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Introduction

midPhase is a unique player in the hosting industry. Since launch, midPhase has adjusted their pricing scheme several times, but has evolved with a feature-rich package that includes additional add-ons such as free domain registration, free marketing package including free advertising on advertising networks, and free web design. midPhase offers a unique approach to hosting plans: only one hosting plan, and they have been criticized on the financials behind offering $7.50 hosting with 1500MB disk space and 50GB storage. How they afford it, we don't know, but they look to be financially strong. They also include Spam Assassin in their web hosting plans, which makes it easier to mark mail as spam before it reaches your e-mail client.
 
midPhase is a relatively new player, launched in late 2002 it has grown quickly by the thousands of customers. Today, midPhase is honored almost daily by new customer testimonials, which they seem to add to their testimonial page daily. midPhase has two corporate offices, one in Chicago-Land and one in Kentucky, with servers in Chicago, and in Orlando Florida.

Initial Impression

midPhase did not appear to provide customers with telephone support, so we decided to send in a support ticket. Within minutes (no joke) a technician by the name of Aaron replied and gave us a phone number and extension to speak with him directly. We called them. After dialing the number and waiting on hold for a few seconds after pushing the extension (they asked that we not post their phone number online) we were greeted by Aaron, the technician. Our representative talked to us about various aspects of what we were planning on doing with our site, and eventually told us that midPhase would be able to help us. He even offered to personally walk us through the installation of one of their bundled eCommerce products -- Agora Cart. We declined. Then, we signed up using their online form, and had an instant setup followed by a personalized email from an Customer Representative.

Price and Cost Effectiveness

You can't compete with midPhase when it comes to price and cost effectiveness. midPhase cost just $7.50 per month (we prepaid for six months) and they didn't have a setup fee. They also registered our domain for us, which clearly meant they knew they were not going to make a penny off of us the first month, so it seems quite clear that in order for them to continue offering free domain registration, they would have to be sure that customers were happy with service, and continue. We had to question the financial numbers behind their pricing. But, then we assumed they are probably singing up a large number of clients and due to this they are generating a profit. Regardless, this cost us pennies compared to the prices we paid at some other hosts. Very good price, almost too good if you ask us. 

Reliability

We were with midPhase for two months and didn't notice a single second of down time.  Further, their ANY-TIME money back guarantee was flawless. We did run into a few software problems while installing some of our own software, and a technician was able to assist us at 4AM.
 
Control Panel

midPhase uses cPanel -- but a highly modified, customized and added-to version. midPhase's control panel is pretty, easy to use and has every feature we could imagine. It even installed bulletin board and eCommerce software for us. 

Conclusion

midPhase was fantastic. If they had listed their phone number and given us a new car, they would have been #1. In fact, this service was so good that one of our editors, Russ, has signed up for his families web site. What more could you ask for? Not much. midPhase was about as good as it gets.

Overall Rating: 86.00%