[rwhitman]

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

[ohashi]

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]

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

[ohashi]

I try to keep an open mind about these things and just look at the data. So far, they seem to be doing even better under EIG but run independently. I hope it continues that way but I will just keep watching and write about it if it starts to change.

[rhizome]

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.

[rwhitman]

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

[eugeneross]

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.