- How good is the (mt) media template grid-service?
- Do you got any problems with downtime, performance or other server related problems?
- How is the support/staff?
- Do you got trouble installing php scripts / forums / cms like: wordpress, joomla, dupal, vbulletin, phpbb, and related plugins or add-ons?
- Is $20/month the all time price or does the price go up after first year of hosting?
Millen–
I wouldn’t pay $0.20 for the grid. I am cutting my losses and terminating the (gs) after a year of grief. 2010 has started much like 2009 at (mt). I have had an (ss) since 2003 (recently closed, no complaints with it ever) and have been on the grid since August 2008. It has always been too unreliable to put anything but my personal sites up. Unfortunately I have recommended it to others who can’t be disentangled as quickly.
Answers to your questions:
- It’s terrible.
- Yes, downtime. If you can get 99.0% uptime with an SQL container you’re doing well. Some major outages in 09 and earlier, latency and dropped db connections more often, general slowness.
- Support is fine unless you ask about downtime, latency, or other service disruption. First they blame you, then they try to upsell you, and the whole time their status log and blog admits the whole thing is a steaming pile of crap! But they’ve always just fixed it for good now, and “the chances of reoccurrence are minimal.” Repeat cycle every 2-4 weeks.
- Joomla and Drupal install OK if you understand how the process differs from a typical server where the database is localhost. But then they will run slow as molasses… Some apps designed badly to assume mod_php can be a PITA to install, like Elgg at least as of version 1.2.
- Use the retailmenot coupon for a permanent 20% discount. None of the fees ever go up, but the response and downtime do.
[I]Copied below is the current version of one of the reviews I keep updated regarding hosts I use a lot. This one pertains to Media Temple’s grid service, probably the most over-hyped worst performer ever to be praised by Techcrunch and admitted to the Gartner “magic quadrant.”
I knew about the grid’s problems after it was launched in 2006, but I didn’t pay close attention and thought they had been solved by 2008. I had good reports from other (gs) users, and I didn’t immediately run into problems until 2009.
As you can see there are some good points, but overall I have to say --without exaggeration-- the (gs) is truly a bad hosting package and the worst in performance I have ever encountered. Apart from the major outages, spam and DDoS problems, call center failures, and “support” based on denial, blaming the customer, and upselling containers or the (dv) the central problem is the grid is SLOOOOOOW.
Unless you think it’s got other qualities worth paying 2-4x the price of standard shared hosting for 3x the wait, the (gs) is to be avoided. Its latency issues are well documented and verified by (mt) itself, my own tests, and others using different remote monitoring services to look at downtime and http response time. The Wordpress latency tracker plugin is also an easy way to see how slow and erratic queries are on the grid without an SQL container. I have posted stats and links to live tracking in the (mt) user forum, as have other customers.
Your money is really better invested in a really good shared hosting provider or else shell out a little more for a VPS, including Media Temple’s (dv). I don’t think it’s price competitive though, and their botching of the grid and extreme slowness in rolling out solutions, upgrades, and new products biases me against giving them any more business pending a sea change in customer opinion and demonstrable performance. Here’s the review:[/I]
Media Temple, based in Culver City, California, is a big, established name in professional hosting, but it also has a reputation for hype and making you pay for a brand rather than A-level service. Media Temple is the host with which I have the longest running experience (since 2003), and my regard for the company has only gone down over time. Media Temple no longer offers shared hosting, having replaced it with the “grid” or “grid service” (gs), which has proved a failure. The (gs) is slated to be replaced by the cluster service (cs) in 2010. The (gs) is probably the best known offering from (mt) apart from the (dv), a VPS plan, as they are the two lowest-priced and most used services.
The main value of the (gs) is that it is managed, scalable, has 24 hour (phone/web/email) support, and you can carry 100 separate domains on it with their own sites and email accounts without paying a bunch of extra fees–as long as you stay within the ample bandwidth and processing limits, which are metered. You have a pretty high level of control with the (gs) and yet not “too much.” You can tweak the Apache and PHP environment. (PHP runs as a CGI process on the grid, and you have access to php.ini.) You have shell access, but you can get by without using it. If you want dedicated mySQL resources you can configure plus diagnostics, you can buy a scalable SQL “container” at an additional $20+/month, which is what the (gs) costs at its normal, undiscounted rate. Django and Rails containers are also available and required to do anything with those frameworks. The (mt) knowledgebase is the best anyone’s ever seen.
The (gs) as of 2009-10 should be avoided, for reasons explained below.
The main drawback of the (gs) is frequent latency leading to slow load times for sites built on database-driven applications like Wordpress, Drupal, or Joomla. As Media Temple acknowledges, the “SmartPool” of shared database servers on the default (gs) package is not immune to the bad neighbor effect, and latency can be a problem. A BIG problem. This is mainly because the SmartPool segregates your databases from your files, which are copied across a cluster of file servers. That’s great for redundancy, but it can slow down overall response time considerably. Even static files will generally yield a slower response time than standard shared hosting. This seems especially true on lower traffic sites. Given enough traffic, caching will kick in, you’ll see faster load times, and you should be able to handle significant traffic volume pretty well. If you add an SQL container, you’ll see a snappier response across the board for applications using a database, but that’s an added expense to get performance you can get from decent shared hosting providers for a much lower cost–which (mt) has acknowledged.
Even with an SQL container there are good days and bad days–and good months and bad months. Bad months as in <99.9+% uptime and slow response time (1.5-3+ seconds). This may be due to an overselling of the grid; as your cluster and storage segment fill up, they may run slower. To eliminate these problems (mt) is moving toward a variety of new service offerings, including the successor to the grid, the cluster service (cs) which has been in development since 2008.
To Media Temple’s credit, they are quite open about their “system incidents” (i.e., technical failures), which are posted and fed into Twitter. There just have been too many of them. While it’s a totally different kind of service (a managed VPS), the (dv) at $50/month or $500/year is a better choice if you’re going with (mt).
Don’t just take my word for it:
http://www.kyle-brady.com/2009/11/26/mediatemples-continued-inadequacy-issues/ “Almost a month ago, I made MediaTemple, and the world, aware of an attack that seemed to be a large security issue, and they eventually admitted it was their problem to deal with, rather than blaming it on software like hosting companies like to do. But, weeks later, the problem is not yet resolved, and the public is largely still in the dark.”
http://www.kyle-brady.com/2009/11/07/wordpress-mediatemple-and-an-injection-attack/
http://www.innovatingtomorrow.net/2007/10/24/media-temple-grid-server-problems
http://www.themememe.com/why-media-temple-sucks-save-money-on-web-hosting-dreamhost
http://www.matthewbirks.com/media-temple-slower-than-dreamhost-officially/
http://cavemonkey50.com/2007/04/media-temple-has-lost-my-support/
http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2007/01/19/anatomy-of-mysql-on-the-grid/ <-Here is where (mt) explained the failure and solution, which hasn’t worked. They make it sound like everyone was going to get a free SQL container, but not so as the first commenter here rightly complained: http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2007/04/05/mysql-gridcontainers-launched/ The answer given was one I was willing to try, and it helped. For double its cost, with an SQL container the (gs) starts to respond as quickly as $4 crap hosting running Wordpress. But you will still get form submission in blogs and CMS platforms that generally go yawning off into the ether, wheels spinning forever.
http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/faq.php#65 <-admitting the bad neighbor effect on the grid = admitting failure at the main thing the grid was supposed to achieve. Unfortunately the SQL container doesn’t address slow http response from the storage segments.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=923539
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=859733&highlight=media+temple+grid
It used to be a fantastic product, a quality brand name and a well established organization, however recently their standards have slipped. 
Yes, Yes, Yes.
Downtime - Last year they had a week where the servers were effectively dead, I only was affected for 2 days but it affected several thousand people.
Performance - I’ve had issues with FTP, Loading speeds, and more… and some of these problems have gone unresolved.
Servers - Security breach this year, everyone’s passwords got exposed and our index.php files got hijacked with some malicious code.
They take at least a day to respond, sometimes longer, their friendly and usually know what their talking about but responses are usually vague at best. And they don’t own up when they have a major issue. EG: The password breach was down to keeping account passwords in plain text format! But they blamed Wordpress installations.
Nope, those work pretty fine for me, never had an issue with them on that.
It’s the baseline price, if you want a dedicated mySQL container (or support for ruby or python scripting) each of those 3 are an additional $20 a month bolt on. Pretty expensive if you want all the bells and whistles. Most other hosts provide you with all that kinda stuff with no additional charges.
dpk is correct, it’s just gone downhill over and over, I joined up with them in 2007 as someone who really loved their control panel, decent polished interface, explicit reference to what you get in the package (none of that unlimited crud) and I had been recommended by others on the service. It’s just been one issue after another with them lately and it really breaks my heart to see such a decent brand become toileted on poor service. If I wasn’t running with them for free (due to compensation for a major issue) I would have likely turned elsewhere. I cannot recommend them anymore.
wow guys, thanks for the extremely detailed answers.
I have been with the same host for I think 7 years now (Surftown, scandinavian host). I have not run in to any major problems during these years but they are always a bit late with new PHP version etc. I was just curious, the grass always seems greener on the other side. In this case the grass looked real good with the custom admin panel, great design and promising words from the host.
Thanks for giving me this useful information.
Is there any other host you guys wanna recommend?
Is there any other host you guys wanna recommend?
I believe that would be better to do your own search and then return to the forum and do the search for reviews
Hi there
It is most definitely NOT Media Temple which is bad.
So, without further ado, here’s what you need to know…
This site, http://littlecoogie.com, was made by me. Notice my name at bottom right. It’s on MT. Never had a problem.
This site, http://www.ancient-beadart.com, was made by me. Not quite finished, I agree, but notice my name at bottom right. It’s on MT. No problems thus far.
Much more importantly, check this http://www.lommebags.com. It’s on SURFTOWN in Denmark and it doesn’t work.
The reason it doesn’t work is because I can’t specify the directory to which SESSIONS are saved. If you try to specify a directory other than the default (for security reasons), SESSIONS are not preserved. As such, there’s zero security.
Because of this, my client has today (March 3) set up hosting with MT. I recommended it.
And I guarantee you with 100% confidence that, when all is said and done, the site will get finished and will work perfectly.
Obviously, one has to accept that on an open forum such as this there will inevitably be those who claim to be something they are not. And one also has to accept that there will be those who claim to have experience with things which in actuality they have almost certainly never used.
Ultimately, then, it is up to you to decide who knows what they are talking about and who most definitely does not.
I wish you well, and hope you make the right choice.
I’m sorry but …it makes no sense … WHY??? check MT Client Profiles and you find the answer!!!