I have been with Media Temple for years and have always been extremely happy with their service. I started with (mt) when I had to move this site to a Grid Server back in 2007 shortly after a link from Daring Fireball crashed shawnblanc.net for like two days.
A few years later, the traffic here outgrew the Grid Server’s monthly GPU allotment and so I moved to a DV Virtual Private server. I also set The Sweet Setup on its own VPS machine and have been very pleased with the performance of the new Managed (dv) servers I’m on. We did almost 200,000 pageviews in our first 24 hours and the site didn’t even blink.
And that’s why I pay for the DV servers — not because I want a dedicated server environment, but because I need servers with more horsepower than the (gs) can handle.
I have considered moving my sites to WP Engine, but I would need one of their custom Premium plans, which means pricing would have been over $250/month — more than double what I’m currently paying for my two dedicated virtual servers on Media Temple.
Last week I spoke with Rick over at Flywheel, and they don’t even cater to guys like me who have a few WP sites and just need good fast managed hosting.
Well, now there is this brand new WordPress Premium Hosting service from Media Temple. And it’s just 29 bucks a month. It’s for folks who want to run a WordPress site or three, and who don’t want to fuss with updates, caching, backups, maintenance, troubleshooting, etc. That pretty much describes me exactly.
I spoke with Media Temple’s customer support earlier today. The Managed WordPress hosting service uses SSD servers, offers unlimited traffic (most manage hosting serves charge by pageviews), and should be able to easily handle the modicum of traffic my sites are doing.
Federic Lardinois, writing for TechCrunch about the new service, says:
Dante Baker, Media Temple’s product manager for this project, tells me that the managed WordPress hosting will offer a one-click setup for developers and designers who don’t want to have to deal with setting up servers and dealing with performance and scaling issues. Just like similar services, it will offer automated updates and one-click backups.
I’ll probably move The Sweet Setup over to the new service and see how things do for a month or two. If I move all three of my sites — TSS, shawnblanc.net, and Tools & Toys — it would save me $85/month in hosting costs. Not to mention the peace of mind of having WordPress-specific managed hosting.