Shared Hosting Plans
Shared hosting is the cheapest form of web hosting. With this hosting tier, your website lives on a server alongside several other websites, thus splitting the cost. Unfortuntely, shared hosting isn't a very powerful web hosting type. For that, you need to check out cloud, dedicated, or VPS hosting.
Media Temple has three Linux-based shared hosting plans: Personal, Pro, and Elite. Personal ($20 per month) offers 20GB of solid-state storage, 1,000 email accounts, 1TB of monthly data transfers, and the ability to host 100 websites. Pro ($30 per month) ups the storage, monthly data transfers, and number of sites to 100GB, 2TB, and 500, respectively. The plan also comes with a CDN and malware detection and removal for one site. Elite ($60 per month) boasts 250GB of storage, 5TB of monthly data transfers, CDN and malware protection for five sites.
Those are high-quality specs, but HostGator$2.64 at HostGator - Shared, the Editors' Choice for shared hosting services, tops Media Temple's offerings with unlimited monthly data transfers, storage, email addresses, and domains. HostGator also offers Windows-based servers, a feature that comes in handy if you need Microsoft's operating system to serve as the foundation for your website.
VPS Hosting Plans
Next up the ladder from shared hosting is virtual private server hosting. VPS hosting has something in common with shared hosting: multiple sites exist on the same server. The big difference is that there are far less sites on the server, and a web host typically guarantees that your site has a certain amount of dedicated computing power.
Media Temple has you covered, with three Linux-based VPS web hosting packages that range from the $30 per month self-managed plan to the $1,500-per-month full managed plan. The latter option is far more expensive than rival services' top-tier plans, but you get a feature-packed VPS that can be outfitted with 8TB of monthly data transfers, an incredible 64GB of RAM, and a robust 600GB of storage. Hostwinds$3.50 at Hostwinds - Shared, the PCMag Editors' Choice for VPS services, maxes out at 18.5GB of RAM and 130GB of storage.
Still, Hostwinds's VPS tops Media Temple's VPS in several important areas. Hostwinds is more wallet-friendly (a Media Temple VPS plan with 4GB of RAM has half the storage of a similar Hostwinds plan, but costs $19.50 more), boasts unlimited monthly data transfers, and offers Windows-based servers. Hostwinds is the VPS host to turn to if you need reasonably featured and priced servers; Media Temple is the host to turn to if you need obscenely specced servers.
Dedicated Hosting Plans
Dedicated hosting is typically a web host's most powerful tier. With dedicated hosting, your website lives on a server all by itself, thus leveraging the server's full power. If your website receives a ridiculous amount of traffic, dedicated hosting is the way to go.
Media Temple's Linux-based, self-managed dedicated servers start at an expensive $2,000 per month (yes, $2,000!) and include 1TB of storage, 128GB of RAM, and 10TB of monthly data transfers.
That monthly data transfer total is topped by AccuWeb$3.36 at AccuWeb - Shared, the PCMag Editors' Choice for dedicated hosting, which offers 20TB of data transfer per month, 1TB of storage, and a choice of Linux- or Windows-based servers starting at $105 per month. AccuWeb's excellent dedicated package delivers great bang-for-the-buck affordbilty, plus you can increase the power options (for a price, of course).
WordPress Hosting Plans
WordPress is the world's most popular content management system, so it makes sense that Media Temple offers the CMS. There are two ways to get WordPress up and running on a Media Temple server. First, you can install WordPress on a Linux-based server environment you get through a standard web hosting plan. Your second choice sign up for a managed WordPressservice, which automatically updates the content management system, makes daily backups, and provides other essentials.
Media Temple has two managed WordPress packages: Personal ($20 per month) and Pro ($60 per month). Personal gives you 50GB of SSD storage, 250,000 monthly visitors, the ability to host two sites, and four staging sites. Pro boasts 200GB of SSD storage, 500,000 monthly visitors, the ability to host 10 sites, 20 staging sites, and two domain names. Both plans include automatic backups, as well as automatic malware detection and removal.
Media Temple's starting price for managed WordPress hosting is less than Pagely, Pressable, or WP Engine's offerings, but nearly three times what A2$3.92 at A2 Hosting - Shared charges for its entry-level plan: $24.64-per-month. In fact, A2, the PCMag Editors' Choice for WordPress hosting, can be outfitted with 40GB of storage and unlimited website hosting, page views, visitors, and monthly data transfers.
Reseller Hosting
If you're looking to get into the web hosting business but you don't want to deal with infrastructure matters, reseller hosting is the way to go. Unfortunately, Media Temple doesn't offer reseller plans. For that, I suggest checking out Hostwinds, the category's Editors' Choice.
Hostwind's plans, starting at $25 per month, have unlimited email, storage, and data transfers. On offer are dedicated and VPS packages of both the Linux and Windows variety, as well as shared hosting, which is limited to Linux. The servers have the same RAM and storage amounts as those Hostwinds supplies directly, which is not the case with every provider. Hostwinds also lets you apply your own branding to the servers you rent, and it supplies 24/7 tech support, too.
Cloud Hosting
Like a handful of other web hosts, Media Temple offers cloud hosting. That web hosting type draws resources from multiple servers, which makes it easy to scale power as needed.
Media Temple's cloud hosting is powered by Amazon Web ServicesCall for Pricing at Amazon. The plans are customized to each individual business, so you must call Media Temple's support squad to get a quote.
If you want to get up and running with cloud hosting without speaking to a human being, check out 1&1 Ionos or Dreamhost, the category's co-Editors' Choices. The former targets businesses that need big power, while the latter targets your typical small business.
Setting Up a Hosted Site
Most services include some type of website builder, so it is a little surprising that Media Temple does not. Like Dreamhost, Media Temple requires you to create your website elsewhere and then upload it via FTP.
That said, Media Temple has another option: Virb, a $10-per-month, standalone website builder that isn't compatible with the hosting plans. It's like Wix in a sense, except that it doesn't support drag-and-drop website creation. It's not even a WYSIWYG application. Instead, Virb offers many themes that you can apply, whole cloth, to your site. Virb creates slick, mobile-friendly sites, so my test site looked great on both my laptop and a Google Pixel smartphone. The problem is, you have very little control over the final design, and the lack of drag-and-drop functionality makes the creation process far more tedious than it has to be.
Virb has music features, letting you stream individual tracks and albums from SoundCloud and sell products using Bandcamp. It also displays Facebook or LastFM events. On the downside, Virb lacks email and domain registration, so you'll have to look elsewhere for those features.
For a much better all-around website builder, you should consider Editors' Choices Duda, Gator, or Wix.
Selling Online and Security
If you want to sell items online, Media Temple has the tools you need. The Magento e-commerce app let me create an attractive store in just a few minutes by dragging and dropping website elements. Magento has more flexibility than 1&1's Online Store in terms of colors and design options, but with that flexibility comes an extra layer of creation complexity that demands more of your time.
Media Temple offers an SSL certificate for $75 per year. This ensures an encrypted connection, providing extra security for your site visitors when they look to make purchases through your website. If you're planning to sell product, consider this an essential. Still, several completing web hosts include SSL for free, so consider Media Temple's offerng another pricey addition.
Media Temple's Grid infrastructure includes the CloudFlare content delivery network with Railgun, which protects your site against botnets, hackers, and phishing scams. It comes with integrated Cloudmark spam detection technology. The web host uses SiteLock's SMART (Secure Malware Alert & Removal Tool) technology to remove malicious code as soon as it's detected.
Ultimate Uptime
Website uptime is an important part of the web hosting experience. If your site goes down, clients or customers will be unable to find you or access your products or services. For testing this, I use a website-monitoring tool to track my test sites' uptime over a 14-day period. Every 15 minutes, the tool pings my website and sends me an email if it is unable to contact the site for at least one minute. The data revealed that Media Temple is very stable. In fact, it didn't go down a single time during the test period. You can count on Media Temple to serve as the bedrock for your online business.
Customer Service
I contacted Media Temple's 24/7 customer support team twice during testing—midday, and early evening—to get a sense of its support team's effectiveness. Unfortunately, the web chat and telephone support is limited to sales inquiries. You have to log into the Account Center to send a tech support message.
That said, a sales representative explained the importance of content delivery systems, as well as the various dedicated hosting plans. I later sent a message via Account Center to learn how to install new themes and plug-ins. The questions were accurately answered within a few minutes.
Media Temple also has a deep knowledge database that you can search for answers to burning questions, as well as Sidekick, a WordPress plug-in that provides useful voice and video walkthroughs. If you're new to web hosting, Sidekick is a good place to start.
Media Temple offers a solid 30-day money-back guarantee.
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