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Jeff Chandler

MediaTemple Launches WordPress Managed Hosting Package

Media Temple Featured Image
photo credit: Leonardo Rizzi – cc

MediaTemple has announced they have a new managed WordPress hosting package available dubbed Premium WordPress Hosting. The package has a cost of $29 per month which places it near the top of my price comparison chart. I created this chart a few months ago when GoDaddy announced their managed WordPress hosting package.

  • GoDaddy – $6.99 / month
  • Siteground – $9.95 / month
  • Flywheel – $15.00 / month
  • DreamPress – $19.95 / month
  • Page.ly – $24.00 / month
  • Pressable – $25.00 / month
  • Synthesis – $27.00 / month
  • WP Engine – $29.00 / month
  • MediaTemple 3 WordPress Installs For $29.00 / month

MediaTemple is owned by GoDaddy but both companies operate independently of each other. While I initially thought it was a bad idea for both GoDaddy and MediaTemple to offer managed WordPress hosting since they are in a way, the same company, I’ve come to the understanding that each one serves a different customer base.

What MediaTemple Offers

As is customary with other managed hosting providers, MediaTemple offers a staging environment to work on sites before they go live. Other notable features include:

  • Easy-to-use site templating
  • Automatic updates
  • Mobile Optimized
  • Automatic security
  • Automatic backups
  • Next-gen cloud infrastructure

Perhaps one of the most important features offered is email, something not offered by WP Engine.

MediaTemple Launches Invite Only WordPress Theme Market

The market only contains one theme created by their creative directory but the company plans on adding more from talented designers in the future. I asked MediaTemple if there was any additional information they could give me regarding their theme marketplace. Their response:

As it is now, the market place is “invite only” with specific designers and organizations building custom themes for (mt) Premium WordPress Hosting customers. The theme market place is an area of this product we’re really excited about. We have very strong partnerships in the creative and development worlds, so this model is likely to change/grow with opportunities and there will definitely be one-off scenarios here. Essentially, the sky is the limit with the market place.

Customers are limited to three WordPress installations per account. If you need more, you’ll need to pay $9/month for each additional site. WordPress Multisite is currently not supported.

MediaTemple states they are aiming to push out WordPress updates within 48 hours of their release. Other leading WordPress managed hosting providers can sometimes take up to a week or more to test major versions of WordPress before applying the updates to their customer’s sites. However, security and or maintenance releases are usually applied the same day. The automatic updates only apply to WordPress, not plugins and themes.

When asked whether customers can initiate updates for WordPress, MediaTemple responded: “Only (mt) can initiate WordPress updates for sites running on Premium WordPress Hosting“. As we’ve mentioned on WPTavern before, this has become standard procedure.

Plugins Not AllowedSpeaking of plugins, they have their own list of plugins not allowed to be used on their managed hosting infrastructure. It’s important for customers to read through the list in case you’ve purchased a commercial version of any of the plugins listed. For example, BackupBuddy is not allowed because it duplicates existing functionality provided by MediaTemple.

Are Managed WordPress Hosting Companies The Unseen Competition For WordPress.com?

While putting this post together, I thought about how many companies within the past three years have created specially crafted hosting environments to cater to customers using WordPress. Most of the WordPress managed hosting services I know of are extensions of established companies.

WordPress.com Versus WordPress.org
WordPress.com Versus WordPress.org

I look at managed WordPress hosting as providing the luxuries of WordPress.com but also allowing customers most of the freedoms associated with self-hosting WordPress. Customers can upload plugins, change themes, edit their themes, and perform tasks that are locked down on WordPress.com or require you to pay an upgrade fee. Plus, they have a team of people ready to help at a moments notice which places them a step above most shared webhosting services.

Tough To Compete Against Free

dollarsignI think the one aspect preventing more WordPress.com users from purchasing a managed hosting account is the price. $29 per month, is $348 per year. That’s a lot of money for someone to spend if they just want to publish their thoughts to the web. If you want most of the freedoms self-hosting WordPress provides without having to pay a large sum of money, GoDaddy is a nice option.

The price of free is hard to compete against which is why I think WordPress.com has nothing to worry about. They cater to customers who just need a quick and easy way to publish content online. I see managed WordPress hosting companies as the next step for users when they outgrow the constraints of WordPress.com or the total price of upgrades is more than the annual cost of a managed hosting account.

Ask MediaTemple Anything

The company is hosting a live Google+ Hangout on March 5th, 2014 at 9AM Pacific or Noon Eastern to answer any questions brought forth by the audience. No question appears to be off-limits.

Are you happy to see MediaTemple enter the WordPress managed hosting space? Is their anything in particular you’d like to know about their offering before you’d consider doing business with them?

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48 responses to “MediaTemple Launches WordPress Managed Hosting Package”

      • @mediatemple
        If I wanted to check out how easy it is to transfer sites over to you guys, set up email, transfer DNS etc do you have a video or a few screenshots showing the process?

        Also I use the thirsty affiliates plugin for my affiliate links, would that cause any problems on your setup?

        I manage client sites, but I also have three of my own sites, which I would try out first so I am interested in the full process.

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  2. With this trend, I think it is all going to come down to support. When something breaks, who is going to fix it? Will they only fix server issues or will they fix coding issues on your site as well?

    Hopefully we’ll start seeing answers to these questions in the future. Price isn’t everything. With a higher pricing, hopefully it is made up for in support.

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      • I don’t know of any hosts that specifically mention that they will fix coding issues, and even we say that it’s out of scope, but what I’m wondering is if they will even make an effort. The way we handle it is to make an attempt for a bit and even if we can’t figure it out, we will send you in the right direction to sort it out.

        Nobody can afford to provide hosting with expert developers running technical support, but the important thing to look at would be how much effort they put in when trying to fix a problem that they don’t even officially support.

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      • Hi guys, thanks for the great questions. When it comes to troubleshooting coding issues we’ll be handling that case-by-case. In some situations we may be able to help but in more complex scenarios, we might not. Sounds like you both understand the reasons for why we can’t make promises on that. With that said, yes Jeff, we will at least look into the issue and see if it is something we can help with, no automatic “No’s” without looking first :). ^DJ

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  3. As expected another major hosting player entering the managed WordPress hosting space.

    I think you missed an important part in considering whether to use WP.com or self-hosted/managed —- Monetization.

    You can pay for hosting if you’re making money from your site which you can easily do if you place banner ads on your site which is not allowed on WP.com

    Not saying that WP.com doesn’t have an audience because they definitely do. A good number of users simply want to publish content, and they don’t care about making money or having third-party ads displayed on their site.

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    • Well, I outlined $348 per year is a steep price to pay just for wanting to blog which is what most WP.com users want to do. So in that sense, you would need to already have an established monetization strategy to have a managed WP hosting account make sense. I don’t see many sites starting out on Managed WordPress hosting making $30 a month right after launch. But you can’t monetize on WP.com at least not through your own advertising which puts users in a tough place. But if users purchase enough upgrades through WP.com, then it totally makes sense to just move to a managed WP hosting provider to open up the doors of monetization and the freedom of using plugins and themes.

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  5. I’m happy but I use NameCheap.Com’s shared hosting. I’m very happy with their services though their customer support service is not specialised in WP and some times I solve my problem before support provider understands it :D . I do not see any reason that godaddy is so good. I hope NameCheap will continue the best work in future and may become a managed hosting provider as well. :)

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  6. I must agree with Jeff Matson support is the most important thing for many On my blog with 5 domain I pay 274 a month for the server It was not the cost of the server that made the move was the great support and beyond my host offer

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  7. “Are you happy to see MediaTemple enter the WordPress managed hosting space?” If it helps bring down the price of managed hosting then yes I am happy.

    At the moment I have cheap but fast hosting plus I use Sucuri for security monitoring and I backup sites manually.
    I’m thinking that for security and backups I should go the managed hosting route.

    WPEngine are way beyond what I can afford but GoDaddy, Siteground and Media Temple are looking good and they have email….. which one to try… which one?

    Appreciate the comparison chart Jeff.

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  8. $29/month with unlimited BW, but they didn’t mention about how many visit that customers can get every month? If they don’t count by visit, so I think MediaTemplate have one good price point better than WPEngine.
    I did try to use GoDaddy WordPress Managed Hosting for last month, then I can say Godaddy is suck because my test site has lost data and sometime they have DNS problem with Managed Hosting. I will not try Godaddy hosting solution anymore.

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  9. Is there any concern that the automatically updating core could break sites? They say they will try to update within 48 hours of the core release, but plugins sometimes take longer.

    WordPress.com maintains an updated core, but they also don’t let you use 3rd party plugins or themes. For older sites, it could be mildly stressful when a new WP update comes along.

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  10. You seem to have missed out lightningbase.com. I have just started hosting with them. At $19.95/month for three sites and email, it seems a pretty good deal.

    In light of comments made above, I should also add that the support I’ve had so far, from pre-sales to transferring a site and tweaking some settings, has been fantastic.

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  11. When comparing value for money between WPEngine and Media Temple – it’s perhaps worth pointing out that WPEngine’s only allows up to 25,000 visits per month on their $29 a month plan, whereas Media Temple seemingly allows somewhere in the region of 1,000,000 pageviews* per month for the same monthly fee. A site with a few hundred thousand pageviews per month running on WPEngine would almost certainly fall into their $249 a month plan – making Media Temple by far and away the cheaper option (about nine times cheaper) for sites with hundred of thousands of monthly pageviews.

    *granted pageviews and visits are different metrics, but I think the math is still big enough for this to be a valid point.

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  12. In my experience with managed hosting, clients have to be explained carefully exactly what ‘managed hosting’ means. I took that for granted before and had angry clients who expected managed hosting to mean that for 29$/month a crack team of wordpress ninjas is on call 24/7 whose sole purpose is to tweak the theme’s padding, font sizes and background colors while helping the client (who won’t learn html) comprehend the purpose of php abstract classes within the plugin they decided “to improve”.

    I now explain the limitations first and tell them to go to Codeable.io to hire the ninjas on call there.

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  13. I’ve tended to shy away from managed hosting quite a while now. I’ve been happily running a VPS for several years now and although it is more expensive than any of the managed hosts, I have complete freedom to host as many WordPress sites as needed (5 currently) without buying any addons or etc.

    I don’t need to worry about managing the server since that is done by the host.

    I’ve been tempted to move to WordPress.com but the fact that I can’t monetise the sites is a damper. Not to mention that I won’t be able to install my plugins there :)

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  15. Just comparing the price is a little misleading though. For example, I am currently using Synthesis but I need to use the Professional plan because the Starter plan doesn’t cover my data storage or bandwidth needs. That’s $97. But it looks like Media Temple has it covered for $29 although as I am already using 44% of my data storage at Synthesis I guess I would need to start paying for more storage at Media Temple than is covered by $29. (44% of 40gb. When it gets to 50% probably next year sometime, I would hit Media Temple’s limit.)
    I am currently a MT customer and they have been pretty great over the years so I am seriously considering switching this particular site back.

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  17. The MT Managed WordPress offering looks pretty interesting. Including email in the cost is a definite plus. Main concern for me is performance and support.

    MT seems to have a pretty good rep for support so that is a good start. The GoDaddy connection raises some concern although hopefully MT can be run at arms length. My WordPress experiences at GD have been way less than positive.

    Performance can also be impacted by popularity. Too much of a good thing can lead to lower server/network performance and increased support hold times. Having some form of SLA beyond the standard “99.9% uptime” would be a positive.

    I called and spoke to an MT sales rep earlier today and it sounded like some of the details (caching technology being used, plugins allowed/not allowed, migration services/process) are still being ironed out. Or maybe it is just a matter of internal communication and training.

    I’ve looked at and/or spoken to a number of the competitors and it looks like MT has a very competitive offering (3 WP site for base price, email included). However the devil may be in the details on things such the management interface or control panel. Time will tell. Definitely worth monitoring/considering. Looking forward to seeing more feedback.

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  18. Are there any service providers that offer most part of a typical WordPress managed hosting (such as performance, staging area, etc.) but also allow the option for the end user to self-update, custom configure wp-config? For my own and clients sites I have WordPress setup as submodule locally and then I deploy using DeploHQ.com. And due to the restrictions can’t use a managed hosting provider.

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  19. Clearly most of the comments are from people who have no idea of what they are talking about since they are just commenting for the heck of it. I have been a long time MT client, with over 200 sites spread between 23 clients. We have used the grid for all of them and never had any problems other than occasional outages which are fixed quickly.

    Got a new client, so I decided to give the “premium” WP hosting a try. Client signs up for it and sends me the logins. Spoiler Alert: service is worse than Fatcow

    I signed in to the account, there is no admin panel, no file manager, and despite what the OP said about operating independently, it is not true. secureserver.net is a Godaddy server and that is what this service runs on.

    While the migrate tool might be nice, there is no way for us to upload a zipped file when migrating a site especially when it is built on localhost. Therefore, the file upload must be done uncompressed and with 4-5K files and slow performance this became a grueling task. The time was bad enough but the Filezilla kept being disconnected with the too many connection note which is the hallmark of Godaddy service. Really, 2 connections at once?

    Chatted with MT live chat and asked where is the file manager and why is the service so slow. Rep said, to make the speed of the premium service faster we have not included the file manager or SSH option. I challenge anyone to explain how speed is increased when not offering these tools?

    Save your money and go to BH or Hgator I tested the two installs which were identical using pingdom.com and MT service was dead last by a long ways.

    Very disappointed in MT allowing Godaddy to use their rep to pull in clients to a premium service which is nothing more than a fatcow performing host.

    Needless to say, I dread the talk tomorrow with the client and tell them I made a mistake and that they need to cancel this service before we make things worse by pushing the sites live and crossing our fingers that MT quality will prevail.

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  20. Unfortunately its been nothing but shoddy, slow and support utterly clueless. The best response so far is “bear with us, growing pains”.

    I cancelled a DV to go to this for simplicity but after two migrations both failing, and XML import failing then the temp domain suddenly going into “Setup in Progress” for 7 days after they upgraded to 3.9 hasn’t been pleasant.

    Not sure what to do now. They have suggested moving the site to the GRID, getting it set up again then moving it back to WP Premium, but they can’t help me do this!

    So i have cancelled a site launch, started looking elsewhere so ideas here would be helpful.

    In answer to my support request it has been elevated to a higher level and is currently 5 days old even though they advertise 17 hours for waiting for a response.

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    • Extract in relation to moving to the GRID until the WP Premium works! I have removed the rep’s name as i think he was sympathetic..

      so should i set up xxx.com in the grid, then add in the subdomain in the grid, use the subdomain to get it working, then rename its directory to just xxx.com to transfer the site, then setup another subdomain to work on the new design then when thats ready rename that directory to launch it in the meantime keeping an eye on the WP Premium as i would need to move it there as soon as i can using the migration tool

      Rep
      Yes, exactly.

      Andrew Wilkinson
      and you wonder I’m pissed!
      3:40 pm

      Rep
      I don’t wonder. I know.

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      • Ugh!. Definitely sounds like they are Not Ready For Prime Time. It sounded promising at first but I think I’ll wait and check back on the MT Managed WP Hosting service in another 90-120 days.

        Maybe they will get their act together by then. Or maybe not…

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        • I commented above Lightning Base. I’m nearing the end of my second month with them, and I continue to be incredibly impressed. Chris Piepho responds amazingly fast to every ticket, and is happy to change things back and forth just so I can test every last detail. (The last one was about Varnish.)

          I strongly recommend you give them a try.

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          • Your comment as well as Andrew’s is another example of how there is no such thing as a guaranteed webhosting solution for everyone. What works for one may not work for the other. Everyone can recommend a particular host and when you go there, you’re the one with the problems. Nice to see at least a few people are having a great experience with them.

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  21. Of course. But Andrew Wilkinson specifically asked for suggestions.

    You seem to be suggesting that that should just have been taken as rhetorical, which would rather defeat the point of having a comments function at all.

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    • I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely pointing out the obvious. MT is working great for you but is a painful experience for Andrew. I’m just saying the conversation is an example of what I tell users all the time looking for webhosting recommendations. Pretty much good luck and keep your bags packed because there isn’t a sure thing when it comes to webhosting.

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      • Fine, OK (though I think you mean that Lightning Base is working great for me)! That’s what I was recommending. I have no experience of MT, and obviously, I don’t know exactly what Andrew’s requirements are, so I don’t know if it will work for him. But since he asked …

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          • Wow I have stirred up a hornets nest here!

            Let me reiterate. I have been a long standing customer of MT and have highly rated them in the past for their GRID offering, i have over 50 sites sat on there and it works fine.

            I have three sites that need a little bit more, ie backups, security, speed, staging, temporary domain and caching. These six things I don’t particularly like using plugins for, so when WP Premium came up it sounded the perfect solution for me.

            The issue I had that started some two weeks ago. The Migration process failed, then an XML import failed to load. I was told then to import the DB, which I did 201Mb, that failed.

            They blamed my network speed initially but then came around to suggesting something was wrong their end. I was told to expect “Growing Pains”.

            I made progress connecting manually to the DB thro Sequel Pro, uploading the images using SFTP, and setting everything up. Then came their 3.9 update process.

            Site returned to bog standard wordpress, the control panel locked me out with “Setup in Progress” and i can’t access anything other than SFTP which is kinda working but useless until i get a DB interface. The Setup in Progress is usually the sign of a migration process started which is something i didn’t start.

            I can get round these things and sometimes enjoy a challenge but this one beats me, its not so much the technical challenge is the clueless morons i am dealing with on chat, who suggested my last post, and the unresponsive support ticket which is now the third one and 72 hours old!

            Believe me i am really trying but to go through the process of moving back to the GRID setting it all up and subdomains for staging then move it back to WP Premium when they say I can is beyond me!

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    • In answer to a number of queries and in response to the above WordPress did contact me with a view to sorting the issues out.

      Now the issues are all concerned with the WP Premium package (Don’t get me started on the DV, sales pitch as opposed to support!).

      It has STILL taken some time to get things done and even with a ‘super guru’ now looking after me, it has taken time to sort things out. they managed to get the import don’t to my live site from an existing host and did point to a few bugs that they had identified in the migration process. They also took on board some feature requests, which is good.

      Although, I had Super Guru Bill on board, everything still went through the support ticket system, and to be honest that is slow. I can’t comment that is the norm as usually in the past its been quite good, but i don’t know if it is my particular problem, or WordPress Premium as a rule creating the delay but when it says 2hrs 17min for an answer and mine is 48 hrs even the calmest man in the world is going to get pissed!

      So, I couldn’t get an XML import done, a DB import or general migration completed. they did, but I’m not sure what they did to do it. So live site up and running!!

      Now, here comes the unclear bit which i think they are now working on. If you then create a staging site, its a direct copy of the live site (I didn’t know that). However, I started working on the new design, making huge changes and, custom workflows, user accounts and a new theme with child theme. What isn’t clear is that it is NOT designed for this. It is designed for small theme changes, plugin updates and testing before pushing to live. So don’t use staging for this – check with them first!

      So I am now stuck, with new site I can’t push to LIVE! OK on comes the tech guru, so after much toeing and froing we decide to create a “Site Template” based on this site as a new site on WP Premium (Your allowed three). So I did, except that failed and all i got was a blank site with no plugins – its supposed to copy everything over bar your posts and users as its supposed to be a template for your new site. So again on comes the tech guru. 4 days later they inform its done, so i check and it is – although now out of sync with the live site.

      So I have my live site working, my new design working on a temp domain, so I need to point the live domain over but in the end its working. the Tech guys have done the job, but not told me how, but have indicated a few bugs they have identified, so hopefully they will keep us all up to date.

      I am nervous when the next WP update comes out and gets rolled out automatically, but Im sure you will here it here first if it all goes tits up!

      In summary, it seems a great product, not greatly explained in its features, great tech support, if not explaining what they are doing! I am sure it will get better and i trust the guys there, my only complaint now is the really slow response. Its taking over two weeks to get here, and over a week since i last posted here!

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  24. Have to say to all you guys (and Mike) that the Tech Guru’s have really been on the ball and I have been impressed with them. At times I have to resort to Twitter to speed things up which I am doing all too often for a variety of companies to be honest! But, when it happens they are good in fact very good.

    For that reason I will be staying with MediaTemple for the site I have transferred, and the next 6 family sites we are launching. don’t get me wrong they are finding issues BUT they are dealing with them and to be fair and honest i trust them..

    In my book give them a try, if you have an issue have a rant, they are human and they do respond!

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    • I have used WP engine since they had only one plan $50 they are an excellent managed WordPress hosting provider.

      I also have accounts with PressLabs, Pressable, Pagely WebSynthesis & Get Flywheel.

      I have tried MT managed WordPress and even Go Daddy to be thorough. They are the same thing same person build both systems and they are slightly different because of SSD’s in the media Temple offering.
      When you check the MT WP Hosting IP address it comes to the Go Daddy data center in Arizona. It is Go Daddy hosting run by the guys at media Temple I will say media Temple is better than Go Daddy for this.

      Back to answering your question
      I believe WP engine to be one of the best however GetFlywheel not only offers you a dedicated SSD VPS with your own dedicated IP and outstanding service for a base price of USD15 a month with phone support it is a steal. What is even more remarkable is they have created a bigger plan that allows you to get 10 sites for USD100 or 10 bucks a site. The difference is you do not share this VPS with other people the resources are your own all the time that is important.

      Their pricing is unbelievable and so does their service.

      Pagely Offers very good service and even though they went away from my go to hosting company FireHost they have re-architected their entire offering making it a much more reliable and faster than before. With some pretty incredible offerings like a VPS with SSH or two load balanced VPS’s with the option to separate your database anytime you like.

      Pressable Offers five websites with their USD25 plan it is five bucks a site you cannot beat that. With the CDN, Cisco enterprise firewall, F5 load balancers on a private cloud.

      WebSynthesis is not my cup of tea though I do have their advanced plan. It is on a media Temple VPS with no SSD’s and it is okay. they are starting to use digital ocean over media Temple.
      The idea that W3TC is the best thing in the world and their fragment caching is better than anything else is not true. They have recently raised the price to USD50 for one site on its own VPS. Comparing that to GetFlywheel’s using digital ocean SSD for only USD15 a month with a better service is well not a hard choice.

      SPDY is available through web synthesis and Pressable it does make a difference in speed using SSL however you can host it through a CDN like MaxCDN and that offers SPDY.

      PressLabs Is extremely exciting that are not cheap prices start at 150 and 300 a month per the first site. You think that has a lot it is really not if you have a site that gets a lot of traffic and is valuable.

      People talk about the cost of hosting and complain about anything over 20 bucks
      but take the cost’s paid for any service by any company. However, that same company is not going to spend USD200 a month on hosting a website that type of money on the website that faces their entire client base and represents the brand to the world?

      is something wrong with what I am saying?

      I would not use media Temple or Go Daddy for managed WordPress hosting. It is a joke. Anyone who gets 1 million page views per month should probably invest in higher quality hosting then MT managed WordPress or Go Daddy.

      Though I also believe that you get what you pay for.

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