# InMotion Hosting Review: Does the Cats Who Code Recommendation Still Hold Up?
You’ve got a dozen browser tabs open and every single one is a web host review. Somewhere around tab eight, Cats Who Code, the long-running dev blog that taught half the internet to build WordPress themes, keeps showing up next to InMotion Hosting. Now you’re stuck wondering if that endorsement is a real signal or a stale affiliate link from 2015.
Honest question. I asked the same thing 18 months ago, right after moving a WordPress site off a host that needed four seconds to load a single page. These days I test hosting providers for BriskPick and keep live sites running on all the major platforms, so InMotion has been in my rotation long enough for me to form opinions. A couple of them are complaints.
Here’s the full picture, including the renewal pricing and backup quirks the sales page skips.
## TL;DR: My Verdict in 30 Seconds
– **Rating: 4.4/5**
– **Best for:** WordPress sites, small business websites, and anyone who wants 24/7 phone support from actual humans
– **Standout features:** 90-day money-back guarantee, free site migrations, NVMe storage, US-based support team
– **Main downsides:** Renewal prices jump 2-3x, and the cheapest plan skips automatic daily backups
– **My take:** The Cats Who Code endorsement still stands. InMotion is a legitimately good host. Just buy the **Launch** plan and skip Core.
– Want the raw numbers? **Check InMotion Hosting pricing here**
## Why “InMotion Hosting Review Cats Who Code” Gets Searched So Much
Cats Who Code has been publishing web development tutorials since 2007. Developers trust the site, and its hosting roundups have pointed readers toward InMotion for years. The reasons make sense. This is a host with SSH access, Git support, cPanel, staging environments, and uptime numbers that hold.
So when a developer searches that phrase, they’re really asking one thing: does a technical, no-hype source’s pick survive contact with actual servers? I ran the experiment myself. Short answer: mostly yes.
## InMotion Hosting Plans and Pricing
The shared hosting lineup has four tiers, and every one includes a free domain, free SSL, and free professional email, plus that famous **90-day money-back guarantee**.
| Plan | Intro Price | Renews At | Storage | Websites |
|——|————|———–|———|———-|
| Core | $2.99/mo | ~$9.99/mo | 10GB SSD | 1 |
| Launch | $4.99/mo | ~$11.99/mo | 50GB NVMe | Unlimited |
| Power | $7.99/mo | ~$16.99/mo | 100GB NVMe | Unlimited |
| Pro | $12.99/mo | ~$22.99/mo | 200GB NVMe | Unlimited |
A few pricing facts worth knowing before you click buy:
– Intro rates require an annual commitment or longer. Month-to-month billing costs more.
– **Launch is the sweet spot.** It’s the first tier with **NVMe storage** and free automated daily backups. Core has neither.
– WordPress hosting runs on the same infrastructure, just pre-installed and tuned.
– Need more muscle? VPS plans start around $30/mo, dedicated servers around $140/mo.
Prices shift often, so double-check before checkout: **check current InMotion Hosting pricing here**.
## Speed Test Results: How Fast Is InMotion, Really?
My test site is a regular WordPress build: lightweight theme, 10 plugins, real content. I ran it through GTmetrix, WebPageTest, and Pingdom over several months. Here’s what came back:
– **TTFB (time to first byte): 170-220ms** from US test locations
– **Fully loaded time: 1.1-1.4 seconds** for a lean WordPress page
– **Largest Contentful Paint: 1.4 seconds** with caching enabled
Two things drive those numbers.
First, the **Max Speed Zone**. InMotion lets you choose your data center, Los Angeles or Virginia Beach. My audience skews East Coast, so I went with Virginia and watched TTFB tighten right away.
Second, **NVMe plus UltraStack**. Launch tiers and up get NVMe drives, and the UltraStack config for WordPress layers PHP 8.x, OPcache, and object caching. Switching it on cut my load times by roughly 35%.
One honest caveat: there’s no bundled global CDN. European test nodes saw TTFB around 350-450ms. Fine for most sites. If your audience is international, pair it with Cloudflare’s free CDN the way I did. Setup took me ten minutes.
## Uptime: 11 Months of Tracking
InMotion advertises 99.99% uptime. My monitor caught two brief blips in 11 months, about 20 minutes of downtime total. That works out to roughly **99.97-99.98% actual uptime**.
Translation: your site stays up. I have never had to babysit this host. Not once.
## Ease of Use: Two Dashboards, Zero Drama
Here’s my main UX gripe: you get two control panels.
– **AMP (Account Management Panel):** billing, domains, renewals. Clean and modern.
– **cPanel:** the actual hosting work. Files, databases, email, one-click installs. Powerful, but it looks its age.
Neither is difficult. Hopping between them feels like 2012 in a few spots, though. Developers won’t mind since they’ll live in cPanel and SSH anyway, which is exactly why the Cats Who Code crowd likes this company.
For everyone else, the basics are covered. A one-click WordPress install finishes in under five minutes, and **BoldGrid**, the free drag-and-drop builder, gets a simple site online without code. Fair warning: it nudges you toward BoldGrid’s own plugins and themes a bit aggressively.
## Support: Humans Who Answer the Phone
I’ve called at unflattering hours more than once. A person picks up, they’ve been US-based every time, and they knew WordPress instead of reading a script at me. Hold times ran a few minutes. Most budget hosts bury phone contact entirely, so round-the-clock phone access sets InMotion apart.
## Where InMotion Annoys Me
Time for the fine print.
**Renewal pricing.** That $4.99 Launch rate becomes roughly $11.99/mo when your first term ends, and every tier jumps 2-3x. The whole industry does this and I still hate it. Put a reminder in your calendar a month before renewal so the sticker shock doesn’t land on your card statement.
**No daily backups on Core.** The cheapest plan skips automatic backups completely. You’d need Launch, a plugin, or your own offsite routine. For a starter tier, that’s a risky gap. One bad plugin update and you’re rebuilding from scratch.
**No default CDN.** Mention