Fast Load Speed
One of the most important things to consider before deciding whether Media Temple or Bluehost is the best for you is full page load speed. While others may use the time to the first byte to determine average speed, average page load speeds paint a more complete picture. Visitors don’t really care when a page begins to load, instead, they care about the time it finishes loading.
So which host is the fastest? We won’t know if we don’t check.
Bluehost Full Page Load Speed
Our Bluehost page load test revealed what we always suspected to be through via eye test. Our web page had an average load speed of 1.1 seconds. Of course, there are web hosts faster than that, but right now we can only think of two.
Media Temple Full Page Load Speed
Unfortunately, Media Temple was unable to compare with the standards of Bluehost. They had a disappointing page load speed of 3.3 seconds. That’s so slow that it would almost definitely reflect in your views.
Bluehost vs. Media Temple; Pricing And Value Comparison
Choosing what plan to purchase can be tasking. But it won’t be if you know the answers to a few basic questions. The first thing you need to know is what you want. What will be your site requirements? How much space will you need? How many sites will you have?
The second thing you need to know is how much value is being offered by a prospective web host and at how much. The last thing you should know, of course, is how much you can afford.
Before going into analysis, there’s one thing worth knowing. Unless you plan on publishing a large website with millions of views, a shared hosting plan is the best plan for you. That’s why this comparison will be mainly on the shared hosting plans offered by Bluehost and Media Temple.
Entry Level Plan; Basic Plan vs. Grid Personal Plan.
The first thing you might want to know is that the shared hosting plans of Bluehost and of media Temple may be a bit of a price mismatch.
What do I mean? The entry-level plan of Bluehost costs $2.95 per month while the entry-level plan of Media Temple costs $20 per month. So, if your budget doesn’t cover that, at least, you really should just pick Bluehost and be done with it.
However, if your budget covers that, there’s still a lot more to learn. Bluehost’s Basic plan comes with 1 website, 50 GB of storage space, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, 1 included domain, 5 parked domains and 25 subdomains. The plan, like it’s been said earlier, costs $2.95
Compared to that, the Grid Personal plan of Media Temple comes with a 100 sites, 20 GB of storage, 100 databases, 1TB of Bandwidth, a 100 email boxes, Web Application Firewall, Content Delivery Network, and malware detection and removal. For this, you’ll be required to pay $20 per month.
First off, what you need to know about the Grid Personal plan is that you’re unlikely to be able to make use of the 100 sites. 20 GB of space will only accommodate 3 small sites at most, so that’s probably just a marketing tactic. But that doesn’t mean that the Grid Personal plan isn’t a good plan. It has a lot of extras like malware detection and removal, web application firewalls (even though that should be a base feature that all web hosting plans should have) and 100 databases. The problem, of course, is the price tag. $20 for 20 GB of storage? No.
Compared to the Grid Personal plan of Media Temple, the Basic plan of Bluehost offers great value for money. Even though it has only one website, it comes with 50 GB of storage and unmetered bandwidth— which is a lot more than what the entry-level plan of Media Temple comes with. At only $2.95, the Bluehost’s Basic plan is appropriately priced and objectively better than Media Temple’s Grid Personal plan.
Medium Level Plan; Plus Plans vs. Grid Pro
Bluehost has two fairly similar medium-tier packages and they are the Plus and Choice Plus plans.
The Bluehost’s Plus plan comes with unlimited websites, unlimited storage, unmetered bandwidth, a free SSL certificate, standard performance, unlimited domains, unlimited parked domains, unlimited subdomains, Spam Experts and 1 Office 365 Mailbox— free for thirty days. The plan costs $5.45 per month for an initial three-year plan and renews at $10.99
The Choice Plus plan of Bluehost has all the features of the Plus plan, but it also comes with one extra feature. It comes with Site Backup in the form of Codeguard Basic. That’s not the only difference between the two plans. While both of them cost $5.45 per month, the Choice Plus plan renews at $14.99 instead of $10.99.
The Grid Pro plan of Media Temple, like the Grid Personal plan, is also rather expensive. The plan costs $30 and comes with 500 sites, a 100GB of SD storage, 500 databases, a 1000 email boxes, Web Application Firewall, Content Delivery Network, and malware detection and removal.
While one can be easily carried away by the fact that the Grid Pro allows for up to 500 sites, it’s important to know that it only allows this on a budget of 100 GB of storage, so to speak. That means that you would most likely be only to host at most 10 small sites with the plan.
Even though the Plus plans cost far less, they offer even more when it comes to sites and storage capacity. Additionally, they also come with genuine additional specs and not base features that all web hosting plans should have.
When it comes to value for money, the Plus plans of Bluehost take the win 10 out of ten times against the Grid Pro plan of Media Temple
Top Tier Plan; Pro Plan vs. Grid Elite Plan
The Pro plan of Bluehost comes with unlimited websites, unlimited storage, Domain Privacy + Protection, Codeguard Basic for site backup, a dedicated IP, unlimited domains, Spam Expert, free SSL certificate, unmetered bandwidth and 1 Office 365 Mailbox free for thirty days. The plan costs $13.95 per month.
The Grid Elite plan, on the other hand, comes with 500 sites, 250 GB of space, 5 TB of bandwidth, 500 databases, and a thousand email boxes. The plan also comes with extra features like a content delivery network, web application firewall, and malware detection and removal. For all of this, you’ll be required to pay $60 per month.
Again, Media Temple tries to hoodwink users by promising an undeliverable number of sites. It’s almostimpossible to hosts 500 sites with 250GB of space. While the value on offer is great for a top tier plan, the price tag is just way too much. At $60 you shouldn’t even be paying for a shared hosting package. You’d definitely find better priced managed hosting plans.
All in all, the Grid Elite plan is a lesson in how not to price web hosting shared plans. In stark contrast to the grim picture painted by the Grim Elite plan of Media Temple, Bluehost’s Pro plan is a great example of amazing value for money. It comes with mostly unlimited specifications, and what’s more, it has extra security features thrown in at no extra charge.
The Best Plan For You
Deciding which web host to go for and which plan to buy is usually rather difficult. But in this case, Media Temple has made it exceedingly easy.
Even if one was willing to overlook the fact that they have a poor average load speed, the fact that their plans are unbearably expensive would be a stumbling block. Bluehost plans are more fairly priced and the host even has better performance than Media Temple.
Media Temple loses this one on all fronts. Ordinarily, we would advise that you get this or that package over another one as it would serve your needs better, but in this case, there’s no need for that. To put it mildly, buying a Media Temple plan would be a gargantuan waste of money. Literally, any of Bluehost’s plan is better.
Alternative
Media Temple is one of the biggest web hosts around, and they make a great alternative to Bluehost if you’re willing to fork out a lot of money.
The cheapest shared hosting plan of Media Temple is $20, while the most expensive is $60. While many people don’t think too much of paying so much for a shared hosting server, Media Temple’s specs make it worth it. Plans come with as many as 500 sites, and security coverage is just almost all-encompassing.
Unfortunately, Media Temple has a major drawback. While uptime is decent, average full page load speed often leaves a lot to be desired. All in all, Media Temple is a great option if you’d like to host a lot of sites and you have enough money to pay for it.