TMDHosting Reviews 2024 – Not Bad, but What’s the Catch?

Linux and Windows web hosting with round-the-clock support

I reviewed TMDHosting as part of an ambitious project of all of the most serious and professional web hosting companies. Find out who made the cut of the best web hosting companies. 

A multiple award-winner, TMDHosting was named Best phpBB provider and Best CMS Made Simple provider within a year of its launch. It was named PC Mag’s editor’s choice, and has claimed to power over 300,000 websites.

TMDHosting offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, and cloud hosting, and it also offers dedicated programs for resellers and affiliates. But is this host all that it’s cracked up to be?

It’s true that it generally has pretty good reviews, but users have reported problems merging from regular hosting to cloud hosting and raised concerns about its cancellation and refund policies. The support isn’t necessarily the best either, but perhaps it’s just a case of getting what you pay for.

With any web host, you’ll be able to find a mixture of both positive and negative reviews. That’s just the nature of the business. As with most hosting companies, TMDHosting has its pros and cons, and it’s definitely not for everyone.

The key is to find out whether it’s the right web hosting company for you, and that’s where this review comes in. Read on to learn more about TMDHosting and to see whether it might be a good fit.

Faster shared hosting and managed WordPress plans

TMDHosting has most of the features that you’ll have come to expect from web hosts, like a (well above par) 99.999% uptime guarantee, a free domain name or website transfer, a drag-and-drop website builder, and hundreds of open-source installers.

Let’s take a look at some of the TMDHosting’s more interesting features.

Generous Resource Allocations

First and foremost, TMDHosting is notable because its sale prices make it one of the cheapest managed hosting options out there, with unlimited SSD space, unlimited bandwidth and a free domain name thrown in on even the most basic plan. You won’t get the same level of performance you’d get from a premium managed hosting provider, but you get good value for your money.

Free Daily Backups

I don’t know about you guys, but I run websites for both personal and professional use. With multiple websites to worry about and relentless deadlines, I’ve been known to forget to back up my sites and more than once I’ve had to recreate them. With TMDHosting’s automatic free daily backups, there’s less to worry about, although it’s always a good idea to make backups of your own just in case.

Faster Loading Times

TMDHosting promises to offer 16x faster page loading speed after combining three layers of caching (APC, OPCache, and Varnish) with solid-state drives (SSDs) to make sure that pages load as quickly as possible. It’s not a magic bullet and won’t cure a sloppy website, but it should still be noticeably faster than if you were using a nearly identical host that didn’t offer those features.

Live Malware Protection

The company claims to offer “military-grade security” through its BitNinja-powered web-based firewall. This is good news if you’re worried about hacks and breaches, especially when running ecommerce sites or storing personal data. No malware protection system is fool-proof, but TMDHosting’s system is better than most.

TMD Hosting has a sleek signup and account creation process. Plus, once you’ve got your login, it’s easy to get started with its one-click installers and the drag-and-drop site builder, although its interface is a little clunky.

One-Click Installers

TMDHosting offers one-click installers for WordPress and over 300 apps, specializing in open-source hosting for everything from PrestaShop and OpenCart to Joomla and WordPress. Even if it doesn’t have the installer for the software that you want to use, it’s a good bet that it’ll still support it if you upload the installer via FTP.

Free Domain Name/Website Transfer

Instead of having to worry about migrating pages and databases yourself, you can let TMDHosting take care of it for you. Even if you’re working on a new build, it has a pre-built WordPress environment and cover firewall and security software on your behalf. That’s one less thing for you to worry about.

Creating an Account

TMDHosting has clearly put some thought into its onboarding process, which makes it easy to compare packages and to make a purchase once you’ve arrived at a decision. While some web hosts will make you wait as long as 48 hours to be able to access your new hosting account after making a purchase, With TMDHosting, it’ll typically verify the order and set up the account within just a couple of minutes. That’s good news if you’re in a hurry!

Connecting a Domain and Installing WordPress

It’s nice and simple to browse for your free domain name or to import one of your own, and you’ll be up and running with your new hosting package in no time. Once you’ve connected your domain, the cPanel access allows you to install WordPress in just a few clicks. It’s beginner-friendly throughout the whole process and customer service is easy to access, in the unlikely event you get stuck.

Click here to read my step-by-step guide to connecting a domain and installing WordPress on TMDHosting.

(Not quite) 99.99% uptime

Perhaps it’s because it focuses more on security and on keeping costs low, or perhaps it just happens to every company, but TMDHosting doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to performance, despite its promises of rapid load times. Belarussian reviewer Yauhen Kuchynski said, “During three months, the servers were down six times. Today, my website has been unavailable for six hours.”

It’s not unusual for hosting companies to offer 99.99% uptime and to fail to meet that threshold, because it’s typically buried in a clause that gives customers tiny amounts of money back, and usually only when you request it. If uptime is important to you, you should always check the fine print and read reviews from other customers before making a purchase.

Because of these concerns about loading speeds and uptime, we thought we’d investigate for ourselves, running a speed test result with Sucuri Page Load Test. You can see the results in the screenshot below. It turns out that while TMDHosting typically has a rapid connection time, the first byte and total speeds are generally only fast in Western Europe. Part of this is likely down to where the physical servers are located, though.

This doesn’t mean that it’s not worth using, but it is worth being a little cautious and knowing the limitations. If your website is mission critical and needs constant uptime and rapid speeds around the world, it’s worth paying a premium for a specialist provider. If you mostly sell to Western Europe and you don’t have the budget to work with specialist hosts, stick with TMDHosting.

24/7 support, but it’s not always the most dedicated

One of TMDHosting’s big selling points is the fact that it offers 24/7/365 support, but be warned: it doesn’t always live up to its promise to be “the most dedicated.”

A few users have complained of inefficient fixes and occasional incompetence, as well as mistakes like restoring the wrong version of a customer’s website. Customer service will try to help you, but they won’t necessarily go the extra mile.

I tested live chat, email, and ticket support. Here’s what I found out:

Live Chat

I contacted live chat several times before I made a purchase. Each time, the agent responded quickly and was very polite. I asked basic questions (e.g. where are your servers located? What is your uptime guarantee?), so as you’d expect, the agent was easily able to answer my pre-sales questions.

Email Support

I sent an email to the sales department asking whether or not the plans included a one-click installer. I received a reply within ten minutes answering my question in full. Again, the operator was helpful and polite.

Support Ticket

Whilst this isn’t available to non-customers, once you’ve created an account, you have the option to submit support tickets via the admin. I submitted a ticket asking whether or not WordPress could be installed via a one-click installer. The agent replied within 25 minutes, answering my questions in full.

Just like most hosting providers, different plans offer different features. So, before you proceed to checkout, make sure to select the appropriate plan. Take a look at the chart below to get an idea of what you can expect to receive for your money.

Cancellation & Refunds

If you change your mind, there’s a 60-day money-back guarantee period, which is helpful for you to really get stuck in and trial the plans. The process to cancel and get a refund is straightforward, although it can take a little longer to leave than it took to get started.

Read about my full experience canceling an account.