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Sarah Gooding

GoDaddy Retires Media Temple Brand

Media Temple (MT) is closing its doors after 24 years in the hosting industry, with the brand now retired and customers fully migrated to GoDaddy. In 2013, GoDaddy acquired MT “to win the hearts and minds of developers,” as then-CEO Blake Irving told VentureBeat at the time. When it was purchased, the highly regarded brand was focusing on advanced technical services that GoDaddy had not yet adapted, and the plan was to have MT operate independently with no changes for employees or customers.

The year following the acquisition, Media Temple launched its managed WordPress hosting product, joining the ranks of Flywheel, Page.ly, WordPress.com, WP Engine, and a handful of other companies that were working to elevate the hosting experience for WordPress users.

In December 2022, MT announced it would be retiring the Media Temple brand and transitioning accounts to GoDaddy, while subtly acknowledging the sentimental place MT holds in many of its customers’ hearts:

Since joining GoDaddy, we worked hand-in-hand with them to incorporate the best of Media Temple into offerings, including improving GoDaddy’s customer experience and leveraging Media Temple’s unique expertise on what it truly means to run a world-class hosting organization. If you closely examine GoDaddy’s hosting offerings, you will find Media Temple’s fingerprints all around. From specialized teams who deal with complex hosting issues to programs like GoDaddy Pro specifically targeting creatives, Media Temple made its mark on GoDaddy.

Fans bid the brand farewell on Twitter, as its retirement marks the end of a chapter in web hosting history.

In February 2023, Media Temple began migrating accounts to GoDaddy, with no action required from customers. Many of the products and services were already fulfilled through GoDaddy, decreasing the number needing to be migrated.

Now that the process is complete, the brand will discontinue operations and move current resources into supporting customers inside GoDaddy. The company assured former MT customers that they will retain their current products and pricing for equivalent products with access to more tools.

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14 responses to “GoDaddy Retires Media Temple Brand”

  1. Some things change and never stay the same. Media Temple was a quality host. Then WP Engine came along and I switched over and never looked back. But I do appreciate the thoughtful care put into the experience and the brand. Good job. Sorry to see it go, but that’s how the cookie crumbles, they say!

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  2. As a longtime MT customer, my migration was not smooth requiring no action from me. It seems they didn’t think to migrate the nameservers so when my MT account was shut down three of my domains that were not held by GoDaddy stopped working. And it took 3 days to convince tech support that was the issue and they finally ported my domains to a godaddy name server.

    I will miss MT

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    • Unfortunately, GoDaddy has disappeared whatsnextblog, which I started in 2002. It contains, essentially, my career, my life’s work that led to so many opportunities over the years.

      GoDaddy’s so-called support is pretty close to useless.
      I NEVER had these issues in my 20 years with Media Temple.

      This is a nightmare, to say the least.

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  3. Back in the day, MT was one of the top hosts and I was happy to have been a long-term customer. I loved their control panel and the overall service–pricing was reasonable too. Support was there.

    When I found out later that Godaddy was acquiring MT, I knew at some point they would eventually be phased out–unfortunately. I think it was several months after the acquisition that I moved back to the previous host.

    Things like this remind me of what happens when acquisitions happen. Over the last 15 years, I have used services where they have changed or were taken over. I also remember long ago in the early years of WordPress, I was deeply into MovableType–dang I miss that. They made bad licensing choices which were a blessing for WP.

    As for Media Temple, I will still miss them.

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  4. They were around in the 90’s when I was a teenager messing around with websites. They would host certain creative sites for free and it was a point of pride to put “hosted by Media Temple” in your footer. They were the original good guys in hosting. I wish GD had never acquired them.

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  6. “In February 2023, Media Temple began migrating accounts to GoDaddy, with no action required from customers.”

    Um, nope! We recently acquired a client’s website and email business thanks to GoDaddy bungling the migration. The hours she spent working with GoDaddy support were largely fruitless, with their reps admitting that they really had no clue how the MT infrastructure worked.

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    • The idea that no action was required to migrate the Media Temple sites is an outright lie. I paid someone to move mine because I am a marketer not a site builder.
      GoDaddy took my site down without notifying me when my credit card was hacked. In “compensation” they gave me three free months of hosting.

      Now my whatsnextblog is gone and they have NO IDEA where it went. As a result, they can’t locate a backup.

      I never would have chosen GoDaddy to host my blog that I started in 2002. It contains my online life’s work.

      I caution anyone who considers hosting by GoDaddy to find somewhere else for hosting.

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  7. It’s unfortunate to hear that GoDaddy has decided to retire the Media Temple brand. Media Temple had built a reputation for providing reliable hosting services and had a loyal customer base. While change is inevitable in the tech industry, it’s always sad to see a well-known brand go. Hopefully, GoDaddy will continue to prioritize the quality of service and support that Media Temple was known for

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    • GoDaddy is, without a doubt, the worst host on the planet.
      They have “lost” my blog that has been online since 2002 and they have NO IDEA where it is.

      Media Temple was my host for 20 years. Any time there was any issue they were on top of it with great customer service.

      Sadly, moving their customers to GoDaddy was a terrible decision.

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    • I think it’s good that GD is retiring the brand. GD has made a mess of things – as expected in this kind of acquisition of a smaller host by a large one – and for them to continue to promote their services using the Media Temple name would be, IMO, downright deceptive. GD can never hold a candle to MT’s service, or ethic.

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  9. I started designing and developing websites in the early ’90s. One of my first hosts was Best Internet Communications, in Mountainview. They were a tiny operation, and absolutely legendary. I still miss the geniuses Mike, Rich, Matt, and all the rest.

    Eventually, Best was bought by Hiway Technologies. Hiway was bought in 1998 by Verio, which had a well-earned rep for destroying everything it touched.

    This process of being swallowed up by a much larger hosting company was known at the time as getting Borged. And as with virtually all acquisitions, the smaller company’s founders are promised, “Oh, absolutely! Your company will be a separate division, and you’ll have complete autonomy!” – and then later are unceremoniously thrown out as they watch while the company they worked so hard to build into something beautiful is subsumed into a lumbering, unfeeling, drone-served collective where the concept of quality of life/work/service simply doesn’t exist.

    Their focus on designer-developers, their overall vibe and support and generally excellent technical chops (storing database passwords in the clear notwithstanding) made Media Temple a great match for me.

    Sadly, the Borging continues, as evidenced by GD’s acquisition of Media Temple. I knew the moment I read the announcement that I’d be forced to move again. I’ve been chased from host to host by the Borg more often than by poor service that wasn’t caused by assimilation.

    I apparently was lucky in this transition. Out of the 18 or so accounts on MT, only one had a problem… They managed to hose the email database on one of my own accounts.

    I’ve taken advantage of this moment to consolidate around client 35 accounts on several legacy hosts onto one smaller company’s servers. I won’t shill them here, but so far, they’re amazing.

    This really is the end of an era. Thanks, Media Temple. You were a good ship and true.

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  10. This whole migration was a disaster. I used to love MT, and my account was nearly a decade old.

    GD killed several of my sites and made it so painful to restore them that I just migrated away and switched to Hostinger, which I would not have found if it weren’t for GD’s fumbling of this process.

    Hostinger is amazing.

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