MDDHosting reseller review

bikegremlin

I think that good hosting providers need all the praise they can get, so it's worth a mention, even if it isn't really "low-end."

Long, boring intro
After HostMantis changed ownership, I decided to move ASAP.
And, I wanted to find a provider with good 24/7 support to avoid any tricky questions from clients in case of any problems (even though @MikePT's MyW is running just fine).

I liked the "flexible" resource limits provided by HostMantis.
It's not the best option for literally re-selling hosting, but a great option for developers and similar (so a perfect match for me, since I manage all the websites I host).

And I saw MDDHosting offering just that. Had them on my shortlist for quite some time, so decided to give it a shot, before (instead of) Veerotech.

The essence

Relatively affordable price ($10 per month) - especially considering the service quality. I.e. I couldn't find anything cheaper with a similar service and, especially, technical support quality.

Very good stability and security, as far as I could test over the past few months.

The best technical support I've experienced. Willing to dive into WordPress-related problems even when they clearly have nothing to do with the hosting server/software. Very fast responses - with solutions, not "thanks for letting us know, we'll get back to you..."

OK performance - not what I'd call slow, but not among the fastest I've seen. I really wish they offered the performance of their Plaid shared hosting platform - I'd be happy to pay 3x the price and call it a day as far as hosting is concerned. But it's also nice to see them offering a (relatively) budget option (just wished they offered a more high-end reseller alternative along with that).

The above two bolded sentences combined probably don't make this a very good fit for the LES philosophy - and that's fine (and worth stressing, don't want to see anyone being misled).

My overall impression is they try really hard to provide the best possible service, and they seem quite knowledgeable, experienced and trustworthy. It's nice doing business with such folks.

For even more details: my rather long MDDHosting review - with all the benchmarks and other boring, tedious stuff, as usual.

Of course, I must not forget to place my affiliate link (yachts and all):
https://www.mddhosting.com/support/aff.php?aff=1454

bikegremlin

Update:

In the mean time, I've switched to MDDHosting's "Plaid" reseller hosting platform (until recently, they've only offered shared hosting on that kind of hardware). Definitely not low end, but it's what I'm mostly using nowadays and I think it doesn't hurt to share the experience.

TL/DR:
As with most other stuff - for a bit higher quality, you pay roughly double the price. Or, as I like to say: "Whichever way you turn, your ass is always at the rear."

In more details:
It's the fastest shared/reseller hosting I've seen so far.
With great stability and tech. support quality (probably the best I've experienced).

It's a bit like as if you took Brixly's performance (and boosted it), VeeroTech's tech. support (and boosted it with WordPress speicalists among other stuff) - at roughly tripled price ($30 per month base price).

So definitely not low end.

For me, for now, it's well worth it - knowing that any stability, security or performance problems are my fault, and nothing to do with the hosting.

Resource allocation is similar to what HostMantis and Knownhost do for their reseller hosting:
you get fixed CPU, RAM, EP and TP - per the entire reseller account.
And you can set limits per each sub-account as you like (up to the max of what your reseller account has).

The downside of it is if you literally re-sell a lot of accounts, and they all start using a lot of the given resources, your other accounts may be affected - if say CPU or RAM is used completely (though similar thing happens on the entire physical server level with shared/reseller hosting, only the bigger capacity and numbers make the affect of each particular website less impactful).

The upside is that you can increase resource limits for any website you want - if it starts needing them (webshop on a Black Friday, a viral post etc.).

With these pros and cons in mind, based on my resource usage stats, this kind of hosting can be used to re-sell. CPU isn't nearly as limited as it is with Knownhost (and especially with HostMantis).

For example, with about a dozen production WordPress sites running, the only load I see going over 5% is RAM - some 500 MB on average, out of 4 GB provided with the base reseller account (4 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 200 total processes, 100 entry processes). CPU speed is so high that the CPU usage (for the same website load) is very low compared to other providers I've tried (and even compared to MDDHosting's Turbo platform), so what required almost 2 vCPU now runs at up to 50% of one vCPU on Plaid.

SLMob

Great review, will definitely consider them if needed to move my current host.

bikegremlin

@SLMob said:
Great review, will definitely consider them if needed to move my current host.

Thanks.

I'll keep it updated.

After the last HostMantis change of hands, I've included test-date info on all my reviews - right at the start.
Because service quality does change over time (with MDDHosting, service quality changes have been for the better over the years).

MichaelCee

Plaid in Welsh means party 🎉 I don’t know if this company is Welsh or if there’s really any relevance but that’s my input for today.

bikegremlin

@MichaelCee said:
Plaid in Welsh means party 🎉 I don’t know if this company is Welsh or if there’s really any relevance but that’s my input for today.

In this case, it's a Spaceballs film reference (Light speed -> Ridiculous speed -> Ludicrous speed -> Plaid speed).

rogerwilco

There's a name I remember from a previous life on WHT. They had a command line oopsie that spiraled into realizing their snapshots were not configured:

https://forums.mddhosting.com/topic/1582-major-outage-092118-09242018/

Glad to see they're still in business and making their customers happy.

bikegremlin

@rogerwilco said:
There's a name I remember from a previous life on WHT. They had a command line oopsie that spiraled into realizing their snapshots were not configured:

https://forums.mddhosting.com/topic/1582-major-outage-092118-09242018/

Glad to see they're still in business and making their customers happy.

That's when they got on my shortlist - when I saw how they handled that (owning the mistake, implementing procedures to prevent it from re-occuring, and working their buts off to restore all the customer data).

MikeDVB

@rogerwilco said:
There's a name I remember from a previous life on WHT. They had a command line oopsie that spiraled into realizing their snapshots were not configured:

https://forums.mddhosting.com/topic/1582-major-outage-092118-09242018/

Glad to see they're still in business and making their customers happy.

It wasn't fun but we learned quite a bit for sure. Sometimes you just don't know what you don't know and it can be quite humbling.

People have mostly stopped mentioning it now ~4 years later . I did discuss it in one of our more recent blog posts a bit.

I actually just hopped over here on LES [and LET] as WHT has been over-moderated to death and is really not very active anymore.

_MS_

@MikeDVB said:
I actually just hopped over here on LES [and LET] as WHT has been over-moderated to death and is really not very active anymore.

Your plans are very high-end.

Any limited quantity (small-sized) specials for BFCM? Maybe, unmanaged instead of "Fully Managed" Shared Hosting? (Most of the) people here know their stuff.

Anyway, enjoy your stay

bikegremlin

MS said:

@MikeDVB said:
I actually just hopped over here on LES [and LET] as WHT has been over-moderated to death and is really not very active anymore.

Your plans are very high-end.

Any limited quantity (small-sized) specials for BFCM? Maybe, unmanaged instead of "Fully Managed" Shared Hosting? (Most of the) people here know their stuff.

Anyway, enjoy your stay

Yeah - an idle-friendly offer!

"We don't have much, but we don't need much."

MikeDVB

MS said:

@MikeDVB said:
I actually just hopped over here on LES [and LET] as WHT has been over-moderated to death and is really not very active anymore.

Your plans are very high-end.

Any limited quantity (small-sized) specials for BFCM? Maybe, unmanaged instead of "Fully Managed" Shared Hosting? (Most of the) people here know their stuff.

Anyway, enjoy your stay

We have a new brand that starts at $2/mo and is what one might call “unmanaged”. Haven’t marketed / advertised it yet though.

Being new around here I want to make sure I fully understand the rules before I try any advertising though. Don’t want to accidentally cross any lines.

bikegremlin

@MikeDVB said:

MS said:

@MikeDVB said:
I actually just hopped over here on LES [and LET] as WHT has been over-moderated to death and is really not very active anymore.

Your plans are very high-end.

Any limited quantity (small-sized) specials for BFCM? Maybe, unmanaged instead of "Fully Managed" Shared Hosting? (Most of the) people here know their stuff.

Anyway, enjoy your stay

We have a new brand that starts at $2/mo and is what one might call “unmanaged”. Haven’t marketed / advertised it yet though.

Being new around here I want to make sure I fully understand the rules before I try any advertising though. Don’t want to accidentally cross any lines.

Yes: min. 6+1 days and 6-1 posts before applying for a provider tag, so just in time for the Black Friday, lol.

_MS_

@MikeDVB said:

MS said:

@MikeDVB said:
I actually just hopped over here on LES [and LET] as WHT has been over-moderated to death and is really not very active anymore.

Your plans are very high-end.

Any limited quantity (small-sized) specials for BFCM? Maybe, unmanaged instead of "Fully Managed" Shared Hosting? (Most of the) people here know their stuff.

Anyway, enjoy your stay

We have a new brand that starts at $2/mo and is what one might call “unmanaged”. Haven’t marketed / advertised it yet though.

Being new around here I want to make sure I fully understand the rules before I try any advertising though. Don’t want to accidentally cross any lines.