This is my freshly updated 2015 review of Media Temple’s managed WordPress hosting offer. So much has happened since I published the first review, just one year ago. Enjoy reading it – and let me know what you think! (in the comments)
A year ago, Media Temple launched their take on a managed WordPress hosting solution. “Managed” in the sense that all is taken care of for you. There’s no need for you to worry about backups, security scanning and patching, database stuff and all the tedious, technical stuff you’d rather not deal with anyway.
Yet, the so-called managed WordPress hosting market is already dominated by key players such as highly-acclaimed, industry-leading WP Engine, relative newcomer Flywheel as well as Synthesis and Pressable.
What made Media Temple enter this market? What is it that makes their WordPress product unique? Competitive? What are the technical facts? I can provide some clear answers to those questions, straight from Media Temple’s Product Manager Dante Baker and the devs of this new, innovative, managed WordPress hosting platform! Wanna know more? Read on!
The long and dreadful road to a host that doesn’t suck
I’m a long-time Media Temple customer. In a minute, I’ll tell you why. But first, know that like most of you, I’ve tried going from one host to another, on a seemingly never-ending quest to find “the one”… The right one. That elusive “perfect web host”.
Most people’s web hosting experiences are… should we say… ahem… less than ideal. And that’s a mild way to put it.
My own bad hosting experiences include:
- The über-popular web host who was great otherwise, but intermittently became very very slow.
- The small, very personal host, whose founder even chatted with me about his Wolf Cub Scout endeavours. Speed? Solid. Support? Rock solid. But when my site got featured on a couple of web design and photography portals: it got shut down. Not because of excessive CPU overage (it was an HTML + Flash based site) – but because the very conservative bandwidth allowance ran out. Thank you very not! Fast forward a few months, Mr. Cub Scout had sold his hosting business. Apparently to two chimps who now ran the operation like… well… two chimps! I. was. flabbergasted.
- The host who locked down our account – FTP and phpMyAdmin/database access included (aka: no way for us to rectify the situation) because of an obese database table. And because their “24 hour around the clock support” really meant “wait 23 hours for each reply” the site was down for several days!
- The “industry darling” web host who started out fast and friendly, but suddenly got super slow with moronic monkey support as icing on the cake.
Returning to Media Temple
The latter was the incident that brought me back to Media Temple. Before the bad hosting experiences mentioned above, I’d been with Media Temple for a short while. I honestly can’t remember exactly why I switched away from them. I recall it being due to a practical matter, rather than a technical matter. I was only a customer for a few days. Their nameservers might not have been approved by DK Hostmaster (the monopoly controlling the .dk domains) back then.
Anyway… When Media Temple (back in 2006) with much fanfare launched their new, innovative (gs) Grid hosting product – I was motivated to find my way back to the temple.
So I switched back to (mt).
The (gs) Grid had its fair share of issues during the first few years of its infancy. Slow page loads, high latency, frequent downtime and more, was the norm.
What kept me there? Well:
- The great service and support that Media Temple provides. When leaving a support ticket, I expect a proper, fulfilling reply, and in 8/10 encounters with (mt): that’s what I’ve gotten.
- I like the (mt) Account Center. Not just for its sleek, simple design, but even more so for its holistic approach to handling the 100 websites allowed. All sites are handled under one roof. No separate sub-accounts. Makes it easy to maintain multiple sites.
- The GPU system. Hated by some, I’ve always loved it. It helps you see how server-efficient your sites are, and it prevents fellow (gs) users from hammering the server with inefficient code running rampant.
If interested, you can also read my complete review of the MT grid, here.
The Achilles’ heel of the Grid has always been its speed. Or lack thereof. The explanation lies in its architecture. It’s a clustered solution. Storage and databases are on separate boxes. That typically introduces some latency.
WordPress can be slow…
If you ask a hardcore coder or database geek, many will tell you that:
1. WordPress is slow and inefficiently coded. Hello admin-ajax.php.
2. WordPress has lots of legacy code, and is bloated for what it does.
While I’m neither a hardcore coder or a database geek (I’m more the creative, entrepreneurial type) I’m inclined to agree! I’ve used a wide variety of competing CMS (content management system) and blogging platforms, and I have to say that only concrete5 and Drupal has been more server-intensive than WordPress!
My key point is this:
If you plan to use WordPress for more than a simple blog with a few lightweight plugins, you’ll need proper WordPress hosting. Period.
So although I’ve been a happy camper with Media Temple’s Grid (gs) hosting since 2007… I wanted something faster. My Headway Hero web design online course has required lots of plugins to make it happen. Many of them hit the database, hence the page load speed of my site went from “okay” to “too slow”.
So it was with great excitement I saw Media Temple’s new Managed WordPress hosting product!
“Worth a try” I thought, and signed up for a plan.
When the going gets tough
I can’t say the first month with Premium WordPress was an ideal customer experience. Some of it due to my own lack of insight into the new platform, but sadly also due to Media Temple’s support staff not being trained enough in this new platform.
I’ve had some very time-wasting and frustrating encounters with support staff who was so oblivious about this new, managed WordPress hosting service that I seriously started thinking whether Media Temple (maybe as a sad result of the GoDaddy acquisition) had outsourced their support – and worse still: maybe even to the local zoo?
Regardless, over time those problems now largely seems to have been solved, fortunately.
Managed WordPress hosting at Pricing that Packs a Punch
Now, in March 2015, Media Temple has aggressively revised their managed WordPress hosting pricing structure.
Previously, $29 would get you 3 sites hosted. Now, anno 2015, they’ve split up the pricing in 3,5 distinct plans. Why 3,5? Because the last, top-tier plan is an “Enterprise” plan, with no fixed price (aka: “call for a customized quote”). But what are the details of the remaining 3 plans then?
Personal – for just $20 you get to host two sites. Curiously (or perhaps: strangely) this plan seemingly does not include “malware detection and removal” like the other plans. I find this a weird choice by Media Temple’s marketing department. An odd signal to send! Which web host doesn’t wanna detect malware on all hosted sites? But seriously, I think they DO detect malware, they just don’t wanna promise to remove it (for free) at this low price point.
Next step up:
Studio – The Studio plan will let you host 10 sites for just $60 a month. Annual plan comes with 1 free (first year only) SSL certificate. I believe this is the most agressively priced managed WordPress hosting available. Bravo Media Temple! If you were an MMA fighter, you’d likely be Bas Rutten!
And finally:
Agency – if you’re running a web design agency, you can host up to 50 sites for just $240 a month. Again; that’s very competitively priced. Comes with 2 SSL certificates for free, for the first year. Rebilling is $75 per SSL certificate. An ok price for a SSL certificate.
So yes indeed: Media Temple continues to deliver serious (Bas Rutten style) liver shots to WP Engine whose $29 starter plan includes only 1 site.
Read more about the details of each plan here.
What’s included?
- Fast, fully SSD based storage.
- Daily backup snapshots. Site restoration at the click of a button.
- Remote server access via SSH / SFTP.
- Malware detection and removal (Studio & Agency plans only).
- Google Apps (Studio & Agency plans only).
- GIT integration.
- WP-CLI integration.
- Comprehensive, WordPress video tutorials, in your WordPress dashboard! (can be disabled of course).
- Themes! More on those below.
Hosting with Premium WordPress themes?
Interestingly, Media Temple has decided to throw some custom-made premium themes into the WordPress hosting package. The themes I’ve seen so far are definitely beautiful! Beautiful and simple. They’re highly targeted themes (photography, portfolio, etc) meaning: fast loading – and simple to use!
Once you think about it, this makes perfect sense! By including their own, premium themes, they can:
- Add extra value to their WordPress hosting customers.
- Entice at least some of their customers to use one of these lightweight, efficiently coded premium themes, rather than more server-intensive themes like f.e. Enfold or Avada.
More themes will be added in the future. But don’t expect Media Temple to evolve into a ThemeForest competitor;) According to Jon Setzen, Media Temple’s Creative Director, they’d rather create a handful really great themes, than hundreds of sporadic, mediocre ones. I applaud that approach a whole lot!
Please welcome to the stage…
Staging sites! Media Temple’s WordPress hosting sports a nifty Site Stager feature. Staging sites allow you to instantly make a copy of your main website. That copy can be used as a testing ground, to develop a redesign, etc.
You can create two staging sites of each site.
Once you’re ready, you can sync the Site Stager changes back to your main site. Nifty? Yes. Neat? Yup! Great? Yeah!!
The Site Stager feature can be quite useful for testing, problem-solving, troubleshooting, developing, etc.
Whatever works well: clone it!
The Site Stager’s cute cousin is the “Clone Site” feature. Just like the staging feature, cloning a site will make you a copy. But in this case, that copy ends up as a new, separate site.
Imagine the possibilities! Create a typical “mothership” template site and simply clone it as needed.
Yeah, you could do this manually, but the cloning feature just make it so much easier to set up new sites for yourself – or your clients.
Does Media Temple’s WordPress hosting rock the show?
Naturally, I was chiefly interested in finding out if Media Temple’s speed claims are true.
Curiously, I didn’t find the WordPress admin to be loading dramatically faster on the Managed WordPress hosting account. But on the front end? Much MUCH faster. We’re talking 3 to 4 times the speed of the Grid!
That’s very likely due to the pretty elaborate caching setup Media Temple has implemented in Premium WordPress:
“Four layers of caching throughout the stack as well as high performance SSD-backed storage. We rely on Varnish, Memcached, PHP APC, and storage L2 caching to maximize performance by minimizing calls to the disks.”
But don’t freak out! Despite the advanced caching – you don’t have to do a thing! There’s a handy “Flush Cache” button located in the WordPress admin toolbar – and that’s it! You don’t have the headache of configuring W3 Total Cache’s gazillion options;)
But apart from the caching; what’s the technical foundation of Media Temple’s WordPress hosting?
Media Temple WordPress – the technical facts
Like Media Temple’s (gs) Grid, (mt) WordPress is built on a network based storage solution.
I wanted to know more, and decided to direct my questions to Dante Baker, Product Manager for managed WordPress hosting at Media Temple, so I could get the facts, straight from the horse’s mouth.
(not that I’m calling Dante a horse… that would be kinda rude…)
Below are the answers from Dante and the Premium WordPress devs:
Oliver @ WebMatros: Is your new managed WordPress hosting based on a clustered server technology (like the Grid) or is it more of a VPS-based kind of setup? And what made you choose that particular route? What are its benefits, compared to other, competing solutions?
Dante @ Media Temple: Yes it’s clustered, and a clustered environment helps us with things like fault tolerance (your sites stay online even if a single webserver goes down), it also helps us do maintenance on hardware without affecting your website uptime. We could have gone with a local storage/db solution, but long term it doesn’t scale as well as a clustered environment.
Oliver @ WebMatros: How have you overcome the latency typical of clustered / network based storage solutions? Also feel free to elaborate a little on the caching technologies used. What does each one target, and what has been the challenges of using several caching solutions together?
Dante @ Media Temple: We were able to mitigate issues with database latency by going with fully SSD backed database servers on a screaming fast network located close to the web servers. We use varnish to help with caching which takes pressure off the web server tier, and our storage filers are all SSD based as well as using memory and flash based L2 arc caching that reduces the number of hits that have to go to the SSD (drives).
Some additional info for the geeks among you:
- Nodes are added dynamically to the cluster so it can scale horizontally.
- There’s no minimum or maximum number of nodes assigned to a given site.
- Load balancing controls the above.
Disallowed plugins
Premium WordPress being a managed WordPress hosting solution, there’s expectedly some plugins that are disallowed. The most obvious ones are caching plugins. Those are redundant.
You can see a full, current list here, if interested.
What’s not to like?
Well, I’m an honest, straight-talking guy. So of course I’ll also say what I find “less likable” about this WordPress hosting offer.
Caching – Media Temple’s approach to this is:
Caching always on. Can’t be turned off. You can empty it, site-wide, with one click. But apart from that; you have no control. I hate messing with caching – it’s bothersome, cumbersome and… well… ehm… tiresome;) Yet, being tied up in an ever-present cache? Nah. Slightly more control would be nice. For ME at least. However, if you’re less technically inclined than me: this may be the PERFECT hosting choice for you!
Which brings me to:
Control – Media Temple has created a managed wordpress hosting product here. And that’s great. BUT, not when they decided to install and activate a WordPress video tutorial plugin, in my WP dashboard. I could deactivate the plugin, but I don’t like plugins to be automatically activated.
What’s more?
Uncached speed – While Media Temple’s WordPress hosting is blazingly fast on the frontend, I’ve found WP Engine to be slightly faster, especially on the backend, aka in WordPress’ admin dashboard. I believe WP Engine is a VPS server setup, and as you read above, Media Temple’s is a clustered one. Speed-wise, WP Engine wins that one. You can read a comparison here. Remember though: Media Temple is much better priced!
So… is Media Temple WordPress hosting right for you?
How right Media Temple WordPress hosting is for you, can only be answered if you give them a shot. At their new, low pricing: there’s little reason not to.
That said, managed WordPress hosting costs more than DIY-hosting like f.e. Digital Ocean where you set up your own server, all by yourself, A much easier, unmanaged hosting solution than Digital Ocean is Media Temple’s (gs) Grid. But it’s not as fast as media Temple’s WordPress hosting that’s tailor-made for… well… WordPress;)
I’ll end my 2015-updated Complete Media Temple WordPress Hosting Review by saying this: If you don’t want to bother with the technicalities of hosting – and just want your site to run without your interaction needed: managed WordPress hosting will do you more good, than harm. And Media Temple’s Managed WordPress solution delivers great value at a now VERY nice price – especially compared to the competition!
PS: For my fellow Headway Themes fans out there: yes, Media Temple’s premium offering works very well with the Headway WordPress theme;)
Jan D. says
Ever since Godaddy bought MediaTemple, their service has become just as bad. Unbearably slow after they load up your servers with other customers and then they want to charge you to move you to another (just to start the process anew). Ugh. After 8+ years, i am moving on never to return to MT.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Jan
Interesting. Which Media Temple product have you experienced that with? The Grid? Their WordPress hosting? DV?
=)
Oliver
Rafa says
My experience with Media Temples’ managed WordPress hosting is all about frustration. Support always blames WordPress and its plugins. I have a lot of issues with the backend, constant white screens, 502 bad requests, etc. When I contacted support the problem is always WordPress and they just tell me to review my plugins or just say that WordPress 4.7 has created many issues. Other hosting providers, like Ideologic, which are not WordPress specific, always give you some hint as to what plugin specifically may be the cause of your problems. They check and give some direction or even they fix it. Media Temple will not fix anything for you and most likely will just send you a few links about WordPress. If you think you are going to need support, Media Temple is not the right choice.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Rafa
Sorry to hear of those troubles!
Have you tried testing your site with the P3 Profiler plugin? It can give some good pointers as to which plugin(s) may be causing trouble.
That said, Media Temple’s support should be more helpful on this matter. I do recall having experienced such 502’s and white screens. Sadly I can’t remember what made them stop:-/
Oliver
Arie Vandenberg says
I got a decent deal last year for a 12 month plan for an unmanaged dev SSD VPS. It worked out to be about $20/month which is not bad. It came with 20Gig storage and 2Gig RAM. I’ve been running a few websites on it and noticed after looking into it that response time is less than favorable. Even with optimizing the website, it’s not as snappy as it could be. Speed aside, I have a real dislike of MT support. I know my VPS is unmanaged, but that doesn’t mean I should have to pry answers out of technical support. Really bad and sometimes just average support in my opinion. After a lot of work, I finally got Webmin/Virtualmin installed on the VPS and wanted to write my notes into a little tutorial to help others on MT. I asked if there was a place to add this to their knowledge base or support forum. “Sorry, there’s no place for that!” Seriously? I think Mediatemple is rotting from within and I’m not going to host my production servers with MT. At least they should have an active, open community support forum, but MT does not believe in that idea.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Arie
Thanks for commenting and sharing your experiences. Valued!
It seems a VPS hosting product wasn’t the optimal choice for you, though. It’s a virtual, empty box, to be set up (and maintained) by oneself. Few of us are sysadmins – myself included – so I’ve always steered clear of VPS’s. I’ve worked with a few, but if anyone thinks running a webserver is easy, set-and-forget: they’re in for a surprise. It’s a difficult task to optimize it, so many variables involved, and like any special task, it requires special skills, earned throughout years of managing servers of different configurations, and with various apps installed. They all behave differently. Typo3 isn’t Drupal and Drupal isn’t WordPress – they all need different optimization, and what works well at first, may not keep on working, as traffic patterns change over time.
That’s why I’m such a big fan of managed hosting.
For what it’s worth, Media Temple used to have some community forums, but they seem to have killed ’em, for whatever reason. Based on my own visits on those forums however, they were mostly used by a few super-passionate (sometimes very passionate…) persons. Regardless, I do miss their forums!
=)
Oliver
Randy says
I get what they were trying to do, offer affordable load balanced hosting, step up passed some of the more expensive dedicated hosting services. From my perspective, it’s a bust, I’ve used it for a number of clients, and had to relocate them. I was told by more than one Media Temple tech that they were in the process of re-engineering the Grid idea. That would be great if it was actually realized. For sites that have spike traffic, a pay per traffic need is more reasonable, sales promos etc… For developers the Grid service would also make sense if you were interested in resale. It’s definitely not there yet though. Let’s hope. Technology growth, it’s inevitable.
Peace.
Nathan says
I signed up for MT’s Managed WP hosting at 11:30am this morning. By 12:30 that afternoon, I had already requested a full refund and cancelled my account.
The first issue was that I couldn’t make a payment. I had to go into an Incognito window to do so…
Then they broke one of my Grid Service sites when their transfer tool failed.
Then they couldn’t connect to a site of mine on a different server via FTP, and support blamed it on a plugin on my site. They’re completely unrelated.
Instead of fixing it, I was given excuses.
I was with MT and their Grid Service for years, support and performance were atrocious.
Now they’ve “accidentally” charged my card twice…
Steer clear of MT.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Nathan
Sure seems like you’ve been “unlucky in hosting” – I hope you’re “lucky in love” then;)
Kidding aside: Which plugin did they blame?
Oliver
Tyler Waite says
Hi Oliver,
I’ve had many sites on Fatcow for years now and I’m looking to see if I can find anything better. They can be quite slow sometimes. I’ve been looking at the Grid, but I’ve been seeing a lot of conflicted thoughts. It seems like (mt) has revamped things in the last couple months. Do you think a lot of these issues have gone away? I’m just looking for something reliable that won’t give me any more headaches than I need.
Thanks!
Tyler
Oliver Nielsen says
You should definitely try the Grid!
Yes, in the beginning (many years ago) it wasn’t stable – but now it is. As stable, or more stable, than so much else out there.
Speed-wise: the Grid is not the fastest, but it depends on how database-heavy your needs are. If your sites are lean: they’ll be plenty fast. Add to that, that the Grid can handle lots of load/traffic, so where some other web hosting companies may be a bit faster, they may not hold up as well once your sites get serious traffic.
Give it a try – and be sure to report back:)
Oliver
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Tyler
You should definitely try the Grid!
Yes, in the beginning (many years ago) it wasn’t stable – but now it is. As stable, or more stable, than so much else out there.
Speed-wise: the Grid is not the fastest, but it depends on how database-heavy your needs are. If your sites are lean: they’ll be plenty fast. Add to that, that the Grid can handle lots of load/traffic, so where some other web hosting companies may be a bit faster, they may not hold up as well once your sites get serious traffic.
Give it a try – and be sure to report back:)
Oliver
Syed says
How would a ecommerce based blog perform on MT?
Say a blog which sell affiliate products and its own producs using woo commerce.
Would MT caching interfere with woo commerce.
Please help me out I am soooooo confused figuring out who i should go with.
WpEngine is too expensive & I have doubts about MT after reading reviews.
Oliver Nielsen says
I can only say that I myself haven’t had problems with caching being a problem when running WooCommerce on Media Temple’s WordPress hosting platform. And on the Grid, you control it yourself. That said, if I was to build a WooCommerce site today, I’d likely choose either Pagely or WP Engine. According to my own tests, the backend / wp-admin is a bit faster on WP Engine than on Media Temple – due to the difference in architecture. And, according to some, Pagely is even better than WP Engine – again, due to differences in architecture.
Pagely is more expensive than WP Engine though. And WP Engine is more expensive than Media Temple. In the end, I believe it makes sense to start low, you can always migrate your site, should you need it. If you start high, you lock yourself into a hosting plan that’s perhaps “more” (and more expensive) than you need – and you’ll never realise you paying for more than you need, if you start out high.
Syed says
Thanks for your reply.
Would you suggest running an ecommerce plus affiliate blog on MT WordPress hosting?
$20/PM plan with 400,000 visitors seem very reasonable price wise.
Oliver Nielsen says
Ecommerce: depends how heavy (i.e. how many WooCommerce extensions / plugins etc). But yeah, generally bandwidth- and traffic-wise, Media Temple has always lived up to their promises. I’ve been with them since 2007.
Paul says
HI great article and following thread and very interesting comments, has anyone used Dreampress from Dream Host and what did you think?
Paul
Oliver Nielsen says
Hey Paul
For what it’s worth: I’ve not myself been impressed much when I was with DreamHost, but that’s many years ago. I still don’t hear good recommendations about them though.
And:
http://joshuaiz.com/words/dreampress-by-dreamhost-why-it-wont-work-for-vizualrecords-com
Tim says
Howdy,
Thanks for the review! As a WordPress frontend dev I was stoked to try out the Media Temple WordPress hosting. However, I have found there are two barriers that may push me back to WP Engine. 1) The staging site feature doesn’t sync the posts back to the live site. I don’t quite understand why this would be the case or not make it an option. I have to manually update the database in PHPMyAdmin. 2) It doesn’t work with WP Migrate DB Pro, which for me is a must-use tool. After working with both MigrateDB pro support and Media Temple I discovered it is because MT WordPress hosting is shared and it would present a security problem. Other than these issues Media Temple has been a good experience for me.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Tim
Thanks for chiming in!
I had some trouble figuring out what synced back to the main site (from the staging version) and what didn’t. I came to the understanding that it’s by design, so that comments, posts and pages on the main site isn’t overwritten, when synced (so as not to lose content created on the main site, after the staging version was created).
Depending on ones workflow, and the nature of the site: it can be both a benefit and a curse. I see what you mean, and I feel your pain;)
Oliver
Tim says
Good point, unfortunately it is on the curse side of things for me because I am using Advanced Custom Fields to add content and that isn’t synced with the live site. I hope they make an option for the option to sync that later. In fact, if anyone could come up with a solution to merge databases, not just sync, that would be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I hope WP Migrate DB does that, it would be an awesome product! By the way, I love how your new post slides in from the top of the screen, brilliant!
-Tim
Paul says
A really informative article. Thank you for doing the hard work to give new WP users like myself somewhere to start when it comes to looking at dedicated hosting solutions.
I see that Media Temple have just revamped their entire range of solutions (as of Feb 2015). Do you have any plans to see how these stack up compared to your original findings? Are you still with Media Temple and are you still as happy with them as ever?
Regards,
Paul.
Oliver Nielsen says
Hi Paul
You have a good point, so I’ve rewritten and updated a large part of the original review – which you can read right here, in this very post (just published).
Still with Media Temple – and happy with them. But I decided to move my site back on the Grid, after a year on the managed WordPress plan. Why? Well, there were some ideas for caching (which I described in another blog post) that I wanted to thoroughly test on my own site (currently ongoing – experimenting) to see if they’d be worth sharing (I think it is – but I’m not done yet). Another thing is: I needed WordPress Multisite functionality. The Grid has it. Managed WordPress doesn’t. For my specific purposes, and with my new caching experiment; I figured I’d just as well go back on the Grid, since I still had other sites on that account, and little reason to keep two accounts active:)
Stay tuned for more on that caching stuff. It’s pretty cool!
Oliver
Dan says
Flywheel is the greatest thing ever for “just want it to work” WordPress hosting. For clients I use a bulk plan there and a couple of separate accounts. Their entry level plans are $15/mo. This is cloud hosting built on linode and digital ocean which I also use and appreciate.
I’ve used Nexcess and Siteground for about 10 years each too. They are inexpensive shared hosting done about as well as it can be. Both have superb support. Nexcess is a US company that owns its own infrastructure. They provide solid fundamentals, not endless features. SiteGround is East European based and does not own the hardware which is mostly leased US servers. They pack a massive and bewildering amount of features into cpanel.
Media Temple/GoDaddy is not competitive in quality for price with any of these hosts.
Caroline says
Hi Oliver,
Thanks for all the great stats! I’m currently on a Blue Host shared plan, and it is sooooo slow. Part of it is my image bloated site. I have smushed the pictures as much as I dare, and I have only been posting for a few months, so I can’t imagine what this will be like in a year. I was thinking of trying out either the MT Grid or the MT Premium WordPress plan. I don’t have a lot of traffic. Which would you suggest for me?
Appreciate your suggestions!
Thanks.
Caroline
Andrew says
Had switched from MT to SiteGround, boy that was the biggest mistake I ever made! As per my posts above had a heap of issues with MT, but SiteGround surpassed them by a mile! 2 months of sheer hell, poor support (mainly cut and paste) blocked IP’s apparently the British Telecom IP database is on spamhaus and therefore blocked. They refused to whitelist me and all my emails were blocked. Appalling company with little understanding outside their realm. Eventually bit the bullet and moved again to WP Engine for my major sites and all the small ones slowly moving them back to MT Grid as their not exactly taxing in resources and just simple WordPress sites. WP Engine are fantastic if expensive, but the speed is absolutely flat out and i know they use Nginx so thats where the difference is. The only issue i currently have is the amount of bots hitting the sites and WP Engine measure hits differently so already near my 100,000 limit. Visits are not pro rata compared. To alleviate this moved all DNS to Cloudflare but beware there are issues with lockouts from the admin backend due to non restored visitor IP’s and its an ongoing issue. Other than that its all going good!
Hope this helps.
Sags says
Media Temple support thus far has been the worst I’ve ever experienced. Idiots. Idiots that you have to slander on twitter to actually get a response. Their responses are mostly BS and they don’t own up to their mistakes.
I’ll never sign up another client with media temple. They are garbage.
Dan Knauss says
Several commenters here make it sound like managed WordPress at Media Temple is bad old grid wine in new bottles. Saying it is 3-4x faster than the super-slow grid is not saying a lot. I’d like to see some performance stats, especially since your whole site here is set up with affiliate links and serves as a marketing tool for (mt).
Cesar Falcao says
…sorry, when you don’t subscribe to posts commentaries, you take some months to notice stuff…
There’s no drawbacks in using Nginx. It’s different, so you don’t use mod_rewrite or .htaccess, because it’s a Apache thing. WP and W3TC will work the same, but faster.
Nginx by itself is a heaven’s send: compared to Apache, it uses half the memory and have a 10x performance in the same hardware. It can scale wonderfully and uses little RAM for it.
It will make your backend fast. 🙂
My server studies are halted, just maintaining my stuff. I had to finish some past projects (pais ones) so it’s in my to do list. Regards, my friend.
Andrew says
Have also been a long time user of MT, and have over 30 sites on the GRID Platform and two on the Premium Platform. When I launched on the Premium there were so many teething problems it was unreal and the replies were usually “bear with us, we are having growing pains”, and the support generally became “We don’t offer support for third party applications’ when querying slow page load times insinuating that it was the site that was poor not their servers. Each time it was a server issue.
I’m having poor latency on both platforms now and i have “smushed” the hell out of images, minify’d everything, and now looking at cloudFare to help. Also Premium does not support Multisite on WordPress you have to go back to the GRID on that and thats where there are huge problems! Try importing an XML file to a Grid site, it fails! They recommend using direct DB import – Server Error 500! Tried importing using Sequel Pro, it fails. Support? “We don’t offer support for third party solutions . . .”
I was toying with going Amazon route with an EC2 instance and RDS but the complexities are manageable but a real pain. Have been recommended to use DigiatalOcean whom I might try to alleviate some of these issues.
mason says
I have Media Temple and I can tell you They are the worst, I have been with mt for two years, recently they have become unbearable, I was trying to transfer a domain name and they put me on hold for an hour… because i never received my confirmation email.. not to mention they are overpriced with outdated technology
Billy G says
Honestly, it’s been a hot mess for me ever since I moved over to (mt). The service sounds great on the surface, but it’s not ready for prime time in the least. I’ve opened at least a dozen tickets in the past month, and response times are downright dismal. Like Oliver said, talking to online chat is an exercise in futility, as they are NEVER able to help, and simply escalate tickets up the chain when they hit a wall. 🙁
Jacques says
Nice article Oliver, I’m currently on the fence about getting this service (which of course led me here). I’m wondering how this would all work with woocommerce? Nobody’s really made mention of it, and with all these tiers of caching I’m a little worried… (W3TC has done some pretty awful things to a few woocommerce sites I’ve setup in the past…)
What are your thoughts on this?
cesarfalcao says
Hi Oliver, epic article here. I did not knew Media Temple managed WP hosting, but it looks a solid start. Most of the performance comes simply just dumping Apache to Nginx as web server (it uses little resources and its speed screams) and use SSD. I had a great experience with WPEngine, and really loved the staging feature, a powerful tool. The MT premium themes was a surprise (I prefer Elegant Themes’s Divi than Avada) but it’s a clever move. I’d like to hear if you tested Pagely and the others. I´d suggest another great hosting that has shared hosting with SSD (starts US2/m): A Small Orange, great speed and support – it has better plans too.