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Comment by maguay | Hacker News Reader

Why MediaTemple specifically? Is there something they provide more/better than other hosts to make them so much more popular among webdevs and creatives? I've tried to figure out how people justify their higher price relative to other hosts like Dreamhost on the simple hosting end to VPS.net on the hither end...

I'd really be interested in any insight any MediaTemple users have!

Edit: I should mention that I recently purchased a domain from MediaTemple because currently you can registe one .com for $5. Otherwise, though, I'm currently using Dreamhost for site hosting and my other domain registrations. I'd really like to know what more they truly offer for hosting!

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I use mediatemple.

My setup is the mediatemple for client projects and a linode vps for my own personal playground

I like them because they are like an entry level honda to, for comparison, say the Rolls Royce of one of the more expensive Rackspace plans.

I don't know if anyone else has used rackspace but I had a client who did once. You pay them something like $2000 - $4000 a month but everytime you call them you instantly get a person on the phone that can get you to someone who can help you fix your problem.

With mediatemple you have to deal with a machine answering and wait 5 or 10 minutes but you only pay $200 for the whole year. And the service and knowledge of the support people is comparable.

They also have a great control panel with all of the standard dns configuration, 1 click app installation, administrative stuff.

Long story short they have plenty of things that automate the tedious setup process of building a site and pretty good customer service.

Though I would agree for the more tech savvy go for the free Amazon ec2 instance and scale up from there or invest in a vps with linode or slicehost.

If you have any specific questions feel free to ask. I know my answer was really general

Thanks for responding! I do have a couple questions. What type of site are you running on your MediaTemple account? If just a standard website or blog, why MediaTemple over, say, Dreamhost? I would personally compare Dreamhost to a honda and MediaTemple to a Rolls Royce when thinking of hosting, say, a design blog, but that would be solely based on price. For just standard hosting, $97 can get you a year's hosting at Dreamhost or many other similar hosting companies. Do you have any idea what they offer to make it worth double that for basic hosting?

Thanks again for your time and for replying!

You're welcome!

and phone support is about the only difference as far as I can tell.

Its nice to be able to call someone

I was wondering the same thing. I've used Linode in the past and been very happy, but I also feel like I have a lot to learn when it comes to "proper" server administration. Does MediaTemple alleviate any of that (ala Heroku)? Or is it just another VPS host with a good reputation?

I'm genuinely curious!

I know that MediaTemple is very cozy with the design community. Other than that, I can't glean much from their web site that would separate them from other hosting providers. I am curious for any insight on this as well!

After taking a look at them, the only thing I could find that set them apart was cost... They're _much_ more expensive...

That's all I've figured out myself. Too bad no MediaTemple users have commented ... I'd honestly like to know what keeps people using them at their price!

I think they tend to pride themselves on their service (which is pretty good I guess.. the tech people you talk to at least seem to know what they're talking about), and they emphasize their scalability. I'm not sure if those things justify the price, but I guess some people think so.

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