I think that mining contracts may have made sense in 2014 when there were lots of new POW coin launches.

In those cases you could have found something that had been overlooked by others and you could mine a large amount of coins that would be worth a lot more in the future.

That situation doesn't really exist anymore.

I think now you are better off using the money that you would point towards mining in buying actual coins - I can't think of a single case where you would actually get more coins by purchasing mining.

It just doesn't make economic sense any more - particularly not for any major coins like Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin etc.

If it did the companies offering the mining contracts would be using that hashpower to mine for themselves.

The fact that they can make more money by selling it should tell you something.