I host two sites on Media Temple; this one and my Dungeons and Dragons community site, Dragon Avenue. I have been using them for a few months now and I can say without hesitation two things:
- Media Temple has some of the slickest features out there.
- My sites either go down or take over ten seconds to load frequently. By frequently, I mean daily.
I have had a couple of phone calls with their tech support folks, including one manager, who seemed sympathetic but unable to offer any advice on how to address the issue. At first, (mt) seemed to sweep the issue under the rug. Communication was infrequent and it took days (no kidding) to even get a response from tech support (as reported by not just me, but my friends who use them as well).
Now they seem to have taken to apologizing for the outages each time they occur.I recently commented on one of their outage reports, but I don’t expect I’ll hear anything back… at least anything that is tangible. I wonder if they’ll even approve my comments to be revealed to the public. Given that none of their recent blogs have comments, I suspect not.
They still aren’t talking about the slowness at all though. As long as their servers respond to web requests within a minute or so, then all is right with the world in their eyes. Yes, that was a bit of hyperbole, but my points are valid.
I recently opened a ticket with them asking about the outages and even asked if switching to a DV plan would eliminate them:
Support response: 2008/04/01 16:37
This depends on the cause of the issue. I have found a good number of causes for timeouts having to do with external resources being pulled. Now if it is a routing issue, moving to a (dv) would help . One thing that would help us in troubleshooting your issue would be to provide us with trace route results to your server.Just let us know which path you will want to go.
I replied:
Site is timing out currently at 11:10PM on 4/8/2008. Here is a tracert as requested. As you can see, the issue isn’t network related (at least on the Internet side of things). I should note that this isn’t rare. The site times out often, sometimes many times per day.
I suspect that your servers are over loaded, but that’s just my speculation. Either way, I need to have my site reliably available. Please help.
tracert www.dragonavenue.com
Tracing route to www.dragonavenue.com [64.13.232.65]
over a maximum of 30 hops:1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms FIOS_Router.home [192.168.1.1]
2 8 ms 7 ms 6 ms L100.VFTTP-02.PTLDOR.verizon-gni.net [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
3 8 ms 6 ms 7 ms P2-2.LCR-02.PTLDOR.verizon-gni.net [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]
4 26 ms 24 ms 24 ms so-6-0-0-0.PEER-RTR1.SJC80.verizon-gni.net [130.81.17.133]
5 24 ms 24 ms 24 ms 130.81.15.26
6 81 ms 32 ms 31 ms avanz.ge3-1.2.cr01.lax03.pccwbtn.net [63.218.91.30]
7 32 ms 32 ms 32 ms cr01-2-2.lax4.net2ez.com [64.93.64.74]
8 33 ms 32 ms 32 ms cust-77.lax4.net2ez.com [64.93.75.14]
9 33 ms 32 ms 31 ms 72.10.63.210
10 33 ms 32 ms 31 ms acmkoiegkq.gs02.gridserver.com [64.13.232.65]Trace complete.
To ensure that they had as much information as possible, I even provided them with 3rd party verification:
Further verification from monitus that the issue isn’t related to my home network:
** PROBLEM alert – www.dragonavenue.com HTTP PROBLEM **
PROBLEM Alert
Service: HTTP
URL: http://www.dragonavenue.com
Tag: Default
State: CRITICAL
Date/Time: 2008-04-09 06:14:47 GMTAdditional Information: Connection refused.
Get your own monitoring at http://monitis.com
Best regards, monitis team.
Here is their response.
The brief outage you have experienced tonight was due to an outstanding issue we have with our (gs) hardware which you can read more about here:
The trace route that you posted is exceptional, your problem is not network related. Contrary to what the last technician said, moving to a (dv) hosting plan you would not have these problems anymore. The issues are isolated to our (gs) hosting plan only. If you wish to try out our (dv) package, I can set one up for you with 1 free month so you can check it out. Let me know if you would like to do that and I’ll set that up for you.
Lame. Just lame. No acknowledgment of the fact that the outages occur daily for minutes at a time or the general slowness that is epidemically affecting their two “grids”.
Here is a screenshot of just one page full of alerts from Monitus, a third party monitoring service. Check the dates on the right column. Sad.
Switching hosts is a PITA. In fact, I tried to switch today and ran into some issues around the Apache mod-rewrite rules that make Dragon Avenue work correctly. As such, I bailed out until I can get some help figuring out how to change the rules appropriately. In addition, there is a rumored compatibility issue with Apache 2.x and Expression Engine. I couldn’t find the info on that, but the host I attempted to move to indicated that there was a problem and the fix was a code change.
As I said, switching hosts is a PITA. I can only hope that Media Temple will really fix their issues or that my patience will end and I will be forced to tackle the burden of switching. Sigh.
UPDATE 6/24/2008 – Media Temple claims to have fixed the major issue causing downtime. And it seems they may be right. My site has been up for 3 weeks now without fail. That may not seem like much, but it’s a huge win over the daily outages I was experiencing. I’ll update this again in a few weeks.
UPDATE 7/13/2008 – The uptime is holding and performance has been good. There was only one outage since the last update and it was very brief.
However, I am still very disappointed that Media Temple’s customer service during the poor service. Their response to my issues were slow and pointless. I expect accountability and help for my money. I will evaluate their customer service again when the need to contact them arises.
April 22nd, 2008 at 18:28
Wow, I switched months ago and have never looked back. Their features (although great) do not outweigh the downtime. I kept getting MySQL errors and sometimes the website just outright wouldn’t load.
The support more-or-less said, “We can’t duplicate the issue, so we don’t know what’s wrong.”
April 22nd, 2008 at 21:41
thank you for posting on bad webHosting services, they often rip people off and its not like the users get there money back.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:32
Serious fail. I get the same problems and shoddy service from DreamHost for The White Company’s guild website. I’m starting to suspect that all commercial web hosts just suck.
If I could get decent upstream bandwidth and a fixed IP, I’d just host my own crap.
You should totally GIS “failboat” and post that pic in your blog post somewhere. =)
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:16
I found the (mt) brand on different websites sporting the badge. I figured, what better way to launch my web-app than on the new (mt) gs? Just another way to show my commitment to high quality and reliability.
For the first week I only got server 500 error codes. Hmm…apparently this was some (gs) problem and went away a week later. I had programmed the error layer to email me with serious errors, this happened alot with MySQL connection refused! Apparently it was being flooded or something. Scalable??
Aside from that it was just plain slow.
It’s a pity to see over 9 months later it seems like the hype:technology ratio is still ridiculousy high.
April 23rd, 2008 at 17:37
I’m w/ Host Department which has been sucking VERY BAD (or good…lol) this week.
So, what do you guys recommend? Is hostgator.com good?
~Adam / AcmePhoto
April 23rd, 2008 at 19:57
Adam – check out http://hostjury.com/reviews/
April 27th, 2008 at 19:24
Jim, thanks for stopping by my site and commenting. I took most of my sites off of the media temple servers for exactly the reasons you outlined here. Downtime aside, my PHP timers were showing long script run times which is just as bad. A mySQL container for a total of $40 didn’t really help. Best of luck!
April 29th, 2008 at 9:13
I do get the same problems too. you guys talked about moving elsewhere..what hosts?
May 2nd, 2008 at 0:24
I’m suffering the same fate with mt. I’ve stuck with their promises of upgrades and improvements to the Grid, but he past 2 weeks is a joke. When the US comes online, the GS stops being able to serve php/mysql pages at any acceptable speed.
Can anyone recommend a replacement host?? It’s not about the $$, just good uptime and speed.
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:20
thanks a lot i am just planning about switching to MT but thank god your article saved me.so anybody recommend a reliable host ?
May 9th, 2008 at 10:54
We have several grid servers from mediatemple. While it started out good, it became more and more apparent that the grid server is very unstable. We experience downtime practically every morning for about 10-20 minutes, and at least once a day the servers get very, very slow.
Tech support is telling us that there is a bug in the system but that they are very close of fixing it (I hear that now for over a month). Well, we get the heat from our clients and we can not afford to loose clients because of our hosting company. So we asked that media temple is moving us to one of their stable platforms till they solved the problem. We were offered some free hosting but would have to move all the data onto the dedicated server ourselves. That is the same work like migrating it to another company.
So if anyone can recommend me a good hosting company, please let me know.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:29
Great blog post, I stumbled across it while pulling my hair out all day with Media Temple. I waited on hold for about 35 minutes and asked what they were doing to fix the performance problems long term. (this is about the 6th time MediaTemple has hit the “FAIL” level for hosting quality) A manager is supposed to call me back.. we will see! In the meantime, price shopping around and reading reviews.
May 21st, 2008 at 16:37
thanks for very helpful post. I was going to switch to mt after a friend praised it. Will look further
May 29th, 2008 at 16:57
[...] issue was around for well over a month. I know many people were affected by this (including this guy) so it’s good news that it seems to be behind [...]
June 11th, 2008 at 16:58
MT’s grid continues not to be impressive stability wise so it seems people should probably stay away. If you want some more reliable hosts check out places like:
http://www.medialayer.com
http://www.webfaction.com
http://www.rochen.com
etc.
Ross
- http://www.hostdisciple.com
June 19th, 2008 at 9:00
Seriously, thank you so much for this review of Media Temple. I’m currently with HostMonster and was thinking of switching to mt but I can see it would be just as bad as HM. Thank you, you saved me some serious trouble.
June 24th, 2008 at 15:53
THANK YOU.
Every few months I re-look at Media Temple to see if they’ve stabilized from the first time I tried hosting with them. I see they have not. Many thanks.
July 8th, 2008 at 5:49
In March I launched 4 massive websites on the GS service at MT. Moving from my own server (40Gb + of data, 1Tb+ of bandwidth.)
My sites have a 100% uptime and have handled the traffic more effectively than when I had my own server with unmetered 10mb.
MT’s GS service has been the most stable host I’ve had to date.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:15
Jim, you should give us an update to this post. I believe (mt) has been quite a bit more stable as of late.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:20
How’s the hosting been going lately?
July 15th, 2008 at 10:02
I updated the original post as things have been pretty good. There was an outage yesterday that lasted for 30-60 minutes (I didn’t watch closely) though.
So not out of the water yet I’m afraid.
July 18th, 2008 at 17:39
You Should Try http://www.networkredux.com/ , they are the best on the market i think !
Great Support , Uptime , Just Great
July 19th, 2008 at 12:35
So, did you have an outage today? Just curious if it hit you, as well.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:52
I just switched to mt because I heard they were starting to sort out the gs. So far things have been great – extremely fast and stable…at least for the first 4 days. Anyone else experiencing this? It’s a great concept if they can deliver on it.
August 16th, 2008 at 12:28
I’m curious, is anyone still experiencing outages with mediatemple? It’s great to see a lack of complaints about as much here lately.
August 17th, 2008 at 11:57
I have been looking around because I have been having a number of issues with Netfirms and I am looking for an alternate. I know Media Temple is used by a number of developers with dedicated servers, but I just don’t need that level of service to run a fairly simple blog. I was hoping the grid/shared service at MT would have just as high quality service as the managed servers. May have to re-think moving to MT.
Thanks for the post Jim!
August 18th, 2008 at 2:53
todd412, Yes, there are still grid server problems with MT, and their support is often shoddy.
I have been with Media Temple for about three years. Ever since they forced me to switch from a shared server to the Grid server, downtime has become a regular thing. The worst time lasted about six hours straight. About once or twice per month, email stops working for an extended period of time. Several times per month, the site fails to load. Each time, they contradict themselves on how the SMTP settings should be configured, telling me to change the SMTP settings to what they were the month before.
I decided to give their (dv) dedicated virtual servers a try, but my suspicions have proved true. Since their support for the grid sucks, and the same techs do the dv support, the dv support sucks just as bad. Don’t get me wrong- their techs seem mostly competent from a technical standpoint, but many of them are completely incompetent when it comes to customer service skills. Their modus operandi is to push off their own mistakes onto others, and at that they are quite adept. I cannot say that this applies to all of their support personnel. I have spoken with some good-humored, professional techs, but MT has many techs who just do not understand that support is a customer service oriented job.
About the only good thing I can say about MT is that their sales team is trying hard to keep my business. They gave me a free trial on the (dv) server. If their support people tried half as hard as their sales dept., I would very likely stay with them. Thing is, they don’t, and for half the price of MT’s dedicated virtual server, I can get what I need from HostGator, whose phone demeanor is head and shoulders above MT’s.
Media Temple has been saying for several months now that they will sack the grid servers and replace them with “an even better” service. It will not be hard to beat the grid, but technology is not their problem. Customer service is their problem. With the sole intent of receiving better service, I would send them a full case of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” book, but they would undoubtedly let their massive ego stop them from even picking it up.
I’ve been doing a lot of research trying to find a good host to replace Media Temple, and the front-runners for me are:
Price/Features = HostGator
Features/Price/Service/Policies = MidPhase or AN Hosting
Features/Service = Mosso
It seems that just about every host has complaint threads like this one going against them. I think the trick is to find one who has great service and high uptime. The rest — features, price, good policies — should be a given.
September 14th, 2008 at 21:00
Can you provide another update? Has the (gs) service had good uptime since your last update in July? Thanks.
September 14th, 2008 at 22:32
Only one outage I can think of since July. Service has really improved. By service, I mean the web service, not customer service. I haven’t actually tried to make use of their customer service recently.
No complaints about them at the moment.
September 20th, 2008 at 19:32
[...] more @ Media Temple Kills My Inner Child Wow, I switched months ago and have never looked back. Their features (although great) do not [...]
September 20th, 2008 at 19:33
[...] more @ Media Temple Kills My Inner Child Tags: mediatemple Some Reviews About Media [...]
November 18th, 2008 at 12:44
Ross, in addition to your recommendations I would add:
http://www.reliablesite.net – $5/mo – I rarely see anything below 100% uptime and my site is crazy fast.
http://www.hostgator.com – They were excellent before they started offering unlimited disk/bandwidth, still good, but heading downhill fast.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:50
just stumbled onto this and wanted to let you know that i still see issues in a container account on the mt grid (the premium gs offering just below vps/etc)…while my simple wordpress site is highly optimized and some can load it under 2 seconds (up to 4 or 5), it has averaged 8 to 12 seconds to just find the server.
on the cheap plans (meaning under 150 permonth!) you can’t touch the apache resolve file and so if you run traceroute you can see the nightmare with their network peers and transatlantic crap!
wanna see what i mean? first, try to load http://www.badzit.com and see how long it takes to just ‘find the server’ and then how quickly the page actually ‘snaps in’ once found (that’s teh queries, css, all cleaned and tight) – then hit ircache.net and click on traceroute on the left side and put in badzit and look at how it makes like 15 to 18 hops or something! unacceptable, got an error report and escalated complaint in right now….
December 23rd, 2008 at 16:57
How has the Media Temple hosting been going so far?
December 24th, 2008 at 9:18
Just checked out Mosso. Wow, great service / features, but it’s $100/month starting.
Found out that Mosso and now, Slicehost are both owned by Rackspace.
March 24th, 2009 at 15:10
Man I am sooo sick of Media Temple I can’t tell you guys. I moved to Media Temple’s GS from 1and1 shared hosting thinking MediaTemple’s supposedly “grid service” and have a ripple effect on the cluster servers in case I get high traffic and the single server will not get bogged down.
I get about 10,000 unique according to Stat Counter.
But today my site was down for 5 HRS! because media temple decided to move my database to some container to enable scaling.
I am so sick of these guys really.
I am thinking of already moving away from them after 2 months of service.
April 16th, 2009 at 16:03
I usually do not comment on blog posts but I found this quite interesting, so here goes. Thanks! Regards, P.
April 26th, 2009 at 4:35
Hey very nice blog!! Man .. Beautiful .. Amazing .. I will bookmark your blog and take the feeds also…
May 6th, 2009 at 15:04
MediaTemple Grid server is now down for the 3rd day in a row. We depend on our websites, so do our clients. This is just unacceptable. STAY AWAY FROM MEDIA TEMPLE. We start initiating the switch away from this hosting company.
I am just wondering that no one has hit them with a class action lawsuit yet as they really fail on their promise throughout. A lot of people are loosing money.
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:14
Hi there, I found your blog via Google while searching for first aid for a heart attack and your post looks very interesting for me.
July 7th, 2009 at 7:47
Hello, I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, Your blog looks awesome, I’ll be back
August 5th, 2009 at 3:32
It’s been over a year since your original MT complaints. How do you feel about the service now?
October 24th, 2009 at 10:38
I’m on Media Temple (gs) and trying to get refunded. My static html sites all work fine; my Expression Engine site is a disaster. I get MySQL errors left and right. The site is tiny and since I haven’t even started promoting it yet, the traffic is 0 (or 1: me).
The good people at MT have basically admitted to me up front that (gs) is not equipped to handle a site with a database. The service is $20/mo.–much higher than average for basic hosting–and while it includes a lot of features, storage capacity, etc., what good is it if you can’t host a simple site on it?
December 22nd, 2009 at 17:59
They also have a money back guarantee, asshole. If you are unsatisfied with their service, get your money back and switch.
December 22nd, 2009 at 23:07
Fenix – A money back guarantee is not a means to get out of their promises of uptime, reliability, and excellent service. Money-back guarantees are pointless… I’d much rather have a host that delivers what they promise.
I understand that things happen (I work in IT afterall), but I cannot excuse so many failures on their part to just do what they promised.
Not sure why I deserved the name calling… I don’t believe I said anything that wasn’t factual and relevant.
March 14th, 2010 at 13:37
It’s an honor posting comments on your weblog
April 18th, 2010 at 0:16
nice site I like and I sure to visit, well done
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:35
Hey , I’ve just posted anything comparable related to Media Temple Kills My Inner Child — Jim Goings on my blogging site a couple weeks ago. How modest is the net
May 23rd, 2010 at 3:39
By chance since their feud in UFC 107 in December, there have been multiple times, exactly where it was assumed that Evans and Jackson may possibly collide in opposition to one particular one more. Nonetheless, Jackson announced a retirement, which did not final for prolonged, but placed the complement on maintain. Now, with the star announcing a return, pretty significantly not too long ago, the feud has been reignited. Both of them will get an chance to settle their variations as soon as and for all when they go head-to-head alongside 1 an additional in UFC 114 on Might 29.
June 10th, 2010 at 21:59
By chance due to the fact their feud in UFC 107 in December, there have been various situations, wherever it was thought that Evans and Jackson may possibly collide towards 1 a different. However, Jackson announced a retirement, which did not final for long, but placed the match on hold. Now, with the star announcing a return, pretty a great deal not long ago, the feud has been reignited. Each of them will get an chance to settle their distinctions as soon as and for all when they go head-to-head towards one yet another in UFC 114 on May 29.
June 28th, 2010 at 8:10
Any update on the Media Temple performance issues? I’m looking to switch but not spend more than $20 per month. I’m dealing with downtime every day with hostmonster and would like something with better reliability. d
July 24th, 2010 at 11:51
Not very often we can see good theme for WP. There are very cool themes, but very inconvenient in settings. I have tried last versions of Designora, Press 88, Jarrah, Traction, also I installed also BlueSense – simple, but made for adsense. Very rarely you can find something convenient but rich in options.