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Comment by recusancy | Hacker News Reader

Media Temple's brand destroyed by one press release.

Now I'll be spending my morning creating a plan to transfer our clients (mostly small to medium businesses) that host on MediaTemple, to a new host.

Any recommendations on a host that offers similar quality/features to Media Temple's Grid/Shared hosting?

Specifically:

* About $20/mo

* An Easy to Use Dashboard

* The Ability to Reasonably Handle Traffic Bursts

* Decent Support

And, of course, not owned by GoDaddy.

I'm now on the lookout too.

Early this year I already migrated 2 DV accounts due to poor customer service, now happily hosted Linode. Now I'll move 2 GS accounts for family and a close friend, but this is no Linode solution.

Also unlimited domain names and a huge amount of storage.

I've been using site5.com for a few years now for this sort of hosting (small clients & family/friends). I've been happy with them.

Definitely agree with this one. I'm just using their $110 USD offering - as many sites as I like, databases, ssh access... git, can deploy rails apps too if needed.

At somepoint I'll have to get down and learn how to properly secure a box and go with Digital Ocean I suspect - but site5 definitely hits the spot for me in the meantime.

Also, their support is fast and excellent.

And no, I don't get any sort of commission or are employed by them :)

Random suggestion - check out NearlyFreeSpeech (https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/).

I use them for a few sites and like their vibe and offerings. It's mostly pay-per-traffic I think. The dashboard isn't really a dashboard, more of a set of config screens. I find it intuitive but may not be what you're looking for.

You can easily set up an account and transfer sites over.

not for geek

I've used them for low traffic static sites, but i don't recommend it for anything more complex. There are few configuration options, but very sparse.

I like Digital Ocean and Gandi.net

+1 for Gandi.net. Great experience with them.

I really like Digital Ocean.

My startup tracks which web hosts people actually like and why. Take a look at the data: http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare

It's hard to say which hosts are similar because MT is a hybrid between shared/cloud. I don't know any other hosts which have a similar mysql grid container that scales (except maybe Amazon RDS).

As far as dashboards most use cPanel or Plesk. If you don't like those, the field gets a lot smaller.

A few more alternatives:

- http://gandi.net

- http://brightbox.com/

- AWS S3/Cloudfront (for static sites)

- http://wordpress.com

I haven't looked at gandi.net before, their prices are reasonable and they have a very clean layout.

Unfortunately, the second I noticed their motto (no bullshit) I realized I cannot use them for our clients. Sigh :(

Ok, full disclosure: I work for Gandi. We realize that motto is something you can't say on the radio, but it's so true, we just have to say it. We are a small, tough, smart company, the kind we want to work for. We do offer a full API for resellers, so you could white-box the solution if you wanted.

Matt from (mt) here. Sorry that you feel that way, but we assure everybody that it's a good thing. We're not making any major changes at the company, and we're going to have 10 times the resources to make better products.

Bullshit.

Thank you for the thoughtful contribution.

It's not even about what GoDaddy plans to do with (mt). It's more about how lots of people feel about doing business with GoDaddy.

What you may not appreciate is that the GoDaddy brand is toxic.

Whether it's your advertising, your support for SOPA, the check-out maze, or the ex-CEO killing elephants - it's a brand that many informed consumers have chosen not to do business with.

I hosted on GoDaddy. Not only was it excessively slow at times, but it was not secure. I would occasionally have security failures and viruses installed on the website.

If you believe that, then for your sake, I hope you're right. But this is worse than being acquired by Yahoo; the product may last longer, but it's immediately lost so much good will that whatever leverage that brought to the table with GoDaddy is not likely to last long.

You missed the bit where GoDaddy is largely regarded as the scum of the Internet.

Their impossible interfaces, distasteful advertising, dark patterns regarding renewals and addon services, parking domains, and support for massively oppressing SOPA legislation all combine to make an absolutely awful brand image.

You've pretty much just destroyed the quite nice reputation (mt) had as a solid, premium hosting provider.

We are well aware of their past, but we're also well aware of what they've been doing to improve their business. Check out our FAQ http://weblog.mediatemple.net/2013/10/15/faqs-about-the-goda...

Ugh. There's even some sly wording in that blog post too.

⁢⁢ > Will you be sharing my personal & financial information with GoDaddy?

> Your personal and financial information stays securely in our system. No third-party vendors will ever have access to it, which has always been our practice.

Doesn't quite answer the question, so I'll have to assume (as other commenters did there too) that you will be sharing information with Godaddy, otherwise it would have been expressly denied. "Our" means the shared companies in this case.

> We are well aware of their past, but we're also well aware of what they've been doing to improve their business.

I'd still avoid combining my premium brand with one that used "godaddy girls" to promote their products.

NSFW. Can't believe I just had to write that.

http://i.imgur.com/z2P21XT.png

http://i.imgur.com/t1dkqhh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/vEWqQIC.jpg

That bit stood out to me, too. GoDaddy isn't a third-party vendor, they're the owner, so the answer should be a plain "Yep, suck it!"

It stays within our system, but there may be some info exchanged. The extent of that share, I have not been filled in on, but I know it's not a complete data dump into Godaddy's databases.

That is exactly the kind of information that your customers want to know.

So the FAQ response is a blatant duck/deception?

I'm not sure it was meant to deceive you, but at least we got it cleared up.

Cleared up for the folks who happen to be reading this comment thread. Maybe you should update the FAQ?

You aren't making your case any better.

Please just stop your community crisis management is just making this worse

A 'rebranding' doesn't erase the past. This particular customer base is not foolish enough to fall for that one.

The problem with that sentence is that "their/they've" is now "our/we've".

I am so glad I have moved all my domains out of GD. Was recommending TM for my customer, now I have to tell them to move out of TM ASAP, sad.

I think for many people its a moral choice. It doesn't mater how it affects MediaTemple as a service, they'll just plain refuse to support the parent company, and good on them for that.

It's great that you'll have more funds. But you are associating yourself with a very negative company. I'll give you a simple example why I hate GoDaddy. About a year ago, some affiliate of our product sent an email to a potential client who reported it as SPAM. Since our domain was bought on GoDaddy, GD sent us a threatening letter saying we have to pay $X upfront to continue to use their services or $Y (about $200) to move to another host. This was no short of blackmail. We tried to explain but it was of no use. We Googled further and found hundreds of other victims.

You're making a major change: you're making my money go to a company I will not under any circumstances support.

I'll be canceling my MT hosting as soon as possible.

No. Sure you get more money, but this is going to be absolutely toxic to your company culture. Now every employee at the company has to wake up and know that they're going to work at GoDaddy, a company that supported SOPA and PIPA a company that was founded by an obnoxious redneck who has a video blog of exploited blonde bimbos doing comedy shtick, a company that took a successful female NASCAR racer and exploited her as a sex object as their spokesperson, a company that outsources all of their customer service to India. The list goes on and on. Who's going to feel good about working there after that?

I'm pretty sure the female NASCAR driver was a knowing and willing participant who received compensation for her actions. So, not exploited.

Not that this discounts the scummery of GoDaddy.

When's your first elephant hunting safari planned?

I'm sorry, but what does an ex-CEO's personal hobby have to do with the way the business is run? I'm sure a shockingly high amount of other CEOs have had African safari and have taken elephants, distasteful as that may be.

GoDaddy has offered us a ton of ammo with which to criticize them professionally, so let's not get into personal ad hominem attacks.

First off, it was obviously a joke.

Secondly, maybe you've never seen the video but there's GoDaddy hats and shirts and shit all over it. He's the one who tied the business to it.

Whoops, my misunderstanding then! :)

I also didn't realize GoDaddy was explicitly shown, so I stand corrected on all points.

He also originally posted the video on the GoDaddy blog.

I agree that there are other (more valid) points on which to criticise them.

However, Bob Parson is still chairman and the largest individual shareholder. I can see why people may not want to support him financially [based on principles, he's rich already].

Well, the results are in, everybody hates GoDaddy, although that can't be surprising to you, and I have to agree with the sentiment, they're a very scummy company.

I'll be honest, from the outside looking in it looks like MT has sold out to cash in.

Surely you were aware of their reputation and their standing in the development community? I have to ask, how much did you consider what the reaction to this news would be before you signed on the line with them?

At least they signed on the line before the news broke. And hope that it was a cash-only deal, since the value had probably dropped once that went to the wire.

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