MidPhase Web Hosting Review
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| IP Address | Service | Status | Response Time | Last Monitored |
| 216.104.37.210 | HTTP |  |
0.168 secs | 05-13-2008 22:20:00pm |
| 216.104.37.210 | HTTP | |
1.177 secs | 05-13-2008 22:10:00pm |
| 216.104.37.210 | HTTP | |
0.172 secs | 05-13-2008 22:00:01pm |
| 216.104.37.210 | HTTP | |
0.216 secs | 05-13-2008 21:50:00pm |
MidPhase.com Profile and Background
Like many of the major web hosting companies, Midphase is a relatively young company formed in 2002. They are a privately held web hosting firm with its headquarters based out of Palatine, IL.
Midphase’s web servers are hosted at Equinix Chicago inside the Lakeside Technology Center. It is a neutral carrier hotel with over 200+ carriers, and only 15-20 minutes North West from the one of the company’s corporate offices. It also has servers hosted in Orlando, Florida.
An interesting aspect about Midphase is the phenomenal growth it has received over the last few years, with it being recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in the industry by Host Count. The business has a number of other sister companies and subsidiaries serving different market segments from low budget to high-end co-location services. It acquired ThrillHost.com, a reseller web hosting specialist, in early 2004.
Signup Process
After examining their web hosting service offerings on their company website, we signed up for the Mega-PHASE package online without any problems. It requested the usual contact and payment details over a secure connection. With their instant account activation, we were immediately provided with details to log into their system.
Like many other web hosting companies, the signup process was intuitive and was completed in less than 5 minutes.
Value for Money
The Mega-PHASE web hosting package that we purchased for $8.95/month, on a semi-annual basis and $7.95/month on an annual basis, was simply to say featured-pack. It offered probably the most generous disk space and data transfer allowance in our top ten lists of web hosting companies with 1500MB of storage space and 50GB of monthly data transfer allowance. If you also purchased the annual plan, they included a free domain name and one month free hosting.
The control panel software employed by Midphase was a modified version of CPanel and so offered a wide array of standard features like e-mail account management, pre-installed scripts, and usage display.
The other value-adding features of Midphase was its website building tool called SimpleSite Wizard that allowed users with no HTML experience to construct websites, and risk free 14 money back guarantee. There was nothing you could ask for in terms of value for money.
Customer Support
Even though Midphase has a toll free number, it is encouraged that you use their company ticketing system if any problems regarding the web hosting service arises. We tested their claim of ticket response of 30 minutes or less by dispatching a support ticket around 9.40pm EST.
The ticket consists of various questions regarding the installation of the OS Commerce shopping cart software.
We were not disappointed when they responded to the ticket in around 24 minutes, and a majority of the responses were clear and detailed. They also have a vibrant community forum that is suited for existing clients who require help in less urgent matters.
Network Reliability and Performance
During the two month monitoring period of our domain name, the in-house tool did not detect any downtime. As such, it upholds (and exceeds) their 99.98% uptime guarantee during this period. However, we were able to recall one occasion, which lasted for over 15 minutes, when our web site response seemed slower than usual. We tested the connection and it resulted in about 10-30% packet loss from multiple locations around the United States. Apart from a slight hiccup, the reliability and stability of the web servers and network was very good.
Final Words
Overall, the whole Midphase experience was refreshing, particularly, in their support response times and generous web hosting plan offerings. An area where they could improve in is maybe implementing a live chat feature and expanding their selection of control panel software to the end-user. Nonetheless, we certainly would hesitate to recommend this web hosting provider to others.
More Web Hosting Companies
Infinology Lunarpages Startlogic MidPhase iPowerWeb Jumpline PowWeb Website Source Apollo Hosting Web.com (Interland) Globat Easy CGI HostRocket BlueHost