Lykaon’s Lair is now officially moved to its new home at Media Temple.
Previously, my sites were all hosted at Dreamhost.
Dreamhost wasn’t completely bad. They were extremely easy to use and were pretty good about holding my hand through whatever I wanted to do.
Unfortunately, the reliability of their servers left something to be desired. They were down a lot, and slow almost all of the time.
That was fine and dandy for my own little personal blog that no one reads, but when we launched Strahotski.com it was clear that we’d need something with a little more beef.
I tried a 1&1 Virtual Private Server first. It was clear that such a solution required far too much oversight.
It wasn’t just managing a website anymore — it was managing a linux server. I’m sure I would have been capable given the time, but it just isn’t worth the effort.
Plus 1&1 Customer Support is really bad. I would have a hard time recommending 1&1 for this reason alone.
I asked for my server to be re-imaged. I was told it was going to take one hour. Two days later, no re-image.
I sent an email to customer support and no word for 3 days. So, I just cancelled entirely. I don’t have time to wait for them everytime I have a problem.
On the upside, 1&1 did pro-rate the amount of time I had used and refunded me most of my monthly fee for the VPS. That’s worth something.
Then a friend recommended Media Temple on hype alone. He hadn’t used it, but the grid technology sounded intriguing and their marketing was much more appealing than their competitors.
So I signed up and immediately fell in love. The interfaces are so nice, and they let you have slightly more control over things than Dreamhost did. It feels like a natural progression from the cheapo hosting that is Dreamhost.
I’ve had two customer service issues so far (both my own fault), and they’ve been extremely quick to respond and never got confused about the requests.
The end result seems to be a much faster load time on both Strahotski.com and Lykaon’s Lair. That alone would be worth the move, but I also get good customer service and a more usable interface to control things with.
Only time will tell on overall reliability but so far it seems better. I reserve the right to change my mind, but as of right now I’d definitely recommend Media Temple for your hosting needs. It’s one step up from Shared hosting without the hassle of a VPS.