MDDHosting is a small, private hosting company founded fairly recently in 2007.
Their claims to fame?
Speed and service. The ‘meat and potatoes’ of web hosting. Their straightforward approach seems refreshingly honest in an industry that can be – well – less so.
It also reflects their down-to-earth, Mid-Western roots (started and headquartered in Indiana, with data centers in Denver, Colorado.)
We’re always on the lookout for the diamond in the rough; new hosting companies that offer a different or better approach than the old industry stalwarts.
MDDHosting looks like a perfect candidate.
We purchased MDDHosting’s ‘Basic Plan’ in June 2015, and set-up a basic WordPress website to begin running tests for the eventual unbiased review you’re reading now. You can find all of our detailed performance stats, like uptime and speed, by clicking ‘History’ for more.
Pros of Using MDDHosting
Most hosting companies sell the same service (more or less). Some throw in a few extras, but the big three of uptime, speed, and service support are primarily what you’re buying.
If a web hosting company falls short in any one of these areas, there’s an issue. Two or more – run!
Fortunately, MDDHosting passes two of the three with flying colors.
1. Very Fast in Page Load Time (358ms)
First up – speed. This is where MDDHosting has been pretty good for the last 24 months.
During the testing months, they put up an incredible page load time of 358ms, which makes them our 3rd fastest host.
A quick background check with other sources confirmed that speed is one of the biggest reasons for so many happy MDDHosting customers.
Last 12-month average load time:
We also noticed that they use LiteSpeed servers which seems to do the trick for them:
2. Quick, Efficient Support
MDDHosting provides standard 24/7/365 customer support through phone, email, and ticketing system. No live chat for now.
During our review processes, they responded to our tickets within less than three minutes (which is fast enough to be considered as a slow live chat).
Once again they perform well in one of the ‘big three’, providing quick, efficient support that’s good enough for an 8/10 at the very least.
3. Straightforward Hosting
WYSIWYG.
That was a bad technical joke that stands for what you see is what you get with MDDHosting.
No hidden fees. No pricing tricks where you have to sign away the next 35 years of your life for the low advertised website price. And no games with limiting standard features to force you to accept the more expensive plans.
Sure, there is some space and storage limitation for lesser plans. Otherwise, you get all of the same features that the more expensive ones offer.
For example, even with their basic plan, you get unlimited:
- Domains
- Subdomains
- Databases
- Emails
- FTP accounts
You want to pay for just a single month, as opposed to a full year (or more)? Sure, you can go ahead and do that. The annual discount isn’t that big either; therefore you’re not missing out on much.
4. 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
MDDHosting offers an unconditional, hassle-free 30-day money-back guarantee with most of their plans. Nothing special like 90 or even 97 days, but not bad either.
5. Free Migrations for cPanel Sites
Some web hosts we’ve reviewed will charge you for every site migration. That’s right: they’re basically charging you extra for bringing your business to them.
Others will offer to move a single site over to their servers for free. But if you want to bring any additional ones over? That’s right: they’ll charge you extra.
We’re happy to report that MDDHosting does neither. According to their terms, they’ll help move any of your sites over to their data centers for free. There’s also no limit, so you can move two, five, or ten, and not be charged extra.
There are only two caveats.
The first is that you need to ask within the first 60 days. That seems pretty obvious, though, so no big deal. After that, it’ll cost $10 per site.
The other potential issue is that these free site migrations are only available for accounts with cPanel. If you’re trying to move sites without cPanel access, then it’ll cost $25 per site or account after that.
The silver lining is that these policies are fairly common. Most cPanel-friendly hosts can move these files faster and easier than other custom configurations that don’t match with their own server setup.
6. No Renewal Price Hikes
MDDHosting bucks another common industry price trick that ends up catching customers by surprise.
Many hosts will advertise a shockingly-low rate on their site.
Naturally, people are drawn in with what looks like an amazing value. And it is if you sign up for usually at least three years to lock-in that low rate.
However, the other common issue is that when this introductory plan expires, you’re often left with a “renewal rate” that can be anywhere from 2-3x the initial price you paid.
Thankfully, MDDHosting doesn’t do that. So whatever price you pay when moving to them is the price you’ll pay when your initial plan expires, too. There’s no surprising price increase in two-to-three years’ time.
7. “1000%” Uptime Guarantee
MDDHosting features a “1000% Uptime Guarantee” in their Terms.
What, exactly, does that mean?
It means for every single hour of downtime, “you can request 10 times (1000%) the actual amount of downtime.”
In other words, one hour of downtime gets you ten hours of credit.
The catch is that you need to email their billing department ([email protected]) within seven days of the downtime.
Similar to other uptime guarantees, this only applies to actual downtime for internal issues or mistakes.
Extraordinary circumstances or regular maintenance downtime are not included.
And this guarantee only applies to their shared and reseller hosting accounts.
Cons of Using MDDHosting
Everything good comes at a price. With MDDhosting, one of their ‘cons’ is just that.
1. Below Industry-Standard Uptime
Over a 24-month period, we tracked MDDHosting’s uptime for our site to make sure things ran smoothly (and that there weren’t any hiccups).
Industry-standard comes out to around 99.93% uptime, and MDDHosting 24-month overall was unfortunately below that – 99.90%.
There were some really strong months with 100% uptime, but sadly this wasn’t enough to raise their average.
Overall, it’s not terrible, but not great either. Especially when you see how much they cost…
Last 12-month average uptime:
- January 2020 average uptime: 100%
- December 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- November 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- October 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- September 2019 average uptime: 99.98%
- August 2019 average uptime: 99.81%
- July 2019 average uptime: 99.95%
- June 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- May 2019 average uptime: 99.99%
- April 2019 average uptime: 99.89%
- March 2019 average uptime: 100%
- February 2019 average uptime: 100%
2. Additional Costs for Extra Services
MDDHosting’s basic plans are a pretty good value. However, anything ‘above and beyond’ the normal hosting plan features will cost you a little something on top.
For instance, MDDHosting doesn’t throw in a free domain name for the first year. Instead, it’ll cost you $14.95/year if you need a new one.
There are also tiny price increases if you sign up for a shorter one or two year deal as well. So prepaying for an extra year or two can often save you a few dollars each month (which could add up to a hundred bucks off the overall plan price).
Even though MDDHosting offers a lot of helpful extra security features, those, too, will cost you extra. This includes everything from their SpamExperts email security to SiteLock website security, too.
And the costs for these aren’t cheap, either. You’re looking at anywhere from $62.99 for three years of SiteLock’s lower-tiered Find service on up to $799.99 for three years of their fully-featured Defend offering.
At this rate, you’ll end up paying as much (or more) for these extra features than you will for the basic hosting plan to start.
So while it’s nice that they offer them, when you start adding everything up, the value-per-dollar doesn’t look so great. And you might just be better off paying a little more each month for something that includes all of these features from the get-go.
MDDHosting Pricing, Hosting Plans & Quick Facts
MDDHosting offers several hosting plans. Here’s an overview of the first three cheapest options:
| Cloud Starter Plan | Cloud 1 Plan | Cloud 2 Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $4.00/month | $7.00/month | $14.00/month |
| Websites | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Storage | 10GB | Unmetered | Unmetered |
| Email Accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Other Features | • 0.5 Core CPU •0.5GB RAM |
• 1 Core CPU •1GB RAM |
• 2 Core CPU •2GB RAM |
Quick Facts
- Free Domain: No.
- Ease of Signup: Very lengthy signup process.
- Money-Back: 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Payment Methods: Credit Card, Paypal.
- Hidden Fees and Clauses: By signing up, you agree that they have the right to change the monthly payment amount and other charges at any time. You must not use more than 25 percent of system resources for longer than 120 seconds or you risk account termination (kinda standard among the industry). Abusing their staff in any medium or format will result in termination of your account without refund (which is also kinda respectable).
- Upsells: A few upsells.
- Account Activation: Quick activation.
- Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
- Installation of Apps and CMSs (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Quick and easy install of popular apps and CMSs with Softaculous.
- Other Features: Free SSL security and SiteLock Site, daily offsite backup
Do We Recommend MDDHosting?
MDDHosting is relatively new to the hosting game. So far, they’ve put up questionable uptime numbers, fast page loading times, and great customer support.
Their no-BS approach is also a breath of fresh air.
Yes, we kinda recommend them (but there are better options out there).
Even though they have come down with their price, there are still many less expensive options out there if you’re just looking for a simple hobby or personal site.
Otherwise, despite being one of the most expensive shared hosting options available, you’ll probably get your money’s worth if you take advantage of all the ‘unlimited’ options that even their Basic, limited plan comes fully loaded with.
P.S. If you want to see hosting providers that ranked above MDDHosting, check our web hosting comparison here.
Have you used MDDHosting? We’d love to hear about your experience – good or bad – as long as it’s honest and transparent. You can leave your MDDHosting review below.
