Sorry to ask another hosting question but I need to make a decision.

Does anyone host/hosted with any of the companies below?

1. Media Temple
2. Bluehost
3. InMotionHosting

1- If you have, how fast do your site loads?
2- Do you receive a lot of spam email?
3- Also, do you use a template? (bludomain) with the hosting company?


I really like Media Temple but after reading reviews online their servers are down a lot and are slow. 1 and 1 also has a lot of bad reviews lately.

Thanks again

Media Temple's grid service definitely has problems. I used to have some sites hosted on the grid service and they frequently loaded slowly, and often went offline. The problem is that they're giving 100 GB of storage to every grid customer. This means they need a ton of storage, and storage ends up being the bottleneck.

Now I'm hosted on Media Temple dedicated virtual server, and I love it. The performance is really good and I rarely have any interruption in service. Unfortunately the dedicated virtual server requires significant linux administration experience. I probably wouldn't recommend it unless you're pretty comfortable working with servers, etc. (I'm a software engineer during my day job.)

I don't have experience with the other companies you mention. I can say that shared hosting is periodically going to be slow, and will have interruptions in service. You quite often get what you pay for. If you find good, fast, reliable shared hosting there is a good chance it won't always be that way (Media Temple was pretty solid before the grid service).

As far as email goes I'd recommend either using a gmail account or using google apps (www.google.com/a/) to setup a gmail account with a real domain name. Either option takes care of the spam problem.

May I ask where you read this?

http://www.powweb.com problem solved.

I have been with MediaTemple for about 5 years now. I did experience some issues during the gridservice transition. However, I can't tell you the last time I had an issue (update: see below- I paused to look it up). I find them to be very reliable and I think they have gotten better over time. I have never felt compelled to look for other hosting and I am very happy with them.

I sent a ticket in on May 14 when I had an issue with my email that somehow resolved itself whilst I was waiting for a response (probably about 2 hours) and I cancelled the ticket.

My last support ticket to them was a feature request (not actually service trouble) in March of 07, and the one prior to that was an FTP hiccup after the gridservice transition at the beginning of March 07. The one before that was in 06, so I am quite happy hosting with them considering I average 1 support ticket a year and the issue is always resolved in a timely manner. Each issue is getting resolved better each time as well.

ETA: Oh, and I have never noticed my site being slow or down a lot. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen. I'm just saying it hasn't happened to me.

Edited again to add: Oh and to answer your other questions:
1- I don't notice my site being slow or anything. Feel free to visit the link in my sig to test it. The video and photos are hosted elsewhere.
2- I get spam email but I don't necessarily equate that to hosting with MediaTemple. Most of my spam started coming when I was a Realtor and also with viruses that harvest addresses from people's address. I also get a lot of spam that is obviously brute force trial and error or just from having a domain. There was a time when your WHOIS listing could not be made private. So, I don't think I get any more SPAM than normal for someone who has had the same domain-based email address (before it was a SPAM threat to list your email address in a contact form) for 9 years.
3- I do not use a template from blu because I don't ever plan on doing business with them after things I have read I have been running a wordpress blog on my site for a couple years and prior to that I was redirecting the index page to Blogger or Typepad.

I have multiple sites on my grid server with Media temple and I haven't experienced any problems thus far with server slowing or anything like that. Being a designer it works really well for me being able to add domains so easily- I've used Media temple for about four years and have been very pleased- their customer service has always been really helpful as well. I would recommend them

Josh

Bartek, a few websites with bad reviews about 1 and 1 are:

http://www.webhostingtestimonials.com/host...reviews-ratings

http://www.webhostingjury.com/reviews/1and1

http://www.webhostingreviews.com/1and1-reviews.htm

http://www.besthostratings.com/web-hosting/1and1.html



Jono, Joshua, and Indygirlie thanks so much for your replies

Matt and Phototristan thanks for the referrals but the hosting companies don't offer the php requirements I need to update our site ;P


Gracias!

I use a company called pingdom to monitor the uptime of the various hosting services that I manage. Basically they have servers located all over the world and every 5 minutes they attempt to access your website. They measure and report any downtimes that are encountered.

There are two screenshots. The first shows my grid service account's uptime. You can see the jagged line at the top, indicating that the site I had hosted on the grid server has a fair amount of service interruptions. Towards the end of the chart you can see that I took that site offline.

The second screenshot shows my Media Temple dedicated virtual server. Recently Media Temple upgraded their DNS system and caused some downtime (the blip in May '08), otherwise it's been a very stable service.