Are you planning to use the InMotion Hosting Launch plan for your website? Do you want to know its features and pricing? If yes, you are in luck!
We’ll cover in-depth features, pros, cons, and pricing details of this InMotion Hosting plan below. You’ll also learn about the user-friendliness, speed, uptime, performance, and customer support the host offers.
Additionally, we’ll share some of the best alternatives to the Launch plan by the end of this article.
But first, let’s have a brief introduction of the Launch plan in our next section.
What is InMotion hosting launch plan?
The Hosting Launch plan is a shared hosting plan that is available for 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year billing terms. The host provides a free domain and SSL with this plan.
Unlike the InMotion Hosting Core plan, which supports two websites only, the Launch plan offers support for unlimited websites.
Additionally, you will receive many other unlimited features, including bandwidth, email addresses, databases, parked domains, subdomains, and NVMe SSD storage.
InMotion Hosting also provides a security suite with its Launch plan. It includes DDoS protection plus hack & malware protection for your account.
You will also receive multiple marketing tools like customer management tools and free advertising credits that will provide an initial boost to your website.
The plan includes a free website builder and cPanel for easier account management.
The Launch plan is expensive compared to its competitors shared hosting plans, offering similar features. We’ll get into the cost details in our pricing section below and see if the higher costs are justified or not.
Pros & Cons of InMotion launch plan
Now that you have got an idea of what the InMotion Launch plan is let’s look at its pros and cons:
Pros of the InMotion launch plan
- The host offers unlimited, fast-loading NVMe SSD
- InMotion Hosting provides US-based customer support via live chat and ticket with the Launch plan.
- You’ll get unlimited bandwidth to support larger amounts of traffic.
- The package includes solid security features for overall website protection.
- With this plan, you will receive a 90-day money-back guarantee that allows you to try out the host’s services without any risk.
Cons of the InMotion launch plan
- The InMotion Launch plan has high renewal prices.
- The host doesn’t perform instant account activation.
- Backups and Restorations are included as a paid add-on feature.
- The host has only three server locations, out of which two are in the US alone.
Features & benefits
Here are the features and benefits of the Launch plan by InMotion Hosting:
Unlimited websites: The Launch plan supports unlimited websites that allow you to create as many sites as you like. So if you plan to build a website portfolio, it is possible to do it with this plan.
Free domain: You will get a free domain for the first year with this plan. Thus, you do not have to spend extra money buying a domain name for your website.
Free Advertising Credits of $150: The host provides free advertising credits of $150 that help with the initial marketing of your website. Therefore, you can spread the word online about your website free of cost.
PHP8 & UltraStack caching: The plan supports PHP 8 with JIT compilation and enhanced security. Also, the host uses UltraStack, a customized operating system stack optimized for simplicity and speed. This highly customizable system goes well with most CMS and HTML/PHP-based websites.
All-in-all, the host delivers better speed and performance via these tools.
Beginner-friendly tools: The host provides an easy-to-manage cPanel and Softaculous app installer. You can manage your files, databases, emails, and everything else from a central dashboard. It is also possible to quickly install 400+ applications from your cPanel itself with only a single click.
Developer tools: InMotion Hosting’s Launch plan provides automation tools and popular frameworks for web application development. It supports PostgreSQL, Ruby, Node.JS, PHP, Python, MySQL, and GIT version control.
The plan is, therefore, suitable for advanced users or developers too.
Ease of Use
After looking at the features and benefits of the Launch plan, it is time to consider its user-friendliness:
- Though the user interface of InMotion Hosting’s dashboard is relatively easy to navigate, it is a bit outdated. The company needs to improve and modernize it to enhance its ease of use further.
- The host uses a combination of cPanel and Account Management Panel (AMP) to make it easier to manage your hosting account. But the problem is that these two might sometimes contradict each other’s functionality. Also, there is a scope for improvement in a few more UX choices to offer a better user experience.
Performance – Is InMotion Hosting Fast?
To get an idea of the Launch plan’s speed and other related elements, let’s look at some of its performance aspects below:
InMotion Performance
The shared hosting plans of InMotion Hosting are limited in I/O, but the host doesn’t advertise it. You will find all these limitations inside your InMotion Hosting cPanel dashboard.
Overall, the Launch plan delivers excellent performance when your website audience belongs to the US. It is because the host has its major data centers in the US region.
The company also has one data center in Amsterdam, so you can expect excellent performance in the European region too.
The InMotion Hosting Launch plan offers 1 GB of physical memory and 20 entry processes. Checkout the screenshot below from our cPanel to see the plan limits:
Speed
We tested the Launch plan’s speed using the Pingdom testing tool. Here are the results:
As seen above, this InMotion Hosting plan delivers good speed when tested from the US. The load time is under 1 second for a page of 659 kB. Thus, your website will load faster, especially for the US audience.
Uptime
We also tested InMotion Hosting for two months to check the uptime it delivers. Here is the test report:
As the result above shows, we experienced 3 outages during the test duration. The average response time is 759 milliseconds. The overall uptime for these two months was 99.98% which is good. The host is also able to deliver 100% uptime during some months.
Stress testing
We performed stress testing to check the traffic the Launch plan can handle. InMotion Hosting did not do well in this test round. The average load time jumped from 4.81 seconds (which is already bad) to a terrible 10.45 seconds.
As seen above, there’s something wrong with the InMotion Hosting server on which our test site is running.
Since the numbers were too pathetic, we double-checked our test site to ensure that it is the same that we use for testing across different hosts. And there wasn’t any mistake on our end.
The chart above studies the average virtual user (VU) load time with the rise in the number of concurrent virtual users.
The blue line depicts the average user load time that significantly rises when the number of concurrent users touches 50. Before that point, the load time isn’t bad but the website performance deteriorates rapidly when it receives 50 simultaneous users.
Customer Support
InMotion Hosting provides excellent and reliable customer support. Their support executives are fast to respond and resolve all customer queries. However, you might observe a waiting time of 30 minutes or above at the live chat on a few occasions.
If you prefer contacting the host via email or support ticket, expect a response within 1 business day.
It is also worth mentioning that the host has an in-house support staff, unlike many of its competitors who outsource this service to Asian nations. So you will be communicating with a website expert from the US itself.
Pricing & Plans
The Launch plan is available only for 3 term periods beginning from a 1-year plan. So you cannot purchase it for a shorter duration of 1 month or 6 months.
Here are the prices for different hosting term lengths.
| Hosting term length | Launch plan initial cost | Launch plan renewal cost |
| 1 year | $6.99 per month | $13.99 per month |
| 2 year | $5.99 per month | $12.99 per month |
| 3 year | $4.99 per month | $11.99 per month |
As displayed in the cost table above, the renewal prices of this InMotion Hosting plan are very high.
However, these are justified since the host hires in-house staff, which costs more to the company. It results in higher operating costs than its competitors, which results in higher hosting prices for the customers.
Considering the Launch plan’s NVMe storage and unlimited features, we’d say the pricing is still reasonable.
What Users Say about InMotion hosting
Now that we know the features, benefits, user interface, performance, customer support, and pricing of the Launch plan, let’s consider the experiences of InMotion Hosting users.
It will help you understand how you’ll be treated as an InMotion Hosting customer.
The following screenshot displays the reviews of many users having first-hand experience with the hosting provider:
The picture above shows that the majority of InMotion Hosting customers are happy and satisfied with its services. They experience better speed and good customer support with the company.
Verdict: Is InMotion launch plan Worth it?
Yes, the Launch plan is worth it! Overall, InMotion Hosting is an excellent host with a good background. This plan is worth choosing if you are a beginner who intends to host basic websites and can spend some extra money.
Who is it for?
The Launch plan is suitable for you if:
- Your website audience mainly belongs to Amsterdam and the US East or West Coast.
- You plan to host small business projects not requiring top-performing hosting services—for instance, websites for beauty salons, law firms, bakeries, etc.
- You want a fast, reliable, business-class host with a competent support staff.
Alternatives
If you are unsure about signing up with InMotion Hosting, you can choose to go with similar plans from other hosting providers. Here are some of the best alternatives to the InMotion Launch plan:
A2Hosting – Drive plan
The Drive plan from A2 Hosting offers hosting features comparable to the Launch plan. You will get a lot of unlimited features, including supported websites, databases, email accounts, and SSD storage.
Additionally, the host provides many free features like automatic backups, site migrations, website builder, and SSL certificate.
Unlike InMotion Hosting, A2 Hosting has data centers in the US, Asia, and Europe. So you choose a location depending on your website audience.
All these A2 Hosting servers are optimized for high speed to deliver excellent performance for your website.
The A2 Hosting Drive plan is a bit cheaper than the InMotion Launch plan. Additionally, it is possible to purchase it for a single month. Its price for a 1-year hosting term is $5.99 per month as against the $6.99 per month price of the Launch plan for the same billing term.
SiteGround – Growbig plan
The GrowBig plan from SiteGround is another excellent alternative to the InMotion Launch plan. It also comes with many free and unlimited features. You’ll get free SSL, email, CDN, and email migrator, along with unlimited databases and websites.
The most significant benefit of choosing SiteGround over InMotion Hosting is its globally distributed server network.
The host has multiple data center locations in the US, UK, Europe, Australia, and Asia. It further uses dozens of CDN locations for faster delivery of your website content.
The GrowBig plan costs almost the same as the Launch plan. You will have to pay $6.69 per month for a 1-year billing term. Unlike the Launch plan, you can also purchase the GrowBig plan for a single month.
FAQ
Can you do e-commerce on the InMotion launch plan?
No, you cannot do eCommerce on the InMotion Launch plan since it is not well-optimized for it. You will have to go with other shared hosting plans from the host when building an online store.
InMotion launch plan e-commerce ready?
No, the InMotion Launch plan is not eCommerce-ready. However, the higher plan, called the “Power” plan is optimized for eCommerce.
The introductory prices of the Power and Launch plans are the same. So you can go for the Power plan if you plan to host an eCommerce website with InMotion Hosting.
Where are InMotion Hosting servers located?
InMotion Hosting servers are located at the following three locations worldwide:
- US East Coast
- US West Coast
- Amsterdam, Europe
Is InMotion Hosting free?
No, InMotion Hosting is not free. The host, however, provides a couple of features for free with all its hosting plans, including a free SSL and a free domain for the first year.
