Interview With InMotion Hosting

Nov 20, 2015
5 min read
Archived

We recently had the opportunity to test out one of InMotion Hosting VPS plans and came away with a very positive experience. As a result, we were able to update our reviews with much more detail, and promote InMotion as one of our recommended hosting providers.

With InMotion Hosting now recommended by us, we wanted to gain insight into the company, so we asked their CEO, Sunil Saxena, a few questions. What we found particularly interesting in their responses, as you will see, was their commitment to web hosting support, and their determination to remain a private employee owned company.

The InMotion Interview:

InMotion is fast approaching being 15 years old, and as a result is one of the oldest hosting companies in the industry. What made you get into the hosting business?

The concept of InMotion Hosting started when the founders were working together at another hosting company. They saw the opportunity to create a customer-centric hosting company that would meet the needs of the mass consumers.

InMotion Hosting was initially a two-man show operating a call center in DTLA, but has since grown to a 200+ person, bicoastal operation. We have always focused on customer service and always strive to give back to the open source community – where we started.

Our key to success is to stay independent and focus on what truly matters in hosting – our customer base. We are still employee-owned and operated and every employee is genuinely driven by doing the best they can, every time.

You have successfully run your hosting business with your co-founder since the beginning. How did you get into business together, and how have you remained a successful partnership for so long?

The idea of InMotion Hosting came about while working at another hosting company. There was simply a thought of “we can do this better,” and the rest is, as they say, history.

Just like with our customers, we feel that communication is key – that has been the catalyst of our success as partners, managers, and hosting providers.

With our core competencies revolving around customer service, we’ve always had the same vision and roadmap to make the business successful.

What do you see as the main challenges your company faces over the next five years?

We believe that being able to identify shifts in customer patterns and staying ahead of them is paramount in tech. This is an ever-changing industry, and being at the technological forefront is what will really matter. In the past 15yrs, we have already observed a major shift in how customers are acquired, what they want, and the level of service expected. Currently, we’re seeing a big shift in the demand for web builders.

People want to own their piece of the digital world. So, the development of personal sites is gaining a lot of traction. Unfortunately, learning code and starting your site from scratch is very difficult and time-consuming.

Hence, the advent of web builders – we are currently working on our own version which will be specifically designed to work for WordPress sites.

Where do you see your company in the next five years? How do you see it will evolve in terms of new technologies?

InMotion Hosting will still be focusing on its priority: customer service. Technology is in an ever-evolving cycle – so, we will inevitably have a focus on staying ahead of the tech curve. But in an oversaturated hosting market, customer retention, and satisfaction, will remain paramount to our continued success.

Although industry consolidation is picking off many of the “smaller shops,” we are committed to remaining employee owned and operated. This might have some drawbacks in terms of immediate scalability, but we work diligently on having the best products in the market supported by the most incredible staff in the industry.

What made you decide to specialize in Business Hosting? What makes your service particularly good for businesses?

We identified business hosting as an underserved market. There were plenty of options, and if you combined all the best benefits into one company, we felt it would serve the business hosting customer well.

The only problem was that there was no one such company – so, we decided to become that company.

That’s why we offer certain features that other hosting companies don’t. We offer the end user free automated backups, as that is a critical part of any small business and shouldn’t be charged extra. They can also have a choice in their data center location for optimal speeds and we offer the entire line of hosting platforms, from shared hosting all the way up to commercial class dedicated servers. So we can easily scale accordingly with any business size.

If you become bigger than anticipated, you won’t be kicked off our servers; you’ll be given the ability to migrate up in line with your business needs.

Your support is always very helpful on Live Chat when we have used it. Where are your support staff based, and what goals do you set them in terms of response times \ helpfulness?

We’re happy to hear that your live chat experience was a positive one. Our support staff is located in Virginia Beach, USA. We basically have a four-fold mantra on every call: “we care, we improve, we have fun, we thrill”

These pillars are the backbone on which we base our goals.

We also set KPIs and goals internally on response time, time of call, etc. to make sure we are a the top of our customer service game at all times. We take customer service incredibly serious.

We were created in the open-source community, and it would be hypocritical of us to not be involved, and give back to this community.

Most of the staff that attends these events have typically been involved in these communities, so they love attending conferences and learning more about their personal and professional interests.

It’s also gotten us great exposure in front of the open source world and end users by being a part of the community directly.

In no more than three sentences, what sets InMotion apart from other hosts?

Service.

Commitment.

Accountability.