Media Temple Expert Review
As one of the longest-tenured hosting services on the market—at over 20 years and counting—Media Temple is one of the most trusted and well-known hosting platforms. With over 1.5 million websites hosted in more than 100 countries, we wanted to see if Media Temple really lives up to the hype and delivers on its promises.
What we found in our Media Temple review is a platform that is ideal for beginners and intermediate users, and one that can scale with companies. Although the platform does not make any guarantees regarding its uptimes or loading times, we uncovered a hosting service that consistently delivers in both categories. Thanks to a great feature set and a variety of pricing options, Media Temple is a great way to build your website and run it smoothly.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Find a plan that works exactly for you with Media Temple’s extensive selection of hosting plans.
- Get answers to any questions you have at any time thanks to 24/7/365 service via phone, chat, Twitter, or e-ticket.
- Keep your website loading times fast and handle larger traffic spikes thanks to Media Temple’s “Grid” of clustered servers.
- Navigate complex setups easily with Media Temple’s helpful Sidekick Walkthroughs for WordPress hosting.
- Host up to 100 websites with Media Temple’s basic web hosting plan.
- Optimize your website’s back-end with integrated SSD storage out of the box.
- Easily launch your website with 1-click staging and centralized control panels.
Cons:
- The company’s servers don’t offer an option for Windows OS.
- Managed hosting and AWS hosting pricing is only available with a quote.
- The company’s control panels do not include standards like cPanel.
Pricing and Payment Methods
We were happy to find a great variety of plans for hosting on Media Temple’s site. If you’re looking for WordPress hosting, the company’s managed WP hosting solutions start as low as $20 monthly, and present you with unlimited data transfers and support, as well as 2 sites and 50GB of SSD storage. You can upgrade to Pro to host 10 websites with an accompanying 200GB of storage and up to 500,000 visitors monthly. If you sign up for PRO annual, you are entitled to 2 domains and 2 SSL certificates included in your deal.
For shared web hosting, plans also start at $20 and give you up to 250GB of SSD storage, 500 databases, and 5TB of scalable bandwidth. Pro and Elite plans also add CDN and WAF for up to 5 sites, as well as malware detection and removal. If you need private hosting, you can choose from a few options. VPS plans come in self-managed (for $30 a month) or managed (for $55 a month). Self-managed plans are meant for advanced users and give you up to 64GB of RAM, 500GB of storage, and 8TB of bandwidth. One great advantage of Media Temple’s VPS servers is that you can pay for them monthly to avoid overpaying or scale easily. If you’re seeking an enterprise-level solution, you can choose from Dedicated hosting, which include self-managed and fully managed versions, and start from $2,000 a month. These plans, however, tend to be more customizable for companies’ needs. For companies that require AWS cloud hosting, Media Temple provides quotes upon request.
Ease of Use
Our Media Temple expert review found that despite some areas where the company can improve, its hosting plans are easy to use and set up. One of the most standard offerings on hosting plans are control panels like cPanel and Plesk. Media Temple doesn’t offer these, instead including its own proprietary version. Although it is not difficult to use, it may throw you off if you’re already accustomed to cPanel.
Otherwise, we found that tools like Sidekick Walkthroughs, which help you complete more complex setups and operations on your WordPress sites, and a great resource center let you quickly and effectively launch your website. For more advanced users, Media Temple’s hosting includes perks like command line administration, multiple OS options, and easy 1-click scaling for dedicated plans.
Load Times and Reliability
One thing that surprised us about Media Temple is that unlike many of its competitors, the company does not make guarantees about its uptimes for some of its plans. Even so, we found it to be impressively reliable and fast enough to manage traffic even at the worst of times. We test companies’ uptime over several months, checking for any outages and measuring mean performance.
Our trials revealed that Media Temple indeed keeps its uptime near 99.9%. Even better, it guarantees 99.99% on its managed, VPS, and dedicated hosting plans. The company’s “Grid” architecture, which divides servers into clusters, also means performance is consistent even during traffic spikes. This also impacts loading times, so your website will always load reliably fast even at peak hours.
Features
Media Temple’s hosting plans grant you a good variety of features regardless of your skill level. For beginners, the company provides great tools like free WordPress installs, unlimited access to around-the-clock support, and resources that include installation walkthroughs, hosting guides, and community forums. Media Temple also offers PHP, WordPress, and MySQL automated updates to help keep your website secure.
For more advanced users, Media Temple’s features include command line access to dedicated hosting servers, full root access for self-managed plans, and a variety of languages like Ruby, PERL, Postfix, Python, and more. You can also choose which OS to install on your dedicated servers between Debian, CentOS, and Linux. Additionally, plans include Git version control, as well as SSH and SFTP access for encrypted transmissions.
Customer Support
Customer support is one of the standout characteristics for which Media Temple is renowned. The company delivers service to its customers 24/7/365, and assistance is available via chat, Twitter, phone, or support request. We were impressed to see that the company’s support staff was able to get to our issues—regardless of which channel we used—and was prompt about assisting while keeping us informed with their progress.
If you prefer to solve problems on your own, or simply want to learn more about your hosting service, you can explore the company’s resource center. There you can find a variety of articles, how-to guides, blog posts, and more. Additionally, you can visit Media Temple’s community forum to see if other users have answers to your questions, or similar issues they’ve resolved.
Media Temple User Reviews
Our reviews look at companies from a bird’s eye view, focusing on features and value over personal experiences. If you want to see what other users are saying about the platform, explore our Media Temple user reviews below:
Conclusion
Our Media Temple expert review found that the hosting service clearly lives up to its 2-decade reputation. The company’s flexible plans for a variety of needs (from shared hosting to dedicated VPS) mean that it is a great choice for beginners, intermediate users, and expert web developers. More importantly, the company’s features, which are reliable for beginners but powerful enough for developers to truly take advantage of, make it a great tool.
In terms of pricing, the company is well within the industry average, and it provides a great combination of affordability alongside useful features and processing capacity. Thanks to its unique architecture, Media temple also delivers reliable performance and uptimes. Overall, Media Temple may be great destination for your hosting if you are seeking a quick way to launch your website and need a trusted name.
