August 14, 2010 at 10:57 pm
We’ve been using InMotion Hosting since late Q4 of last year up to recently. We’ve stopped using them for many reasons, but here are my reasons why we switched and why we even went with them in the first place. There are quite a few great things that happened with our time with InMotion Hosting, but it seems that the bad always outweighs the good. From all that has happened to us in such a short time, which everything is written in this blog post, is just saddening to see happen. Hopefully this blog post will help you find out if you want to use InMotion Hosting’s service or even to drop them even based on our original thoughts.
The Good
Why we went with them
My reasoning why we went with InMotion Hosting is actually for a number of good purposes. We have five good reasons why we picked InMotion Hosting.
- We needed the expandability. We started out on their business plan and I was planning on that in the future I would upgrade to their VPS plans if we needed it (which ironically we’re powered by a VPS now). And I also picked them because they offered dedicated hosting, which is another major reason for expandability.
- We needed the support. I’ve worked with many hosting companies and I have to say, InMotion Hosting had one of the best support representatives. But I have to say, their support isn’t the best all the time; we’ll get to that later.
- We needed the reliability. Because we’re running a blog here that’s on the first page of Google for a variety of search queries, we needed perfect uptime (even though we all know you cannot have 100% uptime because of kernel updates, which requires a restart to apply changes). And their server uptime is great, our server that we were hosting on has been up for around 160 days; that’s great uptime right there.
- We needed the power. Tech Cores is very minimalistic without a doubt, one of the most minimalistic tech blogs out there, but we still need the power to make sure our system loads and runs quickly. We needed those quad core servers (which we’ll talk more about soon) and a powerful network to make sure our content will get served to our readers quickly.
- We needed the top web host. I went out on a huge search last year for the best web host who has won the most awards and such for their perfect uptime, support, and reliability. And I have to say, they really did have all of that while I was hosting with them but things started to go way down hill (we’ll get to it soon).
The Bad
Why we left them
I really have to say right off the bat that InMotion Hosting was a great web-host for a good period of time. But when things went wrong with their system, it seems to be that they didn’t know what to do.
- Their support was a bit brain-dead sometimes. I have to say, their support was great most of the time, but I can name a few names at InMotion Hosting who’s support representatives really don’t know what they’re are talking about. Like for example, there is this one support representative that basically has no idea about a couple of things and he/she asks one of the colleagues working with them every single time I posed a question. I don’t want to be put on the phone waiting for a support representative to ask someone else because that support representative doesn’t have the proper training/knowledge. That’s bad training right there and to be honest, I didn’t want to deal with it. I honestly felt like I wanted to hang up and call back to hopefully get a smarter support representative.
- Their servers are over-sold. When you have a host that has around 50GBs of RAM on their servers and only 300MB of it is left, that says something right there to a server guy like myself. I can almost guarantee you that they might have some VPS plans on the same server we were hosting on. To occupy that much RAM on a shared server is ridiculous. It might be cPanel’s/WHM’s fault with all those hosting accounts, but honestly, that’s scary to look at a server occupying that much RAM.
- Their bandwidth usage is huge. I’m seeing around 20TB (yes, terabytes) being sent from this one server. Because it’s a shared server, I don’t have any idea on what the timeframe is for that, but that’s one over-sold server if you ask me. We’re on the business plan so you might think that they might have a set limit about how many accounts they have on a server, but seriously, 20TB being sent is a rather large number on one server. I don’t know about you, but the very first thing that pops up in my head is that they might not only be hosting their business accounts on that server.
- The server has its laggy days. Some days, I have noticed that the server is dreadfully slow. This can happen to any hosting company for lots of reasons, but sometimes waiting 5+ seconds just for the domain to resolve. With the server being powered by four processors (Intel Xeon X5560), it’s quite the beast of a server. The fifteen minute load average is at about 4.5, so that’s not too bad per se, but remember, it’s one beast of a server with a large amount of accounts on it.
- When something goes wrong, things get crazy. For about two months straight, we were having problems gathering statistical information via a widely used program, AWStats. This is most likely caused by cPanel’s system, but I didn’t care what was causing it. I contacted the highest guy over at InMotion Hosting I could (the co-founder) and I was able to get it fixed by letting the system admins (who I have talked to on the phone for many hours) move Tech Cores over to a new (and more powerful) server on their network. Granted that this did fix the issue, but why did I have to tell the system admins to do it? It took two months for me to get my butt off the chair, step up and talk to the co-founder, and get the system to collect statistical information correctly by moving to a new server. Why didn’t the system admins offer that after many days of struggling, I don’t know, but what I do know is that they did try get it fixed, so I have to give them credit for that. I got in direct contact with the system admins (people who actually know how the system really works) and we were able to get that issue sorted out. But for the fact that it took two months is outrageous.
- Their legal support doesn’t listen. I contacted the legal support department at InMotion Hosting to ask them some clear and straightforward questions about one of the websites I’m starting up (which will not be hosted with them as of now) that would be hosted on their servers at the time, and they responded by saying this message, “InMotion Hosting is unable to offer legal advice. We recommend that you get in touch with a lawyer to get detailed answers to your questions.” If you ask me, that would be a failure on their part to read my original message that clearly stated I would be hosting it on their servers. I was not pleased at all with their response and when I replied back to their message, they never got back to me. I had to go through at least five support representatives to get the answer I needed after that. Their legal department needs to read the whole email and not glimpse through it. If I’m asking a serious legal question about my business with them, I expect a serious response back and not their failure to read the email I’ve sent.
- Their servers aren’t entirely secure. Earlier this year in January, we had a major phishing attack on Tech Cores that made quite a few systems block Tech Cores from viewing all because a secure hole in InMotion Hosting’s system. Basically, a user was able to use our domain as a plot for a phishing attack but letting the information on another account on the same server be served. To explain this in an easier fashion, they were able to use a link like “http://techcores.com/~accountname/phishattack.html” that used “accountname”, a different InMotion Hosting customer on the same server, and use our domain to view a file on their own account. Obviously this is a major secure hole and InMotion Hosting said that the offending code that caused it was in our Apache’s .htaccess file for the main domain. But to be fully honest, they should prevent this on their end and not the customer’s end. I expect more security from a host as big as InMotion Hosting. Even if they suspend the account that caused it, which they did, it still leaves that trail on our end which I do not appreciate at all. As a server admin myself, I know for a fact that they could of prevented this.
- When there’s an issue, they don’t contact you. We had one issue with our Roundcube installation (which cPanel controlled) accessing its database. Because I wondered why I could not access my own webmail, I contacted support and they were aware of the issue. But for the fact that they didn’t post any notification at all kind of startles me. If there’s something wrong, and they knew about it, they should, with all due respect, contact their users on said server about the issue and not wait for their users to contact them. It saves them the trouble of them receiving calls and emails from their customers and it also saves their customers time to inform them about the issue.
Hopefully this will help some of you InMotion Hosting customers who are currently using their service and also those looking to switch over to them. Please remember this though, everything listed is our experience with InMotion Hosting. Your experience may be different, but this is what happened to us. As of right now, we are currently off InMotion Hosting’s servers and we are hosted on our own VPS. I’m honestly done with InMotion Hosting’s service and will not be returning because of our bad experiences with them. All of this happened in just eight months and I’m afraid to see what would happen longer if we would of stayed with them.
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Tech Cores is most definitely NOT a "minimalistic" blog -- it's packed with features and is quite large. (Heck, nookkin.com isn't minimalistic either, though it's less bloated than TC.)OK, the bad: 1) Tech support is often brain-dead. iPower's is ridiculous; InMotion's is far better. 2) As are all shared servers. 3) Again, all shared servers suffer from this at some point. (20TB is quite meaningless here because you don't know a) the time period or b) know their connection speed.) 4) Same with even the most powerful computers. 5) Things do go crazy sometimes. 6) A hosting provider's legal department can't provide legal advice. Ask them if it's "against the TOS" as opposed to "illegal." 7) My iPower client site got compromised. What do you expect with a shared server? :P 8) Maybe they didn't know of the problem until you noticed it, contacted them, and they confirmed it.
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LikeTech Cores's theme is very minimalistic. Compared to other tech blogs, it is very minimalistic for its category.1) Ohh yes, that is correct, but their support can be like iPower. Most people know what they're talking about though. 2) Lyosha, using almost 50GBs of RAM is beyond my mind! Their servers are VERY oversold and I expect more from a "business" plan. 3) Connection speed is 1GB/s I believe and I don't know how long it is. For most *nix systems, some logs are cleared upon reboot. So it could be 160 days. 4) True, but when I say laggy days, I really mean it... waiting for the DNS to resolve is just ridiculous. 5) For two months we had that issue! That's crazy for you. No host should let their customers suffer for two months. 6) I did ask them if it would be against their TOS. I clearly stated that I'm asking legal advice about their TOS. It was their failure to read... trust me. 7) Well, InMotion Hosting is one of the largest business hosts; I didn't expect that from them. And also, they could of easily prevented that. 8 ) They did know about it... did you read the entire thing? "I contacted support and they were aware of the issue." They did know of the issue even before I contacted them... and also, that's not the only thing that I had problems with their support already knowing of an issue. There has been numerous cases where there was something wrong that they already knew about but didn't inform us. I seriously think they need some status webpage/website to list the status of all their servers and send out emails if anything does happen.
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LikeDo you know what "oversold" means? (Versus "overloaded" for example?) If you oversell, you have a 100GB server and you're giving people 5GB accounts. The server can physically serve 20 users that way. But you sell accounts to 50 people, knowing that most of them will use less than 1GB each.This is the standard behavior of web/file hosting providrs, ISP speed tiers, cellular companies, and even utilities. If they actually gave everyone their advertised services at all times, a lot of the resources would go unused.As far as minimalism goes: a minimalistic blog sacrifices features for performance and keeps things really simple. (For example, very few images in the design, a very basic comment form, and not much else besides the posts themselves.)WordPress is hardly a minimalistic platform even code-wise. It's fairly bloated, to be honest.
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LikeYes, I know what oversold means. :)That's completely true, and I completely understand about doing that in a shared environment.Actually, I have one design I made that used absolutely no images in the design and is extremely minimalistic. But I'm not going to run Tech Cores on it.WordPress is a VERY bloated, IMHO. The code isn't optimized at all and it accesses MySQL way too often. But once you enable some caching options in WordPress, optimize MySQL & Apache, and everything else like that, you can get WordPress running fairly fast. :)
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LikeI am having same problems in Inmotion hosting (to which I switched less than a month back). Frequently disables account (yes all domains in the account even though one domain has problem).
Can any one suggest any best VPS hosting company based on your experience ?
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LikeAs I customer I'm fully disappointed with In Motion Hosting. Our account has been suspended and we have no access to the control panel, emails (!) and ftp because the traffic was to high (250 visits per day) even though we bought unlimited traffic. We are now afraid that we will lose all our critical data because they give no access to them. We are really terrified as a company and have been fully stultified to our customers because they see a message like that (pointing to a file suspended.cgi - you can understand what suspended means to a customer or partner!!!):
This site is currently unavailable
If you are the account holder, please contact customer service. Our customer service center is available 24x7 via phone, chat, or email.
As an established company in Greece (Oxy Publishing SA) with very serious and big customers we believe that the definitely don't deserve the award of professionalism. And our damage is really big and unrefundable in any way.
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LikeDo not go with these guys they have done nothing but mess up my systems, there support team is not helpful and they deleted locked folders and messed up all my htaccess files and never would fix it and kept telling me they would send it to tier 2 support and closed my request thye play cat and mouse. I ordered a dedicated server and they gave me a shared server and took my money and took me weeks or fighting with them to admit that I was on a shared server. Then they put me on VPS and with a shared IP. Unless you have months of time to deal with there sub standard support go else where.
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LikeWow, regarding them deleting all your Apache config files, that's just ridiculous to see happen.
Now that needs to stink for them giving you a VPS with ordering a dedicated server. Also, a shared IP on a VPS? Come on! There should be a dedicated IP on any VPS. Not going to use them again for any clients I may have. That's crazy that they don't give you your own dedicated IP for free.
I'm in the process of looking for a host for a client who needs a host with shared, VPS, and dedicated support. InMotion Hosting is out of the question now for me. What host would you recommend who offers it all? I wish all hosts were perfect, but guess that'll never happen.
Thanks for your opinion, Andrew!
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LikeAnd a couple months ago, you were raving about how awesome InMotion was. I was ready to switch over in December, but I guess I'll stick with GoDaddy since it works for me. (No, it's not perfect, but it works.)
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LikeI guess nothing lasts for a long period of time... GoDaddy's hosting is pretty reliable from what I hear and their support is pretty good too. I can vouch for Yahoo's business hosting too. Their support team knows what they're talking about and it's almost like every support rep is very smart.
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LikeI've actually never had to contact GoDaddy support about anything. But crappy outsourced "tech support" is really to be expected of any company nowadays.
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LikeI actually never had any out-of-country support reps before with InMotion Hosting. I know Apple keeps their US support Canada and the US... but for the hosting companies, especially with InMotion Hosting, I think most of their support reps are in the country. Every time I called/e-mailed InMotion Hosting, they were in the Virginia office.
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LikeWow, regarding them deleting all your Apache config files, that's just ridiculous to see happen.Now that needs to stink for them giving you a VPS with ordering a dedicated server. Also, a shared IP on a VPS? Come on! There should be a dedicated IP on any VPS. Not going to use them again for any clients I may have. That's crazy that they don't give you your own dedicated IP for free.I'm in the process of looking for a host for a client who needs a host with shared, VPS, and dedicated support. InMotion Hosting is out of the question now for me. What host would you recommend who offers it all? I wish all hosts were perfect, but guess that'll never happen.Thanks for your opinion, Andrew!
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Liketechcores is kind of heavy on the design/images. on another note, nookin is correct. you have probably seen alot of 'unlimited space' and 'unlimited bandwidth' adverts on shared hosting sites. in reality there usually is a quota, but they know that people looking for shared hosting that would actually fall for the 'unlimited space' ads probably wont be using anywhere near 'unlimited' (or their quota). its a pretty common sales technique nowadays, they get more users for less resources. also i would recommend looking into a) switching to postgresql (not sure if wp supports it or not) and b) using a lightweight webserver like nginx with an fcgi process manager or lighttpd rather than apache if you want to get the most out of your vps
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LikeI do agree that it's a bit heavy on images, mainly because it's a blog and that's where most of the loading time comes from, but other than that, the entire theme is around 400KB which is great.
That is entirely true. And most of the time, especially if you look at DreamHost's TOS, they say right there basically that they don't offer "unlimited" space. They want to make their customers happy. I actually had one host (it wasn't InMotion Hosting) who suspended my account because I used too much bandwidth even though they said "unlimited" bandwidth.
I believe WordPress has a port to make it work with PostgreSQL, but I have actually optimized the MySQL installation to make sure it's running efficiently. I've seen people run WordPress on SQLite however I'll stick with my optimized MySQL.
I have looked at running Nginx or even LightTPD on this VPS, but both are out of the question for me. Nginx is great; I'm actually running it on my home server. But Nginx doesn't officially support or even work 100% with Subversion just yet. I'm a huge Subversion user so I kind of need to stick to Apache on that one. And I'll honestly never use LightTPD on a production server; I've seen way to many major glitches in that web server in the past few months, and I honest think it needs to become more stable. But I do have LightTPD running on a FreeBSD box I have here. But I do have Apache optimized to make sure it'll run quick. I've been a server guy for quite a while, so I've had my share of setting up server software.
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Likewhat kind of optimizations are you using for mysql? one thing to make sure you do is make sure you add ENGINE=InnoDB at the end of all your create table definitions. i have never had any problems with lighttpd aside from getting used to the config, its stable enough that youtube uses it (they also use gws). as for using subversion, you should go with git. everything about it is 10x simpler than subversion.
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LikeInnoDB is good if you're doing a lot of multi-user updating (i.e. it can lock individual rows while multiple users are writing, instead of locking the whole table) or if you want more fault tolerance (i.e. the server crashes while 150 users are simultaneously updating their profiles).MyISAM is actually a better choice for a blog because it's optimized for lots of reading/searching. Thus it's faster and uses less resources. Switching to InnoDB over MyISAM for a blog like this may actually slow things down.Note that I said "may"; you should test both and see which works better using an objective benchmark.
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LikeInnoDB is good if you're doing a lot of multi-user updating (i.e. it can lock individual rows while multiple users are writing, instead of locking the whole table) or if you want more fault tolerance (i.e. the server crashes while 150 users are simultaneously updating their profiles).
MyISAM is actually a better choice for a blog because it's optimized for lots of reading/searching. Thus it's faster and uses less resources. Switching to InnoDB over MyISAM for a blog like this may actually slow things down.
Note that I said "may"; you should test both and see which works better using an objective benchmark.
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Likehttp://tag1consulting.com/MySQL_Engines_MyISAM_vs_InnoDB
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LikeI do agree that it's a bit heavy on images, mainly because it's a blog and that's where most of the loading time comes from, but other than that, the entire theme is around 400KB which is great.That is entirely true. And most of the time, especially if you look at DreamHost's TOS, they say right there basically that they don't offer "unlimited" space. They want to make their customers happy. I actually had one host (it wasn't InMotion Hosting) who suspended my account because I used too much bandwidth even though they said "unlimited" bandwidth.I believe WordPress has a port to make it work with PostgreSQL, but I have actually optimized the MySQL installation to make sure it's running efficiently. I've seen people run WordPress on SQLite however I'll stick with my optimized MySQL.I have looked at running Nginx or even LightTPD on this VPS, but both are out of the question for me. Nginx is great; I'm actually running it on my home server. But Nginx doesn't officially support or even work 100% with Subversion just yet. I'm a huge Subversion user so I kind of need to stick to Apache on that one. And I'll honestly never use LightTPD on a production server; I've seen way to many major glitches in that web server in the past few months, and I honest think it needs to become more stable. But I do have LightTPD running on a FreeBSD box I have here. But I do have Apache optimized to make sure it'll run quick. I've been a server guy for quite a while, so I've had my share of setting up server software.
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Likehey it's Drake from (desperate website plug, YOU WISH![edit]). I actually found your article very interesting Taylor lol. We have a vps server with 16 corse, and 48 gigs or ram. it is great.
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LikeHaha, very funny. :P
Doesn't look like a VPS b/c it's a shared IP (173.205.124.250). Simply on the shared business plan like we were. You're on secure91, and we were on secure85... :P
Taylors-Server:~ root$ host techinform.us
techinform.us has address 173.205.124.250
techinform.us mail is handled by 0 techinform.us.
But seriously, I've had enough of InMotion Hosting... and the 48GBs of RAM means nothing. I bet you that they're hosting at least 2,000 accounts on their servers. On the shared server we were on, it was using about 47.7GB of RAM and had 300MB left.
I'm not relying on 'em mainly for all the issues I had. Why we switched to another provider and got ourself a VPS.
The reviews are very mixed with InMotion Hosting though. I've had a couple of friends who have used 'em in the past where they absolutely hated them but on the other side some of my friends loved 'em. I have one friend who's actually using their dedicated servers; that's the major reason why I actually went with them... because of the recommendations by my friends. :P
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LikeLOL I love how Drake thinks he knows what he is talking about when in actuality he knows nothing about the internals of the system. We were on a shared Inmotion server but we recently switched to a new host.
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LikeHaha, I would give him some credit. But seriously, -every- shared hosts sucks. I haven't used one that's actually decent enough that I would use. And trust me, I've worked with 'em all... the best one if you want my opinion would have to be FatCow. I've had good experience with them actually.
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LikeHaha, very funny. :PDoesn't look like a VPS b/c it's a shared IP (173.205.124.250). Simply on the shared business plan like we were. You're on secure91, and we were on secure85... :PTaylors-Server:~ root$ host techinform.us techinform.us has address 173.205.124.250 techinform.us mail is handled by 0 techinform.us.But seriously, I've had enough of InMotion Hosting... and the 48GBs of RAM means nothing. I bet you that they're hosting at least 2,000 accounts on their servers. On the shared server we were on, it was using about 47.7GB of RAM and had 300MB left.I'm not relying on 'em mainly for all the issues I had. Why we switched to another provider and got ourself a VPS.The reviews are very mixed with InMotion Hosting though. I've had a couple of friends who have used 'em in the past where they absolutely hated them but on the other side some of my friends loved 'em. I have one friend who's actually using their dedicated servers; that's the major reason why I actually went with them... because of the recommendations by my friends. :P
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LikeTech Cores is most definitely NOT a "minimalistic" blog -- it's packed with features and is quite large. (Heck, nookkin.com isn't minimalistic either, though it's less bloated than TC.)
OK, the bad:
1) Tech support is often brain-dead. iPower's is ridiculous; InMotion's is far better.
2) As are all shared servers.
3) Again, all shared servers suffer from this at some point. (20TB is quite meaningless here because you don't know a) the time period or b) know their connection speed.)
4) Same with even the most powerful computers.
5) Things do go crazy sometimes.
6) A hosting provider's legal department can't provide legal advice. Ask them if it's "against the TOS" as opposed to "illegal."
7) My iPower client site got compromised. What do you expect with a shared server? :P
8) Maybe they didn't know of the problem until you noticed it, contacted them, and they confirmed it.
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LikeTech Cores's theme is very minimalistic. Compared to other tech blogs, it is very minimalistic for its category.
1) Ohh yes, that is correct, but their support can be like iPower. Most people know what they're talking about though.
2) Lyosha, using almost 50GBs of RAM is beyond my mind! Their servers are VERY oversold and I expect more from a "business" plan.
3) Connection speed is 1GB/s I believe and I don't know how long it is. For most *nix systems, some logs are cleared upon reboot. So it could be 160 days.
4) True, but when I say laggy days, I really mean it... waiting for the DNS to resolve is just ridiculous.
5) For two months we had that issue! That's crazy for you. No host should let their customers suffer for two months.
6) I did ask them if it would be against their TOS. I clearly stated that I'm asking legal advice about their TOS. It was their failure to read... trust me.
7) Well, InMotion Hosting is one of the largest business hosts; I didn't expect that from them. And also, they could of easily prevented that.
8 ) They did know about it... did you read the entire thing? "I contacted support and they were aware of the issue." They did know of the issue even before I contacted them... and also, that's not the only thing that I had problems with their support already knowing of an issue. There has been numerous cases where there was something wrong that they already knew about but didn't inform us. I seriously think they need some status webpage/website to list the status of all their servers and send out emails if anything does happen.
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LikeDo you know what "oversold" means? (Versus "overloaded" for example?) If you oversell, you have a 100GB server and you're giving people 5GB accounts. The server can physically serve 20 users that way. But you sell accounts to 50 people, knowing that most of them will use less than 1GB each.
This is the standard behavior of web/file hosting providrs, ISP speed tiers, cellular companies, and even utilities. If they actually gave everyone their advertised services at all times, a lot of the resources would go unused.
As far as minimalism goes: a minimalistic blog sacrifices features for performance and keeps things really simple. (For example, very few images in the design, a very basic comment form, and not much else besides the posts themselves.)
WordPress is hardly a minimalistic platform even code-wise. It's fairly bloated, to be honest.
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LikeYes, I know what oversold means. :)
That's completely true, and I completely understand about doing that in a shared environment.
Actually, I have one design I made that used absolutely no images in the design and is extremely minimalistic. But I'm not going to run Tech Cores on it.
WordPress is a VERY bloated, IMHO. The code isn't optimized at all and it accesses MySQL way too often. But once you enable some caching options in WordPress, optimize MySQL & Apache, and everything else like that, you can get WordPress running fairly fast. :)
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