Inmotion Hosting vs Contabo: guide for 2024

Final verdict

Looking over InMotion Hosting vs. Contabo, it’s clear why both hosts are so popular. They have both hosted millions of
websites that run on WordPress for decades, building up a loyal customer base.

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  InMotion Hosting (Overall grade: 8.4)
  
  
  provides a well-rounded hosting service with various types of hosting plans such as WordPress, eCommerce, cloud, and VPS hosting. The service stands out with its top-notch performance courtesy of UltraStack Technology and NVMe SSD storage, bolstered by a 99.99% uptime guarantee. Its diverse plans cater to multiple needs, and users benefit from enhanced security features including DDoS protection, malware detection, and free SSL certificates across all plans. InMotion also excels in customer support, offering 24/7 assistance through multiple channels and a comprehensive help center. However, some users report slow performance on budget plans and issues with complex user interfaces.
  
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  Contabo (Overall grade: 7.6)
  
  
  is particularly notable for its strong performance and reliability, making it an excellent choice for high-traffic and multimedia websites. Utilizing AMD EPYC processors and fast storage options, Contabo guarantees 99.996% uptime, ensuring minimal downtime. The service also emphasizes advanced security measures, such as 24/7 physical monitoring and mandatory two-factor authentication. Despite these strengths, Contabo falls short in user-friendliness and customer support availability, with limited support hours and no live chat. Its control panel can be challenging for users accustomed to more standardized interfaces like cPanel, and some users report frequent downtimes and slow support response times.
  

Hosting types offered

Both platforms provide a variety of hosting types, each designed to meet the different needs of users.

Although both offer a variety of hosting plans tailored to different needs, in certain cases, one platform may prove to be more suitable.

Detailed comparison

🏆 Winner
Contabo: Contabo offers a higher uptime guarantee and fast, responsive hardware.

InMotion Hosting provides diverse uptime claims across its various hosting plans but lacks explicit guarantees for many. Its shared hosting showed impressive performance in 2022 with 100% uptime. VPS and dedicated servers claim 99.99% uptime, but these figures are not clearly guaranteed. The managed WordPress hosting enjoys 99.99% uptime with advanced performance features. Historical data reveals improving uptime, from 99.73% in 2020 to 100% in 2022.

Contabo’s 99.996% uptime guarantee stands out in the industry. The hosting provider utilizes high-performance AMD EPYC processors and fast storage options. Physical security measures like 24/7 CCTV monitoring and access controlled by magnetic cards enhance reliability. Free DDoS protection and mandatory two-factor authentication ensure robust security. Contabo’s site monitoring and speed performance tests consistently show no downtime and high efficiency.

🏆 Winner InMotion: Excellent performance and solid reliability.

When it comes to general performance, InMotion Hosting and Contabo both offer commendable speed and reliability. InMotion leverages UltraStack Technology and NVMe SSD storage to provide up to 20x faster website speeds and benefits from advanced caching mechanisms. Contabo, on the other hand, utilizes AMD EPYC 7282 processors and offers Gen 4 PCIe NVMe SSD for impressive performance. Both providers have multiple data centers—InMotion in the USA and Europe, and Contabo spanning the USA, UK, Germany, and Singapore. InMotion edges out slightly with built-in performance-enhancing tools and a comprehensive caching system.

Website speed

InMotion’s UltraStack Technology and advanced caching deliver faster website speeds with NVMe SSD storage. Their 99.99% uptime guarantee ensures your site is almost always available. Contabo offers strong competition with AMD EPYC processors and PCIe NVMe SSDs, along with a 99.996% uptime. InMotion’s multiple built-in caching options provide it with a competitive edge in maintaining consistently fast load times.

Scalability

Both hosts offer scalable solutions, but they operate differently. InMotion provides multiple scalable plans ranging from shared hosting to dedicated servers, allowing for easy upgrades. Their plans start at affordable prices and offer flexible scaling options. Contabo also offers scalable VPS plans that can be upgraded without sacrificing availability, but it lacks specific information on whether scaling happens automatically. Both have dedicated server options, with InMotion starting at $35.00 per month. The exact details for Contabo’s scaling costs aren’t clear.

🏆 Winner
InMotion Hosting: Offers comprehensive security features and compliance measures ensuring user data safety and privacy.
Both InMotion Hosting and Contabo, have notable differences in their approaches to technical and operational
security, as well as in their compliance with regulations.

Technical security measures:

In technical security, InMotion Hosting offers free SSL certificates with all plans, dedicated IP addresses, and supports both PHP 7 and PHP 8. It also has features like DDoS protection, malware detection, and firewall software. Contabo also provides SSL certificates, customizable PHP versions, always-on DDoS protection, and malware scanning via Imunify AV. Both hosts offer robust security, however, InMotion provides additional features like SSH access and hack & malware protection in all plans.

Operational security measures:

InMotion Hosting ensures operational security with features such as spam protection, automatic backups, and secure application roll-back. For email communication, Spam Experts tools are utilized to ward off spam. Contabo emphasizes physical security with 24/7 CCTV surveillance, magnetic card access, and strict role-based access controls in their data centers. They also offer two-factor authentication and advanced monitoring tools to keep systems secure.

Compliance and certifications:

Both InMotion Hosting and Contabo are GDPR compliant, ensuring they protect personal data and uphold users’ rights. InMotion provides guidance on meeting PCI compliance standards and has policies for CCPA, DMCA, trademark violations, and doxxing incidents. Contabo places importance on industry standards but does not mention specific compliance with HIPAA or PCI standards beyond security measures that suggest general compliance.

🏆 Winner InMotion Hosting: Efficient and feature-rich hosting suitable for varied professional needs.

Both InMotion Hosting and Contabo offer valuable features catering to different user requirements. InMotion Hosting provides outstanding user-friendliness with its industry-leading cPanel, making website management straightforward. It also includes a Softaculous application installer, which simplifies the installation of various web applications. The inclusion of NVMe SSD storage ensures high performance with fast load times. Additionally, InMotion’s unlimited bandwidth and free SSL certificates appeal to users looking for uninterrupted service and secure transactions without extra costs.

Contabo, on the other hand, emphasizes performance and security with AMD EPYC processors, extensive traffic allowances, and robust data center monitoring. Though the availability of a website builder isn’t specifically mentioned, Contabo excels with custom images, cloud-init, and SSH keys that appeal to tech-savvy users. Its multiple OS options and advanced control panel features allow for extensive customization. Free DDoS protection and 99.996% uptime guarantee add layers of reliability. However, some features like domain management might incur additional fees.

Both providers support a range of users from beginners to experts with user-friendly website builders and WordPress staging areas. However, in terms of developer tools, both InMotion Hosting and Contabo offer robust options including SSH access, support for multiple programming languages, and Git for version control, thus appealing to developers looking for advanced capabilities.

Email services:

InMotion Hosting supports the creation and management of professional email addresses, which can facilitate transactional emails and email campaigns. Contabo also offers email hosting but focuses more on server control and advanced features. Neither provider explicitly mentions reselling third-party email services, so customers seeking integrated solutions like Google Workspace may need to configure these separately.

🏆 Winner
Contabo: Efficient and flexible cloud hosting solutions for all needs.

Evaluating the pricing of plans among various hosting providers can be complex due to their differing pricing and renewal strategies. Additionally, certain plans require annual commitments, which adds to the difficulty of making comparisons. The prices listed are based on monthly commitments; plans requiring annual commitments are indicated. Additionally, although some providers offer identical plans for WordPress and shared hosting, we have created separate tables for each to enhance clarity.

InMotion Hosting offers an array of hosting plans at varied price points, focusing on feature-rich packages that include free domains, SSL certificates, and website builders. Contabo, on the other hand, provides competitive pricing with robust features for VPS and dedicated hosting, including extensive storage options and vCPU cores. Notably, Contabo offers both self-managed and managed VPS plans, catering to different user expertise levels. The diverse array of plans at both providers offers unique benefits, making Contabo a preferable choice due to its highly flexible and high-performance plans.

Enterprise plans

InMotion’s dedicated hosting plans, starting at $42.49 per month, deliver configurable servers with high uptime and security, making them suitable for large businesses requiring flexibility. Contabo’s enterprise-level Cloud VDS and dedicated servers, beginning at €59.78 per month, offer high-performance physical CPU cores, large RAM capacities, and extensive NVMe storage, providing powerful solutions for demanding enterprise applications.

Winner: InMotion Hosting: Robust setup options and extensive support resources.

InMotion Hosting uses cPanel, a widely recognized and user-friendly control panel. This makes it an accessible option for both technical and non-technical users, offering a smooth interface and clear navigation. The inclusion of a demo cPanel allows users to familiarize themselves with the system before fully diving in, which is especially helpful for beginners. The simplicity of operation with features like one-click installs for popular web applications adds to the ease of use, ensuring that users can quickly manage their websites without significant effort.

Contabo, on the other hand, offers a custom Control Panel tailored specifically for their services. This panel provides a range of management options including server management, upgrading VPS, and checking OS status. While it is also user-friendly, those who are used to more standardized panels like cPanel might face a learning curve. Nevertheless, the features are comprehensive and provide all necessary tools to manage the hosting environment effectively. This makes it suitable for both new users who are willing to learn and experienced users who need advanced configurations.

Both InMotion Hosting and Contabo provide migration tools, but InMotion Hosting stands out with its free migration tools that ensure a smooth transfer without any downtime. They also offer the Launch Assist service for more complicated transfers, taking care of all files and databases. Contabo also offers migration options, but these are managed services that may come with additional fees depending on the complexity and requirements. InMotion Hosting’s comprehensive migration support is more user-friendly, particularly for those looking for a quick and cost-effective transition.

InMotion Hosting has a highly accessible help center, providing 24/7 U.S.-based support through live chat, ticketing, and phone support. Their online support center includes step-by-step education channels, community support forums, and specialized WordPress tutorials. They also offer premier support services and managed hosting to cover more advanced needs. In contrast, Contabo offers support every day through tickets and phone support during specific hours. Their online resources include tutorials, FAQs, and API documentation, but lack the round-the-clock immediacy of InMotion Hosting’s support. Overall, InMotion Hosting’s support system is more comprehensive and accessible.

🏆 Winner
InMotion Hosting: A precise environment for diverse user management tailored for WordPress sites.

Comparing InMotion Hosting and Contabo in user management and flexibility, InMotion stands out with its capability to create and manage multiple WordPress user roles, including administrators, editors, authors, contributors, and subscribers. This granularity in user roles allows website owners to finely tune the level of access and engagement each user has. On the other hand, Contabo focuses more on personal information management, API credentials, and permissions for server access, but lacks the intricate role-specific permission system seen in InMotion. This makes InMotion more suitable for complex websites needing diverse user roles.

In terms of user interface and tools, InMotion provides a dedicated WordPress interface with plugins like the User Role Editor for easy role customization. This ensures administrators can manage user roles intuitively. Contabo’s Control Panel, while user-friendly, is more geared toward managing server-related tasks, with options for updating personal information, changing passwords, and managing API credentials. It is less focused on detailed user role management but provides a clean interface for server management tasks.

Access control and scalability are well-handled by both providers but in different ways. InMotion’s approach with WordPress user roles, along with tools like WP-CLI for command-line management, provides effective control over user permissions, making it ideal for complex setups with many users. Contabo, focusing on server-level control with mandatory two-factor authentication and DDoS protection, ensures high security but does not offer the same flexibility in managing growing numbers of user roles. Therefore, for user-rich environments, InMotion is better equipped.

InMotion Hosting user roles table:

Contabo user roles table:

Winner InMotion Hosting: InMotion Hosting provides extensive and round-the-clock customer support with multiple contact methods to ensure quick and efficient assistance.

InMotion Hosting offers a wide range of customer support options including phone support, live chat, a well-maintained knowledge base, and a vibrant community support forum. Their support is available 24/7 through various channels, providing users with continuous access to help. They also have a very responsive ticketing system that is managed all day, every day. In addition, they provide managed hosting services and website transfers, making it straightforward for customers to get up and running.

Contabo, on the other hand, has limited support hours and lacks live chat support. Although they offer phone and email support as well as a detailed self-help section, their response times via email can be inconsistent. Their ticketing system is only monitored during specific hours, which can limit accessibility. For customers seeking more enhanced support, Contabo provides managed services and emergency support upgrades, but these come at an additional cost.

User feedback

InMotion Hosting receives mixed reviews from users, highlighting several strengths and weaknesses. Customers appreciate the variety of hosting plans, transparent pricing, robust uptime, and exceptional customer support. On the downside, some users experience slow servers on lower-tier plans and encounter long waiting times for customer support. Additionally, the platform’s user interface has received criticism for being somewhat difficult to navigate, and there are concerns about service outages and higher prices for premium features.

Contabo offers affordable and powerful VPS plans, which are particularly beneficial for running demanding software and complex tasks. Several users have praised the reliability, stability, and cost-effectiveness of the service, highlighting its great value for money. However, frequent downtime, limited customer support, and a somewhat outdated control panel have been significant points of concern. Some users have experienced slow response times and unresolved service requests, suggesting areas for improvement in customer service and operational transparency.

FAQ