MediaTemple VPS Review

MediaTemple, a company that was acquired by GoDaddy around December, 2013, is a web hosting company that specializes in shared hosting and virtual private servers. Although GoDaddy web hosting has somewhat of a negative reputation when it comes to shared hosting (we love their domain service), in our review research on various forums, blogs and other sources, we’ve determined that the acquisition of MediaTemple didn’t reflect negatively with their quality. In fact, the same staff remains, the same server infrastructure remains and the servers weren’t moved/merged.

In this review, we will focus strictly on their VPS Hosting service and compare features, packages, pricing and more. With that said, if you are new to web hosting and starting a new website, you may want to start with our MediaTemple shared hosting review because the pricing is much cheaper and more ideal for those starting a new website. That being said, let’s get started with our review of their VPS hosting service.

Virtual Server Plans Comparison Review

It’s very important to understand how MediaTemple displays their VPS plans because it can be confusing if you aren’t aware of their site layout and structure. On their main VPS page which is shown when you click their “VPS Hosting” from their main page, you’ll find three options to choose from. These are actually categories that drive you to additional options when you click their green “LEARN MORE” button. These initial plans are described below.

• Self-Managed VPS – This VPS is for Linux administrators only. You’ll only get access to the command line with no access to a control panel. This is not recommended for the large majority of users who are reading this review. Starts at $30/mo.
• Managed VPS – This is the most common VPS plan that most register. It gives you access to a control panel, 24/7 support, performance monitoring. daily backups, OS updates and security scanning as part of the plan. Starts at $55/mo.
• Fully Managed VPS – This is for the newbie that doesn’t want to do anything with their VPS. You’ll have access to full professional management that will handle anything you need including automated malware removal, consulting, server configuration, application and plugin installs, and 3 on-demand services per month. Starts at a whopping $249/mo (not a typo).

All plans include access to upgraded SSD which includes optimal performance, especially for any site that uses databases. An amazing 99.999% uptime guarantee is included and, as we’ve mentioned, access to support 24/7 whenever you need it. Need to upgrade? What’s nice about MediaTemple is they provide you with access to near-instant upgrades from 2GB to 128GB with a simple click of a mouse.

Self Managed VPS Plans

These plans include your choice of Linux OS including Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian or CentOS.

All plans were recently updated to include double the RAM with the new specifications available in the screenshot above. As you can see, the pricing ranges from $30/mo to $1,000/mo depending on your specific needs. For the visually impaired, we’ve listed 3 plans with specifications below:

• Level 1 – $30/mo includes 2GB RAM, 20GB SSD space, and 2TB bandwidth.
• Level 2 – $50/mo includes 4GB RAM, 40GB SSD space, and 3TB bandwidth.
• Level 3 – $100/mo includes 8GB RAM, 80GB SSD space, and 5TB bandwidth.

Managed VPS Plans

These 6 VPS plans are what most will want for their VPS plan because it includes a user-friendly control panel to manage your VPS. During your order, you will have the choice between Plesk or cPanel which are the two most popular control panels on the market. Our recommendation is cPanel which is the most popular and most common control panel used across most web hosts which makes transferring to another host (if you need to) easier. With each plan above, you’ll have access to easy-install of the most popular applications such as WordPress and Magento with either control panel you choose. These plans also enable you to be a web host reseller and come with the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, Perl, Python, Ruby and more.

As for the actual plans, the pricing ranges from $55/mo to $1,500/mo depending on the configuration you select. For the visually impaired, we’ve included 3 plans below:

• Level 1 – $55/mo includes 2GB RAM, 30GB SSD space, and 2TB bandwidth.
• Level 2 – $100/mo includes 4GB RAM, 50GB SSD space, and 3TB bandwidth.
• Level 3 – $150/mo includes 8GB RAM, 100GB SSD space, and 5TB bandwidth.

It’s important to note that the $1,000/mo pricing for unmanaged VPS or the $1,500/mo pricing above does not overlap with their dedicated server offers. In fact, the dedicated servers start at $2,000/mo which is something you should keep in mind.

Regardless, the pricing is quite expensive with the entry-level managed VPS plan being more expensive than the majority of VPS hosts we’ve reviewed. The upgrade plans will add additional cost to your overhead, however, based on our research, the pricing equated with additional dependability with few negative reviews.

Fully Managed VPS Plans

Keep in mind that the fully managed VPS that MediaTemple offers starts at $249, we’re assuming for the Level 1 plan above. In order to get this service, you will need to request a quote, for which, MediaTemple will call you back and discuss your needs.

Our recommendation: Skip these plans unless money is no object and the peace of mind and hands-free approach appeals to you. You are paying for access to SysAdmins that will manage your VPS and upgrade your service as needed, however, the control panel you choose from the plans in the managed VPS section above will also manage most of this for you as well. In our experience, if you have a question regarding your VPS with the cheaper solutions above, you can always ask their support and they will likely help you with whatever you need anyway.

MediaTemple Hardware Review

They offer two datacenters, both in USA, on the East (Ashton, VA) and West (El Segundo, Ca) coasts. Network uptime is 99.999% guaranteed which offers a 20/20 policy that states that you’ll get a 20% discount off your monthly fees for every 20 minutes of downtime. That means if your service is offline for longer than 1 hour and 40 minutes, your service will be free for that month but the policy excludes scheduled and emergency maintenance, user configuration errors, DDOS attacks and several other conditions.

The actual hardware is powered by Hewlett-Packard Proliant DL-Series machines featuring multi-core Intel Xeon processors and high-performance Kingston SSD storage.

VPS Customer Support Review

MediaTemple has you covered with support for your VPS plan. In this section, we’re looking for support and documentation specific to your VPS needs. You’d be surprised how many web hosts fail to offer sections specific to their VPS plans which is always a disappointment when we see it. With that being said, let’s dive into their site and see what they offer.

Knowledgebase – MediaTemple has an impressive VPS section available with over 1,000 topics available to help you with your VPS plan. They even include sub-categories specific to DV Developer, DV and for most of you who are considering their service now, a “4.0” section that includes features and topics specific to their latest VPS feature-set. We tried several of our default search queries and they passed with answers to most of our topics. They failed on our queries regarding cPanel / WHM, they could really improve their knowledgebase with specific cPanel WHM help documents, we find it lacking.

Forums – Their most popular forum category is DV Managed with over 2,000 topics and 6,500 replies at the time of this review. This indicates that a decent amount of their customers use their VPS service. That being said, we find the forums relatively quiet with just a few topics receiving recent posts.

Chat – Available to all VPS customers for technical support and assistance. This service is available for sales questions at the bottom right of any page you access on their site, however, at 1AM MST, the system was offline and required you to leave a message.

Ticket System – Again, this is only available to customers with a required user/pass to access.

Social Media – They place a heavy emphasis on their @mediatemplehelp twitter account for help via Twitter. That said, they are doing an amazing job managing support via Twitter with many responses each day including on a popular holiday.

We found the public System Status page a nice touch of transparency. This page reports on DNS, GRID hosting and most importantly, the VPS DV servers.