Need somewhere to host your website? Finding a web host, whether you're new to running a site or looking for a new home for your website, is often difficult. With so many hosts, and hosting options, researching the right host can slow down your move, or even put it off completely.

Here's how InMotion Hosting can make hosting a site simple for beginners and experts alike. Get up to 50% off using this special link!

Time to Pay for Web Hosting?

At some stage, every website owner takes the decision to pay for hosting.

Perhaps your site has got along fine; it might be a blog hosted freely on WordPress.com or Blogger. Perhaps you use cloud storage to host your website, or perhaps your website is embedded within a single URL thanks to the Itty Bitty method.

Whatever the case, signing up to pay for web hosting is quite a big decision. Often, webmasters are tempted to pay as little as possible, and the results usually correspond with that low outlay. Instead, we'd suggest paying just a little bit more to make sure you don't end up wasting your Sunday trying to deal with an uncommunicative web host who has decided to delete your website (trust me, it's a bad way to end your weekend).

While various options are available, InMotion Hosting is a particularly good example of an affordable web host with good customer support.

Get Started With InMotion Hosting: Choose a Package

To sign up with InMotion Hosting, you'll need to choose the right type of hosting for your needs. These different hosting packages come with various benefits and advantages, based upon the type of site you plan to run. For instance, a busy site will require more bandwidth than a small personal blog.

InMotion Hosting's cPanel

Similarly, a site with thousands of hourly visitors will typically require a dedicated server, rather than shared hosting.

As this is a beginner's guide, we're assuming you're setting up a basic static site or WordPress blog. For these purposes, you should use InMotion Hosting's WordPress Hosting Package. This is available from $8.99 a month, with the option to upgrade hosting as your site becomes more popular.

With this package, you'll get a free domain for running one website. It's suitable for 20,000 unique monthly visitors and comes with 40GB of SSD storage. This gives everything a speed increase, as SSDs are faster than traditional hard disk drives.

This package also offers unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email accounts, and the BoldGrid WordPress building framework. If you have little to no web design experience, this drag and drop system can help you design your own layout. Check the BoldGrid website for more information.

InMotion hosts all options on Linux servers. Unusually, InMotion Hosting doesn't offer a Windows Server option. If this is a must have for you, look for a different reputable web host. Check InMotion Hosting's main page for other hosting options.

How Does InMotion's Subscription Compare?

InMotion Hosting is already a popular option for anyone wishing to launch a website, or move their site from another host. But does it really give good value?

With five packages on offer, you're immediately going to spot that InMotion Hosting is more expensive than its competitors. Big names like GoDaddy and HostGator offer a more complicated range of options, however, and it's easier to find yourself stuck between different packages.

With InMotion Hosting, the limited choice makes it simpler for you to choose the right package and get the best deal. For example, WordPress hosting on InMotion is (at the time of writing) $7.26 a month. Meanwhile, you can find a similarly optimized experience on GoDaddy for as little as $3.99 a month, or $4.99 with greater bandwidth. (GoDaddy also offers packages for managing multiple sites).

Similarly, Hostgator offers WordPress plans from just $2.75 a month. However, its packages are apparently the same as the standard plan, so there's little obvious optimization.

The Benefits of InMotion Hosting's Plans

These sites (and others) aside, InMotion Hosting offers some important benefits, which we think goes towards justifying the price. First, and most importantly, is the level of customer service.

InMotion Hosting's Account Management Panel

I'm not the only one on the MakeUseOf team who's been stuck in endless circular online support conversations, seemingly unable to solve the most simple of problems. No one wants this. Fortunately, that's not the experience you'll find with InMotion Hosting.

A couple of minor issues sprung up while I was setting up my site. I sent an email outlining the problems, and they were quickly dealt with. In 13 years of running websites, I've never had such good service.

The second benefit is the quality of the customer portal, the Account Management Panel. Here you can tweak account details and access the cPanel backend for your website. Many hosts make this part of the experience unnecessarily complex, and a little disorienting. Fortunately, that's not the case with InMotion Hosting.

Easy Site Setup

InMotion Hosting makes setting up your site really simple. If you need to create a static site, you can simply upload the pages through cPanel.

But what if you want something more complicated? Fortunately, InMotion Hosting offers scripts to install pretty much any type of website, from blogs and forums to wikis, e-commerce tools, image galleries, video hosting, and much more. (Note that hosting your videos as an alternative to YouTube can quickly become expensive.)

Install WordPress on InMotion Hosting

All you need to do is identify what you want to install and click Install Now. You can do this from the main cPanel with popular scripts, or install other web software via the full list.

Note that if you opted for the WordPress Hosting, the popular blogging software will come preinstalled for you. You'll also receive the login details via email.

Migrate Your Website to InMotion Hosting

If you haven't purchased a domain name with your signup, you can easily migrate an existing domain to InMotion.

All you need to do is request the correct name server address, then log into your domain registrar account. Here, simply replace the existing name servers with the InMotion Hosting replacements. If you make a mistake, you should be able to revert to the original name servers without too much trouble.

Presumably, you also have a website attached to the domain. In this situation, you should back up your site's files, export any databases, and basically have a copy of the site ready to migrate. InMotion Hosting provides detailed steps for anyone wishing to move their existing site to new hosting.

Need Email? Try InMotion Hosting Webmail

Once your website is set up, it might be smart to have an email address with the same domain. InMotion Hosting offers email, with a straightforward user interface to help you create addresses, add passwords, and set mailbox quotas.

Create an email account for your domain

Once created, you have two choices.

  1. Access emails via your usual email client: this is simple enough, and the email system can email instructions to aid with this.
  2. Install the WebMail Lite script via cPanel: this is a webmail solution, along the lines of Gmail or Outlook.com, where you can collect emails in your browser.

The easier option is to rely on WebMail Lite. Just remember to configure your email account once you've set it up. Usefully, WebMail Lite works with any IMAP-enabled account, so you could use it as your primary email application!

Need a New Web Host? Try InMotion Hosting

With good-quality customer service, easy site setup, and a monthly subscription reflecting the quality of hosting and support, InMotion Hosting is an excellent option for any individual looking for a new or first web host. Get up to 50% off using this special link!

Migration options are straightforward, and the range of web applications to choose from is considerable. In short, if you need a high-quality web host that you can rely on, but are limited by a low budget, InMotion Hosting should be at the top of your list.

While many good free web hosting services exist, if you have big aspirations for your site, give them a boost with InMotion Hosting.