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  1. #1

    medialayer - are they really that good?

    after reconsidering my needs based on my other thread in this forum, i have decided to lower my requirements for space and bandwidth and go instead to a non-oversold host in the hopes of getting better uptime and faster site response than i have had in the past. i am pretty much sold on medialayer, as i have yet to find one bad review here or elsewhere (other than some critics of the price, which to me seems fair for a non-oversold host.) i have been in touch with simon who has quoted me a fair price on a slightly customised application hosting plan.

    so before i take the plunge and the effort of moving all my stuff over, i just have to ask, are they really that great? do you find your site loads/runs faster with medialayer than other hosts?

  2. #2
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    I run ab tests from time to time (I should set something up for regular monitoring ) and no other host I've used can match their speed. There can be a delay of about a second on the first request to a quiet site (I think a FastCGI / LSAPI startup issue) but after that I see a Zen Cart index page being delivered in about 300ms on a US server connection or about 1.5 seconds on DSL here in Aus.

    For comparison, I've found other lightly-loaded servers are around 450ms / 2 seconds - still perfectly acceptable but MediaLayer is noticeably faster.
    Chris

    "Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them." - Laurence J. Peter

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    I find them amazing. Yes, I do notice a performance increase - which is really one of the reasons why I decided to host a few sites separately from my VPS at MediaLayer. These guys know what their doing not only with the server software(i.e litespeed) but with the hardware and network. Not to mention, the support is out of this world. layer0, replies to most of the requests within minutes.

    I can't praise them enough. There's a reason why you have not seen a bad review, their customers are really happy

  4. #4
    Join Date
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    I have them, yes they are.

  5. #5
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    Yes, they are that good. Just give them a try. I'm confident that you won't regret it.

    Just renewed for another 3 months today.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by shecky981 View Post
    so before i take the plunge and the effort of moving all my stuff over, i just have to ask, are they really that great? do you find your site loads/runs faster with medialayer than other hosts?
    It is also in my mind. My concerns are (i) I do not find the site of MediaLayer faster than other hosts. (ii) As they become busy with more clients will they be able to maintain quality as they scale. It certainly would not be possible for the owner to reply as he gets too busy. (iii) Will they really be interested in customised shared hosting solution as they scale. Would it not become a very low priority thing then.

  7. #7
    Do they do VPS with LiteSpeed?

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by MyNet-Tony View Post
    Do they do VPS with LiteSpeed?
    Not yet but I do believe they are testing VPS's :-)

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by RossH View Post
    Not yet but I do believe they are testing VPS's :-)
    You should alphabetize that list on your site

  10. #10
    Join Date
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    I have them in a list for an upcoming site of a client (other option is Cartika and then dedi providers).

    - How is MediaLayer for busy sites?
    - How many concurrent users they can handle (dyncamic site php/mysql)?
    - Are they able to handle let's say around 300 users in a timeframe of 1-2 hours?

    Any comment from current customers is much appreciated. Thank you!
    Managed.gr cloud hosting, paas, vps, dedicated, domain registration on global datacenters.

  11. #11
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by edunetter View Post
    It is also in my mind. My concerns are (i) I do not find the site of MediaLayer faster than other hosts. (ii) As they become busy with more clients will they be able to maintain quality as they scale. It certainly would not be possible for the owner to reply as he gets too busy. (iii) Will they really be interested in customised shared hosting solution as they scale. Would it not become a very low priority thing then.
    (i) Based on what tests? In terms of page generation, it can't get much faster than what it is now. If you're seeing a delay, it likely has to do with latency (perhaps you are far away from this particular system).

    (ii) This isn't a one-man show. While I oversee all operations and review tickets, we have staff members who handle most queries. I do not hesitate to handle certain things on my own, but at this time the majority of tickets are handled by my staff.

    (iii) We already have plans for this, and the basic idea is that things will become much more automated than they are now (in terms of custom plan creation and the quote process) but I see no reason why we would discontinue custom plans.

    Best,
    MediaLayer, LLC - www.medialayer.com Learn how we can make your website load faster, translating to better conversion rates for your business!
    The pioneers of optimized web hosting, featuring LiteSpeed Web Server & SSD Storage - Celebrating 10 Years in Business

  12. #12
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    I'm not convinced they are known at all outside WHT..

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by James L View Post
    I'm not convinced they are known at all outside WHT..
    And I'm not convinced that they need to be. Being "known" generally refers to how much they have invested in advertising outside of WHT. Some of the worst hosts are "known" outside of WHT.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by James L View Post
    I'm not convinced they are known at all outside WHT..
    Why do they need to be? Their advertising model is pretty much the same as ours -- word of mouth through service quality. Spending money on advertising is worthless; companies can be spending thousands of dollars on a single campaign and not yield any results.

    Popularity does not equal quality.

    In fact, I'd rather have them continue to be "unknown" (even though they are quite popular) outside of WHT. I known the owner and he runs an extremely tight ship, based on quality and support. I know for a fact he'd rather run a quality, successful business, rather than being extremely popular and lacking in quality.

    And to the OP, yes, they really are that good.

  15. #15
    well, i am definitely going to give them a go then. ill sign up now. thanks for the opinions everyone.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by layer0 View Post
    (i) Based on what tests?
    It is on the basis of how fast the contents of the site display.

    Here is what I tried recently. It showed somewhat variable results at different times but there was some trend.

    Speed Test URL

    1,2,3,4.... are just serial numbers and not ranks.

    #
    Domain name Size Load Time Average Speed per KB
    1 downtownhost.com 72.41 KB 0.13 seconds 0 seconds
    2 cartikahosting.com 30.9 KB 0.59 seconds 0.02 seconds
    3 medialayer.com 8.54 KB 0.35 seconds 0.04 seconds
    4 pair.com 18.78 KB 0.27 seconds 0.01 seconds
    5 hostgator.com 7.98 KB 0.25 seconds 0.03 seconds
    6 site5.com 7.7 KB 0.34 seconds 0.04 seconds
    Last edited by edunetter; 12-12-2007 at 04:35 PM.

  17. #17
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    Seeing that all of these pages are different and generated using different applications, the results may be highly skewed. Also, keep in mind that the "average speed per KB" will be more accurate with a larger sample (or larger page). We're also using GZIP compression (although this test does not appear to support it) which would actually compress the size of the page 68.6%, with a result of 2.74 KB.

    If you had a given PHP application running on each server (preferably a customer server, and not the server hosting the company's website) the test would be more useful, but even then latency would be a factor.

    Best,

    <edit>
    We also use a RewriteRule to add "www" to every URL (for our domain), so when you're testing "medialayer.com", the test utility would actually need to be redirected to "www.medialayer.com" first which adds additional overhead.

    http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test?d...om%0D%0A%0D%0A

    1 downtownhost.com 72.41 KB 0.13 seconds 0 seconds
    2 cartikahosting.com 30.9 KB 0.6 seconds 0.02 seconds
    3 www.medialayer.com 8.54 KB 0.14 seconds 0.02 seconds
    4 pair.com 18.45 KB 0.26 seconds 0.01 seconds
    5 hostgator.com 7.98 KB 0.25 seconds 0.03 seconds
    6 site5.com 8.09 KB 0.26 seconds 0.03 second

    Sounds a bit better to me.

    </edit>
    Last edited by layer0; 12-12-2007 at 05:01 PM.
    MediaLayer, LLC - www.medialayer.com Learn how we can make your website load faster, translating to better conversion rates for your business!
    The pioneers of optimized web hosting, featuring LiteSpeed Web Server & SSD Storage - Celebrating 10 Years in Business

  18. #18
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    I have heard some good reviews about them here in past.

  19. #19
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    Some of the worst hosts are "known" outside of WHT.
    That is indeed quite an interesting remark. Well put!

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by edunetter View Post
    It is on the basis of how fast the contents of the site display.

    Here is what I tried recently. It showed somewhat variable results at different times but there was some trend.

    Speed Test URL

    1,2,3,4.... are just serial numbers and not ranks.

    #
    Domain name Size Load Time Average Speed per KB
    1 downtownhost.com 72.41 KB 0.13 seconds 0 seconds
    2 cartikahosting.com 30.9 KB 0.59 seconds 0.02 seconds
    3 medialayer.com 8.54 KB 0.35 seconds 0.04 seconds
    4 pair.com 18.78 KB 0.27 seconds 0.01 seconds
    5 hostgator.com 7.98 KB 0.25 seconds 0.03 seconds
    6 site5.com 7.7 KB 0.34 seconds 0.04 seconds
    This "test" is really not accurate at all. Why? Do you really think that your website will be hosted on the same server as the main hosts website? I can GUARANTEE you that of those 6 hosts, you wouldn't be placed on any of the on same servers that hosts their main site.

    What they will do, is place you on a shared server, dedicated to hosting shared customers, with hundreds of hundreds of other sites. MediaLayer stated the max they put on each server is about 75 clients I believe. That's a huge commitment to take, which very very few other hosts commit to.

    I have tested more than a few web hosts in my time and can proudly state that websites at MediaLayer DO load faster. Am I saying that all the 5 other web hosts in your list are bad? Absolutely not. However, MediaLayer really provides the truly "premium" service. You'll feel like family, they go to great lengths to ensure your web application loads as fast as it possible can in a shared environment and support is like no other.

  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by amex View Post

    What they will do, is place you on a shared server, dedicated to hosting shared customers, with hundreds of hundreds of other sites. MediaLayer stated the max they put on each server is about 75 clients I believe. That's a huge commitment to take, which very very few other hosts commit to.
    I think alot of good providers put limits on not only the number of accounts and domains per given units of their environment, but, also on CPU and RAM utilization. A hard number is silly, because 1 account can eat up an entire server and then the other 74 are overloading it (an extreme example, but, it does illustrate a point)

    Quote Originally Posted by edunetter View Post
    It is on the basis of how fast the contents of the site display.

    Here is what I tried recently. It showed somewhat variable results at different times but there was some trend.

    Speed Test URL

    1,2,3,4.... are just serial numbers and not ranks.

    #
    Domain name Size Load Time Average Speed per KB
    1 downtownhost.com 72.41 KB 0.13 seconds 0 seconds
    2 cartikahosting.com 30.9 KB 0.59 seconds 0.02 seconds
    3 medialayer.com 8.54 KB 0.35 seconds 0.04 seconds
    4 pair.com 18.78 KB 0.27 seconds 0.01 seconds
    5 hostgator.com 7.98 KB 0.25 seconds 0.03 seconds
    6 site5.com 7.7 KB 0.34 seconds 0.04 seconds
    Im sorry, this test is just bad - all it tells you is how fast a providers website loads - it really doesnt tell you much else. Layer0 is right - if you add a www to ours, the load time drops by 0.10. Additionally - as a very basic example - our website is built in Joomla, yet you are comparing the load time of Joomla with static sites and trying to make a decision on overall quality of service based on these metrics...

    Eitherway, its nice to see that you are doing your research and trying hard to make a good decision - for that I applaud you - as you are well ahead of the curve. If you are thinking of trying medialayer, I say you go for it. I know them pretty well and I think they are very good at what they do...
    www.cartika.com
    www.clusterlogics.com - You simply cannot run a hosting company without this software. Backups, Disaster Recovery, Big Data, Virtualization. 20 years of building software that solves your problems

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by CartikaHosting View Post
    I think alot of good providers put limits on not only the number of accounts and domains per given units of their environment, but, also on CPU and RAM utilization. A hard number is silly, because 1 account can eat up an entire server and then the other 74 are overloading it (an extreme example, but, it does illustrate a point)
    Hi Andrew
    I seem to remember you suggesting in previous threads that most of the problems in shared hosting are caused by the users, and simply placing a larger number of users on a server increases the risk of downtime. If this is the case why would it be silly to put a hard limit on the maximum number of users? Potentially damaging to the host's profit margin, perhaps, but it seems like a great selling point to me.
    Chris

    "Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them." - Laurence J. Peter

  23. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by foobic View Post
    Hi Andrew
    I seem to remember you suggesting in previous threads that most of the problems in shared hosting are caused by the users, and simply placing a larger number of users on a server increases the risk of downtime. If this is the case why would it be silly to put a hard limit on the maximum number of users? Potentially damaging to the host's profit margin, perhaps, but it seems like a great selling point to me.
    Hi Foobic - there you go using my own words against me

    for the record, I didnt state this as a negative towards medialayer (in case anyone thought I did) - but, as a general rule, putting a hard number isnt right (more of a guideline) and I would be willing to bet that medialayer dont put exactly 75 on each server - maybe some have 50, etc....

    you are correct though, the more users sharing a system, the greater the probability for issues - no doubt about it - but, hard numbers isnt the answer either. I like to think of it as a balance between number of users, total available resources and baseline usage...

    eitherway, if you are with a provider limiting number of users and carefully monitoring and maintaining their baselines - then you are in good hands - where this becomes an issue is when providers will just countinue to load accounts on because there is excess capacity....

    anyway, nice comments
    www.cartika.com
    www.clusterlogics.com - You simply cannot run a hosting company without this software. Backups, Disaster Recovery, Big Data, Virtualization. 20 years of building software that solves your problems

  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by CartikaHosting View Post
    I think alot of good providers put limits on not only the number of accounts and domains per given units of their environment, but, also on CPU and RAM utilization. A hard number is silly, because 1 account can eat up an entire server and then the other 74 are overloading it (an extreme example, but, it does illustrate a point)
    Your absolutely correct. ALL hosts do have some theoretical limit, just some have a bit more tolerance than others

    Notice how I said the "max" was 75. Not the official number. I am certain that if one website was eating up a MediaLayer server, it would be removed promptly even if there were less than 75 clients on the server. I know they are committed to ensuring that each site gets it best possible performance and not just to cram as many as they can into each server. I think that's really the MediaLayer's business model which is a bit different than many other hosts.

  25. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by amex View Post
    Your absolutely correct. ALL hosts do have some theoretical limit, just some have a bit more tolerance than others

    Notice how I said the "max" was 75. Not the official number. I am certain that if one website was eating up a MediaLayer server, it would be removed promptly even if there were less than 75 clients on the server. I know they are committed to ensuring that each site gets it best possible performance and not just to cram as many as they can into each server. I think that's really the MediaLayer's business model which is a bit different than many other hosts.
    Agreed !! and that why I said all "good" providers - of which medialayer is certainly one of them.....
    www.cartika.com
    www.clusterlogics.com - You simply cannot run a hosting company without this software. Backups, Disaster Recovery, Big Data, Virtualization. 20 years of building software that solves your problems

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