GoDaddy Buys Media Temple

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/15/godaddy-buys-media-temple-to-build-up-its-business-with-web-professionals/

by recusancy • 13 years ago

141 167 13 years ago

techcrunch.com

thejosh• 13 years ago

Wonder how much for?

And that 88% of their "technical audience" will like the GoDaddy purchase?

recusancy• 13 years ago

Media Temple's brand destroyed by one press release.

mtMattNL10• 13 years ago

Matt from (mt) here. Sorry that you feel that way, but we assure everybody that it's a good thing. We're not making any major changes at the company, and we're going to have 10 times the resources to make better products.

rwhitman9• 13 years ago

Bullshit.

anu_gupta2• 13 years ago

It's not even about what GoDaddy plans to do with (mt). It's more about how lots of people feel about doing business with GoDaddy.

uptown3• 13 years ago

What you may not appreciate is that the GoDaddy brand is toxic.

Whether it's your advertising, your support for SOPA, the check-out maze, or the ex-CEO killing elephants - it's a brand that many informed consumers have chosen not to do business with.

mildtrepidation• 13 years ago

If you believe that, then for your sake, I hope you're right. But this is worse than being acquired by Yahoo; the product may last longer, but it's immediately lost so much good will that whatever leverage that brought to the table with GoDaddy is not likely to last long.

nwh3• 13 years ago

You missed the bit where GoDaddy is largely regarded as the scum of the Internet.

Their impossible interfaces, distasteful advertising, dark patterns regarding renewals and addon services, parking domains, and support for massively oppressing SOPA legislation all combine to make an absolutely awful brand image.

You've pretty much just destroyed the quite nice reputation (mt) had as a solid, premium hosting provider.

tyleregeto• 13 years ago

I think for many people its a moral choice. It doesn't mater how it affects MediaTemple as a service, they'll just plain refuse to support the parent company, and good on them for that.

alecsmart1• 13 years ago

It's great that you'll have more funds. But you are associating yourself with a very negative company. I'll give you a simple example why I hate GoDaddy. About a year ago, some affiliate of our product sent an email to a potential client who reported it as SPAM. Since our domain was bought on GoDaddy, GD sent us a threatening letter saying we have to pay $X upfront to continue to use their services or $Y (about $200) to move to another host. This was no short of blackmail. We tried to explain but it was of no use. We Googled further and found hundreds of other victims.

eropple• 13 years ago

You're making a major change: you're making my money go to a company I will not under any circumstances support.

I'll be canceling my MT hosting as soon as possible.

rwhitman9• 13 years ago

No. Sure you get more money, but this is going to be absolutely toxic to your company culture. Now every employee at the company has to wake up and know that they're going to work at GoDaddy, a company that supported SOPA and PIPA a company that was founded by an obnoxious redneck who has a video blog of exploited blonde bimbos doing comedy shtick, a company that took a successful female NASCAR racer and exploited her as a sex object as their spokesperson, a company that outsources all of their customer service to India. The list goes on and on. Who's going to feel good about working there after that?

ebbv3• 13 years ago

When's your first elephant hunting safari planned?

tomelders• 13 years ago

Well, the results are in, everybody hates GoDaddy, although that can't be surprising to you, and I have to agree with the sentiment, they're a very scummy company.

I'll be honest, from the outside looking in it looks like MT has sold out to cash in.

Surely you were aware of their reputation and their standing in the development community? I have to ask, how much did you consider what the reaction to this news would be before you signed on the line with them?

atourgates2• 13 years ago

Now I'll be spending my morning creating a plan to transfer our clients (mostly small to medium businesses) that host on MediaTemple, to a new host.

Any recommendations on a host that offers similar quality/features to Media Temple's Grid/Shared hosting?

Specifically:

* About $20/mo

* An Easy to Use Dashboard

* The Ability to Reasonably Handle Traffic Bursts

* Decent Support

And, of course, not owned by GoDaddy.

antr2• 13 years ago

I'm now on the lookout too.

Early this year I already migrated 2 DV accounts due to poor customer service, now happily hosted Linode. Now I'll move 2 GS accounts for family and a close friend, but this is no Linode solution.

rwhitman9• 13 years ago

Also unlimited domain names and a huge amount of storage.

meritt• 13 years ago

I've been using site5.com for a few years now for this sort of hosting (small clients & family/friends). I've been happy with them.

corry• 13 years ago

Random suggestion - check out NearlyFreeSpeech (https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/).

I use them for a few sites and like their vibe and offerings. It's mostly pay-per-traffic I think. The dashboard isn't really a dashboard, more of a set of config screens. I find it intuitive but may not be what you're looking for.

You can easily set up an account and transfer sites over.

akinder• 13 years ago

I like Digital Ocean and Gandi.net

rpicard• 13 years ago

I really like Digital Ocean.

ohashi6• 13 years ago

My startup tracks which web hosts people actually like and why. Take a look at the data: http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare

It's hard to say which hosts are similar because MT is a hybrid between shared/cloud. I don't know any other hosts which have a similar mysql grid container that scales (except maybe Amazon RDS).

As far as dashboards most use cPanel or Plesk. If you don't like those, the field gets a lot smaller.

sandstrom3• 13 years ago

A few more alternatives:

- http://gandi.net

- http://brightbox.com/

- AWS S3/Cloudfront (for static sites)

- http://wordpress.com

thebiglebrewski8• 13 years ago

I totally agree with @recusancy, this is the worst news I've heard all day...I absolutely despise GoDaddy and everything they represent.

Who should I switch to? Just have some WordPress site hosted on MediaTemple mostly...

acallaghan4• 13 years ago

Digital Ocean by a country mile, they come with a Wordpress image ready set-up for you, will cost $5 a month for an excellent webserver. I host 4 different Rails sites, and a Wordpress Network of 7 sites there, all running v well.

My referral link: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=1ecc21b66a25

Edit: Note, I don't run all of those sites on the same server, that'd be silly.

atourgates2• 13 years ago

If you're looking for WP hosting without the need to manage a server, we've been having a good experience with Synthesis' managed Wordpress hosting: http://websynthesis.com/

The only downside is that since their pricing is based on the number of domains/installs ($27 for a single domain/install), it'll get pricy for multiple small WP sites on a single account.

thenomad4• 13 years ago

Interesting, I didn't know that. What's the WP image based off? (OS, web server, reverse proxies, etc)

anu_gupta2• 13 years ago

Depends on how much you want to pay, and exactly how much control you want, but one of these should sort you out.

* WPEngine

* Linode

* Bytemark (Big V)

* Rackspace Cloud

* DigitalOcean

thenomad4• 13 years ago

Just second-opinioning this one: I've run Wordpress sites on WPEngine (awesome, just awesome) and Linode (great servers, obviously don't have the complete-hassle-removal factor of WPEngine).

I've run other sites on DigitalOcean (superb) and BigV (been a client of theirs for a decade now - also superb).

mitchwainer• 13 years ago

We just issued a $10 promo code today on Twitter for anyone that is interested in trying out DigitalOcean. Promo Code: DIVEIN10

resistor36722• 13 years ago

Just FYI, Gandi.net is also offering a free "Simple Hosting" virtual instance for a month with code NODADDY. Size "S", valid for a week.

mtMattNL10• 13 years ago

We knew that a lot of our current customers might have a negative response towards this. Like somebody said above, GoDaddy has made some pretty big changes in the past year. With this new acquisition we're hoping for bigger and better things for (mt), especially when it comes to new product lines.

thebiglebrewski8• 13 years ago

Sure, as someone above mentioned though, unfortunately GoDaddy is a toxic brand. I do NOT want to be associated with a brand that doesn't support net neutrality and was in favor of SOPA and PIPA. I'm sure you guys will do fine anyway, but I'm pretty sad I'm going to probably have to abandon MediaTemple in the long run....

tcdent• 13 years ago

I think you'll find the negative response from developers to be way larger than you anticipated. (Otherwise, you probably wouldn't have gone through with this.)

I still respected MT for their independence, even if the service was unbearable for a few years there. You were just starting to earn a good reputation again, now you're right back in the dark days.

rwhitman9• 13 years ago

You're never going to win our hearts or minds here. MT is dead to me now.

There is no one web technology professionals hate more in the world than GoDaddy. I can't think of a vendor I despise more.

Also I'm an MT customer of 8 years and probably referred tens of thousands of business to MT over the last decade. Dead to me. Thats how much I hate GoDaddy.

torartc2• 13 years ago

I'm looking to move too. I'd really like a good suggestion as to where to move my sites.

ChrisNorstrom2• 13 years ago

I wanted to check out Media Temple as a long term host but after this.... I guess I'll stick with 1and1. I've been with 1and1 for almost 10 years. They're not perfect but they're more than satisfactory for me. When the traffic to my websites on my shared hosting grew they automatically moved me to a better more resource free server instead of forcing me to upgrade to virtual or dedicated servers. They're charging $14 per .com so do NOT register domains with them. Use NameCheap.com for that.

dublinben• 13 years ago

Depending on your usage, you should check out ASmallOrange.com and NearlyFreeSpeech.net. They're both very cost effective options for personal sites.

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

If it's just some WordPress site, nobody is better at running WordPress than WordPress.

codereflection4• 13 years ago

Checkout http://ghost.org/, which just opened to the public, if all you're doing with WP is blogging. Otherwise you may want to consider signing up on Wordpress.com, which isn't all that bad (just very limited in configurability).

thebiglebrewski8• 13 years ago

I actually just wrote a blog post on Ghost! http://blog.zfeldman.com/2013-10-15-i-ain-t-fraid-of-no-ghos...

It's really cool but I don't think it's ready for primetime yet.

I want to be able to host static sites and WordPress all from one hosting account with great support and features. Seems like MediaTemple was the only service to offer that...

lolololololo• 13 years ago

they have cheap SSD plans, being there for months and it just works https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=49b5b50accae

obituary_latte• 13 years ago

+1 here for Rackspace mostly due to their excellent support. They seem to have a dedicated WP offering[0].

Have also heard mostly good things about Linode (exception[1]), but don't have personal experience with them.

[0]http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/sites/web-hosting/wordpress/

[1]https://blog.linode.com/2013/04/16/security-incident-update/

ohashi6• 13 years ago

If you are starting to research your options you may find the data my startup publishes useful: http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare

It tracks what people are saying about many of the big hosting providers on Twitter and analyzes what people like/don't like about them.

As far as anu_gupta's recommendations, I have data on 4/5:

Digital Ocean: http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/101/digitalocean/

Linode: http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/24/linode/

WPEngine: http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/103/wpengine/

RackSpace: http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/21/rackspace/

thebiglebrewski8• 13 years ago

Thanks, this is really helpful!

jcomis• 13 years ago

ugh. I don't like this. I liked MT. I just don't like GoDaddy and the way they do business (example: their ceo shooting elephants, their ads, the way they squat domains, they supported SOPA, etc) and do not wish to be their customer, ever. Wonder how many people feel the same as I do?

justindocanto3• 13 years ago

They have a new CEO who seems to have a much better moral compass, but everything else... in absolute agreement.

chasing• 13 years ago

April Fools! Wait...

thebiglebrewski8• 13 years ago

Seriously, I checked the date...

jmduke2• 13 years ago

Makes sense. GoDaddy's been trying to rebrand pretty heavily, what with the redesign, new marketing push, etc., and the article frames MT as a company that isn't exactly doing great financially.

Pretty boggling statistic: GoDaddy has four thousand employees. Twitter has around half that.

josefresco2• 13 years ago

Not mind boggling when you realize that GD actually sells stuff. Therefore they have sales, support etc. Twitter while popular, is only now starting to actually sell "stuff" ie advertising.

Look at Groupon as an example of real world staffing gone awry.

jmduke2• 13 years ago

Absolutely. I'm not particularly familiar with which of GoDaddy's offerings require high-touch sales (I've used them for domains a couple of times), though I'm sure they exist.

Similarly, I'm not gonna be surprised to see a post-IPO Twitter start pumping resources into their sales departments as well. A lot of their high-value partnerships and channels are going to require a little bit more personality than what they've put into the current Twitter Ads offering.

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

I didn't even know that GoDaddy was doing a redesign and new marketing push. I went to their site and was happy to see fewer bikini girls. However, in the about us, they still sound like they're trying to be brogrammer central:

Like a Stanford dorm room on steroids, our Sunnyvale office is 40,000 square-feet of Bay Area badassery, brimming with some of the biggest brains on the planet, dreaming up digital masterpieces and keeping time in agile sprints.

Yhippa• 13 years ago

These guys sound like the Hooters of the technology world.

winslow• 13 years ago

I didn't realize they were re-branding. I just looked at their site for the first time in a while and their rendition of the "flat ui" craze looks horrible in my opinion.

rwhitman9• 13 years ago

I have no love for Media Temple, but have so many client sites there that this really affects me. Just when I thought MT was improving they go and do this.

That line about it staying "independent" is total crap. I stupidly got locked into Outright and now a year or so after their acquisition by GoDaddy its now magically "GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping" and they want to link it with my GoDaddy account. Independent my ass. So now GoDaddy has all my business records sitting next to my MT accounts, old domain names etc. Ugh

eugeneross• 13 years ago

There should have been some type of clause when you agreed to sign up with (mt) for a year. If not, you can make a pretty good argument for your money back.

rhizome• 13 years ago

A well-engineered deployment framework and backup regime should let you move sites to new hosts with a minimum of headaches (if not a minimum of time). Heck, an enterprising engineer could probably whip up a third-party site mover that uses some combination of limited DB privs, temporary SSH keys, etc. to move entire domains around.

You're right that any "things are gonna stay awesome!" through an acquisition is pipe talk. It's just a lie in an attempt to minimize churn.

rwhitman9• 13 years ago

If any of these sites were built using a well-engineered deployment framework, I wouldn't be using a MediaTemple grid account to host them

ohashi6• 13 years ago

It's always interesting to hear people talking about trends they see in a web hosting company. The first thing I do is check and see if their experience actually matches what I see in the data.

http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/23/mediatemple/ (click 'Trends')

I don't see much evidence of 'improving' but it looks fairly stable. It will be very interesting to watch what happens after today though.

I've been watching http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/33/asmallorange/ because they are in a similar situation but half a year ahead of MT. They were bought out by EIG (Endurance International Group - which own HostGator, BlueHost, Host Monster, etc) back in March. They've been run independently and their service seems to have improved (cue EIG hate here). It's easy to craft stories, but I always like to see the data.

maguay• 13 years ago

That's ominous on A Small Orange — didn't realize that. Great.

uptown3• 13 years ago

Anyone have a suggestion for a managed hosting alternative with pricing competitive to MediaTemple?

rwhitman9• 13 years ago

The problem is that MT has the best shared host dashboard control panel out there. The grid shared hosting option historically sucked (can't tell you how many fires I've had to fight because of prolonged grid outages) but damn, that slick control panel makes it so easy to spool up a site for a client in a hurry, or set up a new subdomain that it was worth the pain of periodic unannounced downtime. I loved being able to get a site up on MT Grid in 5 mins flat

If there is anything thats as easy to cruise through and still reliable, I'd love to hear about it.

thebiglebrewski8• 13 years ago

Right?!

thenomad4• 13 years ago

Bytemark's Symbiosis OS makes it extremely easy to spool up new sites or new domains/subdomains. Give 'em a look.

lstamour• 13 years ago

DreamHost's is a bit long in the tooth now, but at least it's not cPanel! :)

nhangen2• 13 years ago

I am so, so disappointed about this. Really love Media Temple and had been considering moving more of our resources to them.

On the other hand, I hate GoDaddy and will absolutely not remain a MT customer.

Anyone have a list of good alternatives for reliable semi-managed VPS hosting in the US?

nwh3• 13 years ago

Depends how managed you need it, but Digital Ocean have been getting nothing but praise of late. They're incredibly cost effective too.

acallaghan4• 13 years ago

This'll be a good thing if MT's customer service and server tech line up replaces over GoDaddy's, but it won't. I'm afraid GD will just take the customers, move them over to their server and strip MT for assets

josefresco2• 13 years ago

For all those here suggestion small alternate hosts, accompanied by their anecdotal positive experience remember that your favorite host is probably one fat check away from selling out just like MT. In fact, most web hosting models are built from the ground up to eventually get swallowed (acquired) but a larger hosting fish.

I've been through several hosting buyouts with my clients over the last 13 years and none have ended well. Even after the dust settles, the "New Company" almost always loses it's original formula for success and with it, it's original customers.

Lessons learned: Host with bigger hosts less likely to be snapped up. Diversify your client hosting providers so one botched buyout will not sink you.

rwhitman9• 13 years ago

Yea exactly. You just can't win with a small host provider. They will always get acquired. Always. Though I did get the sense that MT was large enough to stay independent. Really uncomfortable feeling knowing its GoDaddy now

ohashi6• 13 years ago

Another problem with small hosts is small sample size. Hosting is an odd product that everything is good until it's not. Many/most people never really have any sort of 'experience' with their hosting company. Which ends up as a default neutral/positive opinion. But it's really when there's some sort of incident that the real quality of a company comes out. Until a host is big enough, there generally aren't enough incidents and data points to say much about them.

mtMattNL10• 13 years ago

I was going to post person by person, but I figured a general post with all the info would be a better option. So here it goes...

We're definitely excited about the move. We know GoDaddy may have had a not so stellar reputation in the past, but we're very happy with the changes they've made this year. Along with that, we are very happy to get the funding and resources we need to make bigger and better products. We want to put out better products with the same style and flare, and we can now do it a lot better and a lot faster. Our support isn't changing, products aren't changing, and the only real big change today is that we're getting cake and lunch on the house.

Feel free to shoot any questions at me, or check out our weblog for a FAQ http://weblog.mediatemple.net/2013/10/15/faqs-about-the-goda...

rkudeshi• 13 years ago

I keep seeing allusions to this new, improved GoDaddy...can you provide some details about this? I haven't heard anything about it since moving my domains away from them after the SOPA/elephant stuff.

I know MediaTemple is a good company and wouldn't sell to GoDaddy without reason, so hopefully you can provide some solid justification for staying with you. The current FAQ/blog post don't address GoDaddy's toxic reputation in the tech community at all.

chrisj16• 13 years ago

Are you sure about that? There's an answer to the very question "What about GoDaddy’s reputation in the tech community?"

"They have overhauled their leadership team and attracted tech talent from the best-of-the-best. We love 'the new GoDaddy' that CEO Blake Irving and his team have created, especially their new approach with advertising, product focus and UX." -- http://weblog.mediatemple.net/2013/10/15/faqs-about-the-goda...

GoDaddy appears to be a very different company than it was a year ago, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

I admire your courage and honesty to directly engage with the GoDaddy detractors (of which I am one, sorry). Maybe you can prove us all wrong and help improve them from within.

mtMattNL10• 13 years ago

Appreciate it. I know we can. Our medium size team just got a lot bigger. I think our engineers are the most excited about this because they'll be able to get so much more work done.

kalleboo• 13 years ago

the only real big change today is that we're getting cake and lunch on the house

When has life ever worked like that?

mikeho1999• 13 years ago

Matt, first of all, thanks to you and your team for posting in the comments on sites like HN, TechCrunch, and all the other sites where the news is starting to hit the tech community. I know it can't be easy to read so many critical comments against a company that I am sure has been a great place for you to work at.

However, I think trying to spin things as "everything at (mt) will be the same... only better" is a bit of a disservice to the tech community you are trying to reach out to, which is inherently more savvy about the reasoning and justification behind the acquisition itself.

In short: No company ever sets out to acquire another company to just keep things the same.

I do not doubt that in the short term, not much will change. But starting within the next year or so, there is no doubt in anyone's minds that the combined leadership team of GD and (mt) will begin to capitalize on business, product and technological "synergies" to help increase the bottom line.

That's not a knock against you, GD, (mt) or anyone. That's just business.

But what does that mean for all of your existing (mt) customers?

GoDaddy's modus operandi of profit maximization through questionable-at-best marketing practices, minimizing costs in customer and technical support, and taking any short cuts possible even at the detriment of the customer, does appear completely at odds with the high value of support and refined products that (mt) had prided itself over the years.

So the $400M question (or however much the acquisition was for) is: can these vastly different approaches of your business models be reconciled at all? Or will one way end up "winning out" over the other way? And if it's the latter, who will end up "winning out"... the GoDaddy way, or the (mt) way?

I do apologize if I come up to some of my own conclusions ahead of time, but I hope you guys can prove me wrong. But as I am now an outsider looking in, it ultimately won't make too much of a difference to me -- I actually have been in the process (and am nearly complete) in moving all of my clients off of GoDaddy to AWS (for completely unrelated reasons, mostly dealing with pricing).

But as someone who had been a customer for over 8 years and as someone who had been an advocate for (mt), I couldn't help from having the feeling of "whew, I just dodged a bullet" after hearing this news.

mtMattNL10• 13 years ago

Good question. Some things I will have answers for, others I'm not 100% on. I'll go point by point.

1. The spin isn't really intended. GoDaddy is a huge fan of our services, and they intend to keep it independent so that our team can improve on what we currently have. We'll also be able to hire better people (not putting our team down), but it's always been the motto here to hire people that are smarter than us.

2. Existing customers- nothing is changing. Seriously. Prices aren't going up, control panel isn't changing, and we're not going to be emailing you every day.

3. Our team said yes to this merger because they like the direction their new team is taking. If we can inject some of our flair into what they are doing, even better. In the end though, you aren't going to see a combination of the logos.

4. "winning out" - If i could predict the future, I'd be traveling the world comfortably right now. :) I've been here for three years now, and I trust that things aren't going in that direction.

I appreciate the concern, and we're impressed that so many people care (even if sentiment sways negatively). We're not here to ride our horses into the sunset with bags of money draped to our saddles, we're here to compete in the hosting space. We have always been known for our stellar service, and we are ready to be known for a stellar product.

sandstrom3• 13 years ago

I appreciate that you take time commenting here.

But just as some crimes aren't ever forgiven, I think few people will ever forgive GoDaddy (and rightly so).

A few things that I think is despised: - Support for SOPA - Constant upsales, borderline spam - Being against Net Neutrality - Support for PIPA - A marketing strategy which begins and ends with biki-girls

Complaints about bad performance, bad support and expense products are also common.[1]

As an extra bonus go Daddy's founder, Bob Parsons, goes to Africa every year to kill elephants who he says are ruining crops (others say he's a rich idiot American who likes shooting elephants for fun).[2][3]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Daddy

[1] http://www.bbb.org/central-northern-western-arizona/Business...

[2] http://kottke.org/11/12/the-internets-go-daddy-issues

[3] http://abcnews.go.com/Business/daddy-ceo-bob-parsons-africa-...

codereflection4• 13 years ago

I wonder how this is going to affect the jquery.com site, which has been hosted on MT forever.

I have a strong hatred for GoDaddy, and will never consider Media Temple for any of their services now. Sorry MT guys, I just hate GoDaddy THAT much.

mtMattNL10• 13 years ago

I get where the strong feelings come from, but time does change things (be it better or worse). We think they are going in the right direction, and we're going to work on getting even better.

codereflection4• 13 years ago

It's good that you guys are at least seeing these reactions right up front, so you can hopefully make some headway in restoring faith. There have been many such acquisitions that the public frowned upon, but ended up not being so bad after all (for example, when Salesforce bought Heroku). Best of luck to you.

ISeemToBeAVerb• 13 years ago

The thing is, you are who you associate yourself with.

Until GoDaddy actually proves they've turned a new leaf, I think you're going to have a hard time convincing your customers (myself included) that this acquisition is about anything other than money.

It takes momentous effort to turn around a notoriously bad brand, and with such fierce competition, there will need to be some serious benefits to convince me to stick with MT.

Truth be told, if your service is comparable to other services, I'd rather not give my money to a company owned by GoDaddy.

fowkswe• 13 years ago

There's an elephant joke to be made here...

rootedbox• 13 years ago

my godaddy up times are better than my media temple up times..

bbx• 13 years ago

Media Temple was the first hosting service I remembered the name. It was around 2007, when I started web design. I was immediately fascinated by their brand, their design, and their philosophy. It looked honest and reliable. I actually never had the opportunity to become a customer because I didn't need an American-based server (I live in Europe)...

Well... until a month ago. I finally had a project that required a server based in North America. I chose MT quite rapidly, feeling confident about my decision and/or not caring enough to analyze the market.

And today, this (not so good) news. GoDaddy has had a very bad press for the last couple of years, and it seems like the philosophy gap between the two companies will be hard to handle. I guess it's just bad timing on my behalf but I'll try to stick to MT for the beginning.

Although yesterday I would have indisputably pursued my experience with MT for many years, I will now closely watch any subtle change in their customer policy and probably leave at the first signs of trouble, no matter how slight they can appear.

larrys4• 13 years ago

I originally started using MT because it was what Techcrunch used at the time when they started and iirc a few years after.

SmileyKeith• 13 years ago

I've been using Linode and DigitalOcean with great success if anyone is looking for a recommendation.

petercooper• 13 years ago

This will sound a bit silly but as a customer of both, I gotta confess I'd feel a lot happier if they pledged not to sell out to a company like GoDaddy.. ;-)

justindocanto3• 13 years ago

As somebody who's been chatting with people over at GoDaddy about their upcoming plans to improve their services/ui/support/etc, I've been giving them a chance because it sounds pretty great.

However, that fruit has yet to bare so I am 100% not happy with this at all. I'm actually really disappointed/frustrated/mad right now. This was my safe haven away from everything that budget hosts like GoDaddy did, stood for, provided, etc.

These kind of acquisitions always starts with "We won't be making any major changes" and then the company pulls a Yahoo and begins to slowly deteriorate.

This is the worst news, in regards to my every day business, that I've heard all year. I have 20 clients with DV servers, as well as my own servers and I am now feeling uneasy about this.

Also, have we not forgotten the anti-sopa / anti-godaddy coupon codes MediaTemple was giving out when people were bailing from GoDaddy during the SOPA/PIPA uproar? What happened to that? Nooooooo.

slig2• 13 years ago

I was a client in 2007/2008. The server was laggy and I'm pretty sure they overselled their VPSs.

Good riddance.

ck2• 13 years ago

What on earth for?

hieudang92• 13 years ago

The Lord has a good warrior :( Goodbye MT

ChrisNorstrom2• 13 years ago

"They'll keep things the same and let us run as an independent company" - This is the most told lie during a company acquisition.

1) Media Temple (mt) revealed that they have very slow growth.

2) GoDaddy buys (mt).

Do you think GoDaddy bought (mt) out of the goodness of their hearts? To GoDaddy this is an investment. If they spend $100 million buying your company, they want your company to produce $200+ million back and they'll tinker with whatever they need to to make that happen.

3) GoDaddy sees that (mt) with it's slow growth isn't paying itself off. (and after today's news even slower growth)

4) GoDaddy starts making changes (merging teams, merging products, changing terms, playing with prices and plans) to see an increase in revenue.

ics• 13 years ago

I predict Media Temple TV ads in 10...9...8...

As a long time MT customer (and beta tester), good luck guys! Despite the general sentiments regarding GoDaddy I hope it works out and provides the extra juice for whatever is on the horizon.

antr2• 13 years ago

If I were any of MT/GoDaddy competitors I would launch a campaign/discount to start attracting MT customers not happy with this acquisition.

vtbose• 13 years ago

Surprised that this is not happening quick enough. I know namecheap.com did this very well, with GoDaddy negative press a few years ago.

EA• 13 years ago

(mt) sent this to their customers:

Greetings,

I am proud to share some momentous news with you today. GoDaddy, the Internet's largest platform for small businesses, has acquired (mt) Media Temple. We will continue operating as an independent and autonomous company and our mission will remain unchanged. However, new investments from GoDaddy will provide us the necessary resources to strengthen our focus on web professionals and will help accelerate our plans to expand internationally.

At Media Temple, we've always been on a mission to provide the highest quality service at the lowest possible price. When I co-founded the company in 1998, I saw an industry that wasn't meeting the needs of web designers all that well. At one extreme, there was expensive and overly-complex dedicated hosting that required customers to over-build their solutions. At the other extreme, there was incredibly cheap "unlimited" hosting that was untrustworthy and lacked class and transparency. At neither end was there a company truly qualified to understand and partner with the creative community.

Thanks to incredible customers like you, our model worked out. We've doubled-down on designers and have created a new platform to help people push the outer limits of the web. Now with 225 employees, Media Temple serves 125,000 customers making up more than 1.5 million websites in over 100 countries. We are proud to be one of Los Angeles' original startups, repeatedly recognized as one of the best places to work in the city — and one of the fastest-growing companies in the world.

Personally, working with GoDaddy on the acquisition this year has been unexpected, yet incredibly rewarding. Led by new CEO Blake Irving, the GoDaddy leadership team, which now includes Media Temple's President, Russell P. Reeder, is transforming the company with fresh thinking, new advertising, and an inspiring new strategy. It really is impressive, and so is their new mission: "Help small businesses easily start, confidently grow, and successfully run their online ventures."

Though our customers have traditionally been very different, both companies have similar priorities of providing excellent service experiences. However, we also understand and respect the vast differences and needs of our respective customer bases. Hence, Media Temple will continue to run as an independent business and is not being integrated into GoDaddy. Our customers should not experience any changes to their service levels, pricing, or the expert support we are known for. We're not moving our servers, and the phone number is not changing. We will remain in Los Angeles and will stay committed to being the most amazing hosting provider possible. In all seriousness, our mission to host great ideas feels like it's just getting started!

I am confident that Media Temple has made the right decision and I know the company is only going to get better from here. Please see our website FAQ to understand this news even further. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know at questions@mediatemple.net.

Thank you so very much for your passion, your feedback, and your support over the years.

Best regards,

Demian Sellfors (mt) Media Temple Co-founder @demian_sellfors

jjoe2• 13 years ago

What about your CEO/co-founder Demian Sellfors?

Demian’s succession plan has been a long time in the making. In fact, Demian engineered the company’s strategy resulting in this acquisition. About a year and a half ago. Demian handpicked Russell P. Reeder to run the company. Both have been intimately involved with this acquisition. Demian will be shifting his focus to other projects, but his dream for (mt) to be the most trusted company in the world is still very much alive.

What about the other co-founder, John Carey?

John Carey, (mt)’s co-founder and CFO, is transitioning out of (mt) as part of the acquisition. He has also been intimately involved with the strategy as well. This is something he’s been planning for and thinking about for some time.

izolate• 13 years ago

This is the most revealing part of the press release. The founders wanted to cash out. Let's not pretend this acquisition has everyone's best interests at heart. It only benefits GoDaddy and MT's founders, everyone else gets to witness the end of MT.

Tassels• 13 years ago

They're sticking with virb. Check out http://blog.virb.com/post/64122176288/big-news-from-virb

jjoe2• 13 years ago

Not so coincidentally placed at the end of the FAQ. But I'm certain they've both sacrificed a lot throughout the years. That's almost 16 non-stop years of running MT. It's a well deserved break in my opinion.

vhost-• 13 years ago

GoDaddy has repeatedly blocked my domain transfers, had customer service call and harass me about moving domains out of their control, and didn't listen to a word I said about the elephant scandal when they called me.

I still, to this day, get calls from GoDaddy even though my last domain (which was blocked from being transferred for many months) left their hands last year.

No way am I ever going to trust them, or any company they own again.

culinandy• 13 years ago

If you're looking to get out of MT, Check out A2Hosting.com - they've been operating independently since 2003 - great uptime, I have no complaints!

mmuro• 13 years ago

A bit surprising, but I have no plans to move away from Media Temple, even though I'm not crazy about GoDaddy.

jwenzel• 13 years ago

Well this blows...

elwell• 13 years ago

From what I remember, Media Temple went downhill a long time ago.

zOrg-2013• 13 years ago

Since being in business since 1997, this is my 5th notice of: "...we've be bought & nothing will change...It will be great!..."

It's a crap statement from MT. Nearly a lie. However, it will take several months until MT starts to show real singes of GoDaddy infiltration - in my opinion.

My experience at MT has been excellent over the last 4 years, & conversely my experience with GoDaddy VPS & Private servers have been horrible, a joke, & expensive - resulting in the loss of several $five $figure accounts for my little company.

I've actually MADE great new clients & good money MOVING them off of GoDaddy platforms into my other hosts - MT being the front runner.

Is it time to move services? Yes and no. In the short run (like 6 months) it's a 'wait and see' deal. I am going to move most of my 436 websites/clients away from MT over the next year, and keep and hand-full of sites at MT on my DV (vps) just in case the GoDaddy buyout actually works out.

I've NEVER experienced a successful buyout as an existing account holder.

Message to MT: YOU HAVE BETTER GET THIS GODADDY CRAP RIGHT! You've already lost 50% of the good faith that we as MT clients have.

Suggestions for new host to follow on next post.

zOrg.

tstoliker• 13 years ago

Might want to checkout @LiquidWeb. We are offereing $100 free to MT Refugees that are worried bit.ly/1684rii

jqueryin• 13 years ago

The other cool part to this is that Virb was resold back to it's original founder and did not get included in the acquisition. In addition to that, they received a TC article to boot. Well played, sir!

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/15/virb-spins-out-of-media-tem...

systems• 13 years ago

I have one recommendation, hosting knowledge on hn is really not that great, you should visit webhostingtalk forum for better and more honest discussions on hosting companies and their quality

MT is not perceived as a good host on wht ... it usually gets average or below average review ... so I dont know why everyone is talking as if godaddy will bring them down, MT was never a great company

And i do believe the MT fellow who is saying this will improve MT, sure it will ... godaddy is by far a bigger and more successful company than MT

jpea2• 13 years ago

Considering that developers are usually the ones that recommend hosting decisions to their clients (since the clients generally have no clue about who to go with), they just chopped off the main artery of their business with this sale. Kudos to the MT founders, but GoDaddy just overpaid for something that might be a skeleton company within a few months.

harishchouhan• 13 years ago

Funny thing is that I just moved my sites to Media Temple yesterday.

Poundhost• 13 years ago

We’ll give any MT Customer who is looking for a new hosting provider 25% off any dedicated or cloud server.

Visit http://www.poundhost.com and use voucher code MTREFUGEE at the checkout to get your discount.

GoDaddy Buys Media Temple

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