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MassiveGRID Review (2024): 5 Pros and 4 Cons After Using it

If you need a host that goes all-in on quality and reliability, MassiveGRID probably seems like a good option.

In the last 15 years that it’s been around, MassiveGRID has established itself as a high-end hosting provider.

It offers services to big clients, institutions that need to power large and essential projects, and so on:

massivegrid-featured clients

But believe it or not, MassiveGRID has more than just expensive, intense plans for top-dollar customers.

MassiveGRID also has options better for small-to-medium sized businesses.

So now the question is:

Is MassiveGRID good for YOU? Is it a hidden gem that can provide you top-quality hosting at a more affordable price?

Or does it neglect the things the little guy needs?

I’ll answer those questions, and more, right now.

Let’s start with the good stuff:

MassiveGRID: Pros

Pro #1: Stellar performance

Performance is a key factor to evaluating any host—many would say “the” key factor.

For MassiveGRID, high-quality hosting is everything. It’s the trait it markets itself the most on, and uses as a selling point to high-profile, sizable customers.

So it should come as no surprise that MassiveGRID has great performance:

massivegrid-performance2

This is all part of what MassiveGRID calls “high availability” hosting (the term isn’t unique to MassiveGRID, but that’s another topic).

You can read more about what their high-availability architecture actually means, but it encompasses a range of network, power, hardware, and storage practices/features that combine to offer highly reliable results.

The thing is, ALL of MassiveGRID’s hosting products are high-availability.

Meaning, while the cloud plans still have a higher degree of flexibility and performance than web hosting plans, the web hosting plans are ALSO part of the high-availability architecture.

In short, pretty much all plans are guaranteed this top-tier performance.

Pro #2: Good security

It’s not surprising when you consider what I said earlier about MassiveGRID’s high availability architecture.

But it’s not just performance that gets assured when this architecture is taken into account: it’s also the security.

There are different specifications for the various data centers, but they’re pretty much all good.

To give you an example, look at some of the security measures used in one of MassiveGRID’s London data centers:

massivegrid-security

Yes, an iris scanner! Like in action movies.

Or check out this list, for Singapore:

massivegrid-security1.5

Man traps? Guard patrols? Sounds good to me.

Now, I’ll be honest: not all the data centers have this level of security. But, they all have some great combination of security measures, architecture, and certifications.

For example, these are the certifications for the New York data center:

massivegrid-security2

These may not be comprehensible to you, but don’t worry. Many of these are in fact related to security. For example:

PCI-DSS means being properly certified to handle payment transactions—essential for companies hosting the websites of other businesses. SOC 2 Type II is a certification for storing customer data in the cloud, and so on, and so on.

All the data centers have most of these, which is great.

So all in all, despite variations among the data centers, you can be assured that MassiveGRID’s security is top-notch—and that you’ll be secure whatever location you host from.

Pro #3: Wide range of products, including high-end hosting

As I said in the introduction, MassiveGRID markets itself as very high-end, a reliable option for large institutions.

So it should come as no surprise that it’s got a solid array of products:

massivegrid-products

As you can see, most of these products are the high-end cloud variety that MassiveGRID is mostly associated with.

But it’s also got some products friendly to smaller businesses, aside from just web hosting—WordPress hosting, Magento hosting, etc.

a note on some of those—while they can still be suited for smaller businesses, they involve more customization, including just for the price. So there may be a learning curve.

Nonetheless, it’s nice to see a solid range of quality hosting.

Pro #4: Web hosting plans have good features

Let’s take a look at the overview of the features for these plans.

massivegrid-web hosting-plans1

Those are just the first three. There are three more:

massivegrid-web hosting-plans2

And there we go! It might seem like a lot to look at, but it’s actually quite simple:

Just about everything increases along the tiers. There are few constants.

BUT, probably the best point here is that the first tier alone gets 1TB of monthly bandwidth. That’s exciting, because it’s the STARTING point for all these plans, and only increases as you go up.

In contrast, typical web hosting plans will say they offer “unlimited” bandwidth but practically speaking will limit customers once traffic takes up a few hundred GBs of bandwidth.

Meanwhile, all plans also include:

massivegrid-web hosting-features

Some of these are standard for web hosting plans—for example, free SSL and cPanel.

But regular backups, free site restore, and DDoS protection are great additions and mean that even the first or second tier will be well-provided for.

We also can’t forget the point I raised earlier: performance. The performance for these web hosting plans is much better than that of typical web hosting plans.

And one of my favorite things is that each web hosting plan offers customers their choice of location for three cities:

massivegrid-web hosting-location

Sure, it may just be Europe and the east coast of the United States, but it’s something.

So all in all, the web hosting plans definitely have a solid offering of features.

Pro #5: Good customer support

MassiveGRID is a bit unique in offering premium support packages separate from default support.

But when you consider the price of this premium support ($100 a month, $300 a month, thousands a month), and who it’s intended for (major organizations), it makes sense.

Luckily, the default support that comes with each account for free is still pretty good!

We’re talking about server management (which I sort of count as a feature), and high-quality staff.

They are very knowledgeable and are able to help with most issues pretty quickly.

This customer support strategy DOES have a downside, but I’ll get to that later.

MassiveGRID: Cons

Con #1: Web hosting is pricey

Of course, “pricey” is relative. Relative to what MassiveGRID actually offers, I’d say the prices are very reasonable.

But in this instance, I mean “relative to most other web hosting solutions.” And relative to most other web hosting solutions, the price range here is steeper.

Let’s take a look:

massivegrid-web hosting price2 massivegrid-web hosting price2

Most other web hosting products, with other hosting companies, have a much smaller range as well—typically just three or four tiers.

There’s nothing wrong with having more options, of course. But:

Those extra options go upwards more than they go down. Meaning, there’s less focus on providing bottom-line affordable web hosting products.

The standard price for web hosting these days is somewhere between $2-$4 a month at the entry level, perhaps going to $12-$15 at a third-tier package.

So for people who are prioritizing price, this would likely be an issue.

Having said that, relative to what’s offered, these are still pretty good prices—the degree of quality, and especially bandwidth (which starts at 1TB a month) is noteworthy.

Con #2: Web hosting plans have low storage limits

Let’s take a look again at the storage capacities on these tiers:

massivegrid-web hosting-storage web hosting-storage

A typical web hosting plan, with another host, will usually START with 50GB of storage, often SSD (like MassiveGRID), and for a lower price point.

A typical web hosting plan on the smaller end may offer closer to 10GB or 20GB of storage—but that will still be at a much lower price point.

So compared to the norm, this means paying more for less storage.

Now, I want to be clear: the storage limits aren’t that unreasonable. They feel stingy compared to the typical storage limits on web hosting, but these plans AREN’T typical web hosting.

MassiveGRID’s web hosting plans aren’t the same as the shared web hosting that’s most common, because MassiveGRID’s web hosting plans are based primarily on a very scalable cloud infrastructure.

You can think of them as lower-end cloud plans if you want, but they’re still a tier above base shared web hosting.

So because of that—and because of generous features, like bandwidth—I say that MassiveGRID’s prices are still proportionately good and the storage is fair.

But for people who need both low-costs and generous storage, this set-up is not the best.

Con #3: WordPress plans may be too complicated for beginners

By this, I mean specifically the setup of the WordPress plans. Once WordPress is up-and-running, beginners should be as fine as they’d be with any host.

But first, let me explain how the WordPress plans work with MassiveGRID—because it’s a bit unusual.

There are two basic WordPress plans, both of which are managed.

wordpress hosting kit

As you can probably guess, the left package—the “standalone” kit—is intended for beginners, low-traffic sites, and those prioritizing cost.

The latter is for more resource-intensive sites, people who know what they’re doing, and people who are willing to invest to scale up.

But, that’s not the end of it. The pricing is, as I’ve discussed, pay-as-you-use.

wordpress pricing

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think this is great for flexibility.

But say you want to combine MassiveGRID’s quality hosting with the power of WordPress…and you’re not that experienced.

If that’s you, how much of that pricing table above makes sense to you? You might be able to figure out disk space, and external traffic, maybe the databases—but it’s a lot to throw at someone new.

Part of it is because the per-use pricing is based on the measurement of “cloudlets”:

wordpress-cloudlet

It seems simple enough with that explanation, but there’s a lot more to it in even this simple FAQ.

So you can see why I think beginners will find there’s too much pain involved in understanding how to set up and properly pay for even the “easy” WordPress plans.

Con #4: No live chat in MassiveGrid

This is mostly because MassiveGRID’s support strategy prioritizes quality far above quantity, and premium clients above all.

No hate towards that—it’s a fair approach.

However, it does mean that smaller customers don’t get live chat. In fact, even customers paying a lot of money don’t get guaranteed instant response times:

support

As you can see, a company paying $1,000 a month is guaranteed a response within an hour. But below that, it’s just “best effort.”

Again, the quality of this support is much better than that of a typical hosting company’s live chat. And it can still be speedy.

However, sometimes people have simple questions they can’t find answers to otherwise, and live chat can be a perfect tool for troubleshooting those.

Unfortunately, that’s not an option for a smaller business using MassiveGRID.

Do we recommend MassiveGRID?

Our moment of truth: is MassiveGRID something YOU should use?

Well, as always, the answer is…

“It depends.”

It depends, first on what you consider to be your priority in a hosting package.

There is basically zero doubt as to the quality and reliability of the product itself, the hosting. And the features are overall good, but they’re not jam-packed.

So the main trade offs here are the “extra” features that some hosts pack into their web hosting plans for value deals, and the very low price tags that some hosts pack in for minimal bottom lines.

If you need hosting that’s overall reliable, but doesn’t need to be perfect, and instead includes a ton of features—especially higher storage limits—at lower cost, then MassiveGRID probably isn’t worth it.

In contrast:

If your top priority is having a very stable site that can accommodate a lot of traffic, can scale up easily, and you don’t mind investing a little more…then MassiveGRID is a fantastic choice.

But if you’re still not sure, don’t worry!

You can just try MassiveGRID first, without any risk:

money back guarantee

Happy hosting!

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