Bluehost Vs iPage Vs InMotion Hosting
When we think about top web hosting companies in the Would, Bluehost, Inmotion Hosting & iPage are the most obvious names that comes to our mind.
However picking one out of Bluehost, iPage & InMotion is a difficult task. Each one has their own advantages & disadvantages.
On one had Bluehost & InMotion Hosting are know for their advanced server architecture and up-time, iPage is known as a preferred small business hosting.
Building a successful website that undergoes significant transitions from its initial stages to attain a huge number of customers while at the same time increasing and consuming resources is quite challenging. Especially while considering the fact that there are a number of factors that come to play while running a successful website. Therefore, along with a strong application stack, each website or web application should also have performance oriented underlying hardware to improve server performance while at the same time supporting the above application stack to perform even at critical resource levels.
A good web hosting company goes a long way in supporting the application stack that creates the next popular website or online application that can serve millions of people at once. The web hosting industry is changing quite rapidly with new technologies and services being introduced every other day and organizations are adapting and changing their infrastructure to build new solutions for emerging markets. It’s become quite hard for organizations to innovate and transit from existing server Infrastructures to build new age solutions expected by consumers.
However, organizations who have huge consumer base are constantly innovating in order to attract new consumers from competing companies. With the recent trend in cloud computing, organizations have now shifted to cloud based hardware architecture where consumers can grow and expand their hosting and application requirements depending on their market usage and resource constraints. Therefore, existing hosting companies are also migrating to new cloud-based architectures to allow seamless integration with services and features that is unmatched with their previous counterparts.
Advertising strategies along with strong user interface filled with features that ease deployment and managing of web servers make them enticing organizations to build your applications and websites. Let’s dive deeper in order to understand more about the organizations and how you can use their services depending on your specific requirements. To analyze the difference between the two companies this comparison will solely base on the shared hosting services. Read on to find out the best hosting companies for your requirements.
In this article we’ve compared Bluehost, iPage & InMotion Hosting on various parameters. Hope this will help you decide which out of 3 is the best hosting provider for you.
Primary Differences : Bluehost vs iPage vs InMotion Hosting
Before we go on to compare the various features and services provided by the three companies, we should understand the target market in order to determine why they are exactly providing those services and the differences between them.
Bluehost is meant for everyone ranging from a small business owner, personal websites to large organizations. Therefore, their plans reflect the requirements of all kinds of customers from these sectors. With the rise of cloud computing, Bluehost now provides cloud websites and also offers numerous services and features generally absent in traditional hosting services.
However, iPage and InMotion provide quite different plans as they target very different markets. While iPage targets small business users, it does have one plan that includes essentials for all customers.
Similarly, InMotion targets large organizations and small business owners and therefore provides plans that are ideal for small businesses and growing customers who require more resources than a shared hosting account can provide. Based on these significant differences this comparison report will be presented.
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Plans and Pricing
Bluehost plans
Bluehost two types of shared hosting i.e traditional shared hosting & cloud sites.
The first is the cloud websites that are highly stable, scalable and come with additional features like unlimited data storage and data transfer unlike normal shared hosting accounts.
Plans start from $5.95/month which has a storage limit of 100 GB but higher plans have unlimited storage and bandwidth along with additional services like instant scaling and resource monitoring which is ideal for business applications that may grow instantaneously for a short period of time.
Below are Bluehost’s Cloud Sites plans.
Along with the cloud websites, Bluehost also provides shared hosting services like other web hosting companies. One additional features in its shared hosting account is that they come with email storage which is not available in cloud websites. The business Pro shared hosting plan is one of the best shared hosting plans among all of its competitors as it provides features generally available in VPS servers.
Below are Bluehost’s traditional shared hosting plans.
Bluehost also provides WordPress hosting plans ideal for all kinds of organizations and individuals. The blogger plan is one of the most popular and comes with all features necessary for a WordPress hosting website. Users can upgrade to professional, business or enterprise plans that come with additional features like site lock and wildcard SSL.
Along with expert support and marketplace like the mojo marketplace and content delivery networks, Bluehost WordPress plans are one of the best in the industry.
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iPage Hosting Plan
IPage also provides WordPress hosting but it starts with the essential plan priced at $1.99/month.
The Essential plan is ideal for static website hosting and small blogs. Although you can run small ecommerce stores, the plan is not ideal for such high resource consuming applications.
The company primarily focuses on WordPress hosting and provides two types of WordPress plans. The first is the starter plan price at $3.75/month. It comes with basic WordPress features and allows customers to run any basic WordPress blog or corporate website. It also has standard support and comes with pre-installed themes and plugins along with a customized control panel.
The next higher plan is Essential Plan priced at $6.95/month and provides super speed features along with enhanced security and expert support. All the plans include a free domain along with unlimited space and bandwidth.
Inmotion Hosting Plans
Unlike most web hosting companies InMotion provides business class hosting at shared hosting prices. Along with a free domain name, all its plans include free solid state drives and 90-day replacement guarantee.
Its first plan is named launch and starts at $4.89/month. The next is called the power plan and is priced at $6.29/month and is ideal for any business or ecommerce website.
The final plan is priced at $10.4/month and is ideal for developers and growing organizations. You can run pretty much any kind of e-commerce or corporate website including blogs and other high traffic websites on these plans.
Along with the free 1-click installer and secure CDN services, InMotion provides one of the best hosting experiences in the industry.
In the launch plan you can have two websites but in the Power plan you can have six websites and in the Pro plan and you can host unlimited websites. The Power and Pro plan support all kinds of e-commerce applications but you cannot create any kind of e-commerce websites on the launch plan.
All the plans come with Google Apps integration and control panel supported by business class hardware that make them ideal for any purpose website or web application.
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Features and Add-ons
All the 3 hosting companies come with features filled with numerous characteristics that are normally absent in traditional hosting companies. For example, Bluehost is one of the first companies to go cloud by offering and endorsing the customers to opt for cloud based solutions instead of standard shared hosting accounts. Therefore, it has remained as one of the best cloud services available to users. All of its cloud services are originally planned and come with numerous benefits like unlimited storage and bandwidth along with features like DNS protection, content delivery networks and high resource scalability to improve user experience while at the same time allowing them to grow as much as they want. The cloud plans although don’t come with email storage but do offer a free domain name. Along with interactive dashboards, resource monitoring and instant scaling, Bluehost has managed to produce one of the most successful and widely appreciated cloud hosting services for its customers.
On the other hand, iPage provides cheap web hosting services that come with features ranging from email storage to online sales and marketing. It has one of the best customer support that comes with 24×7 availability with world class technology, network monitoring, high performance load balanced servers, visitor statistics for site traffic reporting and free cloud storage accounts. IPage also provides a toll free phone number in the US along with yellow pages listing which is ideal for beginning websites. It also has a $100 Google AdWords offer along with a $100 credit for Yahoo or Bing sponsorship search.
As InMotion plans are geared for power users and business websites, it comes with free domain registration plus free no-downtime website transfers and advertising credits worth $250. Along with the 90-day money back guarantee InMotion proves to be one of the most stable hosting companies that means business and nothing else. It also comes with web builder and CPanel along with an SSH command line that is ideal for both newbies and experienced developers. You can also check your website statistics on AWstats or raw log files.
Performance
Below we’ve run some test to analyze performance of each web hosting and found below results.
Out of 3 we found Bluehost the best in terms of server performance.
iPage Shared Hosting Server Performance
Bluehost Shared Hosting Server Performance
InMotion Hosting Shared Hosting Server Performance
maintaining server performance in not an easy task. When I was hosting with iPage, I was a bit annoyed with their performance. I had setup and was managing a WordPress website with only 1000 visitors per day and had chosen their highest shared plan. I was supposed to get uninterrupted service but every time I tried to upload more than 20 media files to the website through the CMS, the RAM consumption showed full consumption and the server just hung up. I was also sent a warning regarding high resource usage. If the server cannot handle simultaneous upload of more than 10 media files, then how on earth could we expect it to function properly when the traffic increases. Fortunately, the traffic was minimum and they didn’t charge me for high bandwidth usage. Except the bandwidth, each of their parameters showed that I was crossing the allowed limits. However, this was never the case with Bluehost and InMotion. They have more powerful server configurations that can handle multiple threads of processes at a time. Therefore, they are ideal for all kinds of business users and high performance oriented web applications.
Customer Support
When it comes to customer support, it is widely accepted that InMotion and Bluehost provide exceptional customer service with their experienced technology professionals who are always ready to solve any kind of technical problems that may arise during website setup or during scalability. IPage however is only ideal for US customers as it focuses and provides 24×7 support in the country. Customers from all other parts of the world have to reach the customer support through traditional methods like email and ticket support.
Usability, Upgrades and Migration
When it comes to usability Bluehost and InMotion are the most usable as they are modified to suit the company standards. iPage provides only the traditional cPanel’s that is completely unaltered but has a number of features that lack from Bluehost and InMotion. If you are going to upgrade your existing server architecture, then you will have to contact the customer support to understand whether they support upgrades or not. But if in case you are interested in WordPress or related content management websites then upgrading should not be a problem at all as you get extensive support for all applications and Infrastructures hosted on all three organizations. Bluehost comes with numerous features that are ideally suited for both personal and business use. Therefore, if you want to build commercial websites like Ecommerce or custom applications then Bluehost servers are ideal for your requirements.
However, if you want to build a simple blog or a corporate website that will not attract much attention then iPage should suffice your requirements. If you want to primarily focus on a business application and may need to expand the storage or if you are habituated to classic hosting panels and shared hosting accounts then InMotion should be an ideal choice for your requirements, as they do not have any cloud related plans but the business plans are as good as VPS servers.
All three organizations provide upgrades to VPS and dedicated servers, therefore if you require higher plans with better resources for growing websites or web applications then you can upgrade to the nearest ideal plan. However, depending on the type of services provided by the three companies Bluehost is the best If in case you want to upgrade your servers quite soon. The cloud hosting solutions from Bluehost can upgrade to any architecture while maintaining your application stability without any downtime or maintenance.
Conclusion
As the above features provide glimpse into the numerous features provided by the three companies the most ideal solution for any kind of application or website is a cloud based plan which is only provided by Bluehost. Although iPage is cheaper than all other alternatives, going cloud is the next step towards technological revolution in the web hosting industry.
Today Bluehost is one of the most popular and established organizations in web hosting that controls millions of domains and has thousands of customers from all over the world. However, iPage or InMotion are also competing organizations that want a share of the pie of the global web hosting industry. All three of them innovate constantly to attract consumers while at the same time focus rigorously on their advertising and marketing efforts. To attract customer’s organizations are using multiple methods of marketing and advertising along with unique services and offers.
The high scalability and resource monitoring features in cloud servers are greatly beneficial for any type of application that may or may not grow in the short or long period. In case you do not want a cloud based solution you can opt for business class hosting at InMotion which provides powerful shared services equal to VPS solutions in other hosting companies. If we ranked the 3 companies, then Bluehost is the best while InMotion is the second best and iPage although provides numerous features comes in the end.