Midphase.com review

First impression

Midphase is a UK-based web hosting service founded in 2003, currently part of the UK2 Group, which offers a variety of services including web hosting, virtual private servers, domain name registration and management, dedicated servers and a content delivery network. The company’s team has been together since 1998, according to their website, while nowadays they have teams and offices in Providence and Salt Lake City (Utah, USA), London (UK) and Lviv (Ukraine).

Their main data center, the one used for web hosting, is located in Lindon, Utah, which they claim is a disaster-safe area. For dedicated hosting, there are a number of available locations in the UK and the US, so the choice is up to the customer. The Lindon data center is a Tier-3, meaning it should have at least 99.982% uptime and no more than 1.6 hours of downtime per year, as the uptime should be concurrently maintainable.

Trial period

They don't offer free trials on their web hosting services but they do have a 30-day money back guarantee, though it only applies to initial sign-ups of their shared hosting, reseller, Wordpress, and Website Builder packages.  If you cancel the service after the first 30 days have passed, or after the service has renewed then unfortunately they will not be able to issue any refunds. Please note: upgrades to hosting service, domain registrations and transfers, and SSL certificates are non-refundable. Dedicated plans ARE NOT ELIGIBLE for the money-back guarantee.

Billing cycle

Midphase’s biggest advantage is its price, but the effect of this is quickly mitigated by the fact that it is only available for the duration of your first contract. The rest of their offer is decent enough, specially geared towards individuals and small businesses, meaning you’re not likely to find anything out of the ordinary here.

You can choose to pay for their hosting service packages in three different terms such as Monthly, 12 months, and/or 24 months billing cycles.

Control panel

This web host has decided to stick with the most popular control panel, cPanel. This means you can use 1-click installs like WordPress, protect your emails from spam, and lots more.

All shared hosting plans come with a cPanel, which is accessed through Midphase’s own control panel called CHI. This is simply a dashboard where you can access all your services, which is especially useful if you have several different plans on one account. For every individual service, you’ll be able to go through cPanel to upload your website through the File Manager or FTP, or install WordPress through Softaculous.

Limits

MidPhase has 3 shared hosting plans. Across these plans, each offers something a little different to suit various customer needs. However, there are a few features in common that run across all of their shared plans.

Let’s take a look at some of those features below:

• Unlimited storage space;
• Unlimited bandwidth;
• Free domain name;
• Unlimited emails;
• Ad-free hosting.

Considering all plans offer the above features for free, I’d consider MidPhase very generous. For Wordpress Hosting, there are Starter, Primary, and Pro Plan packages.

Starter at $5.17/month: Can host 1 website, up to 25GB SSD Storage, up to 100k monthly visits, and Unlimited FTP accounts.

Primary at $11.17/month: Can host 1 website, up to 150GB SSD Storage, up to 100k monthly visits, and Unlimited FTP accounts.

Pro at $23.17/month: Can host 1 website, Unlimited SSD Storage, up to 100k monthly visits, and Unlimited FTP accounts.

Website builder

A website builder does not come with a shared hosting plan, but you can always go the other way around: purchasing a website builder plan, which starts from $4.46/mo (renews at $5.95/mo.) Signing up for one of these plans also gets you a free domain name, website hosting, and personalized email — more expensive plans though will get you unlimited storage and SEO management.

It's just very easy to use their Website Builder feature tools and build a professional website in minutes by using their Pre-made templates.

Security

If your website, applications, or databases have been compromised or infected by malware, they can help clean up and get you back to a secure and stable state. Their Level 3 engineers will review your entire setup, remove any nasties, update your applications and plugins, and close unnecessary access routes to minimize the risk of being compromised again. They will employ recognized best practice for a variety of applications such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and more.

Managed Security Clean-Up Benefits:

• Security investigation - They will investigate how you were compromised in the first place.
• Clean-up - They'll remove any malware, viruses, or rogue users discovered.
• Harden - They’ll harden your applications and plugins, following recognized security best practices.

OS

Midphase offers the common server hosting operating system such as the Linux server.

Support

MidPhase has several support options. This includes live chat, email and knowledge base articles. Their support center is easy to use and to navigate. If you have a topic in mind you want to find out more about, just simply enter the details into the search box.

The knowledge base was easy to navigate. The style was slick and simple, meaning even a beginner could figure it out. The articles were detailed and helpful and it was easy to go back to the previous pages.

Next up I wanted to try their live chat. Previous customer reviews indicated this should be a good experience. All across MidPhase’s website there’s an option to chat to an agent, so already the process felt inviting. I asked the agent about their fair usage policy. They advertise unlimited bandwidth and storage space but I want to know more about it.

Conclusion

Midphase is a decent option for clients on a budget, but the subsequent price hike can take that advantage away for many. On the other hand, the lack of restrictions on features like bandwidth and web storage space are a rare find in the web hosting space. For beginners or those hosting a personal portfolio, MidPhase probably offers enough to justify the cheap price. In some cases, affordable pricing doesn’t mean cheap technologies.