InMotion vs WP Engine: Which Should You Choose?
Looking for a premium wordpress hosting that allows you to have complete control over the appearance of your websites? Then you should investigate InMotion Hosting.
They provide one of the most popular WordPress hosting solutions on the market, and their commitment to usability and functionality makes them a clear choice for webmasters who want to build a strong foundation for their sites.
But if you’re looking for the simplest, least expensive option, then you should consider WordPress hosting provided by WP Engine.
Here, we’ll highlight the key differences between the two options so that you can make the right choice for your businesses.
Features
First off, let’s discuss some of the features that you need to consider when choosing a WordPress hosting provider. InMotion Hosting is a clear leader in this area, as they offer dedicated IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) addresses, free backups, free domain privacy, and more.
Those are all extremely valuable features if you’re looking to build a long-term business.
On the flip side, WP Engine only offers shared hosting plans at this time, but they do provide a money-back guarantee if you meet the terms of their service.
So, if you’re looking for a highly-reliable and robust choice, then InMotion Hosting is the clear winner. Otherwise, if you’re on a tight budget and need to ensure that your websites are as secure and fast as possible, then you should opt for WP Engine.
Pricing
Moving on to pricing, InMotion Hosting provides an incredibly affordable price point for their services. You can get a standard plan with 1-year commitment for $2.95/month, and you can get a 2-year commitment for $5.45/month. If you compare that to the price of similar plans from other providers, you’ll see that InMotion Hosting really does offer great value.
On the other hand, WP Engine’s shared hosting plans start at $5.45/month for the basic plan, and their cheapest option is $13.95/month for the ultimate plan. This makes their shared hosting a little less affordable than that of InMotion Hosting’s dedicated plans, but it should be noted that their prices do include a free domain and free backups.
Support
As the name implies, InMotion Hosting provides in-house support via email in addition to phone support from 9 am to 5 pm EST. You can get priority support in addition to their regular plans for just $5 more per month.
On the other hand, WP Engine only offers ticket-based support via their forums and email, and the forums are often quite inactive. We were able to obtain support from them in under 15 minutes, which is quite speedy, but it’s not uncommon to wait 2+ hours for a reply via email. This is obviously not going to work for companies that need top-notch support on a tight budget.
User Interface
The last thing you need if you’re running a business is a clunky user interface. So, it’s vital that you find a hosting provider whose dashboard you can navigate easily without any trouble. The user interface is very important, because it impacts how easily you can perform common tasks such as creating new sites, upgrading your sites, and deleting old sites. We tested the user interface of both InMotion Hosting and WP Engine and found that it was extremely easy to use, especially for someone who is technologically savvy.
InMotion Hosting’s interface was actually very reminiscent of older versions of Windows, but it works perfectly well and is extremely quick and responsive. If you’re used to Windows-like user interfaces, you’ll have no trouble navigating InMotion Hosting’s dashboard.
As for WP Engine, it uses a different approach, where they’ve simplified the UI and taken advantage of the fact that they’re using a content management system (CMS). Instead of having a complicated folder structure, their sites are stored in “buckets”, which are collections of content that you can browse without using a navigation menu. This makes WP Engine’s dashboard look like a mish-mash of unusable options, and, well, it kind of is. We were unable to find a way to create or edit sites using their interface, and even finding existing sites was a chore. In general, we didn’t like how WP Engine handled the administrative tasks of a webmaster. For example, they don’t provide any kind of backup for your sites, and they don’t offer any mechanism for automatically updating your sites when you make important changes.
Security
You’ve probably heard plenty about the WannaCry and NotPetya viruses that infected nearly 200,000 computers in 2018. These are just two of the many viruses that target vulnerable websites. As a result of these outbreaks, many people are now wary of using unpatched and outdated software on a computer or mobile device that they don’t own.
Regardless of whether you’re using WordPress as a CMS or just for storing content, you need to make sure that your website’s security is up to date. Luckily, InMotion Hosting provides multiple layers of security for your sites, which we’ll discuss in further detail below.
Backups
The last thing you need if you’re a business owner is to lose all your important data because you couldn’t recover from a hard drive crash. Backups are important for this purpose, but many companies don’t have the budget to purchase their own storage solutions. This is why they turn to hosting providers, who offer various levels of backups for free. InMotion Hosting provides daily automated backups, which means that they’ll backup your site every day, even if you don’t use their service that day. This is a great choice for companies that need continuous backups, but it’s also great if you just want to make sure that your content is safe from corruption. For example, if you use WordPress and you decide to upgrade to a newer version, you’ll have to do it manually, which could lead to some errors or issues. However, with InMotion Hosting, you can simply click a button to have your website automatically updated.
On the other hand, WP Engine only offers monthly backups via their web interface, and it’s quite a time-consuming process to set them up. They do offer an “express” plan that gives you backups via email, but it’s not always the best solution for people that need reliable and frequent backups. It takes a lot of work to set these up manually, and you have no control over when they’re performed.
Bandwidth
Also known as “network bandwidth”, “download capacity”, and “data transfer speed”, bandwidth determines how much data you can transfer to or from your computer in a given time interval. This is important because it directly affects the speed at which you can upload/download files to your websites.
InMotion Hosting provides enough bandwidth for the standard plan, which means that you shouldn’t have any issues with speed, especially since they cache commonly used pages, so they can serve them faster to visitors. This is great for small businesses that need a fast and stable connection to the internet.
On the other hand, WP Engine only offers small increases in data transfer speed for each plan level, and even then it’s quite sluggish. Unless you have a very large number of visitors, you won’t notice any difference.
Server Location
Many webhosts offer multiple server locations, allowing them to balance traffic across different physical locations. If you run a business that serves customers across the country, you can choose a US-based server for the most stable and reliable experience or a European web host for the best bandwidth and lowest prices. This is a great option for people that need to serve a large number of visitors from different parts of the world.
InMotion Hosting allows you to pick a server location that’s ideally suited for your needs. Their servers are based in North America, so if you’re in the U.S., you’ll get great performance, and if you’re in another country, you’ll still get reasonable performance. InMotion Hosting also offers a CDN (content delivery network), which caches content for users across the globe. This means that if you have a blog with lots of images, those images will display faster for viewers because they’re already in the CDN’s cache.