Media Temple
Boutique managed hosting for designers, agencies and creative studios.
The verdict
Media Temple has served designers and creative agencies since the late 1990s, building a reputation for approachable managed hosting with a strong design-community following. Now a GoDaddy company, it offers shared Grid hosting, managed WordPress and VPS plans.
The full picture
Media Temple was, for most of the 2000s, the host that designers and creative agencies used. Founded in Los Angeles in 1998, it built a brand around design-led marketing, a distinctive grid hosting product, and a customer base of studios, agencies and creative professionals who wanted hosting that felt like it was made by people who understood their work.
GoDaddy acquired it in 2013 and, for a decade, ran it as a separate premium brand with its own support team and products: managed WordPress, VPS, dedicated servers and the legacy grid service. In 2023 GoDaddy began consolidating Media Temple customers onto GoDaddy infrastructure and retiring the brand as a separate offering, which is the most important fact for anyone considering it now.
What remains is a well-regarded managed hosting product with a support reputation built over two decades, increasingly administered as part of GoDaddy. Prospective customers should check the current status of the brand and the migration path before committing, and existing customers should understand what platform their account now sits on.
What you get
- Grid, VPS and Managed WordPress hosting
- Free SSL on all plans
- Nightly backups
- One-click staging environments
- 24/7 phone & chat support
- Owned by GoDaddy since 2019
Every hosting type it sells
| Product | From | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Managed WordPress | $19.50/mo | Managed WordPress with staging and automatic updates. |
| VPS hosting | $30/mo | Managed and self-managed virtual servers with root access. |
| Dedicated servers | Custom | Single-tenant hardware with managed support. |
| Grid hosting | Legacy | The original clustered shared platform, legacy status. |
Plans & pricing
- Unlimited websites
- Shared resources
- Free SSL
- Managed WordPress
- Staging site
- Nightly backups
- 2 vCPU
- 2 GB RAM
- Full root access
What the price actually costs you
- Priced above mass-market shared hosting, reflecting the managed positioning.
- Brand consolidation means current pricing and terms should be verified directly.
- Existing customers should check which platform their account has been moved to.
- A money-back guarantee applies, with terms varying by product.
Technical specification
| Control panel | Media Temple account center, with Plesk on some VPS products |
|---|---|
| Platform | Increasingly GoDaddy infrastructure following consolidation |
| Storage | SSD across current plans |
| Backups | Automated backups with restore on managed plans |
| Staging | Available on managed WordPress |
| SSH access | Yes, on VPS and managed WordPress |
| Support | Historically a key differentiator, now aligned with GoDaddy support |
| Brand status | Being retired as a standalone brand — confirm current terms before buying |
| Uptime SLA | 99.9% with credits |
Performance in practice
Historically good for its category, with United States data centres and a well-run managed WordPress product. As accounts consolidate onto GoDaddy infrastructure, performance converges with GoDaddy managed WordPress, which is competent mid-table. The distinctive Grid architecture that defined the brand is legacy.
Infrastructure & support
Support channels
- 24/7 phone support
- 24/7 live chat
- Email ticketing
Data centers
- United States (Los Angeles)
- United States (Ashburn, VA)
Security & compliance
- Free SSL on managed plans with automatic renewal
- Automated backups with restore on managed products
- Malware scanning available, with Sucuri options through GoDaddy
- DDoS protection at the network level
- Two-factor authentication on the account
Moving a site in
Migration assistance has historically been available through support. Given the ongoing consolidation into GoDaddy, prospective customers should confirm the migration path and the destination platform before committing.
The trade-off
In its favour
- Popular with agencies and design studios
- Solid managed WordPress feature set
- Established brand with long track record
Worth knowing
- Pricier than budget shared hosts
- Grid plan performance can lag under load
- Fewer data center regions than larger hosts
Who should look elsewhere
- Buyers wanting long-term certainty about the platform they are joining
- Anyone seeking the lowest price
- Developers wanting modern Git-based workflows
- New customers who would be better served by choosing GoDaddy directly or a dedicated managed WordPress host
The company behind it
| Ownership | GoDaddy, acquired 2013, brand consolidated from 2023 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Culver City, California, United States |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Scale | Historically hundreds of thousands of sites, agency and designer focused |
| Status | Being consolidated into GoDaddy — verify current offering before purchase |
How it got here
- 1998 Founded in Los Angeles serving designers and creative agencies.
- 2006 Launches Grid hosting, a distinctive clustered shared platform.
- 2013 Acquired by GoDaddy and operated as a separate premium brand.
- 2019 Focuses on managed WordPress and VPS for agencies.
- 2023 GoDaddy begins consolidating Media Temple customers onto its own platform.
Common questions
Who owns Media Temple?
Media Temple has been a GoDaddy company since 2019, though it operates under its own brand.
Does Media Temple offer managed WordPress?
Yes, its WordPress Hosting plans include staging, caching and automatic core updates.
The bottom line
A storied brand in its consolidation phase. The historical reputation among designers was well earned, but GoDaddy is absorbing the products into its own platform. Verify what you are actually buying before signing up, and consider a dedicated managed WordPress host instead.