MediaTemple Woes
I’m done with Media Temple. I switched over about a month ago because they came highly reviewed and I’m just tired of the constant issues.
Since I’ve started using them, I’ve had multiple outages, database problems and been stuck due to bugs in their interface. When I contact support, I’m lucky if I hear back within 36 hours. Right now, the database is refusing connections from multiple sites under my account and the response I got back was essentially, it works on my machine.
Does MediaTemple make a practice of ignoring their “lesser” clients? Maybe they’re too busy trying to be stylish and throw parties to be bothered with providing customer service. It’s very frustrating because I’m now facing another server move which is a lot of work for me.
I’m really stunned by my experience with them. A lot of the people I respect really stand by them. In fact, if this was just some company I had found, I would have canceled before I even moved things over from A2Hosting. After looking at the numbers it’s just something I can’t live with. Here’s a little comparison.
| Stat | Mgmnh.com (still on A2) | ian.sundermedia.com (MT) |
|---|---|---|
| Avg Ping | 47ms | 170ms |
| Page Load (Static) | <1sec | 7 seconds |
| Page Load (PHP/MySQL) | 1.5 seconds | 8 seconds |
| Avg Support Response | 3.2 Hours | 25 Hours*(42 Hours) |
* Most support requests were over 30 hours, but 2 requests were within 2 hours. The second average is without the 2 short responses
Unfortunately, A2 doesn’t have options for the upgrades I will likely need for one of my current projects, so I’ve canceled my accounts with Media Temple and A2 and moved to DreamHost. I’ve got a few site moved already and the performance is definitely a marked improvement.
5 Responses so far
March 29th, 2007
6:36 am
Let me know about your experiences with DreamHost after you get a little time under your belt - I’ve heard good things.
March 29th, 2007
12:08 pm
Be happy that (mt) bought me a beer Monday night then.
I’ve been thinking of moving to Textdrive, they seem to have good plans.
March 29th, 2007
12:26 pm
So far dreamhost is awesome. Their admin interface is a little wonky in spots, but the perfomance is fantastic and they’ve got a good support system. Every solution they find, the post on thier support wiki.
April 1st, 2007
3:27 am
Bummer, dude. Were you on the grid server? I’ve heard terrible things about it, so I skipped to the (dv) which has been pretty good to me (knock wood). It does seem to suffer from occasional latency (at least according to mon.itor.us), but I haven’t noticed anything show-stopping once I got the server tuned up. The (dv) isn’t bad in price if you get some people to share the load; it’s pretty easy to set up multiple accounts, and it’s awesome to have full root access to your little slice o’ server.
April 19th, 2007
10:23 am
i just switched to dreamhost last night. i was enticed by their super-cheapness (even cheaper after you use a $97 off coupon), as well as their wiki (found a page on web publishing using subversion, something i was looking for in my hosting company).
still haven’t played with it much, but found an interesting post that suggests dreamhosted files aren’t very secure by default (haven’t tested this myself yet, and found it AFTER i had signed up)
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=582814
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