Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Review: MediaLayer.com

[Eric Lim]

Um.. it has been a while since I last visited WHT. So hello all! Work is slow today and I'm procrastinating.

I was with MediaLayer for a good amount of time. I used the service mostly to host a personal site and develop some APIs using Truveo video search engine and Zend platform on Facebook. The source codes of these projects were synchronized and managed by a group of developers through SVN+SSH tunneling.

I have absolutely nothing negative to discuss about MediaLayer. They have been great every step of the way. Granted, they're not exactly the cheapest option among what were presented to me at the time, but I'm glad I picked them. After all, $10 didn't break the bank, and I simply didn't need 500GB of bandwidth (are they in the scales of TB these days?). The servers were well managed, and multiple DNS servers are always a plus (well at least save me a trip to DynDNS). They used LiteSpeed, which is an excellent choice, also considering their web server environment is very much similar to my developmental machine at home. Oh yeah, they don't use Cpanel. =) Haha.. I've never liked Cpanel. Too clutter.

I didn't observe any downtime while I was with them. None of the developers involved in the projects had issues with the SVN server. I don't have any statistics to prove it, so you just have to take my words for it. =) MySQL access is reasonably fast.

Customer service was great. All emails were answered professionally within 24 hours, including weekends. Phone representatives ware extremely helpful when I called. I remember once when my identity was stolen, the CSR I spoke to on the phone were very reasonable and handled the billing issues to my satisfaction.

So I'd highly recommend to MediaLayer!


Cheers.

[RSkeens]

Very nice review, you made a good decision going with them. You may already know, but could you please submit your domain name that you host with them using the link http://www.webhostingtalk.com/report.php?p=6431374

[ldcdc]

(are they in the scales of TB these days?)

Unlimited is the name of the game now.

Thank you for submitting a domain. It was indeed hosted by Medialayer at some point.

[MikeDVB]

So you aren't with them any more? If not - why did you decide to leave? I read over the review and I got the jist that you *used* to be with them but no mention as to why you left them

[stablehost]

Originally Posted by Eric Lim

Customer service was great. All emails were answered professionally within 24 hours, including weekends.

I didn't know 24 hours was acceptable... now days.

I see reports of people getting mad if they don't get responses within an hour.

[czarina14]

I thought I would add my two cents worth. I switched from bluehost to medialayer about 45 days ago. I am very pleased with the service. They transferred my 3 accounts for me. There was a small glitch in my ecommerce store (on the admin side), but unless you are a zen-cart guru, that can be expected. I probably could have fixed it myself (or contacted medialyer support), but I wanted my store back online ASAP, so I paid someone on the zen-cart forums $50.00, and they had it fixed in 20 minutes.

My site is monitored by siteuptime, and the site has had 100% uptime since I have been with medialayer. That is compared to bluehost’s multiple hours of downtime per month, and constant server problems. My sites also load much faster now.

Medialayer promptly answers all support questions, usually in a matter of 5-10 minutes. Other than when the sites were originally transferred, I have not had to contact support for anything. The sites are always up and running fine.

If I had one request, I really wish they offered cpanel instead of direct admin. I almost did not go with them because of this. I really like cpanel’s file manager better. It is much easier to navigate, and copy and move files around in cpanel.

I am paying a lot more than I was with bluehost, but it is worth it, especially for anyone running a business website. It gives me peace of mind to know that my sites are available when customers try to reach them.

[The-Pixel]

Great review! Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us. Best of luck!

[IGXHost]

Originally Posted by nerdie

I see reports of people getting mad if they don't get responses within an hour.

It really depends on the client and the urgency of the request. If they offer quicker response times for more urgent cases then it is acceptable. In my standards however, if all requests (urgent or not) were responded to in 24 hours I wouldn't be very happy.

[hD-Scott]

Thanks for the review. Medialayer is always a top performer here on WHT and it's great that another DA host is represented.

[Orien]

Originally Posted by nerdie

I didn't know 24 hours was acceptable... now days.

I see reports of people getting mad if they don't get responses within an hour.

I don't think the OP meant to say ML was answering emails closer to the 24hr mark - just that 24hrs tends to be commonly used as a time-frame to judge response time. From my personal experience, they respond to everything very quickly.

[Eric Lim]

Well, I used the account as a testbed for a few projects I was involved in. Having a domain name was for the sake of initiating the service. When the projects concluded, I disconnected the service. The outstanding service I received from them will very likely make me go back in the near future.

And yes, the 24 hours mark is more or less like a figure of speech. I didn't write them much, but the average response time was within the hour mark. For the most part, I don't write if the matter is urgent. I normally call.

Dan: you guys take some serious measures to determine the authenticity of a review in this forum. i'm impressed!

[MikeDVB]

Yeah, it helps to verify the reviews so that they can be trusted although I would still take *any* review with a grain of salt

I've never seen anything bad posted about MediaLayer so I can't say that any of what you have posted surprises me but it is very good of you to come here and write a review (even though you're not currently using them)

[iHubNet-Matt]

Thanks for the well written review mate. Happy to see a satisfied customer. Update us when you go back to ML again.