How Good is Media Temple Hosting?

Our Official MediaTemple Hosting Review

MediaTemple hosting has been around since 1998. Since then, they have earned themselves over 125,000 customers and hosted over 1.5 million websites, including some bigwig companies such as Starbucks and Toyota.

They’re a little more expensive than some of the Web hosting companies out there, but for many people, they’re worth the money. The most popular option people usually go for when it comes to Web hosting is the shared hosting option. MediaTemple only offers one shared hosting option starting at $20 per month. However, if you choose the annual plan, expect to pay only $16.57 per month.

Media Temple Managed WordPress Hosting Pricing Table

Plan	Ultimate	Pro 5	Pro 10	Pro 25	E-commerce
No. of Sites	1	5	10	25	1
Storage Space	Unlimited	50 GB	80 GB	100 GB	Unlimited
Bandwidth	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Staging Sites	1	5	10	25	1
Daily Malware Scans	1 Site	5 Sites	10 Sites	25 Sites	1 Site
Content Delivery Network	1 Site	5 Sites	10 Sites	25 Sites	1 Site
SSL Certificate	1 Site	5 Sites	10 Sites	25 Sites	1 Site
SEO Optimizer	1 Site	5 Sites	10 Sites	25 Sites	1 Site
WooCommerce	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	Premium bundle($6,000 value)
Starting Price	$25/mo	$40/mo	$70/mo	$125/mo	$30/mo

Media Temple Shared Hosting Pricing Table

Plan	Deluxe	Ultimate	Maximum
No. of Sites	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Storage Space	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Bandwidth	Unmetered	Unmetered	Unmetered
RAM	512 MB	1 GB	2 GB
Email Boxes	100	500	Unlimited
CPU	1	2	2
Input/output (I/O)	1024KB/sec	1024KB/sec	2048KB/sec
Concurrent Database Connections	115	140	165
FTP Users	50	Unlimited	Unlimited
SSH Users	1	1	1
MySQL Databases	25	Unlimited	Unlimited
Price	$20/mo	$30/mo	$60/mo

Fully Managed VPS

Plan	1 vCPU	2 vCPU	4 vCPU	8 vCPU
CPU	1	2	4	8
RAM	2 GB	4 GB	8 GB	16 GB
SSD Storage	40 GB	100 GB	200 GB	400 GB
Free SSL with Annual2	✔	✔	✔	✔
Weekly & Snapshot Backups	✔	✔	✔	✔
Global Data Center Choice	✔	✔	✔	✔
Server Resource Dashboard	✔	✔	✔	✔
Dedicated IP	1	1	1	1
Price	$130/mo	$160/mo	$190/mo	$230/mo

Best Features of MediaTemple Hosting

1) Uptime Guarantee

MediaTemple’s uptime guarantee surpasses all expectations. They guarantee your website will be up 99.9999 percent of the time. If your website is ever down – for any reason – they offer a discount on your monthly fee. For every 20 minutes that your website is down, they offer a 20 percent discount. At its base, this is a company taking responsibility for its actions. They promise that if they can’t keep your website up, they will compensate you. Companies have a bad habit of making mistakes and not owning up to them. Everyone makes mistakes – even companies. This type of corporate responsibility is not something just anyone will offer you.

2) Support Options

The pinnacle of any Web hosting company is support. Most people in the world are not technical geeks. In fact, most people who end up being customers of Web hosting companies are business owners. That being said, companies need to support them. If they don’t, the business owners will do what any business-minded person will do – they’ll move on to someone who will give them proper support.

MediaTemple boasts a KB (knowledge base) database, a user-friendly wiki, and even live system status feeds. Their company blog is updated on a regular basis, and their support teams are US-based – whom you can contact via email, telephone, and a ticketing system with the promise to respond within 24 hours.

3) Email Flexibility

Email is quickly surpassing the popularity of snail mail, and it allows consumers to save paper and reduce their carbon footprint. With media temple, you have the ability to create numerous email accounts in order to best manage communication on your site. Every shared hosting plan comes with both Google Apps for Work email addresses and 1,000 addresses.

4) Cancellation Policy

MediaTemple offers a standard 30-day money-back guarantee for most of their plans. However, their dedicated server plans only offer a seven-day money-back guarantee. These types of guarantees are always a plus. However, they appear to be limited. The 30-day money-back guarantee only applies to hosting fees. It does not apply to other services such as domain name registration fees.

5) Perfect for Reselling

MediaTemple offers an affiliate program. That’s great for acquiring new customers, but what makes MediaTemplegreat is they offer you the ability to resell your hosting space. In other words, if you wanted to go into the business of cloud computing, MediaTempleprovides away. The lowest price on their dedicated server plans starts at around $2000 per month. However, if you were to resell most of this space, you could make your money back at a profit. Server space reselling is not only known to MediaTemple but is advocated by them.

Downsides of MediaTemple Hosting

1) Fast Response Time

There was a study done not too long ago that listed several of the things that can make for a miserable customer service experience – long response times were near the top of the list. In fact, companies that make a habit of taking too long to respond often lose customers this way.

MediaTemple guarantees a 24-hour response time for most inquiries. Our experience says that they will respond in less than 12 hours. For many people, this is perfect. However, MediaTemple is ideal for larger companies. If I was a member of one of these more major companies, and I needed support, I would expect support much faster than that. At the very least, if I’m paying premium prices, I expect premium support.

2) No Windows-based Hosting Options

MediaTemple only offers Linux-based hosting options. For many people, this is good news. They see Linux as a more powerful operating system that can be customized to their needs. However, MediaTemple seems to of forgotten that Microsoft still holds 90 percent of the operating system market share with Windows. Most people still use Windows – despite the complaints – and it would be great if MediaTemple offered Windows-based hosting options.

3) Standard Freebies Are Not Free

Many Web hosting companies offer a standard set of freebies. This includes a shopping cart, blog software, and, in some cases, Google AdSense credit. MediaTemple doesn’t offer any of these for free. They are more than compatible with all of these – but they’re expected to be. Many of the standard freebies are “hooks” to sway a customer in their direction. If MediaTemple started offering the usual freebies, they might experience a small boost in their customer base.

4) Needs more website-building tools

It's crucial to have all the tools available to customize your website to make it unique. Some customers feel that these tools are limited when it comes to Media Temple.

Some capped features can be irritating
Customers have complained that some capped features which are automatically applied are more of an annoyance than a help.

Bottom Line:

Not for the novice. If you’re looking for a simple Web hosting company for a personal blog, there are better ones out there. However, if you’re looking for a powerful dedicated server with guaranteed uptime because you have a business to run, MediaTemple has your back.

Media Temple Q&A

When you’re looking to find the perfect host for your Web site, pinpointing the one with the features and benefits you want while still getting the price point you can afford can feel like an overwhelming task. With millions to choose from around the world, there seem to be endless options. While we can’t review all of them, we decided to give you the facts on the biggest players, like Media Temple, a California-based company with a long history and good reputation.

When did Media Temple start?

Demian Sellfors launched Intergress Technologies as a digital business provider in 1998, and for the next year, the company was focused on providing quality service to its customers — including Media Temple. In 1999, the companies merged, keeping the Media Temple name. Sellfors became CEO, founding the popular Web hosting company. The company, housed in Los Angeles, grew rapidly, launching several different programs that enhanced the service and feature it provided.

In 2006, Media Temple created the Grid, a public Cloud-based service that manages Web sites across many different clustered servers, instead of a single server. In August 2013, they updated this feature.

In June 2013, Media Temple launched CloudTech, which gives customers premium, around-the-clock service from skilled engineers, updated its virtual private server hosting platform, and started to offer LiveChat for real-time interaction with customers. The company was chosen by the Wall Street Journal to audit a government Web site. All of the recognition and growth that Media Temple experienced led to its eventual acquisition by GoDaddy, one of the largest Web hosting companies, in 2013.

What does Media Temple stand for?

Media Temple states that while they’ve experienced great growth in their last 18 years, “one thing has never changed: [their] commitment to [their] customers’ success.” That, they say, is the driving force behind their products.

It must have some impact, as they now host more than 1.5 million Web sites spread across more than 100 different countries, and see more than 125,000 individuals and companies using their hosting, WordPress, Cloud and other servers.

The company lists four keys to its success on their Web site:

• Service
• Products
• Value
• Innovation

Media Temple prides itself on giving customers more for their money, noting that while they might cost a “few more dollars,” the money spent is worth it for faster hardware, smarter software, and high-quality support. The company also works it innovators around the world to create new and exciting products and services, along with partnerships, like their work to create Helix, the first OpenStack-powered private Cloud service with Dell and MorphLabs.

Does Media Temple offer shared hosting?

Media Temple created its own shared hosting structure with the release of the Grid in 2006. The unique clustered architecture was designed to give customers more reliable, faster hosting options that are provided by others in the industry. Certain features are standard in each plan.

• SSD storage
• Protection from DDoS and other intrusions
• 30-day backup and restoration of files
• 1,000 e-mail boxes
• Managed apps, like WordPress, Drupal, or ZenCart
• User-friendly control panel

They offer three separate shared hosting plans; if you pay the yearly cost, you get two free months.

Personal ($20/month): 100 Web sites with 100 databases, 20 GB SSD storage, 1 TB scalable bandwidth, and 2000 GPU, or Grid Performance Unit, which measures every hit or request made to a Grid service.

Pro ($30/month): 500 Web sites, 500 databases, 100 GB SSD storage, 2 TB scalable bandwidth, 2000 GPU, global CDN for one site, and malware detection and removal for one site.

Agency ($120/month for the first three months; $150/month regular price): 2,500 Web sites, 2,500 databases, 500 GB SSD storage, 5 TB scalable bandwidth, and 4,000 GPU. You also get global CDN, malware detection and removal, and a Web application firewall for five sites, along with one domain registration and an SSL certificate for one site.

How is Media Temple’s VPS hosting structured?

Media Temple guarantees a 99.999 percent uptime for their VPS hosting, which means your site will be down for less than a minute each month. They are hosted on SSD servers, which are shown to be the fastest options, and give customers the flexibility to choose between managed or self-managed servers.

Self-Managed:

Each plan includes full SSH and root access, instant provisioning, and a choice between the following operating systems: ubuntu, Debian, fedora, and CentOS.

• Self-managed VPS starts at level 1 $30 per month for 2 GB RAM, 20 GB of storage, and 2 TB of bandwidth.
• Jump to level 2 at $50 per month for 4 GB of RAM, 40 GB of storage, and 3 TB of bandwidth.

The top plans get you a 20 percent discount for the first three months.

• Level 3 costs $80 per month for the first three before reaching the regular price of $100 per month. You get 8 GB of RAM, 80 GB of storage, and 5 TB of bandwidth.
• Level 4 ($200/ month for the first three months, and $250/month after that): 16 GB RAM, 160 GB storage, and 6 TB bandwidth.
• Level 5 ($400/month for first three months; $500/month after that): 32 GB RAM, 250 GB storage, 7 TB bandwidth.
• Level 6 (800/month for first three months; $1000/month after that): 64 GB RAM, 500 GB storage, and 8 TB bandwidth.

Fully-Managed VPS

With the same 99.999 percent uptime guarantee, Plesk Onyx or cPanel and WHM 11.5 control panel, daily backups, site migration, and set-up, and a variety of different features, their managed VPS starts at $249 per month. The scalable pricing allows you between 2 and 128 GB of memory, 30 GB and 1 TB of storage, and between 2 and 10 TB of bandwidth.

Can I get dedicated hosting from Media Temple?

Three different single-tenant dedicated server plans include a variety of services, allowing unlimited domain hosting, 10 TB monthly bandwidth, 128 GB of DDR3, buffered RAM, multi-core Intel Xeon processors, 1 TB SSD storage, and battery- and flash-backed write-cache. The software comes pre-installed on all three plans based on the needs of the customers.

• Self-managed starts at $2,000/month, with command line server management, full root access, and no managed services.
• Managed dedicated servers start at $2,500 per month. You can get root access upon request, a user-friendly control panel, and management of the following areas: basic performance, daily backups, OS and app updates, scanning for security and malware, and removal, if needed
• Fully managed dedicated servers cost $2,699 per month. System management and root access is all managed by SysAdmin, and you get priority responses 24/7. All aspects of your hosting are completely managed by Media Temple.

Is Cloud hosting a service offered by Media Temple?

As an Amazon WebService partner, Media Temple will help you move and build your Web site, which will be fully managed by their SysAdmin and DevOps. Plans start at $499 per month and include 24/7 SysAdmin-certified support. A free consultation will help their reps learn more about your project and pick the best option for your Cloud hosting needs.

They also offer specialized WordPress hosting on Amazon Cloud, with a unique architecture that includes multiple layers of redundancy that ensure 100 percent uptime.  Redundant Web, database, and file servers are spread across multiple data centers. Scaling happens in minutes, your site is extremely secure, and you work with one person all the time to make sure your site is always the way you want. They offer two separate WordPress plans, each with five sites, traffic-based scaling, and a variety of additional features. Plans start at $2,500 each month.

What other features does Media Temple offer its customer?

Media Temple works with a variety of different platforms, like Magento, for e-commerce, along with more than 20 other managed applications. You can purchase SSL certificates for your e-commerce site if you aren’t purchasing one of the shared plans that include the certificate.

Shared plans include CloudFlare, which has been included as a part of the Grid infrastructure. The speed and reliability of CloudFlare, along with the additional level of protection, will keep your site secure.

How is Media Temple’s customer support?

Media Temple prides itself on its customer service, and they are extremely fast, knowledgeable, and responsive. It’s important to remember that Web chat and phone support are only for sales questions. Technical support is limited to messaging through the account center, but the representatives quickly answer with solid answers. They offer customer service on Twitter and e-mail, as well.

You can also use their database of questions and information and can install SideKick, a WordPress plugin that gives you different options to receive walkthroughs for common questions.

For an additional fee, you can upgrade your support, and you’ll be working with certified engineers.

Where are Media Temple’s data centers, and how secure are they?

Media Temple has two highly secure data centers. The first, which was completed in 2007, is VA-IDC4, located in Ashburn, VA. The flexible design includes a better power and cooling capacity, and each of the 20 computer rooms is independently functioning.

The second, EL-IDC3, is located in El Segundo, CA. It meets Tier IV specifications, offers room for growth, and provides an even more in-depth level of security.

How is their uptime?

Media Temple guarantees their uptime for dedicated servers, and they put your money where their mouth is. They are extremely stable, with very little downtime — a good sign for your Web site. Grid-hosted sites don’t have the same guarantee and tend to have more downtime. They are still above the 99.9 percent average, but for $20 per month, a better uptime would be expected.

Will their specialists help me move my Web site?

Some sites include site migration, but for those that don’t, CloudTech engineers will move your site for $150 per site. They will move any site that is compatible with their products and will refund your money if they aren’t able to move your site.

Do they have good page load speeds?

Media Temple notes that the Grid makes sites up to six times faster; many current customers don’t necessarily agree with that speed but do note that, for the most part, their sites are faster than they had been with other hosts.

Do they guarantee any of their services?

While there are many hosting companies that offer extremely long money-back guarantees, sometimes reaching 97 days, Media Temple offers 30 days, which is enough time for you to determine if the host is for you.

What are the drawbacks to choosing Media Temple?

Customers have found a few cons to hosting with Media Temple.

• They don’t offer Windows-based servers
• While all of their plans are more expensive than many of the more popular hosting options, the prices for their VPS and dedicated server plans have a significantly greater monthly cost.
• More tools to build Web sites would be greatly beneficial for customers new to Web design. Their Virb option, which has an additional cost, lets you make sharp, mobile-responsive sites. Again, though, it costs more each month and doesn’t have the popular drag-and-drop themes that are becoming more popular.
• Many of their options are ideal for those with experience and Web development knowledge; individuals or companies without this may find that they have a harder time, in the beginning, learning to use Media Temple.

Why should I choose Media Temple?

Media Temple has an extensive list of hosting options, with many different opportunities to scale up your plans as needed. They provide one-click installation on several Web apps; there are a limited amount on Grid-hosted plans, but dedicated hosting customers have a larger option. Their customer service representatives are experienced, professional, and polite.

Media Temple is an idea hosting company for experienced developers who want groundbreaking, high-quality hosting and aren’t worried about the budget. For those new to hosting or on a tight budget, Media Temple’s prices may seem restrictive; the ability to grow and the capabilities of each plan, though, can make Media Temple a good first choice.