Well, I am sure many of you have heard of Media Temple, they have one of the nicest looking website on the net.
So about 2 weeks ago I joined them, and now I am searching for a new host. Why you ask? Well, it was a very technical, but serious reason for myself.
Most people leave a host because of prices, downtime, or support. However none of these apply to my decision to leave.
Price: The price was not bad, I have seen better deals from Good hosting companies, however Mediatemple is suppose to be high quality, and so you get what you pay for.
Downtime: Their was none.
Support: Very good. Usually responded to my tickets within minutes, and they have 24/7 support via phone. I called about 3 times and didn't have to be put on hold.
So what was the problem? Well I'd like to first mention that I own over 10 websites, and I one reason I choose MediaTemple is because they support upto 20 domains per account.
Heres where the technical stuff comes in. First came the control panel. It simply sucked. I have had 5 different hosts in my time and never have I come across such crap.
I myself prefer Cpanel, but I don't mind others if they have the features.
So, what made it crappy? Well I could go on and on about each little feature (or lack of) but to put it in a few words, it has about half the features of Cpanel.
Next comes the multiple domains situation. Contrary to what they make you believe, Mediatemple's multiple domains per account is so limited it becomes useless.
First, you have to contact support each time you want to add a domain, unlike with other hosts who do it through cpanel. But this wasn't that big a deal.
The second one really got to me... The stat system of MediaTemple cannot differentiate between all the domains. So instead of getting the stats of how many uniques each site is getting, or how many times a spider has crawled each domain, they just hand you this glob of useless information.
Third, The email setup for the domains is CRAP. Each domain cannot have its own email... (WTF?) Rather, the system forwards all your emails for all of your domains to one email account that you designate.
Number Four. With most hosts, addon/alternate/pointed domains domains have act like your main account domain, atleast when it comes to executing scripts, however, not with MT. Their crappy system has issues with PHP, Perl, CGI, all sorts of script that are used in an alternate domain. Alot of my scripts simply wouldn't run properly even though I have installed them MANY times. One such script was phpbb. Easy to install right? Not this time. To be honest, I never got it to work right.
Anyway, the awkward way the alternate domains handles scripts forces the user to add all sorts of work arounds, and .htaccess files that can just be a pain, and as I mentioned I never got phpbb to work. Don't forget that support doesn't deal with this kind of technical issue either, "since my scripts are causing the problem, not the server" << with regards to phpbb, which is a perfectly good and working script.
#5, This one is rather small, but a pain nontheless. The cgibin was below the root domain, unlike EVRY other host I have had before. This requires you to go through and edit .htaccess files.
Anyway, now that I have gotten that off my chest, I suggest you stay away from mediatemple.
So about 2 weeks ago I joined them, and now I am searching for a new host. Why you ask? Well, it was a very technical, but serious reason for myself.
Most people leave a host because of prices, downtime, or support. However none of these apply to my decision to leave.
Price: The price was not bad, I have seen better deals from Good hosting companies, however Mediatemple is suppose to be high quality, and so you get what you pay for.
Downtime: Their was none.
Support: Very good. Usually responded to my tickets within minutes, and they have 24/7 support via phone. I called about 3 times and didn't have to be put on hold.
So what was the problem? Well I'd like to first mention that I own over 10 websites, and I one reason I choose MediaTemple is because they support upto 20 domains per account.
Heres where the technical stuff comes in. First came the control panel. It simply sucked. I have had 5 different hosts in my time and never have I come across such crap.
I myself prefer Cpanel, but I don't mind others if they have the features.
So, what made it crappy? Well I could go on and on about each little feature (or lack of) but to put it in a few words, it has about half the features of Cpanel.
Next comes the multiple domains situation. Contrary to what they make you believe, Mediatemple's multiple domains per account is so limited it becomes useless.
First, you have to contact support each time you want to add a domain, unlike with other hosts who do it through cpanel. But this wasn't that big a deal.
The second one really got to me... The stat system of MediaTemple cannot differentiate between all the domains. So instead of getting the stats of how many uniques each site is getting, or how many times a spider has crawled each domain, they just hand you this glob of useless information.
Third, The email setup for the domains is CRAP. Each domain cannot have its own email... (WTF?) Rather, the system forwards all your emails for all of your domains to one email account that you designate.
Number Four. With most hosts, addon/alternate/pointed domains domains have act like your main account domain, atleast when it comes to executing scripts, however, not with MT. Their crappy system has issues with PHP, Perl, CGI, all sorts of script that are used in an alternate domain. Alot of my scripts simply wouldn't run properly even though I have installed them MANY times. One such script was phpbb. Easy to install right? Not this time. To be honest, I never got it to work right.
Anyway, the awkward way the alternate domains handles scripts forces the user to add all sorts of work arounds, and .htaccess files that can just be a pain, and as I mentioned I never got phpbb to work. Don't forget that support doesn't deal with this kind of technical issue either, "since my scripts are causing the problem, not the server" << with regards to phpbb, which is a perfectly good and working script.
#5, This one is rather small, but a pain nontheless. The cgibin was below the root domain, unlike EVRY other host I have had before. This requires you to go through and edit .htaccess files.
Anyway, now that I have gotten that off my chest, I suggest you stay away from mediatemple.
