MyW hosting review

In this post, I’m sharing my experience with the MYW hosting provider (affiliate link). Along with all the information I have on the company. Detailed, systematic, and as objectively as possible – it is up to the reader to judge whether they are the right fit for their needs. TL/DR – not bad, but still not moving any production stuff here.

Status: Active
From September, 2019 – ongoing

Currently, my file hosting and a few client sites are running on MyW hosting. I keep track and note any problems in this article.

Note 1:
It’s a one-man operation. If you have a problem on a Saturday, be prepared to wait ’till Monday.

Note 2:
Frequent server downtime recently – I’m considering to move. The uptime stats can be seen on:
status.bikegremlin.com page.

Table Of Contents (T.O.C.):

1. MyW hosting company
2. How I came to MyW
3. Website migration to Myw hosting
4. Available resources and server locations
5. Technical support
6. Metrics – tests – speed
7. Uptime
8. Blacklist reports
9. Prices
10. Subjective personal impression and conclusion
11. MyW USA server problems
12. DirectAdmin 2FA login problems

1. MyW hosting company

MyW (My Web) is a small and young hosting company from Portugal – the land of good wine and football. The owner is Mr Miguel Varela, an experienced systems administrator.

– T.O.C. –

2. How I came to MyW

MyW hosting company and its owner have a very good reputation on the LowEndTalk forum I follow. They use the DirectAdmin control panel. Since I was looking for DirectAdmin reseller hosting for learning the ropes of that control panel, development and use if it turns out to be good, I decided to give it a go.

After a trouble free month with their German reseller hosting, I took another one with a US based server.

– T.O.C. –

3. Website migration to Myw hosting

I wrote an article on website migration from cPanel to DirectAdmin. Nothing to add – it all went quickly and smoothly. I easily created custom nameservers for reseller hosting use.

– T.O.C. –

4. Available resources and server locations

Servers they use are Hetzner (for Germany) and Reliablesite (for US, east coast – Los Angeles). Both reputable dedicated server providers.

Storage space depends on the package, from 25 GB for smallest shared hosting, to 100 GB for the largest reseller hosting package. The other resources are:

• 200% CPU
• 2GB RAM
• 4096 IOPs
• 10MB/s Disk
• 50 Entry Processes
• 200 Processes

Quite decent, better than average I’d say, regardless of the price.

MailChannels are used for email delivery.

It should be noted that CloudLinux and LiteSpeed are used – which is important for security, isolation and performance. More detailed explanation of CloudLinux and post about WordPress website caching (and LiteSpeed).

For now they don’t offer automated website backups, you have to set it up on your own – which is advisory anyway. Post about setting up automated website backups with DirectAdmin.

Note: for those who use legacy apps, available PHP version are: 7.3, 7.2 and 7.1 – no older version offered.

– T.O.C. –

5. Technical support

Over the years I’ve used numerous hosting provider services (both with mine and client websites) and experienced all kinds of technical support quality. In those terms, large hosting companies, even those who provide good technical support, have (to have) several levels of technical support. So, for a complicated problem, one must “go through” several levels of support, often repeating the same over and over again, until they reach someone who can solve the problem.

The advantage of a small company run by an experienced systems administrator with good communication skills is that your first and only level of support is a competent and experienced person.

Some companies offer “5 minute ticket response time”, but that response is done by a novice and you get generic replies “thank you for contacting us”, followed by a set of standard questions (that have their place, but can be frustrating if you are experienced and write down all that you checked in your opening ticket).

With MyW, for things that aren’t urgent, I waited for an hour, or for a day. But they were solved efficiently and Miguel was kind enough to patiently explain and answer any questions – which is priceless for me because it helps me learn.

Urgent problems response time? I don’t know, because so far it all worked like Porto’s midfield when Mourinho was in charge. Practically all my support requests were of “informative nature” (marked as “low priority” when opening tickets).

So, based on experience so far, similar to GnuHost, I rate this support as: “you can’t get any better”. That is the advantage of small companies run by competent persons. My post on hosting providers technical support.

– T.O.C. –

6. Metrics – tests – speed

I “tortured” MyW hosting using OctoPerf testing tool. Testing website has one page set to bypass cache – so that server “raw” performance can be put to the test. I simulated 50 visitors who simultaneously browse all the website pages, opening one after the other, as soon as the previous page was loaded.

I compared the results with the, so far brilliant, HostMantis hosting.

During both MyW and HostMantis test runs, I browsed the testing website with browser cache disabled, to see if there’s any slow down, or errors.

I have to say that HostMantis was faster, but MyW didn’t return any browsing errors, or have too slow page loads during the load testing. In truth, the pages did load a bit slower than when there’s no load test being commenced, but not as slow as to make one think there’s some problem with the server.

If you wish to see detailed test reports in PDF, use these links:

• MyW hosting load test.
• HostMantis load test.

These are the test results made using the WP Benchmark tool plugin (wp.org link):

Note:
The poor “Object cache” result is due to a LiteSpeed problem explained in chapter 7 of my MDDHosting review. The problem is persistent with all the hosting providers whose servers I have access to at the moment.

– T.O.C. –

7. Uptime

With servers I’m using, I’ve had 100% uptime so far (see the current uptime reports on the link below). Though I must say that I’m tracking US server uptime only from today (2nd December 2019), so uptime info for that will make sense only in a few months time.

You can see uptime of hosting providers I’m using on this link: status.bikegremlin.com.
– Reports are created using HetrixTools, which I’d recommend (affiliate link).

As you can see from the above-linked uptime reports, the German server location is acceptable, while the US-based server has not been so good.

– T.O.C. –

8. Blacklist reports

So far, both German and US server IP addresses haven’t been on any blacklist, which is important if you are using hosting for sending emails. I’m monitoring the situation and will be updating the text in case of any changes.
Update November 2020: currenly, IP address of German server is on 7, and US server on 22 blacklists, according to HetrixTools (affiliate link).

Though I’d recommend using an email provider separate of hosting provider – regardless of which hosting is used. It makes website migrations a lot faster and easier. Makes email backup easier as well. Finally, it makes email delivery more reliable. I personally like and use MXroute.

– T.O.C. –

9. Prices

Shared hosting costs 5 euros per month for smaller package (25 GB SSD storage) and 10 euros for larger one (50 GB storage).

Reseller hosting is 10 euros per month for smaller one (50 GB SSD storage) and 20 euros for larger one (100 GB storage).

Pricing policy is simple and straight forward.

– T.O.C. –

10. Subjective personal impression and conclusion

It all works fast and is stable. Tech. support communication is very pleasant, friendly. You feel like a guest, not like a client No. 3240345.

DirectAdmin control panel needs improving. This has nothing to do with the hosting provider, it’s not down to them. I wrote a separate post about DirectAdmin and its pros and cons compared to cPanel.

I need to further test this hosting provider. In a few months’ time, I’ll know if it’s as good and reliable as HostMantis that I now use primarily (not anymore, since June 2022). So, even though it’s too early for any conclusions, I’m quite happy with what I’ve seen so far.

Update, November 2020: I’ve had a few problems with some “3rd party apps”, primarily for WordPress, and with Softaculous website cloning not working properly (server going down when attempting to do it). This is not what I would call strictly a hosting provider’s responsibility, but it works with no problems on HostMantis hosting, for example – and makes things much simpler and easier. So I still haven’t moved any production websites to this hosting.

Update, August 2021: I have moved a few production websites to MyW hosting. It’s not as fast (nor as expensive) as HostMantis, but it works. 🙂
The Softaculous-related problem is most probably not down to the MyW hosting provider (and it no longer works with HostMantis either).
Having said that – if speed and uptime are really important, I think HostMantis is a better (though more expensive) choice. In July 2022, HostMantis have changed ownership, and I’ve moved to MDDHosting.

Update, May 2022: at this moment, my file hosting and a few client sites are running on MyW hosting. There’s no more honest recommendation than this. It’s not the best hosting I’ve used, but it’s far from bad. I keep track and note any problems in this article – but so far I’m quite happy. 🙂

If you found this “review” helpful and wish to order MyW hosting, you can use this affiliate link and thus support I/O Gremlin website as well.

– T.O.C. –

11. MyW USA server problems

On Saturday, 9th of July 2022, 8 out of 10 WordPress websites on MyW’s US server started showing broken pages, or returning 5xx errors. Roughly 20% WordPress sites worked fine, as well as all the static HTML sites.

To me, it looked like a caching, or a database problem (one not excluding the other).

I moved all the WordPress websites to MyW’s German server and to MDDHosting (roughly 50%-50%).

Based on the uptime history, the US server is not as good as the German one (provided by Hetzner).

Update, 12th of July, 2022:
The problem was probably caused by DirectAdmin’s tool CustomBuild (link to DirectAdmin’s forum). During its update, it reverted server settings to Apache instead of LiteSpeed. This caused WordPress websites that used LiteSpeed cache to crash. It’s working fine now. Miguel is working with the DirectAdmin guys to see if they can prevent CustomBuild from “touching” LiteSpeed in the future.

The problem still hasn’t been resolved.

– T.O.C. –

12. DirectAdmin 2FA login problems

September, 13th, 2022.

I tried logging in to my reseller DirectAdmin account. It has a 2FA security configured, and that used to work with no problems. Now, however, entering the 2FA code brings me back to the login page – in an apparently endless loop.

After a while, it stopped asking for the 2FA code and just did the login page in a loop (enter username and password – then back to the same login page again). On my other MyW server which doesn’t have the 2FA configured, login works OK.

The problem was solved after a few hours, by restarting the server and reverting from the latest alpha, to the latest beta version of DirectAdmin.

Also, I’ve noticed that the provider’s main customer dashboard no longer provides an option to change the (main) password. I know I used to be able to change that password, and now I took a look after the 2FA problem – to realize I can no longer find that option.

– T.O.C. –

For any comments or questions regarding this article, please use this BikeGremlin Forum thread:
https://www.bikegremlin.net/threads/myw-hosting-review-article-comments.196/