion faster than SiteGround?
InMotion Hosting is faster than SiteGround when it comes to website speed, but both providers offer very similar results.
Which reseller plans are better: SiteGround or InMotion Hosting?
SiteGround reseller plans are better. For half the price you’ll get every essential feature from SiteGround. InMotion vs SiteGround reseller is another win to SiteGround.
Is moving from SiteGround to InMotion possible?
Yes. Moving from SiteGround to InMotion is possible. Not only it offers a free automatic WordPress migration plugin, but also allows you to do the migration manually. To do this process manually, you must download files from your old website, export the website databases, and import them to the new website while uploading the retrieved files. After that, you need to point your domain name away from SiteGround and to InMotion’s server.
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