MDDHosting is an independent web hosting provider established in 2007 with the goal of providing quality services to large businesses and new web hosts alike. It also succeeds with its blazing speed, long list of features, and low price point. MDDHosting has become a favorite here at Cloudwards.net and it is one of the best web hosting providers.
In this MDDHosting review, we’ll explore what sets the service apart from a web hosting package. After launching a website with a lower-cost plan, we tested usability, features, speed, and more to give a complete picture of what the service has to offer.
What it offers is a web hosting experience that doesn’t skimp on features or security, despite its modest price tag. It shows the satisfaction of the web hosting market in its current form and the extent of the best new technologies.
General information and hosting overview
| Speed: | 444 milliseconds (March 2022 to August 2022) |
| Runtime: | 99.99% (March 2022 to August 2022) |
| the support: | Live chat, phone, ticketing, and knowledge base |
| Applications: | Softaculous app installer for the most popular apps like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and more. |
| Advantages: | Unlimited Domains & Bandwidth 25GB Storage Unlimited Email Accounts 30 Day Money Back Guarantee 1000% Uptime Guarantee Daily Offsite Backup Free SSL Certificate Site Builder Unlimited MySQL Databases, And more. |
| Hosting plans: | Cloud Hosting, VPS, and Reseller |
| Site transfer: | free |
| Pricing: | Starting at $6.99/month ($14.99/month renewal) |
Pros of using MDDHosting
Most hosting companies sell the same service (more or less). Some offer some extras, but the three most important are uptime, speed, and customer support are basically what you buy.
If your web hosting company falls short in any of these areas, there is a problem. Two or more – run!
1- Decent page load time (444ms)
First – speed. This is where MDDHosting has been doing so well for the past six months.
During the testing period, they put an average page load time of 444 milliseconds.
MDDHosting last 6-month average speed (monitoring since 2015) | see stats
Moreover, MDDHosting offers improved speed on a monthly basis which easily puts it on the list of the top 10 hosts we reviewed.
2- Good uptime 99.99%
Over the course of 6 months, we tracked MDDHosting’s uptime for our site to make sure things were going smoothly (and that there weren’t any hitches).
The industry standard came in at about 99.91% to 99.93% uptime, and the 6-month MDDHosting was overall 99.99% with 7 breaks.
MDDHosting has shown very good results every month which makes it a reliable host.
MDDHosting last 6-month average speed (monitoring since 2015) | see stats
Average uptime in the last 6 months:
- August 2022: 100%
- July 2022: 100%
- June 2022: 99.99%
- May 2022: 100%
- April 2022: 100%
- March 2022: 99.99%
3- Fast and efficient support
MDDHosting provides standard customer support via ticketing, email, live chat, knowledge base, and also phone. Ticket support, 24/7/365 live chat, and phone assistance for sales and invoicing are available from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET Monday through Friday.
MDDHosting Live Chat Once again, they do well in one of the “Big Three”, providing fast and efficient support which is good enough for at least 8/10.
4- Direct hosting.
There are no hidden fees. There are no pricing gimmicks where you have to sign up for the next 35 years of your life for the low advertised price of the website. And no games with limited standard features force you to accept the more expensive plans.
Sure, there are some space and storage limitations for the lower plans. Otherwise, you will get all the same features as the more expensive ones.
For example, even with their basic plan, you get unlimited:
- addon ranges
- subdomains
- Databases
- Email messages
- FTP accounts
If you only want to pay for one month, instead of a whole year (or more)? Sure, you can go ahead and do that. The annual discount isn’t that big either; So you don’t miss out on much.
MDDHosting offers an unconditional, hassle-free 30-day money-back guarantee with most of their plans. Nothing as special as 90 or even 97 days, but not bad either.
6- Free migrations to cPanel sites
Some of the web hosts we reviewed will charge you for each site migration. That’s right: they charge you extra for bringing your business to them.
Others will offer to move a single site to their servers for free. But if you want to bring any extra stuff, they will charge you an extra fee.
We are happy to report that MDDHosting does not. On their terms, they will help move any of your sites to their data centers for free. There’s also no limit, so you can move two, five, or ten, and you don’t get charged extra.
There are only two caveats:
The first is that you have to ask within the first 60 days. This seems pretty straightforward, though, so no big deal. After that, it will cost you $10 per site.
Another potential issue is that these free site migrations are only available for accounts with cPanel. If you are trying to move sites without access to cPanel, it will cost $25 per site or account after that.
The bright side is that these policies are fairly common. Most cPanel-compatible hosts can transfer these files faster and easier than other custom configurations that don’t match their server setup.
7- Uptime guarantee “100%
MDDHosting features a “1000% Uptime Guarantee” in its terms.
This means that for every downtime hour, “you can request 10 times (1000%) the actual amount of downtime.”
In other words, one hour of downtime gives you a credit of ten hours. The catch is that you need to email the billing department ([email protected]Hosting.com) within seven days of the downtime.
Similar to other uptime guarantees, this only applies to actual downtime for internal issues or bugs.
Exceptional circumstances or downtime for regular maintenance are not included.
This guarantee only applies to shared hosting accounts and reseller accounts.
Ease of use
Getting started with MDDHosting is simple, in large part because it offers only a few services. Unlike GoDaddy, whose homepage is flooded with its massive suite of services, MDDHosting has an extensive selection, which makes finding the right plan simple.
After choosing a plan, MDDHosting will ask you to register a new domain, transfer a domain you own, or select a domain registered with another provider. You will then be sent to a checkout page that displays your plan details, along with the add-ons that come with it.
Unlike Bluehost, for example (read our Bluehost review), MDDHosting does not pre-select add-ons. You get the option to add SpamExperts and SiteLock, but obviously, MDDHosting isn’t trying to pull one from you by pre-selecting packages you might not want.
Before completing the payment process, you need to enter your account information and ask MDDHosting a lot, including how to find the service. While it’s no surprise that you ask for a referral source, MDDHosting requires you to enter it, which is annoying.
Aside from the whining, you’ll set your password on the final checkout page, so you don’t have to go to your email to track down your account credentials. MDDHosting has a closed system, which means you can go from checkout to your control panel with ease.
The client area is a carbon copy of InMotion Hosting, despite the fact that they are both a standalone web host. If MDDHosting is going to copy another web host here, InMotion Hosting is a good choice. It excels in ease of use, as does MDDHosting, with a clear client area that displays your services, support tickets, and bills without getting too crowded under the Services tab.
You’ll find your hosting account, which will bring up a management page showing disk space, bandwidth usage, and more. The Actions menu on the left side allows you to log into your cPanel, access your webmail, upgrade your account, or downgrade and request a cancellation.
Although cPanel is offered, you don’t need to go there often. MDDHosting has a panel of quick links on the hosting management page that allows you to access common cPanel functions, such as file manager and email accounts. Below that, your name servers are also displayed.
You can access using cPanel, but MDDHosting is more crowded than most. It is not difficult to use, but it has more options than the best web hosting with cPanel options. In this case, this is a good thing, because extensions allow you to help with backups, access additional SEO tools, and find new themes for your site.
The multi-step checkout process is lengthy, but MDDHosting is a fun way to use it otherwise. The client area is straightforward, cPanel shelves are stocked and you don’t have to open your email to see how to log in. From choosing a plan to managing your site, MDDHosting is seamless.
protection
95% – Excellent
MDDHosting offers everything we want when it comes to security. In most cases, we find that web hosts introduce some security features and omit others, which makes the plans disjointed On the other hand, MDDHosting offers a taste of it all, allowing your website to remain secure on all fronts.
SFTP and SSH access are included, ensuring that your connection to the server is not interrupted while files are being transferred or changed. This access can also be enabled or disabled depending on the command, so just allow it when you need it.
The servers are protected with ModSecurity, a web application firewall designed for Apache servers. The Web Application Firewall uses a set of rules to block or allow traffic in an HTTP transfer. This can prevent, for example, attacks, such as SQL injection, that can crash your server
However, you will never see the web application firewall. What you will see is SiteLock. It is basically an antivirus for your website, protecting it from malware or anything else related to cybercrime. MDDHosting provides SiteLock Lite, which provides daily malware scanning and blacklist monitoring for up to five pages, with each package.
There are more advanced versions of SiteLock that offer malware removal and a page cap if you wish, but the basic version MDDHosting includes excellent.
Your plan also includes a free SSL/TLS certificate and daily off-site backups. These features are generally hidden behind a paywall or reserved for more expensive plans. With MDDHosting, you get it all, no matter what price you pay.
Privacy
90% – Excellent
Privacy is simple with MDDHosting. Although it is not quite up to DreamHost, the meaningless privacy policy makes it clear that MDDHosting does not work to sell your personal information. However, we would like to see improvements in some areas.
In particular, we’d like to see free domain privacy. When you register a domain, you also create a record containing your name, email address, postal address, phone number, and more. This record is available for anyone to search online, leading to mass data aggregation and, in some cases, stalking.
Domain privacy replaces your information, essentially making your registration private. Unlike DreamHost and 1&1 IONOS, MDDHosting does not offer domain privacy for free. While this is true for most web hosts, we would love to see MDDHosting deliver at least for the initial period, especially with how strong the privacy policy is.
Although not included, it’s hard to complain. Identity protection, which MDDHosting calls Domain Privacy, is just $5 a year, which is half the cost of web hosts like HostGator (read our HostGator review). Although the free service is always preferable, MDDHosting offers a low entry point for domain privacy.
The privacy policy is excellent, though. It’s short and to the point, making it clear that MDDHosting is “committed to protecting your privacy.” MDDHosting says that it will not disclose personal information obtained about you to third parties, for sales or otherwise. MDDHosting states that it will not change without your knowledge and consent.
There is an exception when it comes to law enforcement, which should come as no surprise. Otherwise, MDDHosting will not sell or share your personal information with anyone. Some anonymous data may be used, but MDDHosting says it “will not use any information that could identify individuals.”
Cons of using MDDHosting
Everything good comes at a price. With MDDhosting, one of their “minuses” is that.
Additional costs for additional services
MDDHosting’s basic plans are very good value. However, anything that is “beyond” the features of a regular hosting plan will cost you a small amount upfront.
For example, MDDHosting does not offer a free domain name for the first year. Instead, it will cost you $14.99 a year if you need a new one.
There are also slight price increases if you sign up for a shorter one or two-year deal as well. So prepaying for an additional year or two can often save you a few dollars each month (which can add up to a hundred dollars to the plan’s total price).
Although MDDHosting offers a lot of useful additional security features for free (SiteLock Website Security, SSH/sFTP), for some you still have to pay.
For example, if you want to add SpamExperts Email Security, you will have to pay $107.64 every three years.
So while it’s nice to offer them, when you start adding up everything, the value per dollar doesn’t sound great. And it might be better for you to pay a little more each month for something that includes all of these features right from the start.
MDDHosting pricing, hosting plans, and quick facts
MDDHosting offers several hosting plans. Here is an overview of the top three cloud plan options (if you signed up with their triple plan):
| Turbo Plan | Plaid Plan | Plaid+ Plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $6.99 per month renewable at $14.99 per month | $13.99 per month renewing at $29.99 per month | $27.99 per month Renewing at $59.99 per month |
| Websites | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Bandwidth | not calculated | not calculated | not calculated |
| storage | 25 GB | 50 GB | 100 GB |
| Email accounts | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Other Features | • 2 Core CPU • 2 GB RAM | • Quad-core processor • 4 GB RAM | • Octa-core processor • 8 GB RAM |
quick facts
Free domain: No.
Ease of Signup: a very long sign-up process.
Money Back: 30-day money-back guarantee.
Payment methods: Credit Card, Paypal.
Hidden Fees and Terms: By registering, you agree that they have the right to change the amount of your monthly payment and other fees at any time. You must not use more than 25 percent of your system resources for more than 120 seconds or you risk account termination (industry standard).
Upsells: A few upsells.
Account activation: quick activation.
Control Panel and Dashboard Experience: cPanel.
Installing applications and content management systems (WordPress, Joomla, etc.): Quick and easy installation of popular applications and content management systems using Softaculous.
Other Features: Free SSL Security and SiteLock, Daily Off-Site Backup
judgment
MDDHosting is fast, feature-packed, and inexpensive. It showcases the power of cloud hosting beautifully, with a wide and flexible set of high-tech plans and features, including Cloudflare Railgun and LiteSpeed server. The customer support isn’t the best, but it’s easy to overlook given how much MDDHosting has to offer.
