I moved to MediaTemple’s Grid hosting platform in the beginning of January, I think I’ve used the service enough to post a review on the service. Personally I’m very happy with the service, no complains at all in fact, good customer service, barely any downtime and fast FTP which is all you pretty much look for in a host. Below is the detailed review covering every (for the most part) aspect of the service.

• Reliability

MediaTemple’s GS hosting has been very satisfactory in terms of reliability, there’s virtually 99% uptime, I manage 7 websites on the GS server, there are occasional downtime situations (including yesterday), however this lasts for a few minutes the most. There might have been one time where downtime was around 1 hour. Apart from that the servers have been pretty fast and steady.

The GS server is mainly promoted by boasting uptime during traffic spikes and rightfully so, the server was steady with occasional traffic spikes I got from Stumbleupon maybe a couple of times.

• Ease of use

The Media Temple account management and control panel are quite straight forward and easy to use, they provide 1-click installation of popular applications, WordPress, Drupal and Zencart (they could work on the number of options here as comparatively, to similar services like the GoDaddy hosting connection which offers several more 1-click installations MediaTemple is quite far behind.) They provide several usage reports (bandwidth, GPU, Disk, visitors) to keep track of your server.

• Price

Grid hosting with Media Temple costs $20/month. This is probably one of the factors that can be improved on, since grid hosting is still a fairly new concept and not available by many web hosting providers yet, it is compared to ‘economy’ hosting of other web hosting providers which are available from $5/month depending on the host. Personally, I think the price can be reduced a notch, while I am still happy to pay the $20 a month for a server that is really secure.

• FTP

I use Filezilla to manage FTP transfers and Media Temple offers very fast transfer rates (as opposed to my previous host, Godaddy).

• Email

I use Gmail to manage my custom email domains, and I suggest you do the same with whatever hosting provider you use. MediaTemple is equipped with SquirrelMail, Atmail and RoundCube to manage your email accounts, which are all popular web mail services, you may use the one you prefer.

• Popularity

Media Temple is still appreciating in terms of popularity as more reputed brands shift towards the service, they already boast several established brands (including Sony, Adobe, Techcrunch, etc.) that host with the service so you’ll be in good company if you plan to host with Media Temple.

• Help and Customer Support

Media Temple provides great customer support, I had to mail them a couple of times (the 1-click WordPress installation creates a htaccess file that redirects your site to the Media Temple home page, wasn’t aware of it), and received a reply in just a couple of hours maybe, both times, thus very prompt customer support, also queries are to the point and not excessive or ‘indirect’ (as opposed to GoDaddy’s email support sometimes which can get a little excessive and doesn’t really solve the query. I didn’t have the need to call customer support yet (I generally would if there are several hours of downtime) but I’m pretty sure it should match the email support standards. (Any feedback on this in the comments would be appreciated).

Their knowledge base and user forums already contains a wealth of information which will probably cover all your doubts so you wouldn’t probably need customer support in the first place.

• Overall

If you’ve read the review above, it’s mostly been on a positive note, some of the factors they need to work on are probably their price and 1-click applications, apart from that, it’s a pretty neat service and I’d recommend it to anyone who can fit $20/month into their hosting budget. Any feedback on the service in the comments would be much appreciated.

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Main Pros

• Price

You’ll have to admit, Go Daddy is one of the cheapest hosts out there with their cheapest plan for as low as under $4 a month and domain registration for $1.99 with 10 GB web space, 300 GB bandwidth, 500 email accounts and more you do get your money’s worth. Also the considerable amount of coupon codes they offer helps bring the price a little bit lower than the already economical price. Here is a forum thread with a list of working coupon codes for Go Daddy.

• Popularity

It is also undoubtedly one of the most popular domain hosts, a lot of users have been successfully using Go Daddy over the years whether it’s a corporate firm or a personal blog, Go Daddy is extensively used over the Internet.

• Go Daddy Hosting Connection

This is also one of the main pros, the ‘hosting connection’ features one click of a bunch of useful online applications including forum software, blogging software, content management software, image galleries, wikis and a lot more.

Main Cons

• Adverse Publicity

As much as it is popular which means it is a good host it has gained quite a bit of negative reputation as well. Increasing ‘scare’ stories and inefficiencies which has haunted quite a few users has led to quite a few negative blog posts by angry users. This has also led to sites like NoDaddy and also GoDaddySucks (which doesn’t seem to exist anymore, it re-directs to the Go Daddy home page which is ironic, I think).

As much as there has been negative publicity directed at Go Daddy I am yet to experience these flaws with Go Daddy, they’ve been quite ok with me.

• Crippled plans

As much as their plans are cheap, their plans are ‘crippled’ with only the most basic features included with plans and with many other features subject to payments. While it is quite apparent that the basic package is cheap because of the ‘crippled’ features I think it’s still valid to say they are cheap because you don’t really need most of these features (like the ‘certified’ domain seal for instance), but it’s always nice to have a complete package in case you need it at some point without having to reach for your credit card again. (They give 10 MB mail boxes with the package which is hardly enough with public mail providers giving unmetered mail storage and high capacities. You can read this post on how to handle your corporate mail with Gmail.)

The other stuff

• Services and Support (5/5)

I think their customer service is quite good too; I’ve contacted them quite a bit and always receive lengthy step by step instructions on how to solve my query in less than 10 hours usually. There online support is pretty much complete too with most problems you may face already comprehensively described.

• Control Panel (4/5)

They have been quite under quite a bit of upgrades lately when it comes to their user CP, in terms of the appearance, placement and navigation. It’s quite user-friendly with drop down menus to most features based on its category. It’s upload client is quite good too but as it is FTP compatible I guess it’s easier to use an FTP client instead.

• Mail (3.5/5)

Mail still needs a bit of brushing up. I don’t really like their choice of colors, and the appearance on the whole is not very convincing. Replying a mail is a bit inconvenient with the window opening in a new tab, and the mailbox given with the standard plan could have been more than 10 MB, so with the imperfect situations I faced I decided to handle my mail with Gmail.

• Reliability (5/5)

They are quite reliable I am yet to discover an occasion where my sites might have been down. For now the server is fast and quite efficient.

• Security and Backup (3/5)

They take backups of your files often but you cannot just restore backups like some of the other hosts allow you to. You can restore a backup incase your file was deleted by contacting them and paying a ‘small fee’ as they call it. Domain protection is provided as well.

• Transferring Domains

Transferring domains is quite a smooth process as well with the transfer taking place in around five days, I have transferred two of my domains and on both occasions it went ok, their online help provides info explaining the whole process and virtually walks you through it.

• Overall (4/5)

On the overall based my experience what they have to offer they are doing quite good as a hosting company with cheap prices, lots of features and they are reliable as well which is all you need.

Visit GoDaddy Home Page

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Considering the fact that the basic mail service provided is not really ‘there’ in comparison to Gmail or Y! Mail so you’ll probably go for an upgrade which is what you don’t need to do. Google Apps lets you sign up for a free account and it provides you mail for your domain (any domain, not necessarily bought via Google Apps) via their Gmail service. Well there’s a lot to say about which mail service is best, but I think Gmail has a close to perfect spam filter and its software is pretty fast as well. I am yet to receive a spam mail in my Inbox.

You can sign up for the standard Apps account and during registration you’ll have to select the ‘I already own a domain’ option. From there once the registration is complete. You can setup mail to be received via Gmail. You can check your mail from mail.google.com/a/yoursite.com with a great spam filter and a 6 something GB mailbox. Also, you can add upto 200 users to it which is a bargain considering that the service is free!

Setting the mail up so that it is handled by the Apps account is a walk in the park the provide step by step instructions on how to change your MX records at your current domain to make the domain compatible with your Apps account. Of course if you have any trouble setting it up you can leave a comment and I’ll be more than glad to help you out.

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Excellent service, provides 24 hour toll free phone support. Support to automatically install add-ons like blogs, forums, etc. Tool-tip text help describing various features and online help available as well. Also provides an easy to use site builder to build professional web pages.

Plan prices (2/5)

One of the most expensive domain providers available. This negative point though maybe compensated with the rest of the package.

Control Panel (5/5)

Excellent control panel. You could test it using the free geocities control panel which is similar. Uses tabs, and separate ‘Go-to’ drop down boxes as well to easily navigate to different parts of the control panel. Also displays page views on a graph on the control panel home page; detailed information regarding web traffic too could also be extracted.

Mail (5/5)

There’s nothing to say about the Mail, it’s Yahoo! Mail, what more can you ask for?

Reliability (5/5)

Domains hosted on very reliable servers.

Security & Backup (5/5)

Protects your domain and personal details for $0.99. Backups of all files are made every hour, which could be easily recovered if required.

Special offers (4/5)

While there may be other better special offers available with other domains Yahoo! Provides a few special offers as well the pick being a $100 Yahoo! Search marketing credit to boost your web traffic and get you started.

‘Best’ Plan:

Based on the price and support if you are planning on creating a basic site which does not require much web space the ‘Web hosting Starter’ would be a good choice:

Price – $11.95 (+$0.99 for domain protection)/month

Web space – 5GB

Bandwidth – 200GB

While the price for the above plan as well maybe relatively high,
the extra maybe 5 or 6 bucks maybe worth it because of the overall package.

You can find more details regarding Yahoo! Web hosting here.

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